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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

#241

Post by prawn »

bobthepanda wrote: post #120
alecco wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandparents just bumped their volunteering from weekends to weekdays. Then my Boomer parents switched to leisure activities and travel (they stopped volunteering when they retired). I prefer my grandparent's retirement, but now that NGOs got professionalized and became extremely political that is a no-go for me. I didn't like to be bossed around by a 30yo narcissist driven by maxing out his EOY presentation (to k…

My fantasy is maybe to start a one person cafe operation and manage overheads. Unfortunately most retail space in the US is way too oversized to make that kind of operation work.

Not sure what the current food truck climate is, but that angle might be a way to get something compact and 1-2 person sized. You could get a small caravan/trailer or stand and hire out for parties purely on weekends or just Saturdays to get it started ahead of schedule.

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

#242

Post by jamesfinlayson »

vitaflo wrote: post #228
calferreira wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed! I love programming and have a bunch of side projects that realistically will only ever get anywhere close to completion once I'm retired.

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

#243

Post by prawn »

tensor wrote: post #64
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…

You hit the nail squarely on the head. In days past when people retired they'd still help raise kids or look after households. When we moved past requiring that sort of thing, we left the elderly without engagement. I'm not sure what the solution is, but perhaps as a society we could be more intentional about creating roles where the elderly can still help and feel useful, but also have flexibility and a more relaxed…

There's not necessarily money in it, but in the current era, parents still find the grandparents' availability for minding children incredibly useful. If they also cleaned my house free or cheap, I'd be thrilled!

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

#244

Post by alexashka »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #161
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…

> they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering This is not what actually happens in practice. There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. If this was going to occur there would be mountains of empirical evidence for it by now because this situation isn't rare. I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their f…

> This is not what actually happens in practice. There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. If this was going to occur there would be mountains of empirical evidence for it by now because this situation isn't rare.

Wrong.

> I know many people with a lot of free time...

Not a valid argument for, or against anything.

You probably mean to say you already know humans are just 'lazy' and the evidence for it is vibes, which is completely and totally sufficient for you but for anyone who thinks otherwise - they better come up with evidence that isn't just vibes.

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

#245

Post by joegibbs »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #187
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've built a society where our only consistent interaction with community (for many people) is via the labor market Modern society arguably has more opportunity for play–and evidence of adults playing–than ancient socities. We also have a larger fraction of labor that one can genuinely like doing, versus being forced to do.

I think you should really look up the amount of work the average european peasant was doing in the middle ages, and the amount of free time they had off. Or how much time hunter gatherers spend actually hunting or gathering. Or how meaningful any of that was, compared to what we do today... Our conditions are better today than in the early industrial revolution, but that's not saying much.

"Free time" for a medieval peasant is a very misleading statistic, because it's only counting the amount of time that the peasants worked for their feudal lord - which was about as high as it could be, because of the amount of work that the peasants would have to do beyond that. Without modern technology, they had to gather firewood (I did this on the weekend and it's hard enough with chainsaws, a 4WD ute, a hydraulic log splitter - would take forever with an axe and mule cart), tend their own crops and livestock, mend and hand-wash their own clothes, work on their houses etc, which is all counted as time off work even though the peasant would die if they didn't do it.

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

#246

Post by henrikschroder »

fendy3002 wrote: post #235
spartanatreyu wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. I can't recall which studies they were, but I was under the impression that with a sudden expansion of free time, the earliest productivity gains don't occur until months later at the earliest. I think the effect came up in long-term UBI trial participants, and those that acquired sudden wealth from inheritance / lottery / stocks…

Yep, the statement is so bad with a pattern of "because most won't, then all won't", which commonly used during birth rate issues too. It's either ignorant or malicious with hidden agenda behind. Giving employees 1 week of free time? That's nothing, and nothing will change too as a result. Give them a whole month of free time? I bet they will make some small, short term projects, even doing hobbies like gaming, fishi…

> Giving employees 1 week of free time? That's nothing, and nothing will change too as a result. Give them a whole month of free time? I bet they will make some small, short term projects, even doing hobbies like gaming, fishing, cooking or golfing where it wasn't available before.

*confused in European, again*

Hey, if only there was an entire continent of hundreds of millions of people who typically have 5 weeks of paid vacation per year or more so that we could check this and see what happens?

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

#247

Post by henrikschroder »

stouset wrote: post #105
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 used to follow FIRE-related communities. There were a depressing number of people who would post something along the lines of “I just pulled the trigger! Now what am I supposed to do to fill the time?” Your take is spot on, and it’s incredibly sad the number of people we’ve created whose only source of meaning or joy in their life is their desk job. As someone who pulled the trigger about a year ago, I feel like th…

> Your take is spot on, and it’s incredibly sad the number of people we’ve created whose only source of meaning or joy in their life is their desk job.

I worked for a silicon valley company that graciously offered its employees a month or two of unpaid vacation every five years. And people who had worked there a long while agonized over it, if they should take it, and whatever should they do with all that free time??!?

Meanwhile, my European ass and my European colleagues were so incredibly bewildered by it, because we were used to 5-6 weeks of paid vacation per year, and being used to that means you have no issues finding stuff to do outside of work.

Corporate American produces the weirdest drones ever, people are so incredibly conditioned to work work work.

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

#248

Post by globular-toast »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #11

I think employment may set us up for rapid cognitive decline when we finally become unemployed. As in, working 40+ hours a week makes us over-value "vegging out", which sets us up for failure post-employment.

Interesting. As soon as work is done I'm either outside walking, in the garden or workshop etc. I did a PhD which actually did consume my whole life until I finished it. Every job I've had since then seems so easy in comparison. I'm never "vegging out".

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

#249

Post by rullelito »

globular-toast wrote: post #248
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #11

I think employment may set us up for rapid cognitive decline when we finally become unemployed. As in, working 40+ hours a week makes us over-value "vegging out", which sets us up for failure post-employment.

Interesting. As soon as work is done I'm either outside walking, in the garden or workshop etc. I did a PhD which actually did consume my whole life until I finished it. Every job I've had since then seems so easy in comparison. I'm never "vegging out".

Do you think you are the typical person?

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

#250

Post by globular-toast »

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…

Has society "created" those people? Or are some people just naturally subservient and need structure to come from somewhere else? I always assumed it was the latter.
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