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The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

mstdn.ca

451–460 of 511 posts

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#451
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already have those things. Network rarely like maybe once a year goes down at home, if your company doesn't provide food then you either order and the cost is the same or you can cook and it's cheaper. You are right, companies save money and you save commute time. It's win/win. That's if you like working from home which I don't.

> You already have those things. i don’t even know where to begin with this… so many people absolutely do not have an in home office, do not understand networking, don’t cool their homes/turn their heat down when at the office, don’t use home electricity while at work, etc…

Then dont work in home, go to office instead. Whats the problem?

I think WFH is an option, not something that is enforced?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In the United States, if you’re not a white male it probably is. It was also probably pretty good for white women that didn’t want a job and wanted to be a homemaker.

There are changes (systemic and "organic") in the United States that made it worse for everybody, including people that are not white males, while at the same time issues like systemic racial injustices got better.

A vibrant economy and an on the rise domestic production, for example, meant many more working class jobs for everybody, for example, including blacks. Housing and healthcare was more affordable, including for blacks. That's how millions of blacks post-war could enter into middle class, a class that is now squeezed for both blacks and whites.

Amazing, how orthogonal changes can happen in both directions? And that eras are not just defined from a single aspect, and are not just like their mass media caricatures?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#453
post #100

The easiest way for leaders to mitigate the problem of 'not wanting to work' is to make work a more desirable place to be. It's not even hard to do. Some simple rules for managers and leaders: 1. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Remember all the shitty bosses you had, and be the first to break the cycle. 2. Pay people slightly above market rate. Make that your #1 hiring message: "We pay above market rate" and…

I disagree on #2. I think if you want to build culture you need to find people who value culture over money, and that if you don't live up to your end they can complain about the deal. If you over pay and offer better culture when the culture inevitably falters people are stuck because you over pay.

Pay is a part of culture.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think focussing on salary alone isn't a great strategy. If you doubled everyone's salary, the gain would almost certainly be absorbed by real estate or some other necessity. Regulations on maximum working hours, access to fair housing, education, healthcare etc might work better.

Can you further elaborate on why more government intervention would work better?

There are valid arguments on both sides of the issue.

What do you think would be the best way to help ensure everyone gets a fair share?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority is not land. Here's [1] inflation adjusted land cost per acre over the last 50 years. Pick a piece of land at median 1950 sizes and the increase is around $500 in today's dollars. Now please cite why you claim the vast majority of the increase is land. Want to read what did increase? Houses got bigger as I stated [2]. [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/55910/farmrealestate... [2] https://ww…

And where can you buy a small house? EDIT: worth noting as well that the source you cited was specifically for farm real estate, not residential. Here is a source for land price: https://www.aei.org/housing/land-price-indicators/ On the last chart, change the indicator to Change in Land price (standardised). Note that this is only for 2012 to 2021, not even 10 years, and the _smallest_ increase is 44%, while the high…

First, you conveniently ignore my second link which points out that housing prices, across all houses, not the cherry picked most expensive subset you picked, when adjusted correctly, have been pretty flat. Care to address that? It's been well known that housing prices, per sq ft, inflation adjusted, has not risen according to the pop belief that you share. Here's another easy way to see it - median home prices since 1950, inflation adjusted, have not even doubled since 1950 [1]. Median home sizes each decade since 1920 [2] show that house size have far more than doubled. 1950 was 980 sq ft. 1970 was 1500. 2014 was 2657 (latest on their chart). It sure look like if you picked a 1950 house you'd be paying, well, 1950 rates, doesn't it?

Some numbers from each: Feb 1954 house price $206,717 inflation adjusted. April 2023, $392,780 (the largest value). House sizes: 1950 was 983 ft^2. 2014 was 2657 ft^2 (feel free to chase down sizes for now if you like). 1950 was ~$210/ft^2. 2023 likely ~$147/ft^2.

Care to check the math? Sure seems like housing has not increased (well, it actually decreased significantly by this check) when correctly measured.

Houses cost more now because people want more, and also because they make more than in 1950, inflation adjusted.

Next, new houses in most of the country are built on new residential land as cities expand. Where do you think that land comes from? Farmland. Farmland provides a price floor on new housing, as developers buy it up and add subdivisions.

As to your oddly chosen subset of land: your list is not inflation adjusted. It's also the top 100 metro areas, not the median of house prices in the US. Of course you can pick smaller and smaller subsets to get the answer you want.

The median house in 1950 was under 1/4 acre. From the table below on price per acre, it sure would seem land is not the major factor in house costs.

So, can you provide the correct stat or not? Don't pick the highest cost subset of land. Don't pick non inflation adjusted values. And make it the median of all housing.

Here, I'll help. Here is median price per acre of land with housing on it in the US, by state [3]. It also has the median price per acre, including farmland. Use Excel, check the correlation. If you are to do it, you can also population weight these, add median house cost per state (easy to find), etc.

It's pretty clear the cost of a house is not majority the land, except perhaps in a few really dense, extreme outliers like NYC and SF.

No wonder you believe the highest component of house cost is land. You have not presented actual numbers, only picked the subsets that you like.

Try again. Also, please address the now 3 links I presented about housing costs when size adjusted.

[1] https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/

[2] https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes...

[3] https://www.inmyarea.com/moving/buying-land-analysis

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why facebook allows teenage girls to bully each other into suicide. Show me the facts and we won't have to agree on sophistry. We used to share the same facts as a society, in the 1950s. Society can't agree on the shape of the earth anymore as a basic fact, and you want to tell me everything is better in all aspects.

> Society can't agree on the shape of the earth anymore as a basic fact This has always been the case, but it's just more evident now that the Internet makes it easy for you to read the viewpoints of others.

True we don't agree, but that was not required to unify society on authorized facts.

It is very clear what the facts are socially when the State media declares them via TV, newspaper and authority figures. The internet gave endless niches, virality and influence to disagreement.

Right now you can ignore any facts I bring up and continue to spread flat earth as a fact (not saying that's your view), when before that behaviour would have been ostracized socially.

Now I have to adhere to literal meanings or conquer with sophistry to find agreement on factual grounding.

For culture wars, I don't care, do whatever you want. Say the earth is flat.

But for collboration, understanding and finding boundaries, it makes things very difficult and worse than the past.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where can you buy a small house? EDIT: worth noting as well that the source you cited was specifically for farm real estate, not residential. Here is a source for land price: https://www.aei.org/housing/land-price-indicators/ On the last chart, change the indicator to Change in Land price (standardised). Note that this is only for 2012 to 2021, not even 10 years, and the _smallest_ increase is 44%, while the high…

First, you conveniently ignore my second link which points out that housing prices, across all houses, not the cherry picked most expensive subset you picked, when adjusted correctly, have been pretty flat. Care to address that? It's been well known that housing prices, per sq ft, inflation adjusted, has not risen according to the pop belief that you share. Here's another easy way to see it - median home prices since…

>housing prices, across all houses, not the cherry picked most expensive subset you picked, when adjusted correctly, have been pretty flat. Care to address that?

>median home prices since 1950, inflation adjusted, have not even doubled since 1950

"Not even doubled" = basically flat.

Sure buddy. The single biggest purchase most people will ever make, let's call an 80% increase a rounding error.

>No wonder you believe the highest component of house cost is land. You have not presented actual numbers, only picked the subsets that you like.

If you're going to put all this effort into finding stats then you should first work on your reading comprehension. Here's what I actually said:

>the vast majority of the *increase* of property values is _land_.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good conditions didn't diminish. People now buy vastly bigger and more things. Want to live on one salary like a 1950 person, with 1950 level goods, you can. Also more classes of people now have much better things: women, minorities. Labor is not the only input to productivity, so there is zero reason labor rewards should match productivity. As capital expenses increased to obtain modern productivity gains, the rewar…

Can you elaborate on what "labor rewards" means in the context of ``` Labor is not the only input to productivity, so there is zero reason labor rewards should match productivity. ```

That sounds like they're saying, "if you get a tool that makes you twice as productive, you didn't double the production, the tool did, so the tool owner should get the additional proceeds".

Total braindead understanding of how productivity and labor works, but it sounds great if you own the tools.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone isn’t successful in making money on that work, though, it means it isn’t very good. I know it’s not a 1:1 result, but in reality, if you put in the hours and you make things people want, you will be successful. The problem is everyone who works on something they’re passionate about (even if they suck at it) thinks they ought to be compensated, even if their contributions amount to exactly Jack shit. Meanwh…

>if you put in the hours and you make things people want, you will be successful. What thing does a landlord make? What are the hours on the job of owning dividend-paying securities? Being successful in this economy has literally nothing to do with "making things people want" and "putting in the hours".

There are plenty of unsuccessful landlords who bought property hoping to renovate it and then found they couldn't, and for everyone who made money on the stock market there is someone who lost it.

In the comment above yours someone made the opposite example of a Baker who works all day making fantastic cakes but nobody buys them because his shop is in the wrong place, and the reply was that it's still his fault because he didn't spend enough time figuring out where and how to sell his wares. Making a good decision is just as much making a "thing" as making a physical object.

I think you are also mixing up wealth and success. A very rich man whose stock portfolio does not keep up with inflation is still very rich, but he is not successful.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enormous amounts of study on the concept that the above-average lifestyle enjoyed at that specific point in history by white men was built on the exploitation of other groups. Frequently, people who name that specific point in time as the model for how they would like the world to be are simply unaware of this tradeoff and have no idea that simply reverting society to that point would make it worse for some…

The "above-average lifestyle enjoyed at that specific point in history" came in the US because Europe was destroyed in WWII, and they got to easily be the world's producer and exporter and dictator of terms for decades. That plus strong unions and growing economy. And the tide also lifted black people with it, that's the era when the civil rights progress was made, for example. Oh, and Europe also ended up enjoying a…

Hear, hear!
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