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Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

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Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#141

Post by amelius »

dota_fanatic wrote: post #53
simplemath wrote: post #8

Overworked? Everyone is overworked. We live in a post scarcity industrial world, or very very close to it, and bad actors have gobbled up the spoils of the huge gains in productivity in the last 50 years. How much of the entire economy is predicated on grey money? How much of your time is indirectly consumed by this leviathan? The more I think about it, the more i want to opt out of the entire fucking thing.

Imagine if all the 10x and 100x engineers were all on the same team. Keep competition, but play for the same team. The losers are losers because they didn't create the best solution, but the losers are winners because they get to enjoy the spoils, since they're on the same team. Isn't status everything, after a point? Why can't the United States actually be united? Develop universal human code, highly vetted, secure,…

> Imagine if all the 10x and 100x engineers were all on the same team.

Yes, and imagine they were doing fundamental physics or medicine, instead of social media apps...

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#142

Post by adrianN »

droithomme wrote: post #16

So "instead of" taking an annual vacation, one should limit their work hours to 48 hrs a week, organize their time better, and take up a hobby like knitting. I've got a better idea. Keep the vacation and cut work hours down to 40.

I work 37 hours and I think that's too much.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#144

Post by chimprich »

sokoloff wrote: post #66
DenisM wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a guy in a project that generates a few millions per employee. His share is less than 10% in salary. In this case the discrepancy is easy to see, but the same is true in many other places where it's not so obvious. But we can see it in the big picture, statistically half the money in the country goes to the 0.01% or something along those lines. All the gains from productivity went to the super-rich. It doesn't…

I believe that an employer should make a substantial margin on an employee's labor. That provides a stable situation, covers for the employer's risk (if an employee's project/work fails to create value, they still get paid), and covers the overhead. If you want full value (which might be zero or negative at times) for your labor, you should start your own thing and keep 100% of the value you create. If my employer wa…

You could make a similar argument for taxes. The state provides a stable environment, covers risk, and handles overhead. Yet people (in some countries, at least) are significantly more accepting of corporations taking many times the value they are creating in profit versus the state taking a proportion of their earnings in taxes.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#145

Post by shaftoe »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #73
sokoloff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that an employer should make a substantial margin on an employee's labor. That provides a stable situation, covers for the employer's risk (if an employee's project/work fails to create value, they still get paid), and covers the overhead. If you want full value (which might be zero or negative at times) for your labor, you should start your own thing and keep 100% of the value you create. If my employer wa…

> I believe that an employer should make a substantial margin on an employee's labor. That provides a stable situation, covers for the employer's risk (if an employee's project/work fails to create value, they still get paid), and covers the overhead. A workers' cooperative can do the same job. What justifies the privatization of the cooperative's profits to a single individual?

The profits go to the owner, whatever that is. The employees chose the company (and implicitly the ownership structure) when they began employment. It's not like citizenship where one is born into the situation and the contract is mythical; they had to sign one.

Do you not believe in the sanctity of property rights?

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#146

Post by CJefferson »

refurb wrote: post #94
Tsagadai wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volume and proportion are not the same thing. 50% of net is very easy when you have >10% of all wealth. No super rich individuals are taxed at 50% either of their net income either (if they are they are doing their taxes themselves and their lawyer is a fool), it is more common for ultra high wealth individuals to pay less than 10% of their net earnings.

I see your point, but don't forget that almost 50% of Americans don't pay any federal tax at all.[1] In fact some of them get EITC, so they are getting free money from the government on top of keeping all of their salary. So my question still stands, what would be a fair breakdown of tax burden? Top 1% pay 100% of all income taxes? 90%? I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm asking an honest question. Unless we kno…

Asking the question what should the 'top 1%' pay is (in my opinion) the wrong question.

A better start (for me) is to ask what % of tax the people with the (for example) top 50% of income, or top 50% of wealth, should pay.

If the top 1% has (for example) 90% of the income, then only paying 50% of the tax might be considered unfair.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#148

Post by drjesusphd »

vlehto wrote: post #135
austinjp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite follow this. I'm inclined to believe we are experiencing scarcity. Sure, I can buy just about anything I desire and can afford. Any food item, cheap clothing, cheap travel. But I think that's an illusion. Let's say I'm prepared to pay £50-£100 for an item of clothing. Shoes, jacket, whatever. It's likely to be made by impoverished people on the other side of the world who are paid peanuts. I could even…

While pretty hideous sweashops do exist, there is still good chance that the person who sowed your jeans chose to do it. Because the alternative was even worse.

And to what extent are we responsible for those alternatives? How much are the companies we patronize invested in making sure their employees have no choice?

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#149

Post by lisivka »

com2kid wrote: post #47
cballard wrote: post #2

> So if we need to work long hours, what can we do to recover? Not work long hours? This is what unions are for (now, if we could just have one without dues/political contributions).

> Not work long hours? Consumers demand their new toys on a regular cycle. If one company doesn't keep up, another will. Too long not in the news and people forget about you. The only way to stay relevant in a world with a thousand distractions is to keep making enough noise that customers pay attention. If a product can be done properly in 16 months and ignored, or done in 12 months of way too many hours, and be a h…

Sorry, but damn choice is to work 4 hours per day and be more productive than someone working 12 hour per day.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#150

Post by balfirevic »

chimprich wrote: post #144
sokoloff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that an employer should make a substantial margin on an employee's labor. That provides a stable situation, covers for the employer's risk (if an employee's project/work fails to create value, they still get paid), and covers the overhead. If you want full value (which might be zero or negative at times) for your labor, you should start your own thing and keep 100% of the value you create. If my employer wa…

You could make a similar argument for taxes. The state provides a stable environment, covers risk, and handles overhead. Yet people (in some countries, at least) are significantly more accepting of corporations taking many times the value they are creating in profit versus the state taking a proportion of their earnings in taxes.

That's because their relationship with employer is voluntary.
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