I'm not quite understand western rage about gas prices.
OK, gas become more expensive, shit happens. But what is the problem to ask employer to rise your salary? It's not your imagination, employer perfectly know that gas price rised. You have skills, you sell them to employer who need your skills, it is a trade and there is capitalism around. Gas prices changed, so your skills become more expensive too, since you need gas to continue to sell your skills to employer.
Another question is about salaries. In many private talks with westerners, when things come to salaries, people refuse to name the numbers. IDK, in Russia we don't have any taboos about salaries, and it is common topic for talks, when people compare their salaries, bragging about recent rise or complaining about decline. With exact numbers. "I have 150kRUB/month. Wow, I work less than you and have 170kRUB/month. My business bring me 100-200kRUB/month. I work half-day and have 70kRUB/month. You all too rich in that city, I have only 80kRUB/month in my shithole". (we used to monthly salary numbers, as tradition) I never had heard that kind of talks on western forums or in private communication. Even talking with drunk western friends in bar it is impossible to talk about each other salaries/profits. What is it? Salaries is something intimate on the west and it is indecently to discuss them?
So, how much do you make?
I haven't been an employee since the 80s, but I can see why people wouldn't want to risk the deal they've made by telling anyone else about it. If you knew I was getting $10,000 per hour, would you still be okay with only getting $65 per hour?
Depends on how business going, now it runs a little better, it is $2.5k - $3k / month.
I also haven't been employee for a long time. :)
But I think it will depend on the average. If average is $5 per hour, I'll highly likely will be happy with my deal and will not care about your at all. Even if average is unknown, I'll prefer to rely on needs/spent efforts ratio. If that $65/hour cover all my needs and don't demand any significant efforts from me, I'll will not care about your salary too. Also, it depends on hours a month. Interesting, that this situation with $65/h and $10000/h is real. Say, you and I are electronics engineers with similar skills. But I'm repairing smartphones, and you repair highly sophisticated rare industrial equipment. I need an hour to repair smartphone, you need a hour to repair your thing. But I have endless customers who wish to pay me $65/h 24/7, and you could earn your $10000/h only few times a year, since there is only dozen pieces of that rare equipment in whole world. I could have questions only if average is $10000/h or if average is $65/h and we are doing exact same job with exactly same hours a year. And even in that case could be variants, when it could be OK for me. Either I'm altruist with other wealth source and this job is my hobby or lifework, either you just a relative of some top manager or supervising government official (high-ranked tax officer, f.e.). Or we are artists/actors/whatever where job itself does not matter.
In any case I'll try to find a reason for difference first. And highly unlikely I'll have intention to harm your wage, more likely will try to improve my own, by changing employer or acquiring skills.
You're right that those opportunities are limited. It was a rare and pretty unobtainable type of consulting back then, and was only around 40 hours over a couple years. Still ended up making a few million in that business. The irony is I ended up developing an intolerance for society, and exited.
Mee to, especially in last years, but my business allow to distance from society and I also delivered all business negotiations with customer managers, lawyers and finacists to my colleague/business partner, and I'm talking mostly with decently sane and competent engineers who directly work with our stuff so no need for me to exit.
In last years, top management, especially of large enterprises become completely dumb and insane. Sometimes seems that they even have their own crazy language and system of concepts, so it is impossible to maintain any dialogue with them. You could spend half of year just to make an agreement on each letter of contract, while enterprise losing multiples of our equipment price every month.