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Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

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181–190 of 228 posts

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#182
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously, just check out downtown SF if you don't believe me. It feels dead. Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? This thread is talking about a hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving because of employee-friendly labor laws. In early 2020 downtown was pretty vibrant. > There are more beggars than tourists. I get that you're exaggerating for effect, but c'mon. I saw plenty of tourists/shop…

> Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are. Nor are they as sketchy - I'd feel comfortable walking around Millennium Park at night and be pretty confident I wouldn't get robbed. Can you say the same about the Embarcadero? > hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving be…

> cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are

I haven't been to SF, but I have been to New York. I was shocked how dead the area around the WTC was on a Monday morning (I'd just arrived and walked arround for an hour or so absorbing the city and trying to find a hardware store to get a UK-US plug as it had been so long since I travelled internationally). My local town in rural UK was busier than 8AM Monday morning downtown New York. That can't be healthy. This was about 7 weeks ago.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#183
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Have you heard of the Great Resignation? Isn’t the Great Resignation driven at least in part by the government’s influence? COVID lockdowns and regulations heavily incentivized employers to offer more flexibility around remote work, and COVID economic relief policies helped provide folks with the financial stability needed to look for better employment. I’m not sure this would have occurred organically without any…

That would only explain remtoe workers, However non-remote jobs are having the same problems. Hell the MCD's in my area now has signs wanting people at up to $16/hr (min starting is $13 now) Government policies are never the correct way to solve societal problems, even taking the premise the the "evil profit motive" is the actual reason we have seen abuse in the past (which I disagree with), the resolution to that is…

If someone thinks the Government doesn't solve problems, they can just look at the 1929-1934 and how problems got "solved" under free market capitalism (before the massive government interventions starting in 1934).

(we now consider that period to be a giant mistake specifically because the government did not do enough and left free markets to their own accord)

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#184

I really feel like work would be quite tolerable at 4 days a week. 5 days plus commute has always felt suffocating to me.

Consider that people used to work every day. Farming, hunting, subsisting. When organized religion and cities started to spread, you had one day a week as the day of rest. The industrial age and unionization brought us 5 days, which is now "suffocating." So if 4 days is the norm, that would start to feel suffocating also. Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work is the thing you spend the minority of your time on, yo…

I mean yes? trying to get society to the point where no one has to work to survive (food, clothing, etc) sounds really awesome. less stress and more time to spend on what really matters to someone personally

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#185
post #35

What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).

Yes, I mean we should also have a 32 hour work week but the laws surrounding it need teeth for sure. We should hold executives/managers criminally liable with the potential for jail time for repeat offenses. It's absolutely fucking absurd that shoplifting, especially when performed by disadvantaged folks carries harsher penalties than systematic wage theft. It's upside down clown world out there, abusing your positio…

An interesting thing about white collar crime - jail time is a real deterrent. It doesn't take that much jail time.[1] Routinely sending managers to jail for 30 days for time-shaving would stop that practice rapidly.

[1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/how-stop-white-collar-...

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#186
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only explain remtoe workers, However non-remote jobs are having the same problems. Hell the MCD's in my area now has signs wanting people at up to $16/hr (min starting is $13 now) Government policies are never the correct way to solve societal problems, even taking the premise the the "evil profit motive" is the actual reason we have seen abuse in the past (which I disagree with), the resolution to that is…

If someone thinks the Government doesn't solve problems, they can just look at the 1929-1934 and how problems got "solved" under free market capitalism (before the massive government interventions starting in 1934). (we now consider that period to be a giant mistake specifically because the government did not do enough and left free markets to their own accord)

No "we" do not, some people do, some people do not

There is LOTS of scholarly economics works that shows government intervention in the markets not only lets to the crash, completely extended the length the crash.

Specifically the fed actions in 1929 lead to prolonged pain not seen in other nations that recovered faster because their central bank did not try to "solvable the problem"

To state that is a forgone conclusion that everyone agrees that "free market capitalism" was the cause of the great depression is highly ignorant

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#187
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Have you heard of the Great Resignation? Isn’t the Great Resignation driven at least in part by the government’s influence? COVID lockdowns and regulations heavily incentivized employers to offer more flexibility around remote work, and COVID economic relief policies helped provide folks with the financial stability needed to look for better employment. I’m not sure this would have occurred organically without any…

That would only explain remtoe workers, However non-remote jobs are having the same problems. Hell the MCD's in my area now has signs wanting people at up to $16/hr (min starting is $13 now) Government policies are never the correct way to solve societal problems, even taking the premise the the "evil profit motive" is the actual reason we have seen abuse in the past (which I disagree with), the resolution to that is…

How do negative externalities fit into your picture?

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#188
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on margins well under 20%. Some percentage of these would absolutely go out of business if you somehow mandated 80% of the current hours for 100% of the current pay. Now you can argue they should go out of business anyway, and maybe you're right, but it's still the government passing a law to intentionally put a lot of people out of business and make a lot of people los…

You are assuming that wages represent 100% of costs when its more apt to be 30%. You are assuming that all employees are full time when in fact the minority often are. Lastly you are assuming that people will be paid 20% more for working 20% less. They would be making 25% more 5/4 not 4/5. For example 100 for working 5 hours is 20 100 for working 4 hours is 25. Those errors corrected lets blow through a hypothetical.…

By focusing on the numbers specifically you're missing my entire point, which is that there are always businesses on the edge. This will put some businesses out, causing those employees to lose jobs and those owners to either try to open another business (expensive) or find work elsewhere (and most of the time if you own a business and it goes under you're not eligible for unemployment). Whether that's okay, or even good, is a separate discussion, but I don't see anyone arguing that not a single business will go under by having their payroll costs go up to cover the same number of hours every week.

> Businesses can take the additional profits from rising prices

If a business is increasing its prices, it's much more likely that it's doing so because its own COGS and other expenses are increasingly similarly.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm okay if a union gets someone else to voluntarily agree to a contract that requires employee membership. I'm not okay with a union unilaterally forcing this without agreement.

Isn't it the authoratarian government that's enforcing these laws? Why are you blaming the poor unions, they're only doing what they legally have to do to maximise the returns for their shareholders.

This entire thread seems to be you willfully misinterpreting their comments, or taking the most negative possible interpretation, and then responding to that. In addition to violating the site guidelines, it's boring, stifles discussion, and is the stuff of emotional, uneducated partisan hackery.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been hearing lots of business owners complaining about California's labor laws getting increasingly hostile which leads companies to relocate or move as many resources they can outside of CA I’m almost 50, and I’ve been hearing and reading lots of this my whole life. But somehow California’s economy keeps doing well, even without being one of the places that are winning the battle to attract the firms that are…

California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently. There is a threshold where more businesses leave that it’s starting to reach. The cost of living doesn’t help along with crime. Climate change will also make the situation worse in the coming years, where we eventually lose temperate weather in exchange for forest fires. We’re already experiencing failing infrastructure like…

> California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently

How much was it because of the pandemic causing work from home, which led to new employees joining remotely and not relocating to California, young people who lived here to move somewhere cheaper. The net growth might possibly increase in the coming years.

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