

Mind the Gap - justinmares
http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html

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daniel-cussen
[2004]

You may want to append that to the title. Some people here already know it's
not a new essay, but it's a courtesy to those that either forgot or don't know
because new pg essays attract a lot of interest on this forum.

------
nhaehnle
In the discussion about the ratio in incomes between those earning the least
and those earning the most, pg does not seem to be aware of the fact that this
ratio has been changing over large time spans (even ignoring the excesses from
pop culture which can be explained by a structural change in how that part of
society functions).

Curiously, these changes correlate with the rise and fall of certain political
movements. It is then quite reasonable to wonder if, perhaps, the disreputable
ways of earning money via political manipulation are really not a thing of the
past after all.

------
almightygod
"In a free market, prices are determined by what buyers want" - sure for
products but it is not entirely true when it comes to compensation. If
janitors, in some united way, stopped cleaning our bathrooms for minimum wage
then we would pay more. I'd say their service is "worth" more then we
compensate them for, we are just collectively taking advantage of their
position in life.

~~~
glenra
If janitors charged much more than the reasonable market value for their
services we'd invest more in self-cleaning technology and tools so those few
janitors that remained employed were less necessary and were _really
effective_ such that they could do more work per unit time. We'd also probably
just adapt to a lower level of cleanliness. Or clean the bathrooms ourselves
as needed or as an extra add-on task to some more valuable job.

------
ristretto
Another point of view is that money equals power. Societies rightfully worry
that uber-accumulation of wealth leads to power imbalances; i don't think it's
just a superstition. There are also a number of points i disagree with. I
wonder how he would write about it today, after the crisis.

