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

America's misguided culture of overwork

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 192 posts

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#161

Post by run4yourlives »

teoruiz wrote: post #19
dsplittgerber wrote: post #10

This guy has lots of facts wrong - makes you wonder about his accuracy in research: - no federally mandated six weeks of vacation time (though 4-5 weeks are the norm, even in private sector) - University tuition has been introduced recently (though still low, but will rise as obvious source of gov revenue) - Free nursing care / child care for a small percentage of toddlers only - No labor minister of that name (he is…

> - University tuition has been introduced recently (though still low, but will rise as obvious source of gov revenue) In Spain (another socialist economy by the article standards) University tuition is something between 600-1000 EUR a year and has not risen for a good decade now (except for the inflation).

Spain is on the verge of bankruptcy. Just saying.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#163

Post by run4yourlives »

kragen wrote: post #147
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two interesting points from your comments. First, Americans can work any kind of work week they want. There's a book -- 4-hour-work-week -- that a lot of folks are trying to make work. In technology teams especially. I tell my teams that I don't care how much you work or don't: what matters is productivity and predictability. Sure, lots of others don't feel that way, but it's up to each situation. If there were some…

> Want a society with 20-hour work weeks? Cool. Go build one. Nobody is stopping you, and if it's wildly successful then others will very quickly copy it. This is a very easy thing. Actually from this angle I don't even see the point of the article. In reality, there have been many societies with 20-hour workweeks (many hunter-gatherer societies) and many of them were wildly successful, as measured by the health and…

I don't think he meant that literally. Your taking it as such made for funny reading though.

What I took him to mean was that there is nothing at all stopping you from forming your own company and instilling some edict that mandates 20 hour weeks. Ideally, if this is win-win for everyone it will become a standard and thus, you have "created a new society".

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#164

Post by kjhgfgbhnj »

mattm wrote: post #153
patrickgzill wrote: post #69

My personal experience with Germans is that they are hard workers for several hours, then they take off and play. During the time they are working they are focused on getting work done. Americans will put in long hours, but then during the course of the day will play in the form of checking personal email, talking around the water cooler, etc. You can cross ref. this with NASA's finding that programmers who were only…

My experience echoes this. I really believe there is a fixed limit to the amount of work one can do and once you cross that line, you just end up goofing off or procrastinating. And it's nowhere near 40 hours per week. I would say it's more like 20-30. The 40 hour work week is standard because Henry Ford's productivity studies found that for repetitive, manual labour, that was the maximum amount of hours one could wo…

Ironically the 40hour week in America came about because it was MORE efficient than working 6day weeks - in fewer hours you got more done with the weekend to rest.

Then somebody forgot this and decided that if 40 was good 48 must be better.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#165

Post by philwelch »

bpyne wrote: post #101
Loic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vacations norm is more 5 to 6 weeks with 38h to 41h work week. That is, for all the people I know in Germany. (I know nobody with only 4 weeks). Please note that these are paid holidays, you have a lot of days off too (Christmas, etc.) The University tuition is about €500/year. Nursing/Day care for the kids (we have 3.5 and 1.5 year old kids) is from free to €200/€500 per month for both of them (it depends of your in…

I'm employed at a university in the US and have what we consider a "cushy" job: i.e. good benefits and a short work week. Just for comparison, here's what my employer offers. vacation = 2 weeks personal time = 6 days (sick time is considered personal time) holidays = 7 We have also time off that I don't know how to categorize. It's specific to universities. university shutdown between Christmas and New Year's = 7 day…

"University tuition ranges and often includes housing, which is necessary in less urban areas."

Really? I'd think campus housing would be more necessary in urban areas, just to provide subsidized living space in often expensive areas. I go to a rural university, and there are more than enough apartments around--just living by myself, I'm paying less than half for a studio apartment than I would for a bed in a dorm room.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#166

Post by kjhgfgbhnj »

jeebusroxors wrote: post #98
timr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This article is pure speculative narrative. That is, whereas most essays make a thesis, then present evidence and arguments to support that thesis, this article presents a whole story spun out of thin air, involving FDR, national health insurance, vacations, the Chinese." Huh. Maybe we're being A/B tested, because the article that I just read began with a clear thesis ( "European social democracy – particularly Germ…

"You can pull out these GDP per capita statistics and say that people in Mississippi are vastly wealthier than people in Frankfurt and Hamburg. That can’t be true. Just spend two months in Hamburg and spend two months in Tupelo, Mississippi. There’s something wrong if the statistics are telling you that the people in Tupelo are three times wealthier than the people in Germany." I stopped reading after this thinking a…

GDP is a terrible measure of a population's wealth.

As a famous economist said - "the ideal GDP is a chain-smoking terminal cancer patient going through an expensive divorce whose car is totalled in a 20-car pileup"

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#167

Post by elmindreda »

furyg3 wrote: post #82
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #56

This article is pure speculative narrative. That is, whereas most essays make a thesis, then present evidence and arguments to support that thesis, this article presents a whole story spun out of thin air, involving FDR, national health insurance, vacations, the Chinese. As such, it presents an interesting problem. You could argue with some detail --- such as the role Germany plays as a competitive partner in China -…

While this story certainly isn't great for discussion (for the points you mentioned) I disagree with your last statement. Comparisons are useful, especially when they're disentangled from the politics. I don't really care about how Swedes are ethically superior because they have more mandated vacation and a shorter workday. What I care about are the effects. Is there a lower occurrence of burnout? Are Swedes more pro…

Sweden isn't the example it used to be, in this regard. We currently have a (relatively) right-wing government that's privatising services, cutting social safety nets and creating a low-wage job market. This is having the same effects it did in the US.

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#168

Post by leot »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #160
leot wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My version: I've always operated under the assumption that unequal wealth distribution ('fair' is a loaded word) has an economic cost, since equalities in wealth (+ economic freedom) encourage economy-expanding activities like entrepreneurship. [removed the last point as it is fair one on its own, but is not entailed from the previous statements.] I could be wrong, though. Can anyone come up with an example of volunt…

Imagine, then, what might happen if we doubled the size the base of people that could start/support an Apple or a Google On the face of it: yes, it would lead to higher GDP. BUT you have to consider where that wealth to spread around came from in the first place. If I know that by becoming very wealthy I'm going to be taxed to kingdom come so my wealth can be "fairly distributed" then I don't have much of an incentiv…

You're making it sound like the work won't pay. It will, just less. Care to quantify "kingdom come"?

This argument is effectively:

"I will work my arse off if the tax rate is 5%, but not if the tax rate is, say, 45%. It's only worth it if I can become hyper-rich; super-rich just isn't good enough for me."

Where is the evidence that increasing income/wealth taxes from, say, 20% to 40% causes people to work less hard? And where is the evidence that, even if this were true, it outweighs the other economic benefits of wealth redistribution?

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#169

Post by richcollins »

nanairo wrote: post #117
bad_user wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life expectancy is low because of the vast amount of people that eat crappy food in the US. And what makes people eat crappy food in the US? Could it be that crappy food is sold starting from the school's cafeteria? Could it be that people don't have enough time to cook or eat at better restaurants? This to me just means that in those other countries, the government is re-distributing wealth It could also mean any nu…

Exactly. You want better food at school cafeteria? The government has to pay. You want less death by secondary smoke? You need government intervention (which incidentally the USA have accepted now). Having a government is not such a bad thing. Even Americans used to embrace regulations, until Reagan and the "get the government off my back" idea spread out. Regulations are what help internalise in the price externalit…

Our diet is in large part a result of government intervention. Farm subsidies make distort the price of corn based products (HFCS for instance). The existence of government run schools prevent choice in school lunches.

However I do agree that government should play a role in regulating second hand smoke, as that is an instance of one individual using coercive force over another (making me inhale your smoke in public). Although even that issue is a slippery slope. Do we ban cars because their exhaust is toxic?

Re: America's misguided culture of overwork

#170

Post by thwarted »

hammmatt wrote: post #143
thwarted wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is probably a lot of national pride that manifests itself similar to NIH syndrome.

I spent four months living in Germany. I see tons more national pride when I am in the United States. The only national pride I have seen Germany conveyed was for their football team. Some Germans find it difficult to even discuss their recent history, they feel very shameful about it. If anything struck me about Germany it was how everyone could agree on rational things. Everyone agrees to fund the train stations. M…

My comment wasn't about Germany, but about countries which don't take influence from other countries in their own decision making. The United States could swallow some pride and seriously research and adopt policies that work in other countries rather than dismissing them immediately because that idea/method came from somewhere else (drug laws come to mind).
Post reply on HN