> In particular it seems weird that only we had a massive change during COVID.
It is not weird if you were old enough to be aware of the news during that time. Poor people in the US suddenly coming into money and being lifted out of poverty thanks to COVID stimulus checks was front and center in the news cycle as it was happening. The other countries noted did not follow the same "hand out free money" approach. Their safety nets were built around maintaining continuity during COVID.
> It is not weird if you were old enough to be aware of the news during that time. Poor people in the US suddenly coming into money and being lifted out of poverty thanks to COVID stimulus checks was front and center in the news cycle as it was happening.
A lot was written about the stimulus checks but they were so small to not matter. A $1200 check isn't going to suddenly lift a lot of people out of poverty and keep them there, even though it could be make-or-break for a few selected cases.
The bigger change was that the American economy was basically turbocharged by all of the interventions going on. Remember "The Great Resignation" when everyone was changing jobs because all the companies were hiring as fast as they could? It was an ideal time to move your way into a better position in the job market.
It was the unemployment checks much more than the stimulus checks that made a difference. There was an extra $600/week tacked on to those during COVID. I know a lot of people who were making more on unemployment during that time than they ever had made while working.
> A $1200 check isn't going to suddenly lift a lot of people out of poverty
"A lot" is subjective, I suppose. Concretely, it lifted 11.7 million Americans[1] out of poverty. That makes up approximately 30% of those who were in poverty prior to the stimulus.
That article is just making the same mistake I pointed out: It looks at the change in poverty during that time and claims it all came from the $1200 stimulus checks.
A lot of things changed during that time, notably the job market. Getting a new job that paid $1/hour more would be more impactful than a $1200 stimulus check. People were getting raises much bigger than that.
The checks were not the primary driver of the economic changes
> That article is just making the same mistake I pointed out
The article doesn't do anything other than quote the US Census Bureau.
Obviously you will have already read the citation in full, but for everyone else here is the full quote: "Stimulus payments, enacted as part of economic relief legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved 11.7 million individuals out of poverty. Unemployment insurance benefits, also expanded during 2020, prevented 5.5 million individuals from falling into poverty."
Again, this is from the US Census Bureau. It is being asserted in an official government capacity, from an governmental organization that has access to all the relevant data. If you think that they got something wrong you're going to have to offer something more compelling than some random theory you made up on the spot.
I lived through it and discussed it at the time. I'm aware of the the different politicians and agencies congratulating themselves for the stimulus checks because in politics people make political connections to receiving a check addressed to them but discussing the overall economy is more complex.
This one needs a little common sense. A one-time $1200 stimulus check is not going to lift 11.7 million individuals out of poverty in any meaningful sense, unless you're literally just looking at people within $1200 of an arbitrary cutoff and saying you "lifted them out of poverty" by bumping them over that threshold for the year.
Even if we take a face value the assertion that a 1200 one time check raised so many people out of poverty, it seems incredibly difficult to believe that single check for that single time was enough to change this "average poverty" value from 2x the other countries being referenced to not only less than half of that value, but also below 2 of the 3 comparative counties in the same time period AND 60% of the value in 1990 where the US was supposedly running equal with the comparative countries. Looking at the article graphs, none of the comparative countries see even a blip in their trends during the same time period. For that to make sense, especially in light of the rest of the article, it seems like a handful of things would have to be true:
1) That all of the effects of America's wealth inequality on American poverty could be made up for simply by giving everyone a thousand dollars a year. Not even UBI proponents are that optimistic.
2) That nothing any of the 3 comparative countries did or did not do during a massive global pandemic did anything to alter the relative poverty levels of their populations in the slightest
3) That the major economic crashes and recessions over the last few decades have actually improved American average poverty (notice that the US rate dips for the beginnings of the dot com crash, 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, despite none of those coming with government stimulus checks.
This measurement might be have something interesting to say, but I'm not sure it's saying what is being claimed. It feels more like they've found a more volatile measure of the US economy and stock market than of poverty.
> that a 1200 one time check raised so many people out of poverty
It was $600 per week for a while, along with several other stimulus programs, not even including state-level support — totalling around $50,000 all told. Maybe if you were rich you only saw one relatively small check. But someone who was rich is obviously not someone who was in poverty, per the discussion.
> it seems incredibly difficult to believe that single check for that single time was enough to change this "average poverty" value
Quite. So you admit to recognizing that you overlooked something when preparing your comment but, despite that, decided to post it anyway? I could see asking for clarification or help in understanding, but going off on some long tangent that you already fully realize doesn't make sense...? What motivates that behavior?
Different responses to the COIVD shutdowns. The US government gave stimulus money directly to the people, for many bringing an increase to one's income during that period. The European response was focused more on helping people keep their jobs so their incomes remained stable.
Extremely doubtful that the stimmy was enough to meaningfully reduce the real poverty level. The people who already live paycheck to paycheck spent that almost as soon as they got it (hopefully on something that meaningfully improved their lives, like deferred car or home repairs, but if we're being real a lot of people blew it on gambling apps.)
The metric in question measures how much time it takes to get $1 in income. When, over a set period of time, your income increases (in this case because the government started paying you more than you were getting before), the time to get $1 goes down. When the government stops paying and you go back to the way things were then the time to get $1 goes back up.
> It can get pretty hairy when you already have well-established customers with long-term use-cases that absolutely cannot be broken
LLMs are often poor at writing tests that provide useful information to human readers and poor at writing tests that can survive project evolution. To be fair, humans are also poor at these tasks if done in hindsight, after all the information you normally want to capture in tests has been forgotten. That boat has been missed for the legacy code no matter how you slice it. But LLMs are quite good at writing tests that lock in existing functionality in the rawest way. It seems like LLM-generation is actually the best hope of saving such a project?
> The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2
I think more often they simply picked the wrong programming language as a target. In my experience, AI is especially bad at writing Typescript/Javascript, which happens to overlap with the most widely used language. I have negative things to say about AI too when developing in that ecosystem. If I only ever used AI in that ecosystem I'd probably tell you it is useless with the rest of them.
But my daily work sees me working in more than one language and when I am in some other language environments I have no reservations about AI whatsoever. AI vs good code is no longer even at odds with each other. In those certain languages, the models write good, stable, production-ready code pretty much all the time. It is really quite amazing.
Absolutely. Good managers are invisible. They don't need to talk about career growth as they have already silently, in the background, removed any impediments that might have prevented you from growing. All you need to do is move in the direction you want to go.
> I suspect many will find themselves locked out the middle class for generations.
On the other hand, once software as a high paying career dies there will be nothing to prop up the status quo (high cost of housing, for example) so the middle class will return to being much more accessible to modestly paid jobs.
> This is a really concerning perspective: people were paid what they were worth.
The parent comment doesn't discount that, only pointing out that "what they were worth" was inflated due to a speculative environment. Wherein lies your concern?
That prices change from one point in time to another is a trivial fact.
“Inflated due to a speculative environment” is not an accurate way to frame labor prices that held for many years. At that point, the prices were simply high due to high demand relative to supply (compared to other types of labor).
> At that point, the prices were simply high due to high demand relative to supply
That goes without saying. The investigation here is into demand. Which was said to be overinflated due to speculation. As noted, many of the companies hiring the developers did not have viable businesses.
I think calling it inflated is to play to a narrative that labor was overvalued broadly in tech.
Salaries across industries in the US have remained flat since the 1970s. Calling the one sector that can provide access a middle class lifestyle inflated s to play into a narrative capital is eager to tell, even if OP didn't intend that.
> Salaries across industries in the US have remained flat since the 1970s
What do you mean? The real (meaning adjusted for inflation) hourly wage in the US has increased by around 20% since 1970.
What has changed since the 1970s is that wages are no longer coupled to productivity. Perhaps that is what you are thinking of? But that should be an obvious truism for anyone in tech. We create the very things that cause that to be the case!
That NeoLiberal shift did not take place in a vacuum. It was a product of the world around it. It absolutely was caused by tech.
If we — those with the power to build the productivity creators — took a stand and said "we refuse to create tech for the interests of the few" it would have never happened. But, instead, we welcomed it and are responsible for it.
The corollary of “if we took a stand” is that Capital took a stand and collectively undid a lot of the gains of the post-WWII social democratic order.
So no. It wasn’t caused by tech beyond the uninteresting factors like modern society being complex and, of course, that tech developments influence things (pretty much all things).
The productivity gains we've seen above the capacity of human productivity would have been impossible without tech. It absolutely was caused by tech.
The benefactor of those gains was also entirely decided by those who created the tech. We could have given use of that tech to everyone. In some cases we actually did (e.g. open source), but in most cases we gained (at least partial) ownership of the capital so it was in our best personal economic interest to keep it for ourselves and our close friends.
> The productivity gains we've seen above the capacity of human productivity would have been impossible without tech. It absolutely was caused by tech.
Would have been impossible without and being caused by are different things.
The sense of being “caused by” in a political context are the people who have the power to direct things. Which are not necessarily the people who implement something.
> The benefactor of those gains was also entirely decided by those who created the tech.
You assert that they were decided by. Based on what?
The vast majority of tech work was done in employment, either for some government or for private entities. The private entitites were controlled by Capital. The governments were controlled by democratic forces and Capital.
> We could have given use of that tech to everyone. In some cases we actually did (e.g. open source),
Again I reference the meme of Overworked Nebraska OSS Maintainer.
The impressive work done on OSS by tech workers directly have been done in their free time. The bulk of OSS work done by people as a living is probably through corporations like e.g. Intel working on the Linux Kernel.[1]
That impressive free time work has gotten the reputation as a treasure trove for the highly motivated and tech literate. In contrast to something that regular people can plug-and-play as an alternative to Big Tech dominance.
> , but in most cases we gained (at least partial) ownership of the capital so it was in our best personal economic interest to keep it for ourselves and our close friends.
Yes, well played. For those that got away with their financial-independence millions. For the rest, well, I guess they never managed to learn the moral lesson of Monopoly.
While you are right to recognize that there was some attempt to inject political context, it was not there originally, and is not the main discussion taking place. The fact that wages and productivity have become decoupled is not inherently political. It is but simple mathematics. Tech is the cause for the decoupling; it is why we have been able to become continually more productive and at an accelerating rate.
> The vast majority of tech work was done in employment
Yes, but generally even where employment is present tech workers also demand a share in ownership (e.g. stock). Tech doesn't invent itself. At least not yet. The workers have held the cards. Even those who haven't won the lottery are still in a pretty good economic position, relatively speaking.
> While you are right to recognize that there was some attempt to inject political context, it was not there originally, and is not the main discussion taking place.
I don’t care if anyone wants political context to be there or not. Political context is not some subjective choice that the participants in a discussion can choose to be the case or not, like some alternative history exercise.
This political context (i.e. reality) called NeoLiberalism is so well-researched and argued that I can just call it NeoLiberalism and even a forum full of techheads don’t bat an eye. Which is more than can be said for your incoherent nuh-uh where both:
- Technology just determines things by itself
- And (also) the rank and file peons who implement technology could have forced something better on the world (than the pile of shit that we have)
Trouble is that regulation isn't imposed by an omnipotent deity in the sky. In a democracy, regulation must come from the very same people who you say don't care, don't complain, and aren't willing to change their habits. Given that you say the people don't care, aren't willing to change, and perhaps even prefer the status quo, regulation isn't going to magically appear.
> The first company which can achieve human level intelligence will just be able to...
They say prostitution is the oldest industry of all. We know how to achieve human-level intelligence quite well. The outstanding challenge is figuring out how to produce an energy efficient human-level intelligence.
It is not weird if you were old enough to be aware of the news during that time. Poor people in the US suddenly coming into money and being lifted out of poverty thanks to COVID stimulus checks was front and center in the news cycle as it was happening. The other countries noted did not follow the same "hand out free money" approach. Their safety nets were built around maintaining continuity during COVID.
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