Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leisure is the new productivity

edition.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#21

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

MadManE wrote: post #7
cryoshon wrote: post #3

According to this (probably sugarcoated) article, the average person in the US works more than 40 hours per week. Attendant to this claim is the assumption that salaried employees are paid the same amount regardless of how much they work. We work more, and earn the same. We get zero guaranteed vacation days. We have labor policies that are worse than many impoverished countries. Our politicians are absolutely not wor…

Why does this have to be solved at the legislative level? Can't we rally around the idea that we are worth more than we're being compensated, and change our behavior accordingly, or is that relegated only to legalizing pot?

> Why does this have to be solved at the legislative level?

One of the main reason people have to work so many hours is the government diverts much productivity to waste. The best example is health care spending. Americans blow 25% of GDP on it. For all this spending Americans achieve a life expectancy of 78. Mexicans achieve 76 with a far lower GDP per capita of about $13,000 and spend something like 8% of GDP on health care. From this I conclude American health care spending is essentially a wasteful racket. It's not a stretch to say Americans spend one full day a week working to pay for doctors and medicines that don't really work.

Pile on other rackets such as massive overspending on defense, over-budgeted police and fire fighting forces, over-budgeted primary and secondary education, and you easily get another day or two. Americans in productive industries are spending probably near half their work week producing to pay for government connected parasitical industries.

Legislating less work time is not the primary problem. The first thing to do is address the question of Why are we as a society blowing so much money and effort on worthless crap? Cut back on the massive levels of waste and there will be more wealth with which people can choose how to spend their time, working or not.

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#22

Post by Chinjut »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #17
Delmania wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, they will never do this. Our society is too heavily influenced by the "Protestant work ethic", and we have a folk lore about hard work and success. Plus many politicians are "pro-business" and take the stance many business owners do: that we should be grateful for having a job and be willing to sacrifice for our company without any expectation of reward.

The Dutch have a strong Protestant work ethic too, and are pro-business, good traders and still consider five weeks holiday normal. What is needed is people to realise that those five weeks is not lost business, but happy productive employees for the rest of the year.

Or, what's needed is for us as a society to decide we have some other fundamental goal than "productivity".

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#23

Post by bjelkeman-again »

Chinjut wrote: post #22
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch have a strong Protestant work ethic too, and are pro-business, good traders and still consider five weeks holiday normal. What is needed is people to realise that those five weeks is not lost business, but happy productive employees for the rest of the year.

Or, what's needed is for us as a society to decide we have some other fundamental goal than "productivity".

Yeah. That too. Being a European I have slightly different possibilities than in the U.S., but fundamentally, having lived in both places, I belive one can be the change here, and there.

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#24

Post by yoshizar »

There is some pretty misleading writing in this article. Take the sentence below:

"Some years, international comparisons of GDP per hours worked have found, workers in Norway, Ireland, Denmark and even France, with their 30 days of paid vacation every year, their café culture, their generous paid family leave policies, their short work hours mandated by law and their new directive forbidding some employers from expecting workers to check work-related texts and emails after hours, beat us by a mile."

In other words,

In some years (not others), the GDP per hour worked is higher in countries where employees work fewer hours per year.

If people work 20% less and are 10% more productive per hour when they do work, they're still less productive in total than if they didn't reduce their hours.

Why does a company care if their salaried employees are more productive per hour? They just want that employee to maximize productivity over the employee's lifetime with the company.

If the article has only historical anecdotes to demonstrate that employees are more productive in absolute terms if they work fewer hours, that's not very persuasive toward the point the author is trying to make, that major industries and large companies should change because they get more value out of having employees work fewer hours.

I'm not saying I disagree with the author's point, only that they are using misleading evidence to try to support it.

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#25

Post by MadManE »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #21
MadManE wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this have to be solved at the legislative level? Can't we rally around the idea that we are worth more than we're being compensated, and change our behavior accordingly, or is that relegated only to legalizing pot?

> Why does this have to be solved at the legislative level? One of the main reason people have to work so many hours is the government diverts much productivity to waste. The best example is health care spending. Americans blow 25% of GDP on it. For all this spending Americans achieve a life expectancy of 78. Mexicans achieve 76 with a far lower GDP per capita of about $13,000 and spend something like 8% of GDP on he…

I agree - but the way to achieve less waste in government is not to pass more laws and regulations that feed the beast.

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#26

Post by ripter »

cryoshon wrote: post #3

According to this (probably sugarcoated) article, the average person in the US works more than 40 hours per week. Attendant to this claim is the assumption that salaried employees are paid the same amount regardless of how much they work. We work more, and earn the same. We get zero guaranteed vacation days. We have labor policies that are worse than many impoverished countries. Our politicians are absolutely not wor…

We've successfully dealt with this issue in the past.

"Ironically, it was only when Henry Ford took the wildly controversial step of shuttering his automobile manufacturing factories on Saturday and cutting daily work hours from the then-standard 12 to 8 that workers began not only enjoying leisure time at home, but became more efficient and productive at work."

If Google and other big corps shorten work hours, then other companies might follow just like they did when Ford changed. Eventually it'll trickle up to legislation.

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#27

Post by zenogais »

rifung wrote: post #19
zenogais wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote from the article: "Ironically, it was only when Henry Ford took the wildly controversial step of shuttering his automobile manufacturing factories on Saturday and cutting daily work hours from the then-standard 12 to 8 that workers began not only enjoying leisure time at home, but became more efficient and productive at work." Now if we re-read the Wikipedia article we see that, in fact, Ford was not the decisi…

My take from the article was that Ford popularized the idea. I definitely don't know enough about history to make a case either way, but at the very least the wikipedia article did not contradict it. It doesn't seem too far fetched to me that Ford's cutting daily work hours would have made a huge impact if only because it brought the idea to the public's eyes. At the very least it wouldn't surprise me if only because…

I get what you were trying to say, for sure, but the fact of the matter is that you weren't actually familiar with the history, as you now admit, and ignored the entirety of the Wikipedia article except for a single sentence in order to draw support for the conclusion you wanted validated. Now you're falling back on pure conjecture to support your conclusion. The Wikipedia article does contradict the original statement, if you still don't see how then I can't really help you except to suggest you perhaps review in detail.

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#28

Post by Chinjut »

squozzer wrote: post #18

It's quite possible that those who control the means of production already know everything mentioned in the CNN and like things the way they are. Salaried workers tend to be college-educated. Putting them on the treadmill reduces their ability to innovate and thereby threaten the established order. Hourly workers tend to have less education, which lowers their status and reduces their ability to threaten the establis…

Small correction: "Gandhi".

[The fact that you included Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah in your list suggests to me you quite possibly are South Asian and thus perhaps are already aware of this and simply made a typo; however, as this mistake (or, rather, its variant "Ghandi") is so common (I see the misspelt version far more frequently in Internet discussions than the correctly spelt one), and is related to frequent misspelling of my own name, I use any opportunity I can to bring attention to the correct spelling]

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#29

Post by Chinjut »

ripter wrote: post #26
cryoshon wrote: post #3

According to this (probably sugarcoated) article, the average person in the US works more than 40 hours per week. Attendant to this claim is the assumption that salaried employees are paid the same amount regardless of how much they work. We work more, and earn the same. We get zero guaranteed vacation days. We have labor policies that are worse than many impoverished countries. Our politicians are absolutely not wor…

We've successfully dealt with this issue in the past. "Ironically, it was only when Henry Ford took the wildly controversial step of shuttering his automobile manufacturing factories on Saturday and cutting daily work hours from the then-standard 12 to 8 that workers began not only enjoying leisure time at home, but became more efficient and productive at work." If Google and other big corps shorten work hours, then…

In support of the grandparent comment, one does suppose Ford was motivated to his actions not purely of his own accord, but, rather, was also influenced by the ambient environment of a thriving and contentious labor movement, which in its agitations was not afraid to employ strikes, etc.

Re: Leisure is the new productivity

#30

Post by cryoshon »

ripter wrote: post #26
cryoshon wrote: post #3

According to this (probably sugarcoated) article, the average person in the US works more than 40 hours per week. Attendant to this claim is the assumption that salaried employees are paid the same amount regardless of how much they work. We work more, and earn the same. We get zero guaranteed vacation days. We have labor policies that are worse than many impoverished countries. Our politicians are absolutely not wor…

We've successfully dealt with this issue in the past. "Ironically, it was only when Henry Ford took the wildly controversial step of shuttering his automobile manufacturing factories on Saturday and cutting daily work hours from the then-standard 12 to 8 that workers began not only enjoying leisure time at home, but became more efficient and productive at work." If Google and other big corps shorten work hours, then…

So we're left waiting for the power players to make things better for us?

There's probably a better way that doesn't rely on them, I think.

Post reply on HN