The CPI "basket of goods" does include Housing (40%) and transportation (16-18%).

So no, you can't just dismiss real wage gains so easily. That clerk at a store in the 1950s made $25-50 per week. After adjusting for inflation, that would be $339-678 per week. Based on home prices in the 1950s, that clerk could have afforded a mortgage on an 800-1,000 square foot house with 1 bathroom and no air conditioning.

Now tell me again how good those clerks had it in the 1950s!

I never said Microsoft had it all together. What I said was that it's a fantasy to assume that Linux is inherently more secure. It tends to have fewer exploits in the wild because hackers, when given a choice between going after 60% of the desktop market, and going after 5% of the desktop market, will nearly always choose the 60% piece of the pie. It's just not profitable enough to go after a tiny sliver of the market.

You keep bringing up this so-called stagnation of wages as if it were a real thing. It is not. Wages, adjusted for inflation have risen consistently over the past 50 years, in every income category: low, middle, and high. We older folks have a tendency to look back at the "good old days" with rose-colored glasses.

And you believe that you personally have sufficient understanding of every patch-note to make a wise determination of whether you need that patch?

Let's suppose you *are* a security expert and know what the patch-note means for your security. The reality is, that patch contains many changes, the patch-note is just a summary, probably more or less as accurate as an AI summary. Unless you inspect the source code diff, you wouldn't actually know everything that is in that patch.

And even if you did inspect the source code diff, security vulnerabilities have a way of hiding in plain sight. Heartbleed is one such example. Nobody saw it for years, even though it was completely within open source code, and affected millions of Linux machines in the wild.

Never forget! Life was just peachy under Biden! Thank you for your honesty!

This is a fantasy not substantiated by evidence. Heartbleed--a Linux vulnerability in an open source library--was lying in plain sight for years before some hacker discovered it, and it was exploited in the wild for years before anybody discovered the attack.

My point was, employers can forbid all they want, but that doesn't stop employees for talking.

Your experience is not an indication of a good practice. Linux is somewhat sheltered because of its low adoption as a desktop operating system. If Linux had a 60% market share like Windows, you can bet hackers would be all over it, finding all kinds of ways to attack.

EXACTLY! Do NOT believe the conspiracy theorists! The laptop was a Russian plant, the Steele Report is gospel, the lab leak theory has zero credibility, and Smollet was attacked by MAGA.

The list is “opinion”? No they’re all FACTS!

Don’t you read the New York Times?

Or are you on the side of uneducated deplorables?

Your company is a unicorn. Most do not do such things.

It's a lot easier to decide what you're "willing to accept" than it is to actually get that amount of money. To get it, you have to find and get hired by a company that will pay you that amount. This process can be tremendously disruptive to one's life, especially if it means relocating. Sometimes, the benefits of that desired salary are outweighed by the risks or disruption. But that doesn't make it somehow "childish" to be unhappy that companies use tactics like this to keep your salary low.

Good luck "forbidding" employees from discussing their pay.

Even if they don't talk about salaries with each other, they do go to sites like GlassDoor and post their salaries there. It's not hard to find out what your job is worth.

If they did, they wouldn't be losing people right and left, who are leaving because the company refuses to pay them enough to stay.

Not having a LinkedIn profile, really limits your job prospects these days. I've landed at least three jobs specifically because recruiters found my profile there. And by the way, I *want* my profile to be completely public, so people can find it!