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The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

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Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#101

Post by J-dawg »

grabcocque wrote: post #75

All very interesting theories, but the US isn't an amazingly hard working nation by global standards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time

The ranking [0] is absolutely fascinating, and contains a lot of surprises.

Who knew that Mexicans work 500 hours a year more than the Japanese?

I wonder if the data is being skewed somehow, perhaps by different cultural norms around women working, or something like that?

If anyone can shed any light on this it would be really interesting.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#OECD_ranking

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#102

Post by llamataboot »

beaconstudios wrote: post #94
llamataboot wrote: post #78

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)

which is kind of ironic because in a state of anarchy like subsistence farming you'd expect to work a lot more than 50 hours, and doing back-breaking manual labour at that.

I'm not sure how much subsistence farming has to do with a socio-political theory that primarily came out of 19th Century Europe/Russia and Modernity, but sure, if that's your critique I don't want to derail the thread into a discussion about what anarchism is/isn't

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#103

Post by jacquesm »

cmdrfred wrote: post #80
J-dawg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Now let's hope nobody gets ill.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#104

Post by hellofunk »

dnel wrote: post #91
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.

I visited the US for the first time while on honeymoon and a couple of friends we visited while over there asked how I was handling doing work while away, it was an eye-opening insight into American culture I'd never witnessed before but it was a good opportunity to explain work-life balance from a European pov though, I didn't hear any counter-arguments from that small sample, maybe someday it'll catch on.

In Holland, everyone takes off 4 - 6 weeks in the summer to travel the world. This is so different than Americans:

1) In the U.S. you can work for years at a company before getting more than 1 or 2 weeks paid vacation.

2) Most Americans don't travel much outside their own state or region, let alone country. Most don't even own passports.

3) Even when not on the job, either at night, on the weekends, or on vacation, Americans tend to stay attached to their job via email or phone.

It's true that American salaries can be a lot higher than European ones, especially for developers. But Americans also typically do a lot of side jobs or have households with 2 or more full-time jobs per family, 2 or more cars per family. So one has to ask if it is all worth it?

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#105

Post by tscs37 »

thw1438383 wrote: post #97
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.

Atleast they get paid relatively more than in the EU. In Japan you're expected to work mad hours (read 11-12 hrs) for what is barely above minimum wage in the US! Add to that Tokyo is hecka expensive. I was quoted a salary of $ 30k for a deep learning position. Now that is third world.

Please keep in mind that your costs of living are also different.

In the EU you don't pay as much for the same services as in the US, especially healthcare.

I'm not sure about Japan but it could be the same thing there.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#106

Post by rjtavares »

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 ?

> lower quality of healthcare

No. US does not have better health care indicators than other countries with similar development levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_o...

> increased government spending

Maybe... But you will spend much less overall on healthcare, so it'll be a net positive for normal working Americans.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PCAP?year_high_de...

> increased chances of corruption

Countries with better healthcare than the US also have less corruption perception. I'm not suggesting public healthcare causes that, but it certainly does not cause the opposite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

> creating a moral hazard of not working to earn what is consumed

Moral hazard "occurs when one person takes more risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks". How does this affect healthcare?

We know that a lot of diseases have a strong genetic factor, so moral hazard isn't an issue there.

Of course, behavior is also an important factor. But working insured Americans are already subject to moral hazard (since they're on a group policy, their disproportionate costs are already supported by others). Medicare and Medicaid recipients are also already subject to moral hazard.

So moral hazard will be created for uninsured people and people on an individual policy, for behavior induced health problems. If that's a deal-breaker for you, you should be against federally funded healthcare.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#107

Post by onion2k »

intended wrote: post #92
cmdrfred wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Whats the comparison of sizes like ? Really curious because if the next smaller house in size is a trailer then the UK sizes must be weirdly small.

Here in the UK houses are tiny compared to the USA, but it's really just because there's far less available land to build on. The entire UK is about half the size of California.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#108

Post by intended »

vostok wrote: post #71
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…

> 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…

The theory is that you are selecting yourself to do things you like, which you just happen to do at the highest level.

This was fine in America for a long time, but

1) As colleges degenerate from being an intellectual addition, to a pre requisite for jobs well paying or not

2) several classes of jobs disappear, especially those which could be done by common sense and training

It results in posers. People who are high functioning, cynical and clear about what it takes to live a decent life.

I probably point it out a lot on HN and other places - but you see this in action in India and China (and other developing nations).

Very few people actually are interested in doing math or math derived work all the time, but if they don't society and the jobs market will be unmerciful.

So they pretend. They hate it, assume everyone else is pretending, and go through the basic motions required to get to the other side.

These are the people who are badly affected by the whole process. The ones who would not have been happy becoming engineers, lawyers or olympiads.

But that's the game, and people will always play it.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#109

Post by k-mcgrady »

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.

It's that attitude that is the problem though. Poorer American's generally don't want change to help them because they believe it's only a matter of time until they are 'really winning'. Taking your two points: would a larger house and higher salary make significant improvements to your quality of life or will it provide short term satisfaction of having nicer/bigger/more expensive possessions?

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#110

Post by cyphunk »

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.

The hardest thing for me to explain to my American family, as someone living in the EU, is that a tax or burden that is evenly distributed has near 0 negative impact on collective productivity.

A society where everyone is missing one leg will still function and be largely productive, up until they have to compete with a society where everyone has two legs. That leg is something like health care, maternaty leave, vacation, VAT, higher taxes. In the USA policy indicates that they'd rather give up their literal leg, than risk being #2.

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