Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

groups.csail.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 523 posts

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#361

Post by bcrosby95 »

ernst_klim wrote: post #277
lostjohnny wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Expensive medical treatments Again. Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. It is expensive, but it's a shared cost that benefits everybody. > Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future Maybe, but back then they didn't have the means to care for more than a few days at a time, to think about the future. If they could have done it, they would have done it.

> Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. As a person which lives in Russia and Germany, I'm really interested in what you mean by solved? Universal healthcare in Russia is a total mess. Universal healthcare (edit: in Germany) have a lot of problems too, of which the most significant is underpayment, low salaries, and such a lack of personnel, that CDU people did really suggest to use conscription to draw the fre…

My favorite subject.

First, I'm not sure if you're aware, but the price of a procedure in the US is not necessarily related to its cost. There's been several news articles showing the same procedure can cost 100x more in one hospital vs the other in the same city. Hospitals literally pull prices out their ass and justify it by saying "no one pays that price". Then they bludgeon people with these completely fictitious numbers when insurance doesn't play ball.

What you're also failing to realize is the US does have a universal health care system, it's just really shitty and inefficient: its called the emergency room. Doctors can't just leave people to die if they can't pay.

Stories from the great US paid healthcare system:

When my wife had to get her gall bladder removed. The hospital charged us $25k for 1 hour use of the surgery room, and $20k for 1 hour use of the recovery room. It took insurance almost a year to resolve, and in the meantime both sides kept bothering us. Hospital told us not to worry though because things usually get resolved once both sides start threatening eachother with lawsuits. I asked what happens if insurance still doesn't pay it, and they said that the hospital usually writes it off. Sounds GREAT!

The above was on top of ~10k other general hospital bills, plus 3.6k anesthesiologist, 25k surgeon, and a couple k in post operation followup. Total charged price for one of the most common operations in the country: about 85k. Completely sustainable.

In another instance, we needed something done that we thought wasn't covered by insurance. When trying to figure out what the price would be, it took several weeks worth of phone calls, and tens of hours on the phone to figure out with our local hospital what it would cost. Then when we got there, someone said it didn't include something. But it was OK because insurance covered the whole thing for various reasons. We said OK. They were wrong though, insurance still didn't cover it. This is important because medical places usually have an "insurance price" and a "cash price", and we got screwed out of the cash price by going through insurance.

We also had a close friend deliver her own baby in a hospital hallway and get charged $30k for the delivery.

My sister was charged $1.2k for the removal of a cotton ball from her ear while waiting in a line.

My brother had a $5k ambulance ride.

I always think twice before interacting with the healthcare system in the US.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#362

Post by ssully »

dorusr wrote: post #293
nudpiedo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having said all that, I've never had the opportunity to work with physical labor so my views are likely biased. Very strong opinion to end up saying everything could be just false because it is a mere gut feeling. Everyone has worries and problems, if it is not the weather which is about to damage the harvest it will be the expensive providers or the fruits imported from cheaper countries or the workers who try to…

You're confounding affluence with the difference between physical/mental labour. I've done both hard physical labour and hard mental labour, and what OP says is totally spot on. Hard physical work, even when excruciatingly tough, is most often more bearable than hard mental work. There's nothing like beig 'done' after a hard day of work. After a hard day of mental work you just feel miserable until you fall asleep. I…

My significant other does manual labor, and it's a good day when they don't want to just come home and fall asleep on the couch and those good days are rare. Even after my worst days of a software dev job, I still have the energy to come home and cook dinner, do some yard work, and other chores.

I will echo your line about wishing manual laborers were better appreciated. I have impostor syndrome, but it's not in comparison to peers in my industry, it's feeling like I don't deserve to earn multiples more then people like my spouse who break their bodies for a pittance.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#363

Post by kasey_junk »

kerkeslager wrote: post #350
rubber_duck wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my l…

What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? - It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. - It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid. - It's considered normal for potential employers to do back…

My explanation is you are just wrong about all of those things. A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts. Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law and you should definitely be doing both legal and financial research on any perspective employers.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#364

Post by elindbe2 »

Pungsnigel wrote: post #263
lostjohnny wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Expensive medical treatments Again. Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. It is expensive, but it's a shared cost that benefits everybody. > Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future Maybe, but back then they didn't have the means to care for more than a few days at a time, to think about the future. If they could have done it, they would have done it.

It's not by any means solved in Europe. // Swede

Compared to the US it is. Obviously there are going to be ongoing problems in any large undertaking, but Sweden pays half the cost for healthcare per capita. A 50% discount for equal quality care. Americans like myself are getting absolutely screwed in terms of the cost of healthcare.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#365

Post by macspoofing »

kerkeslager wrote: post #350
rubber_duck wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my l…

What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? - It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. - It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid. - It's considered normal for potential employers to do back…

>What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms?

OK. You can't just assert things and then when someone disagrees challenge them to come up with their own explanation. The null hypothesis is "I don't know".

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#366

Post by marcosdumay »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #242

"Consider a typical working day in the medieval period. It stretched from dawn to dusk (sixteen hours in summer and eight in winter), but, as the Bishop Pilkington has noted, work was intermittent - called to a halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner." I would argue it's a flawed thinking then. If you are required to be there for 16 hours, even if you work only every second hour, I consider…

"There" was near home. Those activities were done with family and friends.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#367

Post by greyhair »

It all depends on what you did for a living.

Case in point, agriculture. Averaged over a year, maybe it wasn't too bad, but during planting and harvesting, the day didn't end.

And animals need feeding and care through the day, so that was an anchor if you were raising animals.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#368

Post by kerkeslager »

kasey_junk wrote: post #363
kerkeslager wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? - It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. - It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid. - It's considered normal for potential employers to do back…

My explanation is you are just wrong about all of those things. A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts. Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law and you should definitely be doing both legal and financial research on any perspective employers.

> A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts.

Not everyone works at "firms": this is extremely common in food service, for example.

> Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law

Citation? I've worked at least one place where it was explicitly against the rules to share what you were paid with your coworkers (although this was years ago--I'd be happy to hear if the situation has changed).

> you should definitely be doing both legal and financial research on any perspective employers.

Obviously, but you simply don't have the same tools to do that. Have you tried asking employers for references?

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#369

Post by flmontpetit »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #356
flmontpetit wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Being a software developer is easy. It's not necessarily the case, but I can think of no other trade that pays so well and offers so many opportunities for so little ability, effort, accountability, responsibility and stress.

Where do you work? I'm in operations and spent 10pm-3am last night responding to an incident. There's a lady here going bald in her early 30s. Stress is high, responsibility is high, accountability is high, effort is high. I can think of literally 1000s of jobs that are easier

I'm a C# dev and the only anxiety I've experienced has lied in having to maintain garbage legacy code.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#370

Post by kerkeslager »

macspoofing wrote: post #365
kerkeslager wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? - It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. - It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid. - It's considered normal for potential employers to do back…

>What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? OK. You can't just assert things and then when someone disagrees challenge them to come up with their own explanation. The null hypothesis is "I don't know".

The person I'm responding to said:

> The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage.

If that hypothesis is true, then they can use that hypothesis to explain the existent phenomena.

Post reply on HN