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Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

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Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#221

Post by kevmo314 »

deadbabe wrote: post #217
gyomu wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have created people that never develop as human beings outside the context of their being economic entities in the workforce What do you think people did with their lives before retirement became a thing? My great grandparents worked the fields and took care of the animals till they dropped. I did have one great grandma who spent the last few years of her life vegetating in a chair because she literally couldn’t…

Based on my grandmothers I’d say they mostly sat around and gossiped, went on walks together, ate meals together, did fun stuff together and then talked about stuff. Repeat until they die off. Socializing with friends every day can be very fulfilling and doesn’t require to actually produce anything or do any work.

People don’t post about their daily 9-5 on instagram either.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#222

Post by SupremumLimit »

djeastm wrote: post #212
SupremumLimit wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree quite strongly. I derive a lot of meaning from these types of activities (in addition to family and friends of course) and zero meaning from my job. It's the narrow focus on work to the exclusion of everything else in life that is the problem - and that's what the comments above highlight.

I would suggest that it's the fact your job has no meaning to you that raises the meaning the other things have in your life. That's a good thing. When people really love their job, it lowers the meaning the other things have in their life (I won't say family, necessarily, though it can, but also things like hobbies or friends often suffer, because the job is all-encompassing). There's only so much meaning one can fe…

I take your point that there is a limit on meaningful activities one can undertake but I disagree that it's some kind of zero-sum situation. I used to find my work more meaningful and I don't think it made any other things less meaningful - I just felt that I spent more of my day doing things that meant something to me. Life, on the whole, can feel more or less meaningful; we don't distribute a fixed amount of meaning across all the things we do.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#223

Post by zeafoamrun »

devilsdata wrote: post #158
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life. Th…

The people I know who have done it best are a friend's parents. They are both general practitioners and just gradually scaled back how many hours per week they worked, and gradually filled the time with various community and outdoor activities (church, choir, book clubs, hiking, biking, etc). My aim is to do the same, but I think I need to shift from being a tech employee to some kind of consulting to do that since scaling back is seen as weakness in corporate culture.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#224

Post by [deleted] »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #186
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.

Not when basics like rent, food, and healthcare eat up the majority of that 45k There's only so much you can reduce your lifestyle before you're literally just living to work anyways

[deleted]

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#225

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #186
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.

Not when basics like rent, food, and healthcare eat up the majority of that 45k There's only so much you can reduce your lifestyle before you're literally just living to work anyways

The US has one of the highest median incomes adjusted for cost of living in the world:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income

(You're welcome to complain. I'm just clarifying that insofar as this is a problem, it is very much not exclusive to the United States.)

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#226

Post by lecor »

monocasa wrote: post #179
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ancient societies had more in-person community and common free third-spaces For the elites. Most people in the population were doing back-breaking labor. I'm not saying there wasn't leisure. But when most of a society's labor goes into agriculture, most of the leisure time is going to be spent on the farm with fellow farmhands. (The exception being winter months.)

Medieval serfs typically worked about 150 10 hour days a year. In addition to the winter months there's a lot of gaps where the plants are in the ground, and now just need intermittent maintenance. All of this of course ignores women's work, which was more omnipresent across the year. But it was also pretty social as well, hence the lasting power of phrases like "sewing circles".

FWIW: That 150 hour estimate came from work by Gregory Clark at UC Davis who has since cast doubt on it.

“There’s a reasonable controversy going on in medieval economic history,” Clark told (Amanda Mill). He now thinks that English peasants in the late Middle Ages may have worked closer to 300 days a year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/medieval-...

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#227

Post by Arainach »

Aurornis wrote: post #175
devilsdata wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life. Th…

> The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. I don't buy this construction of the workday where spending 50% of your awake hours at work leaves people so exhausted they can…

"9-5" jobs in America are anything but. Since the popularity of smartphones people are reachable 24/7 and employers are taking full advantage.

Hourly employees have it even worse. When your schedule varies week to week and even on your "day off" your employer may be constantly reaching out trying to bully you into taking another shift, it's very hard to maintain regular non-work activities. Perhaps you have friends who work similar schedules to you, but good luck going to a sports team or club that meets Thursdays at 6 when you don't know if you'll be available then until 12 hours before if ever.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#228

Post by vitaflo »

calferreira wrote: post #122
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

I actually have the same fear. I love computers and I don't know what I'll do once I retire. Problem solving on computers is like oxygen to me.

You literally have one of the easiest things to retire to. You can do whatever you want with computers when you retire and for the rest of your life.

If you were an ER doctor and loved saving lives it would be a little harder.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#229

Post by sandworm101 »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

>> We have created people that never develop as human beings outside the context of their being economic entities in the workforce and that's not something to celebrate.

Unless you own shares. A population dedicated to work, followed by a retirement dedicated to steady medical spending punctuated by occassional holiday travel, is ideal for sustained economic growth year on year.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#230

Post by dkga »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

I think it is also more than that. In car-centric places like Brazil or the US, older people essentially need to drive or be driven around to have a social life. In pedestrian friendly cities like many in Europe, it is very common to see older people walking to meet their friends/relatives. I saw it all the time in Switzerland. Even those with severely limited mobility would prefer to actively walk or take the tram/bus somewhere (no matter how much time it took) than stay at home.
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