They do. It's just not for working people. Plenty of over 50s retired early and will do nothing but leisure until they're 90 etc. They sit around voting for crazy republicans and complaining about their kids (who work 12h a day) don't visit enough...
Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
201–210 of 381 posts
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#202No one works harder than farmers and ranchers. Up before dawn and work until dark. My occasional 50-60 hour weeks with a deadline approaching are easy compared a normal week for my rancher grandparents. To say nothing of lambing or calving or harvest seasons.
Forty hour work weeks are relatively new too.
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's the acceptable minimum? Society could become like an army, with the same clothing for everybody, a small personal area to sleep and a canteen for food. Everything could be highly automated. We could experiment by making that available as a baseline - anyone who wants to can sleep in the flophouse, wear the durable clothes, eat the soup kitchen food. And anyone who wants more could continue as they are.
Man, that would be sweet Right now we theoretically have that, but in practice it's a Kafka-esque bureaucratic nightmare to partake in social services, and once you fall of the Employment Train it's extremely hard to get back on unless you have connections or very valuable skills I wonder what society would be like with a perfect safety net.. I'm kinda worried we'd end up with horrible ghettoes full of disgruntled pe…
We've done it with certain services, we could do it for more - massive soup kitchens open to all for eating anytime, for example. By skipping the "money" part the desire for fraud drops, too.
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#204Not only do we have less time: 1. Both couple partners have to work in the past only one. 2. We work more. 3. We take loans (obligate to future work).
> 1. Both couple partners have to work in the past only one. Why is it so? I always hear that. I am not married yet but I keep it a little challenge to myself to one day disprove that. I believe with a clever lifestyle of not spending on useless stuff and moving into a cheap region one can easily make that work. So I say, brazenly and naively ...
A reason not mentioned yet: people get divorced more often now than in the past. If you have relied on your partner's income for a decade, it can be really hard to get into the workforce on your own, with a ten-year sized hole in your resume and the professional experience of a 20-year old.
Heck, it can be difficult enough after a couple of extended parental leaves, much less half a marriage.
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#205Every generation looks at technological progress and predicts the obvious conclusion, that people will have more leisure time. It’s easy to see that what you are doing now will be easier and quicker. They don’t see the new things that people will be doing, new social structures to adapt and compete in, new information to process, and especially the cognitive burden of managing risk in so many new choices. The simples…
You don't see the leisure rich, because they don't "advertise" - they often have a few million in total assets and work on things they want to - you find them in non-profits, etc. You could also consider the FIRE people to be leisure rich - often at even lower total assets. Paid off house, modest investments, even more modest expenses.
I wonder if another reason you don't see them is because many are delusional about how their "work day" compares to others in the economy.
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#206Compared to my parents and grandparents generation, my life is filled with leisure. Basic everyday necessities took up so much of my grandparent’s time when they were younger. A meal would take hours to prep. All the veggies to prep said meal grown. And then the many hours spent cleaning, maintaining, and improving the living space. Social obligations. They basically just worked all day long to just live. Leisure wer…
Don't forget making and mending your own clothes, washing them by hand, beating rugs outdoors by hand, all the little chores that have been replaced by electrical tools or are cheaper to purchase than make yourself. Harvesting and chopping firewood, or managing coal.
If you visit an Amish community, they might talk about how people occasionally want to join them, only to realize just how much easier modern life is and not be able to take the constant work required to live without.
I've always thought the statistics for average television time for Americans seemed inflated, but even given that they might be, it is still pretty wild in perspective.
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#207I think that may have come to pass if it hadn't been to the very top part of society capturing such a gigantic % of the new wealth generated. With more even distribution I could totally see more middle class deciding they've got a "good" life and no reason to work another 20 hours extra.
I’m not sure about that. It just seems like too easy an excuse. Just to damn convenient to say, “If only the rich people...”.
I fear that the reason that applies much more often is that most of our energy is being spent on doing the wrong things, or being spent on competition with others.
Think of somebody building a web scraper: They are spending hours or days building something whose purpose is essentially to overcome defenses created by other people. So it’s a Red Queen thing. Both parties have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.
And I believe this is happening in many areas. Marketing. Government. Compliance. Software. You name it.
It’s what Hannah Arendt called work turning into labor. In other words, that which used to be the act of creating something once has turned into that which constantly needs to be repeated for the mere sake of subsistence.
The better question to ask, in my opinion, is not “Who is at fault for this?“, but “ How do I, personally, avoid wasting my own energy like that?“
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#208We all know what happened to Americans' earned leisure time in 1974
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in the USA and I don't know WTF he's talking about.
Hot take: If you can follow the posts here, you can make 300k in the US Check out the salaries on levels.fyi And no, it is not reasonable to make 100k in the Midwest instead. Unless you're buying like $50,000 worth of gas and eggs per year, you're going to save WAY more in the SF Bay Area and reclaim years of your life by retiring earlier
Buy a house in the midwest that's the same size as one in the bay area and you can retire early on 100k income :)
And it'll have a lawn instead of a tent city.
Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)
#210If I only had free time then: I would meet a lot of people Study and teach many things for fun Travel wherever Experience many different things Play a lot Alas, I work. I can hack it a bit by remote working and doing a 4 day work week. I have to give up playing and a studying/teaching for that. I don’t understand how people can say that people need directions and therefore need to work. I need the exact opposite and…
you’re under 30 and it shows
repeated failures makes lack of pain the goal vs. pursuing something great
Now, get off my lawn.