Earlier quoted context omitted.
If everyone would receive X money then X would be the new 0.
Only in a psychological sense, not in purchasing power.
Why? Why wouldn't it lead to inflation?
Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
91–99 of 99 posts
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
If everyone would receive X money then X would be the new 0.
... No. That's not how those numbers are related. Consider a case where I give every US citizen $500/mo, and a software engineer makes an additional $5000/mo. Then 11 unemployed persons have the same spending power as a software engineer, which is markedly different from 0...
Wouldn't it lead to massive inflation making those $500 practically worthless? The engineer's nominal salary would rise meaning you would need a magnitude more unemployed persons to have the same spending power.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only in a psychological sense, not in purchasing power.
Why? Why wouldn't it lead to inflation?
It is not increasing the supply of money, so I don't see why it would cause inflation. Even if it did cause dramatic inflation $500 would become the new $250 not the new 0.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#94Poor negotiation and group think stole the 4 hour workday. I've seen companies where you can have 2 devs working on the same project, one making say $30,000-40,000 and one making like $60,000-70,000. They do the same work, but have wildly different valuations because of their ability to negotiate. If people negotiated higher rates and fewer hours, that is entirely possible to achieve and eventually could be the norm,…
I appreciate your comment the most. If you want something then make it happen. Don't wait for the slow crawl of society to take you where you want to go.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The market value of labor, relative to other goods. Also see the book "Two-Income Trap", it basically describes how households didn't become better off from making both partners work, because that just bid down the price of labor relative to housing and education. Everyone ended up in the same position as before, but now they work 2x more and cannot opt out. Also the non-working partner in the family provided a safet…
> Everyone ended up in the same position as before, but now they work 2x more Surely the extra people working produced more output (e.g. ~twice as many bugs fixed/year or ~twice as many new anti-cancer drugs/year). Supply of some things would remain constraint and their prices would be bidden up, but many others would have their supply increased and prices could even fall (e.g. due to capital costs spread over a larg…
Sure, it's not the same position. Smartphones are getting cheaper. But how much do you spend on smartphones? The main argument is about things like housing and education, which don't seem to be getting cheaper.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the place. Phone & internet is not it, but college, rent, cars & health care are.
I guess it does depend highly on lcoation. I live in Vancouver, Canada. For my fiancee and I, our cell phone bill comes to about $150/m and internet is $40. That alone is $1,200 a year. Cars are another expense that's gone up substantially over the last 20 years. We pay $140/m in insurance and at $1.40/L gas, at least $150/m in gas. That's $3,500 a year not including servicing (minimum $100 every ~3 months) or car pa…
A year ago in Vancouver, I was paying $28 a month for cell, $30 for wired broadband internet, and $81 for a transit pass ($91 now).
But if you want to spend a lot of money, cars and Canadian telecoms definitely make it easy.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it does depend highly on lcoation. I live in Vancouver, Canada. For my fiancee and I, our cell phone bill comes to about $150/m and internet is $40. That alone is $1,200 a year. Cars are another expense that's gone up substantially over the last 20 years. We pay $140/m in insurance and at $1.40/L gas, at least $150/m in gas. That's $3,500 a year not including servicing (minimum $100 every ~3 months) or car pa…
A year ago in Vancouver, I was paying $28 a month for cell, $30 for wired broadband internet, and $81 for a transit pass ($91 now). But if you want to spend a lot of money, cars and Canadian telecoms definitely make it easy.
Transit is alright in Vancouver, but not sufficient for a small family. I live in North Delta and work downtown Vancouver. I have a 7 year old daughter that needs to be dropped off at school, and picked up from her Grandma's in Surrey. I also coach her soccer team and play myself. For the individual transit alone is typically sufficient, but as soon as you have certain responsibilities a car quickly moves into the 'necessity' column.
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
A year ago in Vancouver, I was paying $28 a month for cell, $30 for wired broadband internet, and $81 for a transit pass ($91 now). But if you want to spend a lot of money, cars and Canadian telecoms definitely make it easy.
Transit is alright in Vancouver, but not sufficient for a small family. I live in North Delta and work downtown Vancouver. I have a 7 year old daughter that needs to be dropped off at school, and picked up from her Grandma's in Surrey. I also coach her soccer team and play myself. For the individual transit alone is typically sufficient, but as soon as you have certain responsibilities a car quickly moves into the 'n…
> but as soon as you have certain responsibilities
True, kids in suburbs aren't cheap
Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?
#99Capitalism`s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The profit motive is so strong that it often ends up creating irrational scenarios such as the economic situation we have today. European countries seem to have struck a far better balance by harnessing the profit motive of capitalism while preventing disasters such as for-profit healthcare, for-profit education, for-profit government policies (for the ric…
When America was still Capitalistic, still had a functioning free market system, the results it produced in both education and healthcare put the European welfare state model to shame. If you go back 30, 40, 50 years America embarrassed most of Europe in both healthcare and education. For decades America had both the best healthcare system, and a very cost effective system. That reputation has only been lost in the l…
Norway doesn't actually spend any of theoil money. Its all saved in a rainy-day fund. Said fund now owns over 1 % of all publicly listed sticks in the world. Norways welfare state is run of non-oil income, generated by maximizing the number of middl-class taxpayers in the coutry. Much the same strategy as Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Nederlands, Belgium, etc etc employs.
Americas welfare expenses is actually about 1/3rd of what the really successful European eco0nomies spend. Germany, Austria, Switzerland...America spends about what Italy and Spain does per person in welfare. A bit more than Portugal and Greece, but definitely UPIGS territory.
Americas model worked in the decades after world war 2, when all competition was bombed into ruins and needed American resources to rebuild. There is basically three countries that didn't get ruined by WW2, America, Sweden and Switzerland. All had the same prosperity-boom after WW2, despite very different policies.
Also: You don't understand national debt.