5 ms·

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

by 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
      >By being very very good looking Models are paid to be very, very good-looking. "What you produce" is a value decision in the first place, one that society makes together by how we allocate resources.
      - learc83 10y ago
        Yes. We basically pay people based on 1 metric. Not what they produce, but how good they are at convincing other people to give them money. Whether it's by building a product, being very good-looking, or asking for a handout. (Sure you can say that we pay people based on what they produce if you argue that a homeless man is producing good feelings when you donate to him, but I think that's a bit silly). Obviously this is always going to be the case to some extent in a free society, but we should definitely do more to help those who don't happen to be good at convincing other people to part with their cash.
    - badsock 10y ago
      Many contributions that people make to a functioning society can't, and never will be, quantified. One way around this is to assign a base value to a person because they are a member of the human race and a citizen of your country, and then let them demonstrate additional value through the usual capitalist means. It's imperfect, certainly, but it works well enough in many developed countries, and it's more accurate than the model that says what can't be measured has no value.
  - adventured 10y ago
    And how does that brutality compare to the 96% (or more) of the rest of the world that falls below the US median standard of living? You're trying to pretend those systems aren't extraordinarily brutal to their people? It's absurd. I see no evidence to support your premise that the US is brutal toward its people, given the high wages the US pays, the high standard of living the US offers at the median, and the extraordinarily high disposable income levels the US offers at the median ($44,000 household disposable income vs eg $28,000 in Finland). Where's the brutality? The sole thing I can see that is actually bad is in healthcare. Let's compare the US median to the medians in: Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Czech, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia. The only thing you're going to find where the US lags significantly, is in regards to healthcare costs. In nearly every other economic respect, the US exceeds those nations and the radical majority of the planet.
    - learc83 10y ago
      Why would you compare the US to developing countries. If you want to compare us to other countries, compare us to developed countries. Yes our median and mean incomes, disable incomes, household wealth etc... are high. But those values aren't very evenly distributed at all. Just look at average household wealth by race. You'll find an enormous discrepancy. (I was actually shocked when I looked at this. I knew it was bad, but not that bad) We have a huge number of people doing incredibly well, and a huge number of people barely getting by. The social programs other developed countries offer go a long way towards easing the burdens of that 2nd group. You can point to Finland and say that yes they have $16k less in disposable income, but they have universal health care (which you already pointed out), they have paid family leave, they have worker protections, better unemployment etc...
- tedmiston 10y ago
  New Zealand & Australia having a higher percentage of people working 50+ hour weeks over the US seems unintuitive. Update - Getting downvoted, so here's explanation: This doesn't align with the culture over there at all. I think this source is questionable. For example, if you compare the average hours worked per worker over a year (descending), the U.S. is #18 with 1,789 hours while Australia is much lower at #27 with 1,664 hours [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
ne0n 10y ago
Part of the problem is that employers like Walmart aren't hiring people full-time at 40 hours a week because that requires the worker get benefits. So they hire mostly part-time work at 30-hours a week or less, which isn't enough for people to live, so the workers have to try and get a second job.
- learc83 10y ago
  There are a few solutions to this. You could completely separate health insurance from employment. Or you could require benefits for part-time employees as well.
  - Keverw 10y ago
    I never got why health insurance is tied to employment. Then when you switch jobs, you start a new plan and then there could be a gap where you could be uninsured. I think health insurance should be separated from employment. I think we're the only country that does it this way.
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    This. So much this. You can also do things like require the same sort of benefits for all employees. Pro-rated vacation and sick time, if offered, as well as retirement, discounts, and other such things.
plandis 10y ago
> You Americans are so brutal to each other. So first off that's kind of offensive. Secondly, one commentor on HN doesn't reflect the views of 300M+ people. People typically come to HN because it fosters good discussion. Throwing insults at an entire country doesn't accomplish that at all.
- learc83 10y ago
  I'm American, and I'm more offended by the way we treat workers than I am by someone calling us out on it. It's not an insult. It might not reflect the views of the entire country, but it is an accurate depiction of our labor policies. We are the only developed nation in the world without paid maternity/paternity leave. No universal healthcare. No protection from arbitrary termination. And a terribly low minimum wage that hasn't kept up with inflation.
  - plandis 10y ago
    We? My state has a decent minimum wage, my company offers good benefits, including cheap healthcare and paid maternity/paternity leave. Some people might not care about their fellow workers but some of us do. Typecasting all Americans as brutal is offensive. I say this as someone who actively helped to campaign for a higher minimum wage. But yeah, I'm American so I must not care about anyone else. I'm fucking sick of this stereotype.
    - learc83 10y ago
      > my company offers good benefits, including cheap healthcare and paid maternity/paternity leave How does that help people who aren't working for your company. That's like saying America isn't brutal to it's workers because rich people can afford good dental plans. Sure we're not brutal to people who have good well-paying jobs. We're brutal to people who aren't that fortunate. > But yeah, I'm American so I must not care about anyone else. I'm fucking sick of this stereotype. Work to change it. Our country sucks when it comes to labor rights and social welfare compared to every other developed country. As long as that's true it's not really unfair to call us brutal to workers. Obviously there are those of us who aren't, but it's a pretty fair generalization for the country as a whole.
Kalium 10y ago
> 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? Yes. We have. A great many of us have considered this at significant length over the course of centuries. The question is not novel by any reasonable measure. Do you have a suggestion along the lines of an answer, or did you wish to merely pose the question?
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  The answer has long since been established to be, "No, a person's personhood is morally primary and overrides their economic usefulness or uselessness."
  - Kalium 10y ago
    Indeed! However, history suggests that translating that laudable sentiment into actual resource-allocating policy and social organization is upon occasion slightly less than maximally clear, obvious, or straightforward.
zo1 10y ago
>"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?" Have you considered that perhaps it's someone's prerogative and right to choose whether or not they want to pay for other people's lack of "economic usefulness"? We're in this mess precisely because we had good intentions of helping the needy, and propping them up. All that did was raise their number, putting all sorts of economic pressures on existing poor people's salaries. Now we're expected to foot the bill even more? You know, at some point, people are going to start saying enough to that sort of thing. It's borderline emotional-terrorism to guilt people into supporting so many needy. NO I am not a bad person for wanting the best for the people I care about. And not wanting to sacrifice it for the people who are reckless about bringing innocents into this world on my expense, and then teaching them anyways to hate me for not wanting to sacrifice further. One last thing. I come from a family where the sole bread-winner did work 60-hour work weeks, and still does. Precisely so that I and my sibling wouldn't have to. Though I still do, because I want even better for the people I care about and brought into this world.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  This is especially a problem because any solutions that are politically likely at this point, like raising the minimum wage, aren't taking money from the wealthiest, they're taking money from the middle class to fund wealth redistribution.
  - badsock 10y ago
    The taxation system is a man-made thing. If Americans wanted to raise the minimum wage, but redistribute the costs of it to the upper and not middle class, that is absolutely possible.
    - jsmith0295 10y ago
      It's possible but there's basically no chance of that occurring in the current political climate. Our "liberal" party is dominated by corporate interests. Hillary Clinton being the Democratic nominee is basically the perfect example of that. It probably isn't clear based on my other posts, but I'd love to have some of the policies Bernie Sanders has proposed rather than what I've talked about here. At this point it just seems a bit like a fantasy. Especially given how gerrymandering has the Republicans in a position to keep ahold of the House for quite awhile.
gozur88 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. I take it you're European? What's the youth unemployment rate in your country?
- badsock 10y ago
  Canadian, and it's similar to America's.

by badsock 10y ago

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
    >By being very very good looking Models are paid to be very, very good-looking. "What you produce" is a value decision in the first place, one that society makes together by how we allocate resources.
    - learc83 10y ago
      Yes. We basically pay people based on 1 metric. Not what they produce, but how good they are at convincing other people to give them money. Whether it's by building a product, being very good-looking, or asking for a handout. (Sure you can say that we pay people based on what they produce if you argue that a homeless man is producing good feelings when you donate to him, but I think that's a bit silly). Obviously this is always going to be the case to some extent in a free society, but we should definitely do more to help those who don't happen to be good at convincing other people to part with their cash.
  - badsock 10y ago
    Many contributions that people make to a functioning society can't, and never will be, quantified. One way around this is to assign a base value to a person because they are a member of the human race and a citizen of your country, and then let them demonstrate additional value through the usual capitalist means. It's imperfect, certainly, but it works well enough in many developed countries, and it's more accurate than the model that says what can't be measured has no value.
- adventured 10y ago
  And how does that brutality compare to the 96% (or more) of the rest of the world that falls below the US median standard of living? You're trying to pretend those systems aren't extraordinarily brutal to their people? It's absurd. I see no evidence to support your premise that the US is brutal toward its people, given the high wages the US pays, the high standard of living the US offers at the median, and the extraordinarily high disposable income levels the US offers at the median ($44,000 household disposable income vs eg $28,000 in Finland). Where's the brutality? The sole thing I can see that is actually bad is in healthcare. Let's compare the US median to the medians in: Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Czech, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia. The only thing you're going to find where the US lags significantly, is in regards to healthcare costs. In nearly every other economic respect, the US exceeds those nations and the radical majority of the planet.
  - learc83 10y ago
    Why would you compare the US to developing countries. If you want to compare us to other countries, compare us to developed countries. Yes our median and mean incomes, disable incomes, household wealth etc... are high. But those values aren't very evenly distributed at all. Just look at average household wealth by race. You'll find an enormous discrepancy. (I was actually shocked when I looked at this. I knew it was bad, but not that bad) We have a huge number of people doing incredibly well, and a huge number of people barely getting by. The social programs other developed countries offer go a long way towards easing the burdens of that 2nd group. You can point to Finland and say that yes they have $16k less in disposable income, but they have universal health care (which you already pointed out), they have paid family leave, they have worker protections, better unemployment etc...
tedmiston 10y ago
New Zealand & Australia having a higher percentage of people working 50+ hour weeks over the US seems unintuitive. Update - Getting downvoted, so here's explanation: This doesn't align with the culture over there at all. I think this source is questionable. For example, if you compare the average hours worked per worker over a year (descending), the U.S. is #18 with 1,789 hours while Australia is much lower at #27 with 1,664 hours [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time

ne0n 10y ago

Part of the problem is that employers like Walmart aren't hiring people full-time at 40 hours a week because that requires the worker get benefits. So they hire mostly part-time work at 30-hours a week or less, which isn't enough for people to live, so the workers have to try and get a second job.

learc83 10y ago
There are a few solutions to this. You could completely separate health insurance from employment. Or you could require benefits for part-time employees as well.
- Keverw 10y ago
  I never got why health insurance is tied to employment. Then when you switch jobs, you start a new plan and then there could be a gap where you could be uninsured. I think health insurance should be separated from employment. I think we're the only country that does it this way.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  This. So much this. You can also do things like require the same sort of benefits for all employees. Pro-rated vacation and sick time, if offered, as well as retirement, discounts, and other such things.

plandis 10y ago

> You Americans are so brutal to each other. So first off that's kind of offensive. Secondly, one commentor on HN doesn't reflect the views of 300M+ people. People typically come to HN because it fosters good discussion. Throwing insults at an entire country doesn't accomplish that at all.

learc83 10y ago
I'm American, and I'm more offended by the way we treat workers than I am by someone calling us out on it. It's not an insult. It might not reflect the views of the entire country, but it is an accurate depiction of our labor policies. We are the only developed nation in the world without paid maternity/paternity leave. No universal healthcare. No protection from arbitrary termination. And a terribly low minimum wage that hasn't kept up with inflation.
- plandis 10y ago
  We? My state has a decent minimum wage, my company offers good benefits, including cheap healthcare and paid maternity/paternity leave. Some people might not care about their fellow workers but some of us do. Typecasting all Americans as brutal is offensive. I say this as someone who actively helped to campaign for a higher minimum wage. But yeah, I'm American so I must not care about anyone else. I'm fucking sick of this stereotype.
  - learc83 10y ago
    > my company offers good benefits, including cheap healthcare and paid maternity/paternity leave How does that help people who aren't working for your company. That's like saying America isn't brutal to it's workers because rich people can afford good dental plans. Sure we're not brutal to people who have good well-paying jobs. We're brutal to people who aren't that fortunate. > But yeah, I'm American so I must not care about anyone else. I'm fucking sick of this stereotype. Work to change it. Our country sucks when it comes to labor rights and social welfare compared to every other developed country. As long as that's true it's not really unfair to call us brutal to workers. Obviously there are those of us who aren't, but it's a pretty fair generalization for the country as a whole.

Kalium 10y ago

> 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? Yes. We have. A great many of us have considered this at significant length over the course of centuries. The question is not novel by any reasonable measure. Do you have a suggestion along the lines of an answer, or did you wish to merely pose the question?

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
The answer has long since been established to be, "No, a person's personhood is morally primary and overrides their economic usefulness or uselessness."
- Kalium 10y ago
  Indeed! However, history suggests that translating that laudable sentiment into actual resource-allocating policy and social organization is upon occasion slightly less than maximally clear, obvious, or straightforward.

zo1 10y ago

>"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?" Have you considered that perhaps it's someone's prerogative and right to choose whether or not they want to pay for other people's lack of "economic usefulness"? We're in this mess precisely because we had good intentions of helping the needy, and propping them up. All that did was raise their number, putting all sorts of economic pressures on existing poor people's salaries. Now we're expected to foot the bill even more? You know, at some point, people are going to start saying enough to that sort of thing. It's borderline emotional-terrorism to guilt people into supporting so many needy. NO I am not a bad person for wanting the best for the people I care about. And not wanting to sacrifice it for the people who are reckless about bringing innocents into this world on my expense, and then teaching them anyways to hate me for not wanting to sacrifice further. One last thing. I come from a family where the sole bread-winner did work 60-hour work weeks, and still does. Precisely so that I and my sibling wouldn't have to. Though I still do, because I want even better for the people I care about and brought into this world.

jsmith0295 10y ago
This is especially a problem because any solutions that are politically likely at this point, like raising the minimum wage, aren't taking money from the wealthiest, they're taking money from the middle class to fund wealth redistribution.
- badsock 10y ago
  The taxation system is a man-made thing. If Americans wanted to raise the minimum wage, but redistribute the costs of it to the upper and not middle class, that is absolutely possible.
  - jsmith0295 10y ago
    It's possible but there's basically no chance of that occurring in the current political climate. Our "liberal" party is dominated by corporate interests. Hillary Clinton being the Democratic nominee is basically the perfect example of that. It probably isn't clear based on my other posts, but I'd love to have some of the policies Bernie Sanders has proposed rather than what I've talked about here. At this point it just seems a bit like a fantasy. Especially given how gerrymandering has the Republicans in a position to keep ahold of the House for quite awhile.

gozur88 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. I take it you're European? What's the youth unemployment rate in your country?

badsock 10y ago
Canadian, and it's similar to America's.