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Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

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Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#191

Post by marvin »

ctchocula wrote: post #190
cjalmeida wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you mentioned taxes, let's get more numbers! Yay! Income taxes in Texas for 95k amounts to about 27%. Income tax in Berlin for $60k (30y, no children, left other options on defaults) amounts to 33%. The after tax difference is about $30k then. Tuition in UT Dallas, 4y engineering bachelor degree, is $45k. Free in DE, but you pay that in less than two years with the difference in salary. Public transport? In US th…

Just a nitpick, but I think you are using the marginal tax numbers instead of the actual tax rate, and not applying all the complicated deductions available to US people. Texas: $95k pre-tax falls into the marginal 28% bracket, but after subtracting 401k + IRA deferral ($18k + $5.5k), $95k falls to AGI of $71.5k. Then after subtracting standard deduction ($6.35k for single 30y, no children), personal exemption ($4.05…

Hm, this is interesting to me -- if your example is representative, US income tax rates are often quoted at the marginal rate, whereas European taxes (higher on a percentage basis) are quoted at the net rate, skewing the perception in the direction of European taxes sounding lower than they really are.

Of course, there's both deductions and non-income taxes also, which complicate the issue. In Norway, the total tax pressure is significantly greater than 50% for most people. (VAT at 25% always deducted from already-taxed income, long-term capital gains at 30%, pre-salary employer tax at 14%, company profits taxed at 24%, salary taxed at ~33% on average, fuel tax ~30%, wealth tax 0.85% of net assets after deductions +++).

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#192

Post by awalton »

gozur88 wrote: post #129
Spooky23 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retailers have taken it to another level by requiring you to commit to availability without a commitment to have work. Nobody gets 40 hours — you target around 28 typically. Control and keeping high turnover is an objective in retail management. It’s usually cheaper and more efficient to have full time staff, but it’s easier to skimp 5% of labor hours and force the salaried manager to fill the breach.

>Retailers have taken it to another level by requiring you to commit to availability without a commitment to have work. Nobody gets 40 hours — you target around 28 typically. This is the law of unintended consequences as applied to the ACA. If they give you more hours care their costs go up dramatically unless they're already offering health.

This was happening at least a decade before the ACA was a glint in anyone's eyes. Probably more like three decades...

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#193

Post by pjmlp »

jernfrost wrote: post #155
pjmlp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the people getting together that gives the unions that power in first place. Law is meaningless if workers don't make it happen.

My native Norway is much like Germany with respect to unions and speaking with my American side of the family, and following American news I get the strong impression that laws protecting people's right to unionize are VERY WEAK in the US. They are also designed in ways which makes people end up resenting unions. I register a lot of union hatred in the US which simply doesn't exist in Norway. Part of the reason seems…

Thanks for the reply.

My point is that law is only part of the equation, people need to fight for keeping it relevant.

I never said it was easy to do so.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#194

Post by pjmlp »

cjalmeida wrote: post #107
pjmlp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that enjoy living in countries with strong union law usually get to choose, unless they rather keep quiet instead of reporting abuses to the respective work authorities. This includes IT related jobs. If people on US and other countries want these benefits, choose to get strong instead of demonizing unions.

Avg dev salary in Dallas: $93k. Avg dev salary in Berlin: $55k. There's a saying you should be careful with what you wish for, you might as well get it. (I deliberately didn't pick SV/NYC. Dallas and Berlin are very similar cost of living wise.)

30 days vacations, healthcare and overtime only when I say so.

It ia worth every penny I get less than Dallas, life is not always about money.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#195

Post by jernfrost »

cjalmeida wrote: post #176
jernfrost wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to consider the wealth of respective countries and cities. E.g. my native Norway which is more similar to the US in GDP per capita has developer salaries closer to the US. Not only is Germany poorer than the US, but Berlin is among the poorer cities in Germany. Hence I don't think it says much about the results of unions. Norway has equally strong unions as Germany and close to 80% of Norwegian workers are u…

From [1], cost of living in Oslo is way higher than Dallas. They're more in line with NYC or SFA. The avg salary is only about $65k [2]. Quite disappointing. I checked and dev salary in the rest of Germany. Not very different from Berlin. Switzerland does pay handsomely. But, unlike neighbors, unions have quite minor role. And labor laws are way more lax than France or DE. About prevalece of manufacturing in Germany,…

I think it is a bit hard to compare the salaries, because Norwegian currency is presently at a historical low. When I compared at earlier years salary of me and my friends in the software industry was more similar to the US.

Also I am in doubt about how many Norwegians report to these web pages. It would be more accurate to look at statistics gathered by NITO among its members.

One aspect you have to consider with respect to the US and Europe in general is that Europeans work a lot fewer hours. A lot of difference between US and European software developer salaries could simply be down to difference in hours worked.

I make about $97 000 at current exchange as a software developer in Norway. But I work only 37.5 hours per week. I got 5 weeks vacation per year. In addition to a lot more public holidays than in the US. I haven't worked overtime in over 10 years. While judging from accounts from Europeans working in the US, it is quite normal with very long work weeks and overtime.

Oslo living expenses will look extra high because we are most likely at at the top of a property bubble. We never had a downturn in 2008 for the housing market.

Also living expenses in Norway is usually hard to compare with other countries since food prices and recently housing costs are quite high. However health care, education, child care etc is quite cheap. Many consumer goods are also relatively cheap. E.g. food is much cheaper in Spain than in Norway but buying a TV is cheaper in Norway.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#196

Post by jernfrost »

pjmlp wrote: post #193
jernfrost wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My native Norway is much like Germany with respect to unions and speaking with my American side of the family, and following American news I get the strong impression that laws protecting people's right to unionize are VERY WEAK in the US. They are also designed in ways which makes people end up resenting unions. I register a lot of union hatred in the US which simply doesn't exist in Norway. Part of the reason seems…

Thanks for the reply. My point is that law is only part of the equation, people need to fight for keeping it relevant. I never said it was easy to do so.

Agree, I just didn't want to put all the blame on American workers for the low unionization rate. I think they have much harder job than their peers in Norway and Germany.

Forming a union is never easy, even in Norway.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#197

Post by jernfrost »

rumcajz wrote: post #187
jernfrost wrote: post #150

Anthropologists David Graeber, has addressed this and offered the explanation with the observation that we as a society produce what he calls bullshit jobs. Almost 40% of Brits in a surveyed acknowledged that their job wasn't needed. People believing in effective markets would of course protest and claim such enormous inefficiency can't possibly exist. Somebody will simply start a company without bullshit jobs. Howev…

My take on the problem (predates Graeber's book though): http://250bpm.com/blog:44 TL;DR: Firms are not people and can't strive for efficiency. Only individuals can. Once the financial incentives of individuals are misaligned with the financial incentives of the firm, the firm is going to lose (and pay for useless jobs).

I liked a lot your analogy with altruism. Wish I had thought of that one myself ;-)

I probably disagree with the notion that people actively seek to create bullshit work for themselves, initially. I think a lot of bullshit jobs is something people realize they are doing after the fact when it is hard to change careers or find another job. They then engage in a sort of cover up operation to avoid losing that bullshit job.

Of course there are a lot of bullshit jobs which exist due to regulations and red tape. People might seek a lot of bullshit jobs simply because they have high status and pay. E.g. it is well paid to be a lawyer and high status, despite the fact that a lot of lawyer work, is just bullshit.

I also think everybody could have been employed despite removing bullshit jobs, it is just that people would simply need to work a lot fewer hours. This assumes of course a gradual change. If we removed all bullshit jobs tomorrow, there would for structural reasons be a lot of people who can't change to other activities easily.

I also think that a lot of bullshit work, isn't 100% bullshit. There are perhaps 10 hours worth of work to be done each week. However workers have no incentive to expose that, because otherwise they could not excuse the pay they get. Also people are proud and don't want to look like they are lazy or working less than others. So in a sense people end up doing bullshit to simply not look worse.

So part of the solution is also to stop valuing work so dam high. We have a tendency to glorify work. I personally think people would end up doing useful things for the most part if given the choice. People are unnecessarily concerned with others being lazy.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#198

Post by jernfrost »

Shivetya wrote: post #145
darawk wrote: post #144

Because capitalism optimizes for production and consumption - not welfare. Often welfare and production/consumption are aligned (e.g. producing enough food for everyone). But in the case of labor/life balance, they are not aligned. It's actually kind of odd to me that serious people (e.g. John Maynard Keynes) would ever have thought that work hours would decrease. There is no term in the economic fitness function for…

well a capitalist society is also a society bombarded by marketing experts who are in every part of a person's daily life working to convince them to spend more which in turn drives them to work more or go into debt pushing retirement further off. consumption is high because marketing is that good. go read any of the popular brand subs on reddit and you will see people making stupid purchasing decisions daily and man…

Agree there is this illusion that the market is there to figure out what you want and deliver your needs efficiently at a low price and high quality.

Instead it is more like the producers create their own demand by emotional manipulation of the consumers.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#199

Post by guy98238710 »

neilwilson wrote: post #186
guy98238710 wrote: post #174

Saying that people just like working is ridiculous. It's either author's social bubble or it's straight propaganda. I cannot imagine people in factories or construction saying they like to go to work. The reasons behind the 40-hour week are way more brutal: - Contemporary economy has surprising amount of internal inefficiency causing most of the value to be wasted. - Value that is not squandered is distributed uneven…

It's entirely reasonable because the literature shows that it is true. Work is leisure you get paid to do and leisure is work you pay to do. If your society doesn't allow that state to come about then it is because it has been deliberately designed to have fewer work opportunities than there are people that want them. If you construct society so that there are always more work opportunities than people who want work…

What literature shows that? The linked presentation contains only inference instead of direct evidence.

You seem to be imagining distant future when people just work on things they enjoy. Even if such utopia can be built, it doesn't change anything about the present situation. The vast majority of people would quit their jobs if they didn't need the money.

Re: Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

#200

Post by jernfrost »

closeparen wrote: post #182
Shivetya wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well a capitalist society is also a society bombarded by marketing experts who are in every part of a person's daily life working to convince them to spend more which in turn drives them to work more or go into debt pushing retirement further off. consumption is high because marketing is that good. go read any of the popular brand subs on reddit and you will see people making stupid purchasing decisions daily and man…

Consumer goods are practically free next to housing. I don’t buy this argument at all. I could completely slash or double marketing-driven spending tomorrow and be in substantially the same financial position. Maybe that’s just a Bay Area distortion. Consider also that a large portion of consumer goods spending is on cars, which are basically just a substitute for living on more central/expensive land. In the end it…

The real cost of housing is distorted though when house prices keep going up. In many cases, if you take into account the value increase of housing, it is actually opposite of what you claim. People don't spend anything on housing, because they get back whatever they put pay for the house in terms of value increase of the property.

I think it would be more fair to look at, how much does it cost to build a house, and divide that cost on the time it may be used. We should not really add the price of property to the equation.

If one does this I will bet that consumer goods make up a much bigger part of the economy than you think.

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