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The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

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Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#161
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird... maybe he was also mad at economists because they proved again and again that slavery was more expensive than paying people a wage!

That sounds counter-intuitive? Have you any literature that backs this up?

Adding to the previous comment, slaves also work much less effectively than employees because slaves have no incentive to try hard, since either way they will stay slaves.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#162
Poverty is not simply a financial condition. It is - for lack of a better term coming to mind - a disease; and certainly not a diseaae anyone chooses. In fact, poverty creates tunnel vision. It limits vision. It, in the minds of the impoverished, limits choice.

It's complicated.

Matt Desmond's "Evicted" was a profound moment for me. Similar to this study on sleep, he highlights how areas of higher eviction rates ultimately destabilize the broader community. That feeds back into the disease and the cycle perpetuates, like a virus.

https://www.evictedbook.com/

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#163
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in rural Canada, and we had busses. Some kids came in from 60+ miles away. I recall quite a bit about school, and yet no one really complained about getting up at 5 to 6am. Of course, most kids lived on farms, some even had chores before going to school, and early to bed, early to rise was normal. We had a few antenna TV stations, no cable, VCRs weren't around for the average family, and of course no Intern…

As far as human biology is concerned, the entire concept of agriculture is a modern perversion. You can't use it to argue a particular behavior is the natural state.

And yet people get up before dawn to go fishing and hunting.

At no point did I cite biology. Instead, I validated that different wake-up times have existed in the past, and in fact still do.

When does the garbage man, the builder, the mechanic get up? The blue collar man? It isn't 8am, that's for sure. People I know in these professions of start work at 7am. Or earlier. I see them get to sleep by 9pm.

Get to sleep sooner, discipline yourself, as with anything else, it's just that easy.

Or that hard?

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most developed countries are far enough from the equator that the amount of daylight is very different during different parts of the year. Perhaps it would make sense to base the schedule around sunrise and sunset rather than around arbitrary numbers?

How exactly are we supposed to run a modern society without the concept of time?

You can have a time system based around sunrise.

I mean with most clocks also being internet connected computers it wouldnt be too hard to make a system where you measure time in hours after average sunrise in a tike zone.

That is where I live right now it's sunrise +3.

I'll reschedule the daily 'standup' to SR+3.5, the banks open at SR+3 and close at SR+11.

One major consequence I can see is that now we have north south timezones on top of east west.

This would break in the extreme north or south where there are days without a sunrise.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#165
post #129
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in rural Canada, and we had busses. Some kids came in from 60+ miles away. I recall quite a bit about school, and yet no one really complained about getting up at 5 to 6am. Of course, most kids lived on farms, some even had chores before going to school, and early to bed, early to rise was normal. We had a few antenna TV stations, no cable, VCRs weren't around for the average family, and of course no Intern…

Staying up late is much easier then getting up early. Anyone who gets up early and then has to be anywhere can speak to the general paralysis that involves, since the entire activity has to be planned around a very sharp time-based shutdown. Stealing hours later is a lot easier, because any amount of sleep will still break up the day compared to none. The other reason of course is that the real trick is just staying…

No major disagreement, but I will add this...

Eating too much, borrowing more money than you should, eating junk food, staying up too late, being addicted to your phone, texting whilst driving, perhaps these are all the same problem?

And like any animal, we need to be trained to control ourselves, when young, for our own good?

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#166
post #147
post #3

Those in the study were low-income adults in Chennai, India who sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. The key takeaway was: > increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being, and led to small decreases in labor supply. I find the result surprising. When I get under 6 hours I see a clear drop off in performance.

> ... only 5.5 hours per night ... > ... increased sleep duration by 27 minutes per night ... I'm not surprised. On average, they were still under 6 hours, if barely. And if the sleep problems are interrupt-driven, this study does not appear to account for sleep quality.

Ok, then we could assume the hypothesis: Either you sleep 8 hours and are productive or you go down to 5.5 because 6 wont increase your efficiency levels either.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#167
post #91

The majority of comments seem to have the belief that the need for 8 hours of sleep is truth, and seem to mostly be making up various excuses why the increase in sleep here doesn't show results. As far as I can tell, the 8 hours figure is on pretty shaky grounds and most believe it due to pop-science books like 'Why we sleep' and it could easily be the case that this is just another study showing how exaggerated that…

I need probably 7.5-8 hours of sleep. I'm very confident about this. If I get only 5-6 hours sleep for a couple nights, I become quite cognitively impaired; if it goes on long enough there are serious emotional effects too. There are people who insist that actually, 5-6 hours is fine, and that I must be lying, lazy, or deluding myself. These people are trying to make me stupid and miserable. It's an issue that provok…

>It's an issue that provokes a lot of strong emotions, especially on the side of people who feel pressured to sleep less than they need.

Perhaps you feel like it is much worse for the side you perceive yourself to be on. I, and plenty of other people have had very negative experiences and sleep-related anxiety because of all the people insisting that getting less than 8 hours of sleep is bad for you on flimsy evidence.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#168
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that a study 'Economic Benefits of Meth use on the Urban Poor' would be looked upon so well by the Ethics Board.

No, but you could say “ADHD medication”, much of which is very similar

Please stop repeating this anti-psychiatric talking point.

1. They are different chemicals.

2. They are administered by different means (inhalation is vastly more impactful than swallowing a tablet).

3. The doses for pharmaceuticals are much lower.

By repeating this argument you create prejudice against those of us who live with ADHD and rely on medication to function normally.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#169
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not really. Actually minimum wage in Ukraine (where I live) is rather low, so businesses generally pay higher. Fast food workers are not on minimum wage. In terms of salary a school teacher would make less or the same as McDonalds worker. For example, McDonalds Ukraine pays an entry level worker -14 000 UAH ($500) monthly for 40 hours per week. School teacher makes minimum 5000 UAH ($180), +bonus(10-60%). Teache…

Ah, sorry, didn't know things are that bad in Ukraine. I'm from Bulgaria so i can assure you my stereotypes are mixed and i don't think everything is like in the US or Western Europe. How's the new president doing? At first it seemed like a joke, but the little concrete things i've read about him post-election seemed OK.

Of course, I think you can really get the idea what is going on in Ukraine due to kind of similar circumstances. Sorry for being a bit too blunt.

New president I think is a bit better than the previous three but the whole situation kind of shows two things: 1) There is not much you can do in the country where oligarchs control everything. 2) There is still not much ideas for the future except some sort of a neoliberal 'reaganomics', further privatization and generally disengagement of the state from any meaningful public good iniatives.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly are we supposed to run a modern society without the concept of time?

You can have a time system based around sunrise. I mean with most clocks also being internet connected computers it wouldnt be too hard to make a system where you measure time in hours after average sunrise in a tike zone. That is where I live right now it's sunrise +3. I'll reschedule the daily 'standup' to SR+3.5, the banks open at SR+3 and close at SR+11. One major consequence I can see is that now we have north s…

That's what time zones are. You're just proposing more granular time zones. And none of them can fix the problem that in a lot of places the days are just short in the winter.
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