Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) • Hacker News Board

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#201

Post by ido » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #193

ido wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume the kindergarten teachers earn less than they would have otherwise had in a different job or less than the average parent of the kids in their group? I mean yes, I support better wages for them (jobs in education generally don't pay that great) & I'm sure people working in the financial sector earn much more but I don't think that was the alternative the common teacher had to chose from. As I said w…

> Why do you assume the kindergarten teachers earn less than they would have otherwise had in a different job or less than the average parent of the kids in their group? Cause when they leave, they get jobs that earn more money.

Who leaves what job? There are plenty of kindergarten teachers who stay at that job their entire careers. If you refer to the parents, in Berlin it costs no money for the parent to send their kids to kindergarten (same as public schools).

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#202

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #104

lmilcin wrote: post #95

I think there is absolutely no need every adult person needs to work 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. We might just as well work 4 hours a day or 3 days a week. It seems to me, this is just a matter of how the market pressures people to spend as much time as possible at work vs how much work most people can tolerate. How do I know? There are countries where it is normal that both parents work to provide for their hou…

The commute may influence this. The average American commute is about 30 minutes each way. That's 1 hour round trip. Commute as a portion of work time.... 4 hrs work: 25% 5 hrs work: 20% 6 hrs work: 16.7% 7 hrs work: 14.3% 8 hrs work: 12.5% Considering you don't get paid for your commute, there is a natural incentive to work more hours.

Not only have others suggested the reduction of the week to 4 days, but if you manage to de-align everyone's work week then commuting can become faster. And de-centralising work (not necessarily to the home!) can also improve the commuting situation.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#203

Post by coldtea » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #161

coldtea wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they really worked less hours including those things, and it has been studied a lot. In fact, a lot of the work was those things precisely. (Not that there's anything great to come home dead tired from a 10 hour day at the office + commute, and then have the "amazing" convenience to "order food for dinner"). You can still see it in societies that don't have our lifestyles. Go to a blue zone like in Ikaria (where…

What kind of french farmers? The land owners with their subsidized businesses, or the hired hands?

No, small farm owners (domestic professional production of e.g. wine, cheese, etc, but not in any large quantity).

And with no use of "hired hands" in the sense of large "factory-like" farms.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#204

Post by varjag » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #139

ido wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Germany, both my kids go to public kindergarten/daycare (there is no distinction between the 2 here, it starts when the child is 1 year old) & the kindergarten teachers are mostly German themselves. They don't earn great wages but they are not indentured servants either.

Right. So there's a large group of mostly women who accept low wages to store children so more privileged people can go earn higher wages.

In my son's daycare about a third of personnel were men.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#205

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #166

Consultant32452 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. So there's a large group of mostly women who accept low wages to store children so more privileged people can go earn higher wages.

In Iceland at least being a leikskoli teacher requires a degree and they are far from child storage. They work and care for the childs development. This is at least a fairly common model in Nordic countries and presume its similar in a lot of Europe. I've heard horror stories about featureless cinder block rooms as day care in the US though.

In UK (before state mandated ages, ie 4yo) the level of care can be pretty grim, and it's often low skilled young women ([1]) - particular if you're poor yourself.

[1] because for some reason minimum wage is reduced for younger people, like young people don't need housing or food, I don't know ...

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#206

Post by ido » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

varjag wrote: post #204

Consultant32452 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. So there's a large group of mostly women who accept low wages to store children so more privileged people can go earn higher wages.

In my son's daycare about a third of personnel were men.

Same for my son's group.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#207

Post by coldtea » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

kugla123 wrote: post #177

Swizec wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I’m from (slovenia) you need to major in kindergarten education to be a kindergarten teacher. So while the major is a little limited, it’s still a bachelors.

And starting wage is lowest as it can be - minimal wage.

Well, they're merely working with children at their most sensitive and formative years, why give any importance to their work /s

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#208

Post by vfc1 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #195

vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

Simple rules that work for me: a) don't take my work laptop home, no corp provided phone (if they insist I'd keep the phone at my work desk, where it belongs). b) work 40 hours on average per week. Just go home already! Helps if you're a late sleeper (like me), you can simply arrive later at work to compensate for the hours you've recently donated to your employer. This works very well for me, although I'm based in E…

This is what I did too, leave the laptop at work, arrive relatively late, as I knew I had to leave late anyway.

It makes it more bearable, but it still kind of sucks, and everyone in your team is doing it (taking laptop home, answering calls), eventually, it's going to cost you.

You get to work in the morning, and there is this long email thread about how something was "urgent" or went wrong and they tried to reach you and they couldn't... all that good email delivered peer pressure stuff, passing the bucket blame it on the absentee kind of thing.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#209

Post by dTal » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #170

feviskus wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an anecdote from quitting yesterday at a German IG-Metall company: Yesterday I quitted my working student job in order to precipitately take the opportunity for an internship at another company. My boss congratulated me for the offer, said it's a pity that I leave AND spoke with HR so that I do have a shorter period of notice (otherwise I would have had problems). All on the same day. While accompanying me on my…

> Im kinda blown away by this non-selfish (in a company's view) behaviour and strongly consider to rejoin at some point. The beauty of capitalism is that it rewards such altruistic behavior - in that you may rejoin them in the future.

If the behavior is rewarded, it is not altruistic but self-interested, which is the true nature of things that capitalism rewards. It is not true in the general case that altruism aligns with self-interest, which is precisely the problem with capitalism.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#210

Post by meheleventyone » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #205

meheleventyone wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Iceland at least being a leikskoli teacher requires a degree and they are far from child storage. They work and care for the childs development. This is at least a fairly common model in Nordic countries and presume its similar in a lot of Europe. I've heard horror stories about featureless cinder block rooms as day care in the US though.

In UK (before state mandated ages, ie 4yo) the level of care can be pretty grim, and it's often low skilled young women ([1]) - particular if you're poor yourself. [1] because for some reason minimum wage is reduced for younger people, like young people don't need housing or food, I don't know ...

One of the many reasons I'm glad I moved here from the UK before having kids.