71–80 of 163 posts
Somewhat of a tangent but related to labor: tell your reps to abolish personal income taxes and replace it with a consumption tax. We should not be taxing labor…
I've been wondering what stops politicians from gaming the democratic system by introducing legislation that has short-term benefits for the electorate and long-term negative consequences for the country as a whole. I know that I wouldn't vote for someone like that, but I can't think of many people around me who wouldn't. I suppose many would think of it this way: "what's good for the long-term future of the country…
Decades ago the U.S. tied healthcare to employment. It had some big positives at the time. I think it has proven to have more negatives as time has unfolded. Here is one of them. If you reduce hours per worker by, say, 10% you just pay each worker 10% less and hire 10% more workers, right? It's not so simple. If you try to cut the health insurance premium of each worker by 10% the policy becomes unattractive. If you…
It’s slightly worse than that. If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1/(1-0.1)) A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.
A rule of thumb is a worker's full cost is 2x their salary in the US. This varies, but it makes the math easy.
So costs would increase about double that. But if your workers are doing creative work, they might be more productive now per hour and that might offset the costs.
I work 80 hours per week. I do what I love so it doesn’t feel like work. By doing this I am 40 hours ahead every week than most everyone else and the output and results definitely show.
I've worked with people who have this mindset. Their work product definitely shows that more isn't better. They had higher defect ratios and in general lower output per hour. With one exception, they were trying to make up for being less productive by spending more time creating the appearance of work rather than taking time out to recharge and doing better work in the same hours as others. This pattern doesn't make…
A lot of people say they won't do that but … it inevitably happens and then they are in a bad plus, usually learn that the company won't put anywhere near as much effort into protecting them, and that unbalanced lifestyle means they don't have much else to fall back on.
With the political realignment, I guess it's not surprising that some politicians are trying to bring back the glory days again with New Deal ideas. Most people can probably agree the 40 hour workweek is an outdated idea. But a 32 hour workweek is just a modification of an outdated idea. Not a modernization of it. I'm not quite sure what the modern version of a 40 hour workweek is, but it's not a shortening of it. I'…
Same with the $15 minimum wage. But it's a start.
I've been wondering what stops politicians from gaming the democratic system by introducing legislation that has short-term benefits for the electorate and long-term negative consequences for the country as a whole. I know that I wouldn't vote for someone like that, but I can't think of many people around me who wouldn't. I suppose many would think of it this way: "what's good for the long-term future of the country…
First, understand that while people definitely want short term gain, they also want long term gain. Most all people are decent to some extent, and want long term success for their family, community, country, planet, etc. So, keep that in mind, and then let's examine this:
> it's absolutely mind-blowing that there isn't an entire line around the corner of politicians pushing for higher minimum wage, free education, free healthcare, basic income, etc
There is widespread disagreement over whether this is a good idea in the short or long term. And, keep in mind, voters do want long term success! So, when half the country thinks policies like these would cause a descent into socialist chaos, it's not surprising that politicians can't win on these platforms.
Nevertheless, we are constantly dealing with the ramifications of policies politicians crafted for short term gain. The mortgage interest rate deduction is a great example -- politicians subsidized homeownership, which was very popular, and we are left dealing with the drastic ramifications of a totally messed up housing system. Similarly, guaranteeing loans to help people go to college -- very popular in the short term, but has led to the ballooning of education costs.
The difference between these policies, and the ones you mentioned, is that they passed during a period of relative national unity, so it was much easier to get them through Congress.
Can we get the almost infinite list of "overtime exceptions" for salary employees removed while we are at it? There are so many Americans that never saw a 40 hour a week expectation because of these and most of those people were not paid overtime due to 'salary' expectations. Every fast food/retail store manager I have ever spoken to faces this dilemma and all of my friends in 'professional firms' like architecture/l…
"I’d Say, In A Given Week, I Probably Only Do About Fifteen Minutes Of Real, Actual Work.” -- Peter, Office Space I've worked in lots of offices and watched people, especially "important" ones. It's fun to watch. They're so busy the strain is enormous. But if you pay attention, they spend lots of time calling their sister, talking to the Schwann's man.. "I work so hard I never leave work" but little actual work is do…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s slightly worse than that. If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1/(1-0.1)) A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.
The research around shorter work weeks and productivity indicates "units of work" don't work that way. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/06/1013348626/iceland-finds-majo... > Now, research out of Iceland has found that working fewer hours for the same pay led to improved well-being among workers, with no loss in productivity. In fact, in some places, workers were more productive after cutting back their hours.
For the record I fully support any push to reduce the amount of work people are expected to do, but claiming there's no impact because of productivity gains just doesn't add up in many cases.
So that means people will earn even less? how is that a good thing? This won't reduce the money supply or the discrepancy between poor and rich, it will just make the poor even poorer.
This incentivizes employers to pay more per hour, otherwise people won’t work reduced hours for the same rate
"McDonald’s to Employees: Get a (Second) Job" https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/07/mcdonalds-budget-mc...