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The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

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Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#71

Post by vostok »

NTDF9 wrote: post #5
cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

>> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford. Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and…

> It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college)

The crazy thing is that if you want one of those high paid jobs where you work all day and all night then you don't even get those first 18 years.

I worked at such a job and an easy majority of my colleagues went to universities that require high achievements at the school level.

In the best case you get your first 14 years.

A large minority of my colleagues went to secondary schools with highly competitive admissions and another minority had achievements that require a very early start (olympiads, olympics, college sports, etc.).

Many of these people started when they were between 6 and 10 years old.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#72

Post by cyphunk »

cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

Upward mobility in the US is a myth fed through fables. Measured by % of population that transitions from the lower 5th economic ladder to the top 5th the US ranks lower than the large majority of OECD peers [1]

http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study...

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#73

Post by J-dawg »

rmc wrote: post #65
seanhandley wrote: post #59

As a European (used to free healthcare, statutory maternity leave, and 25 days paid leave per year) it shocked me on first visiting America how third-world it actually feels regarding what people consider a "normal" work/life balance. People work incredibly hard, long hours and often with very little to show for it. It's surreal.

And many of them think that people in Europe have it worse. That the economy would just collapse into African-levels of poverty if there was mandatory paid holidays. This is a danger of American TV shows and movie studios remaking shows for the American audiences. They don't get to see that Europe is mostly a developed place.

Not to disagree with the parent comment (because overall I prefer the European way) but we do have it worse in some ways.

Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America, you're really winning. But when you're losing you're really losing. In Europe the ups and downs of life are more smoothed out.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#74

Post by pikzen »

Terr_ wrote: post #69
NTDF9 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford. Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and…

> A consequence of worshipping money. I disagree -- if money was truly worshiped, why would discussing salary be taboo? I think it has more to do with things like a just-world hypothesis [0] run amok, a long-term political trend in decreasing union power, and a lack of awareness about exactly how much surplus value is being siphoned away before the average person sees any of it. I mean, "stop worshiping money" almost…

Discussing salary is only taboo because your employers make it taboo. By keeping your salaries a secret, they get more leverage in negotiations, can afford to give you much smaller raises, and have a general upper hand. Keeping salaries secret is nothing more than ensuring you stay on the bottom of the society.*

Your employer, however, is happy to keep all that money.

This is why we need unions. Because as a single person, you have absolutely zero leverage over your employer. Sadly, fear on each side is what makes the agreement work, properly.

* Applies more as you go down the chain of responsibility, or salary. Needless to say, software developers are not doing that badly in the grand scheme of things.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#76

Post by coldtea »

pavlov wrote: post #25
cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

I'm not convinced that Protestant traditions are to blame. The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone. At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care a…

>The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone.

It's not the same protestant ethic. In nordic countries most are counted as members of a church nominally still today, but they hardly believe in anything. Only 20% or polled Danish even say they believe in Christ for example, another 20% states they are atheist, and the majority is totally indifferent.

The US got all the religious hardcodes, calvinists, the Puritans, Quakers et al, and let the define the national ideology beyond the church, and piled an Old Testament mentality on top of it.

Even today when the nordic countries have mostly atheists or totally indifferent nominally religious people, the US has a large population deep on Old Testament.

>At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care and other worker-friendly policies.

In the forties and fifties, that is post war world II, the US was "heavily unionized" too. It was the golden era of the unions. But that (influenced by the tradition of leftists and labour rights activists in the US and the post war boom in the economy) didn't last long (e.g. after McCarthy), whereas in nordic countries, if not the unions themselves, those "safety nets" and worker-friendly policies remain respected.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#77

Post by Ntrails »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #44
trome wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

58% of Americans would prefer a federally funded healthcare system[0], akin to healthcare in Canada. We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer. Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut…

Doesn't federally funded healthcare system have problems like lower quality of healthcare, increased government spending, increased chances of corruption and creating a moral hazard of not working to earn what is consumed ?

I'm gonna address these point by point with opinions.

lower quality of healthcare

Not overall, but arguably yes for people with perfect healthcare plans at the moment. I think that everyone having 90% "rated" healthcare is better than a split of 0%/50%/100% by wealth bracket.

Increased government spending

Yes. Absolutely - you have to tax people the money that would otherwise go to insurers and spend it as an insurer. Since the US currently spends the highest proportion of GDP on healthcare for incredibly unequal healthcare you can decide for yourself whether even big government could manage to be less efficient.

Increased chances of corruption

No.

Creating a moral hazard of not working to earn what is consumed

Sure. It's a problem when there's zero cost involved in healthcare - something many systems struggle with. Often in european countries you'll see some kind of excess/copay so people have a little "skin in the game" before using the system. The UK uses waiting lists and gateway doctors (GPs) to assess need.

Rationing of healthcare on a basis of need, rather than wealth seems smarter to me from a population basis.

There are many healthcare systems, all have trade offs. Most of the first world is unconvinced that the current American system is optimal

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#78

Post by llamataboot »

Waiting for the inevitable HN critique about "voluntary work" and "why should anyone have the right to tell someone else to work less" without a complete understanding of what voluntary means in a world with massive structural inequalities.

Or as the anarchists say, "Work 50 hours or starve" isn't a choice, it's a threat.

(edit: nitpick misspelling)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#79

Post by coldtea »

Applejinx wrote: post #63
cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

If Fiverr is going on about "beating the trust-fund kids", that is inadvertently exposing a severe unpatched exploit which has nothing to do with protestant work ethic. It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game…

>It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work.

Currently?

And why would "how hard you work" play any role?

A surgeon doing 20 hour shifts gets way untold times less money than e.g. Tim Cook or some absentee CEO -- as their pay, not as their returns from capital investments.

And let's not compare a miner who risks their life (and lungs) underground with some cushy executive.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#80

Post by cmdrfred »

J-dawg wrote: post #73
rmc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many of them think that people in Europe have it worse. That the economy would just collapse into African-levels of poverty if there was mandatory paid holidays. This is a danger of American TV shows and movie studios remaking shows for the American audiences. They don't get to see that Europe is mostly a developed place.

Not to disagree with the parent comment (because overall I prefer the European way) but we do have it worse in some ways. Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America, you're really winning. But when you're losing you're really losing. In Europe the ups and downs of life are more smoothed out.

I live in America and my wife's family is from the UK. We aren't rich by any means but we bought a small house last year and when her family flew in they kept commenting on how big our house was. Our house is about as small as you can get without living in a trailer.

I'm a high school drop out and we each make less than the median nation income and I feel we are better off than if we lived in the UK. Though I admit life from 18 - 25 would have probably been less of a struggle there.

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