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Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

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Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#281

Post by imbnwa »

briantakita wrote: post #155
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of over-the-top flamewar comment is off topic on HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We've had to ask you before not to post like this. If you keep it up, we're going to have to ban you—not because we disagree with your views (we don't know or care what those are) but because we don't want this place to burn to a crisp. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/news…

So you respond by being hyperbolic...If you want to ban me, go ahead. I have no intention in creating a "flamewar". I'm not sure what exactly I'm "destroying" here so go ahead & do whatever you see fit...As far as I'm concerned, I made a statement of truth with historical analogy. Is history now verboten as an "over-the-top flamewar"? You have proven my point of group coercion & why it is dangerous for individuals to…

FYI 'house negroe' was a rare occurrence in the Antebellum South. Majority of plantations weren't big enough to support distinct labor pools, slaves largely and for the most part rotated tasks depending on age, gender, season, etc (the gender aspect is also why 'house negroe' is meant to suggest an effeminized Black male, which is an entirely other problematic discussion). Never mind the much higher rate of sexual assault and abuse when in close proximity to slaveowners. The political distinction this dubious dichotomy is meant to imply (Black folk loyal to slave owners, as suffering Stockholm Syndrome) is largely an effect fabricated in Malcolm X's 1963 speech given at Michigan State University and has persisted via constant repetition in popular culture.

Distinct labor pools were much more at hand in places like Jamaica where the average plantation was much larger than in the American south.

This is a similar distortion to the way people use 'Uncle Tom' when, ironically enough, the actual literary character is the opposite of the political distinction implied by pejorative use

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#282

Post by ben_w »

bombcar wrote: post #183
ben_w wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this topic, a question I've had for a while but never learned the answer to is: if nobody did anything outside farming, how expensive would farm equipment be? I assume there's some scale benefit to agricultural vehicles from the production of everyone else's vehicles, and likewise the construction and maintenance of the transport infrastructure to get food from the farms to the people, but I don't know whether or…

Part of it is that there's a certain amount of food each person can reasonably eat - so if you want to feed a hundred people you can have, say, five or so with modern equipment farm the field and feed all 100, or you could have all 100 work with more outdated equipment (think: horses, etc) and farm the same amount.

I think I’m asking a different question: if we could actually work much less? Can we really feed people if everyone who isn’t currently a farmer or making farm equipment/consumables stopped working, or are greater economies of scale needed to keep the cost of that farm equipment and those consumables low?

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#283

Post by feet »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #225
jmyeet wrote: post #79

Common right-wing propaganda is that socialism is a poverty cult. This is particularly prevelant in American culture. It's a complete fabrication. The reality is everyone should enjoy the fruits of their labours to a greater degree than they do today. This is the very idea behind workers owning the means of production. Another way to put this is that every billionaire is a policy failure. A quote that is often mentio…

Anyone who quotes the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" line has never met a working class person. Nobody thinks that. I worked in a plastic factory for ten years and it's very clear there is no path up from making $45k to anything higher than plant manager. People who are just feeding a grinding machine expect even less. My feeling is that most of my coworkers felt somewhat exploited and envious, but they didn'…

>distinguish themselves from the low-status welfare recipients

That's literally the same concept as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Its all class warfare and the distinction you make is useless in the grand scheme

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#284

Post by hourago »

quartesixte wrote: post #195

Compared to my parents and grandparents generation, my life is filled with leisure. Basic everyday necessities took up so much of my grandparent’s time when they were younger. A meal would take hours to prep. All the veggies to prep said meal grown. And then the many hours spent cleaning, maintaining, and improving the living space. Social obligations. They basically just worked all day long to just live. Leisure wer…

You are probably a well paid engineer or similar. Your experience is valid, but not the most common one.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#285

Post by feet »

saiya-jin wrote: post #152
upsidesinclude wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no one cares about your diatribe or outrage. The point is that there is always an elite or wealthy class, pick which group you like best. Always, for all time this is what happens in society. Don't care about your one example of some communist paradise that was great.

So what, giving up so easily on problem so obvious is usually done by people who are well off and actually have to lose, or those who for some basic reason don't understand they are also the ones getting fucked over (ie patriotism can push folks easily in very stupid positions and in the same time make them feel good about their actions). If you traveled a bit around the world, maybe you could see that nothing is bin…

Its evidenced by many comments here. People are well off and the system has worked for them so we see the attitude of "it's working for me, fuck everyone else who didn't work the way I did or wasn't born into the right circumstances"

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#286

Post by snowwrestler »

em500 wrote: post #182
snowwrestler wrote: post #130

It seems obvious that we have no more leisure time now than before. But consider the huge leisure industries that have grown over the past 100 years. Movies, TV, now streaming services. Radio and now Spotify and podcasts. Video games. Sports and all the media around sports. Even social media is arguably mostly entertainment these days. Or look at active leisure. How many more cyclists and rock climbers are there toda…

I think it's broadly true that people have a lot more leisure time that they think. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has surveys on how Americans spend their time[1]. Across the entire population, people spend 3.61 hours per day on Work and work-related activities, vs 5.19 hours per day on Leisure and sports. If that seems a bit off, consider that a lot of people barely work at all (especially those under 25 and over 6…

This is such a useful comment, especially about ages.

I would bet a higher percentage of people under 21 today are still in school, vs 100 years ago. School is not leisure time, but comes with leisure time.

And on the old end, Social Security and Medicare are probably allowing a higher percentage of people over 65 to enjoy a full retirement, vs 100 years ago.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#287

Post by bombcar »

ben_w wrote: post #282
bombcar wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is that there's a certain amount of food each person can reasonably eat - so if you want to feed a hundred people you can have, say, five or so with modern equipment farm the field and feed all 100, or you could have all 100 work with more outdated equipment (think: horses, etc) and farm the same amount.

I think I’m asking a different question: if we could actually work much less? Can we really feed people if everyone who isn’t currently a farmer or making farm equipment/consumables stopped working, or are greater economies of scale needed to keep the cost of that farm equipment and those consumables low?

Large swaths of people do work that is not even remotely related to farming, even if you need Google and AT&T for the companies that make the supplies farmers need, there's no arguable way the entertainment industry as a whole is necessary for farming or farming equipment. And I daresay there are others.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#288

Post by olalonde »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #274
olalonde wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because our free society is based on the fundamental assumption that grown-up adults are generally responsible and act in their own best interest. Throwing out those assumptions is very dangerous and brings us closer to authoritarianism and tyranny.

Free society? What kind of "free society" is it when people can't afford basics like housing, healthcare, and education? The median US individual income is currently about $36k. People at the median are either not making it or just barely making it. How is that "free?" MIT has calculated that the living wage in the US is just over $24/hour which is $48k per year. The median is about 1/3 short of that. That's what you…

Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#289

Post by Dylan16807 »

mrtksn wrote: post #109
strken wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the argument that people living in Australia would starve to death if everyone in the world gradually halved their working hours over the next decade. I think current consumption here is so far above subsistence levels that there's a lot of room to drop without facing famine. This is less clear-cut for anyone in a society that's close to subsistence and I'm not in any way suggesting that we should all cut…

If halved working hours result in reduced output of the needed chemicals and machinery, that would definitely mean that less food will be produced. If Australia can keep up paying more than the rest and purchase the needed resources and machinery, then other parts of the world will starve and Australia will be just fine, I guess. Ideally, paying more should be able to convince people to work and prevent supply chain…

> Ideally, paying more should be able to convince people to work and prevent supply chain shortages but if for some strange reason people all over the world insist on working less some people who are less fortunate will definitely need to change their diet or even die.

And you'd have to assume nobody would change jobs. It's a useless extrapolation.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#290

Post by rufus_foreman »

kubb wrote: post #48

I have several fantastic things that I love doing and work makes it very hard for me to pursue them. One of them is philosophy. There is a great deal of benefit and pleasure that a person can derive from learning about about and understanding the arguments that have been made across the centuries. Another is physical activity. It feels great to move your body, it makes you so much happier than sitting at a desk. Anot…

>> One of them is philosophy. There is a great deal of benefit and pleasure that a person can derive from learning about about and understanding the arguments that have been made across the centuries.

>> Another is physical activity. It feels great to move your body, it makes you so much happier than sitting at a desk

Maybe you should get a job doing repetitive manual labor. You get plenty of activity and it is completely mindless so you can be thinking about whatever you want. That's how it was for me at least.

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