Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org

@freemo @kilroy_was_here I don't think it's correct to say that living standards in 1975 were achieved by compromising workplace safety (and by extension that any loss since then is because more is being spent on safety). Safety standards at the time were what was believed to be acceptable, it's not that people were cutting corners to save money, and even if they had been workplace safety isn't generally as expensive as all that.

Any erosion of median living standards since the 70s is likely to be a result of massively widening inequality between the top and the bottom. For instance in the UK in 1979 the top 10% took home 21% of the total net income, in 2009/10 it was 31%. This rise was largely at the expense of the bottom 30%. (figures from https://www.poverty.ac.uk/editorial/more-unequal-country). The top 10% have a 50% pay rise over that period, the bottom 10% have a 75% cut. Similarly, from https://www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/going-backwards-1983-2012, the percentage of people lacking three or more "necessities" in the UK has more than doubled between 1983 and 2012.

Similarly in the US the share of aggregate income from 1970 to 2018 being taken home by the "upper tier" income group rose from 29 to 48%. The "middle tier" income group fell from 62 to 43%. Share of aggregate family wealth for the upper tier rose to a whopping 79% from 1983-2016, to just 4% for the lower tier (both stats https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/).

The rules got changed, a lot of regulations that served a very good purpose got done away with, and the richest in society got the benefit. It's nothing to do with spending money to make workplaces safer.

@freemo @kilroy_was_here I don't know, but I strongly suspect that increase in death risk is rather uneven. Teachers, probably about the same, coal miners, not so much. So most jobs you'd probably be fine. ;-)

With my Trade Union hat on I supported someone a little while back who was accused of something particularly unpleasant. He strenuously and emotionally denied everything. I chose to believe him, because it felt like someone had to and my job as his TU rep was to support him, which was much easier if I decided he was telling the truth. And he was at a similar or slightly earlier stage to me in life with similar problems to what I'd gone through (otherwise similar, anyway), I saw some of myself in him.

For different reasons both he and I left the company before his case came to trial, I didn't find out what the outcome was until just now. He wasn't telling the truth. That will be his victim re-traumatised, his wife betrayed, his family presumably broken, his child growing up with that stigma on his father, and that's leaving aside the toll on him, personally.

I feel incredibly sad. There are no winners here. There were never going to be as soon as he did what he did.

#tradeunion #Casework

@cstross I've just finished Quantum of Nightmares - enjoyed it very much (thank you!), but it left me wondering (especially if you're writing the final one!), how long CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN lasts and what happens when it does? I remember it being some sort of celestial alignment, but are we talking planetary (days, presumably if you assume effects lasting until next time around then through to years) stellar (decades to centuries?) or galactic (centuries to millennia?)? Does the Black Pharaoh vanish again and the government go back to the more conventional and banal evil of the Tories?

Could just hand-wave and say galactic so there's no need to think about what comes after, but you'd also assume for a longer-lasting alignment it'd be nearly there for (much) longer, so the effects would come on very gradually.

Basically, I'm wondering do Bob and Mo get to retire once CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is over, or if it'll even *be* over in their lifetimes. ;-)

@freemo That would be my hypothesis. Though I am frequently wrong. ;-)

My understanding is that the gains you speak of were largely won by organised labour. Deregulation of markets and weakening of trade unions since the 80s has demonstrably led to wider inequalities between workers and executives, which would suggest the gains in worker buying power should at the very least have slowed since then and possibly gone backwards.

@freemo (Just because my understanding was that in the US and UK at least, the deregulation of Reagan and Thatcher has led to that gain going backwards since then)

@freemo Do you happen to know what the number was for say, 1975?

@cstross Maybe they've just given up on being able to debug it altogether.

"Alright boys, there's an off-by-one bug in here somewhere, but the only interface is an AI chatbot that tells us the code looks different every time we ask and the whole thing is based on the premise that none of the qbits will decohere on us at the wrong moment. Screw this, let's go for a pint."

@spacekookie @garius This is one for you. ;-)

Honestly. I know these people are getting rich, but I remember David Mitchell making the point once (his was about Heathrow 3rd runway): You can't take it with you. What good is being rich when the climate crisis kills you and your children? #climatecrisis #climatechange #COP28 #FossilFuels

@garius Fury of Vosene. Play now for free at mictrotransactionsareexpensive.com!

@Glastomichelle I haven't been up there for a long time, but I remember one very windy trip up when I was a kid where I was so convinced I was going to be blown off the path up that I was literally flat on the ground holding on. And yes, it can be very cold up there when it's windy!