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Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

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Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#71

Post by jk2323 »

paganel wrote: post #34
a3n wrote: post #9

Most people don't get to choose how many hours they work. Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. (I'm not an employer.) It's good for an employer if you work overtime, all he has to pay is time, or time and a half, or nothing if you're salaried. He doesn't have to pay more benefits, as he would with an additional employee. Of course an…

> Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. That’s exactly Marx’s point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value. I know that that theory has been “debunked” and “proven” to be false, but I’m just reading now about it in its “Grundrisse” (I had read its Capital I some years ago) and it’s frightening about how right he was about subje…

"That’s exactly Marx’s point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value."

Actually, no. This has nothing to do with Marx "surplus value". And his idea of "surplus value" was wrong by several reasons. The funny thing about Marx is that he failed to understand capitalism as much as good ol' Ludwig von Mises.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#72

Post by hfhdnenen »

chillwaves wrote: post #57
sametmax wrote: post #32

It has. 80 years ago your worked more hours, and you could not slack at work. Today, you work not only less, but half of the people in the offices I go to don't work their full shift. They go to facebook, send text messages, take long breaks, do their shopping and watch porno (yep), etc. Also, an hour of work doesn't have the same value. When your work is moving boxes, an hour is an hour. But in an office work, there…

This is just some weird anecdote. I work at an architecture firm where the employees have deliverables and bill to clients, we all work really really hard. I work between 45-50 hours a week of real work. One any given Saturday or Sunday you will find dozens of people in my firm working. They are not just pretending. I have worked at a job you describe where people do not do much, but I would hardly say that is the no…

I’m leaving architecture proper (staying in the design field, but working independently) for this reason. My labour is billed to clients at three times my hourly rate, I receive no benefits as a contracted employee (paid as a consultant), and regularly work overtime to execute someone else’s concepts. The latter would not be an issue if the industry-wide quality of work were better here in Canada, but the overwhelming majority of medium to large firms (where one would receive benefits) produce cookie-cutter buildings the mercy of cheap developers and clients.

Disregarding the quality of the work, the most obvious solution to the ubiquitous presence of overtime in the industry would be to hire more people, but there doesn’t seem to be enough money to go around - especially if you want to do something even slightly outside the norm.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#73

Post by pbourke »

losteric wrote: post #64
a3n wrote: post #9

Most people don't get to choose how many hours they work. Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. (I'm not an employer.) It's good for an employer if you work overtime, all he has to pay is time, or time and a half, or nothing if you're salaried. He doesn't have to pay more benefits, as he would with an additional employee. Of course an…

Better public education (especially for adults) would reduce supply/demand discrepancies, giving the average American employee more bargaining power. Higher wages may also support more smaller/domestically owned businesses, which tend to treat their employees more humanely than huge corporations.

> Higher wages may also support more smaller/domestically owned businesses, which tend to treat their employees more humanely than huge corporations.

I’m curious what you base that statement on, as I’ve generally not found it to be true during my career.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#75

Post by Animats »

sliverstorm wrote: post #59
surfmike wrote: post #5

People's perceived needs grow but that is not the whole story. Many people now are spending almost 50% of their pre-tax income on housing, and most of that is the price of land and goes to landlords. It seems that landlords inevitably capture a big chunk of people's salary increases. Additionally in the US your health insurance is generally tied to your job; even after Obamacare you probably have to work to pay for y…

Many people now are spending almost 50% of their pre-tax income on housing, and most of that is the price of land and goes to landlords. 1) That's really not a countrywide thing 2) It's not specifically the landlords, it's whoever was already there. A landlord who bought in just recently is not rolling in dough. The people who capture the gains are the people who got in fifty years ago and sold & moved, or the landlo…

The people who capture the gains are the people who got in fifty years ago and sold & moved, or the landlords who got in fifty years ago and are still renting the property.

Yes. Silicon Valley's land baron is John Arrillaga, who bought Silicon Valley farmland in the 1960s. He owns about a square kilometer of office space.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#76

Post by nnq »

sametmax wrote: post #46
fatwah wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80 years ago women could afford to stay at home.

Population increased also. And consumerism. And debt. And a lot of laws have been added. But last year, 2 of my friends fire their 5 employees and started again, them alone. They made the calculation: there productivity ratio was better with only them 2, than with the 5 part time workers they had that they were paying full time + benefits. And their team was "good" in my book. Most teams I meet are not, and I travel…

> Population increased also

If this were really the problem, it would be pretty easy to solve... (HINT: this isn't really the problem!)

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#77

Post by paganel »

digi_owl wrote: post #51
paganel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. That’s exactly Marx’s point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value. I know that that theory has been “debunked” and “proven” to be false, but I’m just reading now about it in its “Grundrisse” (I had read its Capital I some years ago) and it’s frightening about how right he was about subje…

The impression i have developed of Marx's thinking is that in his fervor to get his labor theory of value to work he ignored or managed to talk himself in circles regarding the impact of industrial machinery. Looking at it with modern eyes, it would be easy to make said machinery operate like an amplifier of labor. Meaning that for each unit of labor used to operate the machine, the owner would get a multiple of said…

> Looking at it with modern eyes, it would be easy to make said machinery operate like an amplifier of labor. Meaning that for each unit of labor used to operate the machine, the owner would get a multiple of said labor out.

I agree with this, but trying to look at the issue with Marx's eyes I think he saw the subject like this (I'm no Marxist, nor an economist, just making an educated guess): Of course that the machines help their owners (the capitalists) make more money in absolute terms (the amplifier of labor you mention), but at the end of the day what matters for a capitalist (and is one of the essences of capitalism, I think) is that he should make more money compared to the other capitalists.

Now, I think Marx says that all capitalists (as a class) can have access to the same machines -> they can all enjoy the same returns caused by said newer, better machines -> so technology/science progress is no differentiator in the long run between capitalists, because the new, better machines bring them the same rate of profits (of course a company or two can go bankrupt if they haven't modernized fast enough, but we're talking about more general stuff). What I think Marx is saying is that the main (and in his view the only one that counts) differentiator between capitalists consists in how well they can "squeeze" out labor out of the, well, labor-classes (industrial workers back in Marx's time). And if you look at the economic history of the past 25 years (give or take) you can see that the grand winner of this period, China, is actually a capitalist country (I'm ignoring its one-party rule thing) that knew pretty damn well how to squeeze out labor out of its citizens/workers, and also that the United States has had a better economic run compared to Europe also because it treats its workers worse (and unfortunately people over here in Europe have started noticing this and have started copying the US).

> From that he concluded that it would actually be in the best interest of industrial capital to collaborate with labor in a common front against finance, but that sadly they would side with finance capital until it was too late.

That sounds pretty interesting, I've never got to read his Capital II and III, I guess I'll give them a try.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#78

Post by nnq »

bandrami wrote: post #4

Because we are never satisfied with a stable standard of living; people want to live better than their parents did. Automation only decreases the need for labor if you hold standard of living constant.

> we are never satisfied with a stable standard of living

...yes we are. Thankfully, nowadays more and more people "drop out" of "traditional media exposed society" and the brainwashing is starting to wear off. Too bad we're at the end of Homo Sapiens' days and there will not be any benefit to anyone though anyway (or maybe too good, a species as miserable as ours deservs being accelerated into extinction anyway)

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#79

Post by crdoconnor »

jk2323 wrote: post #71
paganel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. That’s exactly Marx’s point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value. I know that that theory has been “debunked” and “proven” to be false, but I’m just reading now about it in its “Grundrisse” (I had read its Capital I some years ago) and it’s frightening about how right he was about subje…

"That’s exactly Marx’s point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value." Actually, no. This has nothing to do with Marx "surplus value". And his idea of "surplus value" was wrong by several reasons. The funny thing about Marx is that he failed to understand capitalism as much as good ol' Ludwig von Mises.

He was a big fan of Italian fascists' repression of leftists.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#80

Post by nnq »

What we desperately need is a way to reverse-brainwash the workaholics that spoil the labor market by willing to work more than 6 hrs a day. If we could figure out a clever way to penalize them for working more we could damn enjoy the heaven-on-earth that current technology should afford us all (now that we seem to have figured out how to stop population growth too)...
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