It's hard to compare, but those who try usually say we have about 30x the income now. So the extra effort is worth it!
But you can't buy time.
Well... we live twice as long as those people.
Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
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Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#52It's hard to compare, but those who try usually say we have about 30x the income now. So the extra effort is worth it!
Maybe? It depends on whether that extra income makes people happier. I know people struggling to get buy on $4-500k/year. And I know people who live happily on a much smaller amount.
For me, the marginal value of a dollar diminishes pretty quickly, so the extra effort typical of the American schedule is definitely not worth it to me.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#53Meh, I think this lacks perspective. Maybe you 'worked' less in that era in the sense that you provided a smaller portion of your time to a third party for pay. But, you worked more overall. You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner; You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer,…
I'm not sure that is true.
Firstly, what are you working in exchange for? Are you performing some kind of useful work for someone else, receiving nothing in exchange then going and being a hunter gatherer for some reason? Probably not.
>You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner
Money has existed for a very long time so purchasing food ready to eat isn't so far fetched assuming your life took you near a non-trivial population center. Bartering goods like food, clothing etc has existed for even longer.
>You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer, then an hour creating clothing, then an hour cooking, then an hour mending the hole in your roof, etc.
It reads as if you are assuming that a given individual is going to have to do everything, which doesn't seem to have been the norm for most humans. Most people didn't live alone. Instead of doing all of that maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer. Meanwhile someone else created clothing, someone else cooked, someone else mended the roof.
Its also worth noting that all of these jobs have a very well defined point of being done. It doesn't matter if it takes you 2 hours or 20 minutes to acquire food. Once you have as much as can reasonably be consumed before it goes bad you are done. If you catch a deer within 30 minutes you are done. If someone else did well fishing then there is no value in going hunting at all.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#54In America, at least, we should consider the legacy of slavery and indentured servitude in attitudes towards working hours. Many of the expectations for economic output by American industry have been set by the productivity of people who had little or no right to question the conditions they worked under, overseen by people who cared little for their well-being beyond that productivity. If that's the basis of the American work ethic, no wonder your boss looks at you like you're crazy when you say you'd like to be able to live comfortably on 30 hours of labor a week.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#55Meh, I think this lacks perspective. Maybe you 'worked' less in that era in the sense that you provided a smaller portion of your time to a third party for pay. But, you worked more overall. You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner; You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer,…
French farmers did nothing 1/3 of the year now many are hyperstressed and a number are taking their own lives.
it's not only due to the work but to the solitude as well. there used to be 70% of the population, men and women farming and living in farming communities, now only 3%, mostly men, actually working and not many people around
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The closer your work is to the actual benefit it provides, the more gratifying it is.
Then why do I hate cooking?
Nobody has to like everything. I like cooking, I hate doing dishes and cleaning. I know people who hate cooking and enjoy dishes. It is good to have a mix of complementary skills and preferences in a household.
It's a hell of a thing when, as a cook, you can stand up from a good dinner you made and walk away from the mess knowing that your roommate Barry wants to have a quiet hour of not talking to anyone doing the dishes and tidying the kitchen because he has actually been looking forward to it and that's what gives him peace. The same peace I got from chopping vegetables and stirring pots.
I've even met someone who likes doing laundry! They wash and iron their own dress shirts despite being perfectly able to pay an inexpensive dry cleaner and describe it as "Cheaper than seeing a shrink".
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
The closer your work is to the actual benefit it provides, the more gratifying it is.
Then why do I hate cooking?
Because your brain is thinking of other tasks or responsibilities, and you feel as if you’re wasting your time, or need to rush to finish.
Additionally, if you’re not experienced, you don’t know how long something will take, and the indeterminate estimate is off-putting.
Correct?
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#58Sure, many spend 8 hours at the office. But do they do 8 hours of work? Probably not. There are diminishing returns on time spent working, and it probably starts around the third hour. https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/978019087... Many industries would probably suffer negligible losses (and maybe gains) by transitioning to 20 hour work weeks.
I don't disagree with you. The average eight hour office worker probably only does do four hours of work a day. But I think the problem is that that nearly everyone has internalized that cadence. If every office worker had their schedule cut to a 20 hours a week, I strongly suspect that only 10 hours of work would actually get done. It's just too much of the low efficiency is culturally ingrained on every level from…
I beg to differ. Everywhere I've worked, people have despised the waiting built into the processes they have to conform to. Many roles are constructed so that they're actually two roles: one is pure productivity, with clear goals and deadlines. The other is some sort of service role where you're at the beck and call of clients who could waltz in whenever, defined less by your productivity than by your availability (which is always meant to keep you in an workplace for 6+ hours). Switching between roles is aggravating; effectiveness at one kills the other, to some degree. Most would rather just do one at a time, and be paid for either the time sacrificed or the work completed, at a dignified rate.
But that would cut into C-suite bonuses and dividends.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#59Here is some more recent data (from 2014): https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours I'm glad I live and work in Norway where the average is between 1300 and 1500 hours a year.
42 hours in Switzerland is IMHO a lie. I’ve seen and experienced tech and pharma setting expectations so high that people have to work at least 50-60 hours.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#60It's hard to compare, but those who try usually say we have about 30x the income now. So the extra effort is worth it!
Poverty is usually measured relatively to the perceived average of your environment’s wealth because that is how poverty affects your life. You can be 100 times as rich as some poor soul in a third world country and still be so poor in your own society that you are constantly struggling, fighting for survival, skipping meals and inheriting that struggle to your kids who are born into them without much chances of gett…
I invite you to visit us in Africa where a dose of real poverty will dis abuse you of your silly notion that relative poverty is a real thing.