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Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

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Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#91

Post by feet »

hansword wrote: post #47
mrtksn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like! It really boils down on how many people need how much resources and how many people produce these resources. You can argue over who should be your bourgeoisie, should it be the political elite or the entrepreneurs or should it be inherited or or should it be the the people from special blood or religion or should no one be…

> because despite the increase in productivity we also have increased lifespan which results in large number of retirees who consume the resources for much longer than before. The retirees in your example, with great probability, either have to rely on outside support (be it children or social security), or they will die with lots of wealth left over (aka inheritance). I hate to sound like a crummy communist, but thi…

Communists aren't crummy in the least, the ideas are important for developing new ideas that work better than our current system

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#92

Post by GoldenRacer »

mandmandam wrote: post #65
neonsunset wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsure why the post is downvoted, this point of view is really interesting. Could you link some reference materials to explore this more?

I am downvoting because the comment acts as if it's a mystery where all the wealth gains in productivity have gone. It is NOT a fucking mystery, and I'm outraged that so, so many people are or act oblivious to the obscenely obvious cause. (Since it's not actually obvious to everyone, thanks to shit education and propaganda, the uber-wealthy have hoovered up the gains in productivity and kept it to themselves.) It's v…

That could fix a lot of issues if you just look at America in isolation. The truth is though, even with the insane wealth distribution in America, the middle class here still makes a good amount of money. I regularly see people on here scoff at low six figure salaries. Those salaries are virtually impossible in many parts of the world and the only reason they're so easy in America is because we are exploiting developing nations the same way the ultra wealthy here are exploiting us. If we actually tried to redistribute the wealth that the ultra wealthy has accumulated, it would go to developing nations and not the hackernews crowd.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#93

Post by slothtrop »

watwut wrote: post #53
hansword wrote: post #25

I am amazed at the disdain for leisure and "free" time and "slacking" in the comments here. If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like! I suspect a big problem is that many people actually don't know what they like to do. Most people with full-time jobs I know don't have much energy left after their workday, and thus the only "leisure" they are still capable of and th…

> If you like TV, great for you, but it being the 'default' might be a problem When I was younger, I multiple times tried to cut of all mindless crap like tv or browsing. It led to lite depression and low productivity every single time. Conversely, when I had a lot of free time or worked on easy boring project, the stuff I do in free time became more intellectually difficult without me intentionally going for it. My…

Yeah but that's not even contended. In a hypothetical scenario where you didn't have to work to earn a certain quality of life (since, lets be honest, none of us have to "work to live"), would it be ideal to spend all of that time on passive, consumptive activities? Notwithstanding issues with life balance that are not endemic, I think work is good for people in most of its capacity. Coordinating with others and producing something of your labors, particularly that which others value, is validating and meaningful. You could quibble that some of that could be done at leisure, but things we take for granted won't. There's a lot of well compensated hard work out there that no one does for fun.

Leaving aside the question of the merit of work, I think a consistently low-productivity lifestyle leads to negative symptoms.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#94

Post by dayvid »

eric4smith wrote: post #19

Quoted post unavailable.

I highly recommend viewing this short Louis Rossman video on the real reason why employees are not returning to work. This is from a small business owner in expensive NYC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52HpzZ4HT4g

TL;DR - employers left the employees first. The first time economic uncertainty hit their business, they dropped as many people as possible. This led employees to reconsider their relationships to their employers and work, especially realizing they couldn't rely on a steady paycheck.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#95

Post by s1artibartfast »

kubb wrote: post #48

I have several fantastic things that I love doing and work makes it very hard for me to pursue them. One of them is philosophy. There is a great deal of benefit and pleasure that a person can derive from learning about about and understanding the arguments that have been made across the centuries. Another is physical activity. It feels great to move your body, it makes you so much happier than sitting at a desk. Anot…

>If I could get 1/10 of what I earn but without having to perform all this theatre, it would be better for everyone.

What does this mean? You would take a 90% pay cut for 90% less work? Seems pretty doable

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#96

Post by ben_w »

strken wrote: post #74
mrtksn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like! It really boils down on how many people need how much resources and how many people produce these resources. You can argue over who should be your bourgeoisie, should it be the political elite or the entrepreneurs or should it be inherited or or should it be the the people from special blood or religion or should no one be…

I live in Australia. Australia produces 190% of the food it requires, exports 71% of its agricultural production, and only 2.2% of its population work in agriculture. In earlier societies around 60% or more of the population worked in agriculture. I don't believe most of this increasing agricultural productivity is due to us buying things from poor countries, although it's probably a factor at some level. I think it'…

On this topic, a question I've had for a while but never learned the answer to is: if nobody did anything outside farming, how expensive would farm equipment be?

I assume there's some scale benefit to agricultural vehicles from the production of everyone else's vehicles, and likewise the construction and maintenance of the transport infrastructure to get food from the farms to the people, but I don't know whether or not that scaling benefit is enough to change the conclusion.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#97

Post by JaimeThompson »

DeathArrow wrote: post #44

>Indeed, in 2006, the top twenty per cent of earners were twice as likely to work more than fifty hours a week than the bottom twenty per cent, a reversal of historic conditions. >Just why this has happened is both a mystery and a paradox. No paradox. One way to make more money is to work more.

>One way to make more money is to work more.

Not if you can't get schedules for more hours which is the situation millions of people are in also a lot of people can't pay others to do their chores and such for them so they have to do that themselves which can take a lot of time.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#98

Post by strken »

mrtksn wrote: post #87
strken wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Australia. Australia produces 190% of the food it requires, exports 71% of its agricultural production, and only 2.2% of its population work in agriculture. In earlier societies around 60% or more of the population worked in agriculture. I don't believe most of this increasing agricultural productivity is due to us buying things from poor countries, although it's probably a factor at some level. I think it'…

Food is just part of the human consumption. Starting with the agrarian society, we as species are having it very easy TBH. Disasters happen and some places are chronically problematic but overall food is solved problem since many millenniums. Thanks to the developments in the last century, incredibly small percentage of people directly produce the food. However this is due to paradigm shift, these people are capable…

I don't buy the argument that people living in Australia would starve to death if everyone in the world gradually halved their working hours over the next decade. I think current consumption here is so far above subsistence levels that there's a lot of room to drop without facing famine.

This is less clear-cut for anyone in a society that's close to subsistence and I'm not in any way suggesting that we should all cut our hours by 50%, but why not 20%? Even if food production decreases linearly, we'd still be at a 152% surplus, right?

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#99

Post by CodeSgt »

lesam wrote: post #72
mrtksn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like! It really boils down on how many people need how much resources and how many people produce these resources. You can argue over who should be your bourgeoisie, should it be the political elite or the entrepreneurs or should it be inherited or or should it be the the people from special blood or religion or should no one be…

Humanity is much more productive per capita than 50 years ago, but we are collectively working more hours, not less. The goal should not be for everyone to do no work. The goal should not be for everyone to work full time and fear unemployment.

We work more in large part because we consume much more. Increased consumption requires increased supply which requires increased production which means more work to be done.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#100

Post by slothtrop »

hansword wrote: post #25

I am amazed at the disdain for leisure and "free" time and "slacking" in the comments here. If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like! I suspect a big problem is that many people actually don't know what they like to do. Most people with full-time jobs I know don't have much energy left after their workday, and thus the only "leisure" they are still capable of and th…

I program for work, and not leisure. As prospective careers go, it probably ranks top among similar labor. All the same I could not be arsed to develop "for its own sake". Work offers coordinating with others towards a common goal and finding validation from the product, and the value it brings - but it also, it offers incentive.

If people don't "have" to do anything, they generally don't do much. Especially today where attention is easily hijacked by passive electronic consumption, advertisers. This leads to problems. Low motivation, ennui, health issues. It's not a question of "discovering what one likes to do".

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