Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
vice.com
Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#2Maybe the stuff we want to buy has gotten increasingly expensive. College, phone and internet, all on a stagnating wage.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#3Maybe the stuff we want to buy has gotten increasingly expensive. College, phone and internet, all on a stagnating wage.
Depends on the place. Phone & internet is not it, but college, rent, cars & health care are.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#4People who don't work at all. That's the choice (maybe more like outcome) the society went with. For what might the first time in history, the rich are working more than the poor[1] and labour participation rates are dropping[2].
In many ways this is a superior alternative. Children don't work. They used to. People spend a lot more time in school at the beginning of their life when it has the potential to have the biggest impact. It's not all bad. Although not quite living up to the dreams from 20th century either.
There's also something to be said about positional goods. A lot of people are driven by status and they work to be ahead of others. Elizabeth Warren believes that this explains why, despite technological progress, regular middle class family needs two incomes where one was enough a couple decades ago[3], they're competing for the same house, or school district. It doesn't explain everything but it's a factor.
[1] http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21600989...
[2] http://equitablegrowth.org/2014/08/18/equitable-growth-make-...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Paren...
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#5Maybe the stuff we want to buy has gotten increasingly expensive. College, phone and internet, all on a stagnating wage.
Depends on the place. Phone & internet is not it, but college, rent, cars & health care are.
Collage, rent, cars and healthcare take up an awful lot of the available income for most people, so if these are more expensive then that accounts for a lot.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#6Capitalism`s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The profit motive is so strong that it often ends up creating irrational scenarios such as the economic situation we have today.
European countries seem to have struck a far better balance by harnessing the profit motive of capitalism while preventing disasters such as for-profit healthcare, for-profit education, for-profit government policies (for the rich), for-profit prisons, etc.
It is fascinating how powerful cultural and institutional momentum can be. I regularly run into very intelligent and rational Americans (particularly on HN!) who defend American institutions (e.g. healthcare) in spite of all the widespread data about them being massively inefficient.
In the end, we reap what we sow. The profit motive brings great riches, but to a tiny few. The rest, sadly, often become the servants who enable the lifestyles of these outliers. Conversely, the outliers become the American Dream, seducing the average worker ever onwards with promises of riches and comfort just a few lucky breaks away.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#7Capitalism`s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The profit motive is so strong that it often ends up creating irrational scenarios such as the economic situation we have today. European countries seem to have struck a far better balance by harnessing the profit motive of capitalism while preventing disasters such as for-profit healthcare, for-profit education, for-profit government policies (for the ric…
That and the absolute horrible response to the word Socialism which is equated directly with Communism by large parts of the electorate.
The US system is very good at produce big winners at the expense of everyone else - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM astounded me even though I already knew the distribution was inequitable.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#8Capitalism`s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The profit motive is so strong that it often ends up creating irrational scenarios such as the economic situation we have today. European countries seem to have struck a far better balance by harnessing the profit motive of capitalism while preventing disasters such as for-profit healthcare, for-profit education, for-profit government policies (for the ric…
Please explain how for-profit education is a disaster. By all measures, private schools in the US are superior to public schools, and the US's private universities are consistently rated best in the world.
You also can't generalize about e.g. for-profit healthcare based on the American situation, because the regulatory environment is so extreme as to have to created a government-controlled crony-capitalistic oligopoly. The for-profit healthcare in less regulated countries like Mexico is inexpensive and amazing.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#9Maybe the stuff we want to buy has gotten increasingly expensive. College, phone and internet, all on a stagnating wage.
Depends on the place. Phone & internet is not it, but college, rent, cars & health care are.
I guess it does depend highly on lcoation. I live in Vancouver, Canada. For my fiancee and I, our cell phone bill comes to about $150/m and internet is $40. That alone is $1,200 a year.
Cars are another expense that's gone up substantially over the last 20 years. We pay $140/m in insurance and at $1.40/L gas, at least $150/m in gas. That's $3,500 a year not including servicing (minimum $100 every ~3 months) or car payments ($280/m). All in, just owning a car costs us about $7,200 a year.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#10People "need jobs" to be able to "afford" things, so we have a lot of people basically generating work for each other, as per Parkinson's Laws.