Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 73 posts

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#61

Post by xlm1717 »

dawnbreez wrote: post #60
crzwdjk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, there's an easy workaround for the ever-increasing land rents, which should work even in places like the SF Bay Area: you can just have a group of people pool their resources to pay for a given plot of land, usually in the form of an "apartment building". Unfortunately, those are illegal in almost all of the Bay Area, and in SF itself, even in the few places where you can build a new one, the process tak…

>apartment buildings are illegal Well, I guess they don't want tall buildings falling over due to a quake...

They should get Japanese engineers to come in and build the apartment buildings then. Tokyo is still standing.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#62

Post by xlm1717 »

dnautics wrote: post #18

Because when you devalue the currency through a policy of secular inflation, you have to work harder to maintain the same standard of living: this is the whole point of manipulating the economy using the inflation/employment connection (aka Phillips curve). You can't negotiate a wage reduction with your employee due to sticky wages, so for a country to make it appear like they're doing a good job keeping employment n…

The simple answer is: because Keynesian economics doesn't work.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#63

Post by adrianN »

jacobolus wrote: post #28
patio11 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One answer is that the market forces tend to funnel all increases in income to landowners as rent. This is partially a result of Americans choosing to consume more housing than citizens of peer nations or, indeed, Americans historically. The size of the average owned American home doubled since 1950. You can save a substantial amount of money if you're willing to live like a 2015 Japanese salaryman or a 1950 American…

Zoning has a lot to do with home sizes. In general American cities are zoned to not allow smaller units, even for those who might prefer the cheaper rent if given a choice. Japan has much simpler and more flexible zoning laws. ...But Japan doesn’t have the history of racially motivated urban design in general, so the story is a bit complicated. That, and America has been heavily subsidizing an automobile-based lifest…

This is a nice comparison between Japanese and US zoning laws:

http://urbankchoze.blogspot.de/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#64

Post by sly_foxx »

unprepare wrote: post #59
sly_foxx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, comparison works and is spot on. You can survive without stable income - humans and many other animal species have been doing it for hundreds of millions of years. Yes, it's hard, but so what? Why would that be a reason to create a safety net(by taking from productive people and giving it to parasites)? 'People can live perfectly well without a girlfriend' This is false. Some people who are asexual can do it. Bu…

>You can survive without stable income - humans and many other animal species have been doing it for hundreds of millions of years. Yes, it's hard, but so what? Oh, you mean removing yourself from society and illegally living in the wilderness? How do you pay for your hunting and camping licenses? >But, most will be frustrated, maybe even depressed This is obviously very different from being dead due to lack of food,…

"Oh, you mean removing yourself from society and illegally living in the wilderness?"

- Yes, living in wilderness illegally or even taking resources from others. You don't pay for anything - you do what you gotta do, take what you want and try not to get caught.

"This is obviously very different from being dead due to lack of food, water or shelter."

Being frustrated or depressed is worse than being dead. When you're dead, you don't feel anything, so good/bad don't even make sense.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#65

Post by tygaa »

vidarh wrote: post #16
at5 wrote: post #2

The thing about capitalism is that the capitalists tend to win. Gains have accrued to capitalists mostly. Lack of leverage on the part of labour means they are expected to be more productive not work less.

> The thing about capitalism is that the capitalists tend to win. That's because the capitalists are the ones that already "won". A capitalist - or aspiring capitalist - that fails, is/becomes a worker. Anything that squeezes the economy of capitalists as a group forces some of them into the working class.

This comment adds nothing to what was said above. Capitalists started out advantaged at the advent of modern commerce and have accrued gains.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#66

Post by vorotato »

xlm1717 wrote: post #61
dawnbreez wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>apartment buildings are illegal Well, I guess they don't want tall buildings falling over due to a quake...

They should get Japanese engineers to come in and build the apartment buildings then. Tokyo is still standing.

has nothing to do with that, has everything to do with maintaining the "look and feel" of SF.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#67

Post by vorotato »

lhh wrote: post #45
majewsky wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This article is deeply flawed... change in wages != change in standard of living. Measuring "standard of living" is a very hard problem. At least they're being clear about their definition, so I can judge the correlations they find for myself.

Sure, maybe coming up with a good rigorous definition is difficult, but I think it's pretty obvious that standard of living is rising drastically. Smart phones are now ubiquitous, for example, whereas they essentially didn't exist a decade ago. You could have had all of the wealth of the planet but no antibiotics less than a century ago. Conflating wages with standard of living is a glaring error.

I think the biggest complaint is that the improvement in quality of life and agency, is not even slightly evenly distributed. I'm not knowledgeable enough to posit good arguments, so you'll have to research this on your own. I'm sure with a modest bit of effort and investigation you'll come to a more balanced position.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#68

Post by ScottBurson »

sde wrote: post #53
ScottBurson wrote: post #8

One answer is that the market forces tend to funnel all increases in income to landowners as rent. I was not familiar with this theory until a few days ago, when someone here on HN linked to an online version (edited and abridged) of Henry George's Progress and Poverty [0]. I've been reading it since; its clarity is stunning: I feel as if a great veil has been lifted from my eyes. Whether I'll still feel that way in…

The focus on rent is a good legacy of George's theory. However, I was quickly disappointed by the book that was linked. George was doing well critiquing previous economic theory that had separate theories of wages, rent, and profit. He showed instead that it must be that production = wages + rent + interest, as a formula that relates them and can be rearranged. Then in the next chapter, 12, he falls into a sort of ab…

> Then in the next chapter, 12, he falls into a sort of absurdity about the nature of interest

Yes, I noticed that too. I'm not enough of an economist (obviously) to know what he should have said instead.

It's a weakness, but I don't think it's fatal to his key point, which is that urban land values are socially created and should benefit society as a whole.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#69

Post by dang »

sly_foxx wrote: post #12

Can you think outside of the communist box? Competition is in part due to the fact there are more humans alive today fighting for the same resources. It's kinda similar to dating, where things are not getting easier(except for those who inherited good genes). Today with dating you have to do more to get the same result people use to get with less effort. Lack of social safety net? Why do you care about that? You don'…

Hi, I'm a moderator on HN. Comments like "Can you think outside of the communist box?" and "Don't be a hypocrite" break the HN guidelines, which is probably why your post was downvoted. When posting here, please ensure that your comments are civil and substantive. You can (re-)read the following to get a better idea of what we're looking for:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10879391 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Why Americans Work So Much Despite Keynes's Prediction

#70

Post by crzwdjk »

dawnbreez wrote: post #60
crzwdjk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, there's an easy workaround for the ever-increasing land rents, which should work even in places like the SF Bay Area: you can just have a group of people pool their resources to pay for a given plot of land, usually in the form of an "apartment building". Unfortunately, those are illegal in almost all of the Bay Area, and in SF itself, even in the few places where you can build a new one, the process tak…

>apartment buildings are illegal Well, I guess they don't want tall buildings falling over due to a quake...

This is equally the case in most other US cities, most especially the expensive ones, but even including the likes of Chicago. It's kind of baffling: a four bedroom house with one kitchen and four roommates is perfectly fine per the zoning code, but that same house split into two apartments with two people living in each one would only be allowed in a relatively small fraction of the city (generally a smaller fraction than _actually has_ such buildings, btw). It's almost like the zoning bureaucrats think stoves are some kind of evil that needs to be strictly limited.
Post reply on HN