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In my experience this problem could be alleviated if it were possible for a worker to work a 50-60 hour week at a single job without incurring additional expens

In my experience this problem could be alleviated if it were possible for a worker to work a 50-60 hour week at a single job without incurring additional expenses for their employer. The current regulations around that sort of thing make it so the people who want to avoid needing government assistance have to get two jobs and deal with potential scheduling conflicts between them. When I worked minimum wage jobs there were a lot of people who couldn't work out a situation where they could easily get a second job like this partly because they were dependent on slow public transportation. You'd likely have significantly less people on government assistance if they were free to work more

jcrawfordor 10y ago
This kind of runs against the philosophical ideal of the limited workweek though. The idea is that people should never have to work more than 40 hours to make ends meet, and so when working 40 hours is not enough, the government will close the gap. Sure, we could probably reduce welfare dependence by allowing people to work 60h a week, but that would be abandoning one of the most important principles of the fair labor standards act and greatest achievements of the labor movement.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  You can survive on 40h a week, but that's about it. I don't think it's worth limiting people who want to do better than that just to try and get people to work less on average. So I guess their achievement just doesn't go far enough in my mind because it hinders economic mobility. If it were possible to succeed on 40h a week of minimum wage, then it might be different. I don't think that's really possible to achieve universally though federal policy, though. I'd prefer to just get rid of the overtime pay requirement and health care requirements included in the ACA (or probably most of the ACA. The mandate and tax is really terrible for young working people.) Edit: Just to clarify a bit, when I was working 2 minimum wage jobs it was because I wanted to be able to build some savings. I could have actually lived more comfortably (and had health insurance) had I opted to only work one job and apply for benefits, but then I just would have been getting by. Had I not had the extra money saved up I wouldn't have been able to replace my car when it's transmission went out, or be able to take the risk to work at a startup which is how I started my career as a software engineer.
  - contravariant 10y ago
    If a full time job at minimum wage with benefits isn't enough to get out of poverty, then changing the definition of 'full time' seems like an odd solution. Raising minimum wage or benefits seems much more reasonable alternatives.
    - nine_k 10y ago
      Raising minimum wage also reduces the number of jobs available fir the most needy.
      - c0nducktr 10y ago
        https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster
      - coldtea 10y ago
        That's a myth. But that raising the work-time per worker reduces the number of jobs available is not a myth, it's mathematical inevitability (unless work-hours needed not only will grow to compensate, but also grow more than if the per worker work-time had remained fixed).
      - Helmet 10y ago
        Incorrect - raising the price of labor does not decrease the demand for labor. It's a movement along the demand curve, not a shift. Ultimately, what will influence the amount of jobs available at Walmart will be the demand for Walmart's products, macro economic trends, technological innovation, etc. They're obviously not doing this out of a goodness of their heart - their doing it because their stores are a mess and sales have been slumping. By increasing worker's wages, their betting that the increase in productivity will spur demand for Walmart's products.
        kgwgk 10y ago
        > Incorrect - raising the price of labor does not decrease the demand for labor. It's a movement along the demand curve, not a shift. But wouldn't this movement along the demand curve reduce the number of jobs available (at the point where demand and supply cross)?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
byuu 10y ago
If workers move from 40 hours a week to 60 hours a week, that's going to result in up to a 50% reduction in available jobs. Realistically the number will be lower, as not everyone is going to want to work that much. But that's still going to have a huge negative effect on unemployment. With the slow but steady rise of automation, the solution is not more work per employee, but less. There's going to be an incredibly rough period as unrestrained capitalism struggles against ideas like basic income. But there will come a day when there isn't enough work to go around, and your idea will only make this situation worse. We have the wealth to pay workers more, at least in the US. It's just that the top ~400 people have more of it than the bottom 160,000,000 people combined. This doesn't require absolute socialism where everyone is given exactly the same amount regardless of work ethic; any amount of reduction in income inequality would be beneficial. A return to where we were in the 1950s (ignoring other inequality issues of the time) would be a very positive step. Further, exponential growth of revenue is impossible to sustain indefinitely. At some point, people are going to have to stop judging a company that breaks even or has stable profits as a failure. As long as a company isn't losing money, it's providing value to all the people it employs, and to the economy as a whole by allowing those workers to purchase goods and services from others.
- gohrt 10y ago
  > At some point, people are going to have to stop judging a company that breaks even or has stable profits as a failure. These are called utility companies or dividend companies and no one judges them a failure, outside of the SV bubble.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  That isn't necessarily true. I wouldn't expect a wholesale move to 60 hour work weeks if the overtime pay requirement were raised or eliminated. And there are many people who already want to work 60 or more hours a week who get a second job to do that, but it's a very annoying and inconvenient process, and it usually results in a decent amount of wasted energy on the part of the worker. Having two jobs is especially inconvient when it takes 40+ minutes to commute via public transportation. Though I also agree that there should be more wealth redistribution. But without a very significant increase in that sort of thing, the existing laws are still going to be more in the way of workers than actually helping them in my opinion.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gohrt 10y ago
How is 50-60 relevant? Shift employees at many companies beg for ~40 hours but can't get them. Walmart gives employees ~30hr weeks, to avoid providing health insurance. It's not about the overhead of juggling extra shifts, it's about circumventing labor laws to pay lowest possible hourly wages.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  That's part of the problem I was referring to. If reducing hours didn't cut the cost of labor then employers wouldn't have an incentive to do it, and people wouldn't need second jobs. That 30 hour thing is fairly recent, and some companies get around it by simply having really shitty insurance that nobody is going to opt into. McDonalds does this. I don't know if that's the approach Walmart takes, but I was able to get around 40 hours a week there while I did work there. That may differ based upon the job you do though -- I was unloading trucks mainly.
coldtea 10y ago
>In my experience this problem could be alleviated if it were possible for a worker to work a 50-60 hour week at a single job without incurring additional expenses for their employe Yeah. Also slavery might work.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  People are already working those kind of hours, sometimes more. It's just difficult and they end up having to do stupid shit like have an hour and a half between shifts that isn't really good for anything. Most people who work two jobs would rather work 10-12 hour shifts instead of shorter shifts at two different jobs, often 6-7 days a week instead of 5.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Most people who work two jobs would rather work 10-12 hour shifts instead of shorter shifts at two different jobs, often 6-7 days a week instead of 5. Maybe we shouldn't optimize for the lesser evil but fix the issue altogether?
badsock 10y ago
You Americans are so brutal to each other. Instead of trying to address the problem of why someone can't live on a 40-hour week, you just want to remove one of the staple worker-protection laws. 60-hour weeks basically means you live to work. Have you considered that perhaps someone's economic usefulness shouldn't be the only determinate of whether they have to spend essentially their entire lives on Earth just trying to survive?
- adventured 10y ago
  > You Americans are so brutal to each other. Brutal is an exaggeration. Americans don't come close to leading in the 50+ hour work week category. The US now ranks below: Iceland, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea on that metric and has been falling down those rankings for decades. https://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2016/08/15/employees-working-more-than-50-hours-per-week-2014-opec-area/ https://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2016/08/15/employees-wo...
  - badsock 10y ago
    When I say brutal, I'm not specifically talking about people working 50+ hours a week, I'm talking about the mindset that says that the singular number of how many bucks you can pull in should determine whether or not you're going to have a seriously downtrodden life, as if that were the only measure of your value to the world, or as a human being.
    - ci5er 10y ago
      How should you measure your value to the world if not by what you produce? By being very very good looking and your mother thinks you're smart? By being a nice person? Being nice should be table stakes, but ultimately, on average, people need to produce more than they consume or the world as we know it fails. It wasn't too long ago, that 50+ hours/week was a luxury - and it wasn't earned by typing at a desk.
      - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>In my experience this problem could be alleviated if it were possible for a worker to work a 50-60 hour week at a single job without incurring additional expenses for their employer. How would working more without any more wages actually help the worker? Or do you mean the worker would receive their normal hourly wage without the "additional expense" of time-and-a-half overtime rates? This scheme sounds insane, a recipe for slave-driving and exploitation of the worst kinds.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  The problem is that people are already getting second jobs for this very reason. People want to work more when they're only making around minimum wage, and the laws that are supposed to protect them just make that difficult. I was saying they ought to get the same hourly rate but that the time and a half pay should not be mandated as a federal law as it is now.

jcrawfordor 10y ago

This kind of runs against the philosophical ideal of the limited workweek though. The idea is that people should never have to work more than 40 hours to make ends meet, and so when working 40 hours is not enough, the government will close the gap. Sure, we could probably reduce welfare dependence by allowing people to work 60h a week, but that would be abandoning one of the most important principles of the fair labor standards act and greatest achievements of the labor movement.

jsmith0295 10y ago
You can survive on 40h a week, but that's about it. I don't think it's worth limiting people who want to do better than that just to try and get people to work less on average. So I guess their achievement just doesn't go far enough in my mind because it hinders economic mobility. If it were possible to succeed on 40h a week of minimum wage, then it might be different. I don't think that's really possible to achieve universally though federal policy, though. I'd prefer to just get rid of the overtime pay requirement and health care requirements included in the ACA (or probably most of the ACA. The mandate and tax is really terrible for young working people.) Edit: Just to clarify a bit, when I was working 2 minimum wage jobs it was because I wanted to be able to build some savings. I could have actually lived more comfortably (and had health insurance) had I opted to only work one job and apply for benefits, but then I just would have been getting by. Had I not had the extra money saved up I wouldn't have been able to replace my car when it's transmission went out, or be able to take the risk to work at a startup which is how I started my career as a software engineer.
- contravariant 10y ago
  If a full time job at minimum wage with benefits isn't enough to get out of poverty, then changing the definition of 'full time' seems like an odd solution. Raising minimum wage or benefits seems much more reasonable alternatives.
  - nine_k 10y ago
    Raising minimum wage also reduces the number of jobs available fir the most needy.
    - c0nducktr 10y ago
      https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster
    - coldtea 10y ago
      That's a myth. But that raising the work-time per worker reduces the number of jobs available is not a myth, it's mathematical inevitability (unless work-hours needed not only will grow to compensate, but also grow more than if the per worker work-time had remained fixed).
    - Helmet 10y ago
      Incorrect - raising the price of labor does not decrease the demand for labor. It's a movement along the demand curve, not a shift. Ultimately, what will influence the amount of jobs available at Walmart will be the demand for Walmart's products, macro economic trends, technological innovation, etc. They're obviously not doing this out of a goodness of their heart - their doing it because their stores are a mess and sales have been slumping. By increasing worker's wages, their betting that the increase in productivity will spur demand for Walmart's products.
      - kgwgk 10y ago
        > Incorrect - raising the price of labor does not decrease the demand for labor. It's a movement along the demand curve, not a shift. But wouldn't this movement along the demand curve reduce the number of jobs available (at the point where demand and supply cross)?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

byuu 10y ago

If workers move from 40 hours a week to 60 hours a week, that's going to result in up to a 50% reduction in available jobs. Realistically the number will be lower, as not everyone is going to want to work that much. But that's still going to have a huge negative effect on unemployment. With the slow but steady rise of automation, the solution is not more work per employee, but less. There's going to be an incredibly rough period as unrestrained capitalism struggles against ideas like basic income. But there will come a day when there isn't enough work to go around, and your idea will only make this situation worse. We have the wealth to pay workers more, at least in the US. It's just that the top ~400 people have more of it than the bottom 160,000,000 people combined. This doesn't require absolute socialism where everyone is given exactly the same amount regardless of work ethic; any amount of reduction in income inequality would be beneficial. A return to where we were in the 1950s (ignoring other inequality issues of the time) would be a very positive step. Further, exponential growth of revenue is impossible to sustain indefinitely. At some point, people are going to have to stop judging a company that breaks even or has stable profits as a failure. As long as a company isn't losing money, it's providing value to all the people it employs, and to the economy as a whole by allowing those workers to purchase goods and services from others.

gohrt 10y ago
> At some point, people are going to have to stop judging a company that breaks even or has stable profits as a failure. These are called utility companies or dividend companies and no one judges them a failure, outside of the SV bubble.
jsmith0295 10y ago
That isn't necessarily true. I wouldn't expect a wholesale move to 60 hour work weeks if the overtime pay requirement were raised or eliminated. And there are many people who already want to work 60 or more hours a week who get a second job to do that, but it's a very annoying and inconvenient process, and it usually results in a decent amount of wasted energy on the part of the worker. Having two jobs is especially inconvient when it takes 40+ minutes to commute via public transportation. Though I also agree that there should be more wealth redistribution. But without a very significant increase in that sort of thing, the existing laws are still going to be more in the way of workers than actually helping them in my opinion.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gohrt 10y ago

How is 50-60 relevant? Shift employees at many companies beg for ~40 hours but can't get them. Walmart gives employees ~30hr weeks, to avoid providing health insurance. It's not about the overhead of juggling extra shifts, it's about circumventing labor laws to pay lowest possible hourly wages.

jsmith0295 10y ago
That's part of the problem I was referring to. If reducing hours didn't cut the cost of labor then employers wouldn't have an incentive to do it, and people wouldn't need second jobs. That 30 hour thing is fairly recent, and some companies get around it by simply having really shitty insurance that nobody is going to opt into. McDonalds does this. I don't know if that's the approach Walmart takes, but I was able to get around 40 hours a week there while I did work there. That may differ based upon the job you do though -- I was unloading trucks mainly.

coldtea 10y ago

jsmith0295 10y ago
People are already working those kind of hours, sometimes more. It's just difficult and they end up having to do stupid shit like have an hour and a half between shifts that isn't really good for anything. Most people who work two jobs would rather work 10-12 hour shifts instead of shorter shifts at two different jobs, often 6-7 days a week instead of 5.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Most people who work two jobs would rather work 10-12 hour shifts instead of shorter shifts at two different jobs, often 6-7 days a week instead of 5. Maybe we shouldn't optimize for the lesser evil but fix the issue altogether?

badsock 10y ago

You Americans are so brutal to each other. Instead of trying to address the problem of why someone can't live on a 40-hour week, you just want to remove one of the staple worker-protection laws. 60-hour weeks basically means you live to work. Have you considered that perhaps someone's economic usefulness shouldn't be the only determinate of whether they have to spend essentially their entire lives on Earth just trying to survive?

adventured 10y ago
> You Americans are so brutal to each other. Brutal is an exaggeration. Americans don't come close to leading in the 50+ hour work week category. The US now ranks below: Iceland, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea on that metric and has been falling down those rankings for decades. https://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2016/08/15/employees-working-more-than-50-hours-per-week-2014-opec-area/ https://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2016/08/15/employees-wo...
- badsock 10y ago
  When I say brutal, I'm not specifically talking about people working 50+ hours a week, I'm talking about the mindset that says that the singular number of how many bucks you can pull in should determine whether or not you're going to have a seriously downtrodden life, as if that were the only measure of your value to the world, or as a human being.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    How should you measure your value to the world if not by what you produce? By being very very good looking and your mother thinks you're smart? By being a nice person? Being nice should be table stakes, but ultimately, on average, people need to produce more than they consume or the world as we know it fails. It wasn't too long ago, that 50+ hours/week was a luxury - and it wasn't earned by typing at a desk.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>In my experience this problem could be alleviated if it were possible for a worker to work a 50-60 hour week at a single job without incurring additional expenses for their employer. How would working more without any more wages actually help the worker? Or do you mean the worker would receive their normal hourly wage without the "additional expense" of time-and-a-half overtime rates? This scheme sounds insane, a recipe for slave-driving and exploitation of the worst kinds.

jsmith0295 10y ago
The problem is that people are already getting second jobs for this very reason. People want to work more when they're only making around minimum wage, and the laws that are supposed to protect them just make that difficult. I was saying they ought to get the same hourly rate but that the time and a half pay should not be mandated as a federal law as it is now.