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We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

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Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#261

Post by tossacct »

sliverstorm wrote: post #253
tossacct wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a good thing that individuals control their own money, and can choose to give it to whomever they want. Can we agree that people with no money will starve to death unless they use violence to take food from someone, or the government uses violence to take food from someone on their behalf? The foodstamps of this great depression are equivalent to the soup lines of the old great depression: they prevent…

I don't think anyone really objects to food stamps; rather, the expectation of a living wage for doing whatever suits your fancy.

Agree for the current US, which is likely a large part of why they have food stamps, but no "living wage for doing whatever suits your fancy".

An argument could be made that much of the government funded research done at Bell Labs is worthless. An argument could be made that of the worthwhile things that have come out of this government research, transistors, lasers, and CCDs are the most far reaching (since transistors begat miniaturized electronics begat cell phones and computers begat the internet).

These government researchers were largely doing "whatever suited their fancy" and most of it was wasted effort and tax money. An argument could be made that the money and effort wasted was worth the amazing results.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#262

Post by sliverstorm »

tossacct wrote: post #261
sliverstorm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone really objects to food stamps; rather, the expectation of a living wage for doing whatever suits your fancy.

Agree for the current US, which is likely a large part of why they have food stamps, but no "living wage for doing whatever suits your fancy". An argument could be made that much of the government funded research done at Bell Labs is worthless. An argument could be made that of the worthwhile things that have come out of this government research, transistors, lasers, and CCDs are the most far reaching (since transist…

The government and by extension its citizens acknowledge and accept that most government funded research won't pan out. Important details that make this work:

1) Only a very small fraction of the population is doing government funded research. Large population supporting small research operations is sustainable.

2) The research is vetted on some level, and it is in a technical field. Technical research has an established history of paying dividends (even though it finds many dead-ends)

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#263

Post by InclinedPlane »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #220
InclinedPlane wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion the biggest problem is not either of these things, it's the labor and tax laws. Today working around 40 hours a week is an important prerequisite for a great many important things such as the traditional suite of full-time employee benefits (health insurance, for example). Additionally, social security and medicare taxes take 14% of income right off the top, and then federal and state income tax adds on…

If that were the case then savings rates should have trended upwards over the last few decades as tax rates have come down in the US.

That change only applied to some.

Here's a graph of overall tax burden since 1960 broken down by income group: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/13/opinion/sunda...

Only the top 1% has seen a dramatic change in tax burden over that time frame, for everyone else taxes have either stayed steady or gone up overall. The most important parts of this graph are the middle, second, and top quintiles, who should be the most capable of putting money aside. However, their federal tax burdens all rose substantially. And the recent reduction in tax rates has only occurred during a massive economic contraction so there hasn't been a true opportunity for most people to make use of the lower rates yet.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#264

Post by tossacct »

sliverstorm wrote: post #262
tossacct wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree for the current US, which is likely a large part of why they have food stamps, but no "living wage for doing whatever suits your fancy". An argument could be made that much of the government funded research done at Bell Labs is worthless. An argument could be made that of the worthwhile things that have come out of this government research, transistors, lasers, and CCDs are the most far reaching (since transist…

The government and by extension its citizens acknowledge and accept that most government funded research won't pan out. Important details that make this work: 1) Only a very small fraction of the population is doing government funded research. Large population supporting small research operations is sustainable. 2) The research is vetted on some level, and it is in a technical field. Technical research has an establi…

I agree with your point 2).

I disagree with your point 1): very many Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and being supported by welfare initiatives such as unemployment, medicare, and food stamps. Some significant fraction could be employed doing basic research instead of sitting at home watching TV and looking for jobs that aren't being offered by corporations that are making more profits than ever through fractional reserve lending and bailouts.

An example of underemployment in our industry: there are very many individuals with government funded computer scientists with BS, MS, and PHD degrees, that are employed in lucrative positions as code monkeys and computer janitors. These people should be inventing the next UNIX and IPV8 and advanced networking algorithms and image recognition and self driving cars. I'm not educated on whether strong AI is a pipe dream or not but weak AI has helped with image recognition and encryption breaking and genetic learning and spam filtering and web searching.

I think your initial point that "citizens acknowledge and accept that most government funded research won't pan out" is highly highly controversial in the US among some democrats, republicans, and most libertarians. Many want to cut non-military blue-sky research completely. These people call themselves neo-conservatives, President George W. Bush was a champion of the ethos. Liberals and normal conservatives are a bit sneakier on their wishes to de-fund research.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#265

Post by nitrogen »

userulluipeste wrote: post #214
nitrogen wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something else about life is bothering you, it's probably best not to take it out on us naive 20-somethings. Either way it's clear something about this thread has deeply upset you (happens to all of us), so if it's something deeper going on I wish you luck sorting it out. If not, at the least, I too wish it was possible to live on $10/day and still have some semblance of a family and social life.

I met a lot of people probably like samstave, making a lot of uninspired decisions, like drowning themselves in debt and such, then here comes someone telling about $10/day... Those people feel miserably and "deeply upset" of course, especially because there is no easy way out.

It doesn't even have to take "uninspired" decisions. Simply having other human beings depend on you for their existence is enough to make escaping the system impossible, along with a number of other hurdles like lacking transportation to wherever $10/day is enough.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#266

Post by javert »

tossacct wrote: post #257
javert wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like I've never heard of that. It's just that it's a false concept that doesn't actually exist. Take electricity, for example. First, there are many large companies that could raise the necessary capital to build power plants and electric transmission lines. Second, people can always get together and form a non-profit power company if the normal market isn't providing stable, competitive prices. (By "people"…

>>> It's not like I've never heard of [the concept of natural monopolies]. You have the benefit of the doubt from me, but your specific arguments leave out the installation phase of the electrical grid, which I'm sure you are very familiar with. >>>First, there are many large companies that could raise the necessary capital to build power plants and electric transmission lines. Agree, but capital isn't the only thing…

I was under the impression that the "last mile" was owned by whatever company had been granted the local monopoly. If the "last mile" is owned by the government, and the power companies connect at hubs, then there is no actual "natural monopoly." I think that's actually a good solution.

A better solution would be to have the "last mile" owned by the people who own properties, but that may be nit picking. And I think that's probably how things would have eventually developed without government intervention.

Now, I think that in reality, power companies (in the US, at least) almost always are regulatory monopolies, i.e., government-granted ones. But, because of the "last mile" solution, they don't _need_ to be.

In summary, I feel like my point that natural monopolies don't exist is still supported.

When a corporation thinks it can make money by suing municipalities that form broadband networks, they do so. Like in Lafayette.

You can't (logically) use one abuse of government power to justify other government power that counteracts it, which seems to be your argument.

In the example you gave, the abuse is being able to win invalid lawsuits, and that is being used to justify government regulation of arbitrary industries (telco, in this specific case).

Better to just make it so you can't win invalid lawsuits.

Because the cable companies and the ISPs and the media companies are largely owned by the same people, and collude monopolistically.

They do collude monopolistically: the telcos have government-granted regulatory monopolies.

deregulation achieved through the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Given that the telco industry is 100% made up of government-granted regulatory monopolies, this act clearly did not implement deregulation.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#267

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

youngerdryas wrote: post #53
olliesaunders wrote: post #45

Incidentally, an enforced max number of hours per work week is a potential solution to the high unemployment a lot of countries have right now.

Please no. More useless busybodies and paperwork. It would probably be cheaper to extend unemployment benefits.

So you prefer that we actually cultivate a loafer class and a worker class?

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#268

Post by tossacct »

javert wrote: post #266
tossacct wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> It's not like I've never heard of [the concept of natural monopolies]. You have the benefit of the doubt from me, but your specific arguments leave out the installation phase of the electrical grid, which I'm sure you are very familiar with. >>>First, there are many large companies that could raise the necessary capital to build power plants and electric transmission lines. Agree, but capital isn't the only thing…

I was under the impression that the "last mile" was owned by whatever company had been granted the local monopoly. If the "last mile" is owned by the government, and the power companies connect at hubs, then there is no actual "natural monopoly." I think that's actually a good solution. A better solution would be to have the "last mile" owned by the people who own properties, but that may be nit picking. And I think…

>>>Given that the telco industry is 100% made up of government-granted regulatory monopolies, this act clearly did not implement deregulation.

I do not think it is controversial to say that deregulation is the act or process of removing or reducing state regulations. I have checked several dictionaries and encyclopedias, on line and dead-tree.

So a slight reduction in the regulatory laws that contributed to the formation of "government-granted regulatory monopolies" is deregulation. Therefore, the 1996 telecommunications Act of 1996 is deregulation, since it reduced and removed some, but not all, regulatory laws.

If we can agree on this, I will reply to the rest of your comment. If we disagree I can still reply, but the definition is really important to my argument.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#269

Post by qu4z-2 »

aridiculous wrote: post #137
mark_l_watson wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I must disagree. Two people working 20 hours a week are refreshed, not burned out, have time for educationally side projects, etc. I am in my early 60s and for my whole life I limited my work hours to 32 hours per week, even working for large companies. I had lots of time for educational side projects, exercise, extra time with family and friends, and mediation. My only regret was not perhaps cutting this to l…

Can I ask how you approached this issue with your employer(s)? I am willing to entertain that trade, but it doesn't appear many employers are willing to even think about it. They might fear it hurts employee relations or is simply too radical to comprehend.

I currently work three days a week for a reasonable salary. Admittedly I live in New Zealand, so possibly the job market is different here (we're a pretty laid-back culture, and there's a shortage of good programmers).

I would suggest negotiating this arrangement when you're changing jobs. Your existing employer will likely be reluctant to reduce your hours, whereas (if you're any good) a new employer will be happy to have you for half of each week if the alternative is not having you at all. And it needs to be clear that that is the alternative. My current employer made me a couple of good full-time offers, which I declined: "I'm currently only looking for part time work, as I need the time to pursue my personal projects and interests."

Still on the theme of "It's better to have you part-time than not at all", you may be able to negotiate an ongoing part-time position at your existing workplace if you are seriously considering leaving (and thus the alternative is your leaving, and their not having you at all). Be careful about this, though. You want to maintain a good relationship. An ultimatum will do you no good. But if you're genuinely in-good-faith considering leaving, they may consider your offer.

You will probably have to try a number of different companies before you find one that will hire you on those terms. And, as with all bargaining, you need to be able to walk away.

DISCLAIMER: This worked for me the one time I tried it, but that may be complete coincidence.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#270

Post by qu4z-2 »

xtracto wrote: post #131
samstave wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, you and ctdonath sound like 20-something morons. Get a fucking life with several mortgages and children. Or, better yet - go live the idolized life of the genius software development hermit you both appear to think yourself to be. What a wonderful life that will be. I am so sick of these douchebag HNers that all think of themselves to be the next rails revolution and have no fucking clue as to what it actually…

Can you please go back to Slashdot? you are polluting an otherwise interesting discussion.

That was somewhat uncalled for.
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