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Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all da

by cbanek 10y ago

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

SwellJoe 10y ago
Some might say "too much capitalism". I don't know many protestants.
- WaxProlix 10y ago
  "Too much capitalism" would imply that the people who get money funneled to them at the top don't work hard enough (or take enough risk) to earn that money. Surely you don't believe that? edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that.
  - sillysaurus3 10y ago
    I believe that. Family connections matter far more than how hard you work. I don't think it's unfair, or that there's too much capitalism, but it's the nature of the system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that. Well, look at what Steve Jobs did for Apple. Regardless of whether he would've done that if he was paid less, how many workers was he worth? The natural follow-up question is then, why not pay them what they're worth? One reason CEOs are paid so much is to prevent them from making short-term decisions that optimize their stock price at the expense of long-term planning. If their entire compensation is tied to the stock price, there's no incentive for any CEO to try to do better than increase the stock price at any cost.
  - ifdefdebug 10y ago
    Look, while there are enough people getting money funneled to them at the top for sure work very hard. But those are not the seriously rich. Those are the subalterns, they earn about seven or eight figures a year and work hard for it. The seriously rich get to chose how much they want to work, if they want to work at all. Surely you know that? Edit: sarcasm is best perceived when the argument leads ad adsurdum. Now people at the top working very hard and taking risks happens all the time and your "Surely you don't believe that?" could have been just an arrogant attitude, so your sarcasm was hard to spot. But I'm glad to hear it was just sarcasm :)
    - milesrout 10y ago
      'Seven or eight figures' is seriously rich.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    It's not at all about how hard you work. It's about working smart, i.e. working on the right things.
    - pikzen 10y ago
      Some people don't get to work on the right things. Hell, most people don't get to work on the right things, by virtue of not being born in the right social class, the right skin color, the right neighbourhood, the right family.
  - 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
    The issue is not the sarcasm, the issue is that there is now no way to differentiate that sarcasm from a non-sarcastic opinion on HN, because you can find people legitimately believing this.
  - rsync 10y ago
    "Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that." I don't think that's obvious, but let's stipulate that it's true. While there may be no amount of work that justifies it, there is an amount of ownership that justifies it. Not everyone is a up-the-ladder CEO that gets placed into a firm and then rent-seeks for a few years while waiting for a golden parachute. Some people founded their firms and reap the financial gains directly from what they've built - and if that is 400 or 500 or 600x what the janitor makes, so be it.
- cbanek 10y ago
  Right, I'd agree with that. But my point is that capitalist drive, and that feeling to "work hard and you'll succeed" rather than saying it's who you know and how lucky you are, some historians trace down to the early American protestants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
- danmaz74 10y ago
  If you mean "too much capitalism" as in "too little taxes for the rich, almost complete destruction of unions, too much power for lobbyists", then I think you're right. "Free market", democracy, government spending and unions are all imperfect, but they are IMHO all necessary counterbalances to the sheer power of money for a capitalist system that benefits most of the population. Instead, for too long the ideology that The Market is perfect and self-regulating and automatically works for the greater good, while Government/taxes/regulations/unions are all evil, has triumphed. Working to find a good balance is so much more difficult and so much less attractive than believing in a very well narrated oversimplification. But, instead of working in that direction (the good balance), lots of people are opting to believe in even worse oversimplifications - the ones that populists all over the West are spreading. Not an easy situation to fix.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    when somebody from left mentions taxes it's always to increase them, which makes most people turn their back immediately (me too). what US needs is to be smarter with taxes for the citizens, not more of them (because army/intelligence/state will happily take and consume any amount). don't wage super expensive useless wars that do pure evil in the world for generations to come is a good starter. tax megacorps like apple which laugh in your US face while you worship their products (and super rich if it makes sense too) appropriately. bureaucracy can always be leaner. and so on, we all know the drill
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > Some might say "too much capitalism" Competition is good. Aristocracies are not [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt
NTDF9 10y ago
>> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford. Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and the rich are going to contribute a larger share towards those collective resources. Thus, humans are not reduced to what they make but how they live and what their values are. Happy faces sharing a dining table, celebrating large families and friendships that last a lifetime. It's not protestant work ethic. It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college) and hoping you don't meet a "man-made" disaster like healthcare disaster, divorces, bankruptcies, lawsuits, prisons (completely ignoring natural disasters).
- cbanek 10y ago
  I'd agree with all of that. The differences between Europe and the US in terms of maternity leave / time off / healthcare are fairly stark. And now we're presently dismantling healthcare as a right in the US. Really hitting at least one disaster in your life seems almost inevitable, and the system is waiting there to profit from you. I'm definitely of the more socialist bent, in that I know that if people around me aren't healthy and safe, everyone is more at risk. But I feel in the minority these days.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - trome 10y ago
    58% of Americans would prefer a federally funded healthcare system[0], akin to healthcare in Canada. We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer. Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut closing 26 points of a 36 point gap by beating the streets with 500 volunteers[1], or Bernie in West Virginia going to town hall after town hall and talking to people about the very real issues that affect their lives. We can convert the "unwinnable" "red" states if we only dare put in the effort to beat the streets and call people, have one on one interaction and talk about issues that matter. Jobs, healthcare, workers rights, when you connect to people, even if you disagree with a person about "divisive" issues, they can often feel you are out there fighting for a better future for them and their family. So get out there, go join Wolf PAC, Our Revolution/Woke, go to a Womens Day protest, a BLM protest and fight for a better future. If we take action, we can create change! 0 - http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-funded-healthcare-system.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-... 1 - http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-is-the-young-turkss-cenk-uygur-talks-to-mediaite-about-organizing-volunteers-in-local-elections/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-i...
nefitty 10y ago
I'm sure there's a happy middle. Obsession with luxuries and consumption play a big part in getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill. Obsession with achievement probably plays a big role in burnout and overwork. Personally, I'm doing my best to get to a point where I can feel good in an outfit I've had for years, feel good with a cheap haircut, feel satisfied reading and meditating to relax and being able to leave work at work and sleep soundly no matter the occurrences of the day. Judge me by the way I treat you not by the number of zeros in my bank account.
brokenmasonjars 10y ago
I don't know.. I work about 15 hours a month opening up positions and closing them with my brokerage account. Have been doing this for a good 12 years or so now. Granted the earlier years were fraught with hard learned lessons that any newbee would make without proper mentorship. To me, it just seems like too many see that initial hamster wheel and jump on without thinking much about things. Then again, they lack proper education. I'm not even sure if it's about teaching them how to trade and invest, instead people need to be taught how to think critically and break out of the victimization trend. Then again, I'm not sure if that will help things much either.
- pyrale 10y ago
  You do realize your way of life can never become mainstream, right ?
  - brokenmasonjars 10y ago
    It can act as an additional revenue source thus allowing you to cut on the hours you work per week. If you can train yourself, or find a proper mentor. Though I think a proper mentor is the real bottle neck, so too many try to train themselves and lack the proper knowledge for where to start; too many go to CNBC to start.. If it became mainstream it would just mean more volatility which for me.. volatility is a good thing. Yet were not even close to that, not many trade. Which is fine too, adaptability is key. I think the "you can't" stuff really flows out to other areas of the economy, e.g. starting up etc. So we get into this thing were people don't even try, or they try and fail once and don't bother getting back up. Granted, having a family etc is problematic .. though I do know someone who failed thrice starting businesses while being a mother of 5. That has to be pretty challenging and seeing her persevere tells me many more can be successful if they get past the initial hurdles.
    - joncrocks 10y ago
      I think what the parent means is that not everyone could do this and make money and then have to work less. If that were possible, then it would also be possible for no-one to ever have to work, which might be possible in the future, but not right now.
pavlov 10y ago
I'm not convinced that Protestant traditions are to blame. The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone. At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care and other worker-friendly policies. So it seems too simple to blame the dysfunctionalities of the American work environment on reformed Christian ethics -- at least, the Nordic example shows that a different, more employee-friendly interpretation of the same ethic is possible.
- bildung 10y ago
  AFAIK protestant work ethics are rooted in Calvinism, which heavily influenced many sects in the U.S., but not or to a lesser degree the northern european countries.
  - iaskwhy 10y ago
    Can you guys expand on this? It's something I'm usually interested in but being raised in a Roman Catholic country doesn't make it obvious what differences might exist between Calvinism and Protestantism.
    - ikurei 10y ago
      Also catholic-raised, but from my understanding Calvino very strongly defended discipline and hard work over faith. In contrast, catholicism places a greater emphasis on... well, not sinning.
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      This is probably a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
  - piva00 10y ago
    Calvinism influenced the Netherlands a lot, I'm not really so much versed in Calvinism in America but if you want to compare I'd suggest starting there. Even more interesting because I consider Netherlands the closest you get in Continental Europe to a Scandinavian country (socially/economically speaking).
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Back in reality, working hours have no significant upward trend. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP More people simply don't work. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Consumption (note: figure adjusted for inflation) has only increased. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA Looks like that protestant work ethic/capitalism/etc is working pretty well for us.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Or, you know, this whole interpretation is misleading statistical BS, and as the caption says "Factors such as unpaid absenteeism, labor turnover, part-time work, and stoppages cause average weekly hours to be lower than scheduled hours of work for an establishment" -- and lowly paid part time work has replaced steady full time employment in many sectors. (As for the per capital consumption, does it add mr. Gates with Joe Average? Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, and they don't have much cushion left in the bank?)
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    All the factors you cite mean the number I provided is an overestimate. If you have any evidence we work harder than before, cite it. Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, That's definitely not the case, since the numbers I cited are adjusted for inflation. To determine whether average Joe has more buying power, simply compare the goods and services available to him to those of his parents. That's a clear win - when I was a kid, avocados were an expensive luxury to be consumed only once in a while, and I was often bored with nothing to read.
nostrademons 10y ago
Anyone who is successfully bilking the system so they can make large amounts of money doing a job they enjoy is not going to crow about it on social media. (Well, except for brokenmasonjars, who is currently downvoted to oblivion here.) You get a very skewed perception of reality reading human-interest pieces, because nobody wants to read an article about someone who is doing better than them in every way, having more fun too, and is going to act like a douche and crow about it to the news media. And if you have half a brain, you don't want that article to be written about you.
Applejinx 10y ago
If Fiverr is going on about "beating the trust-fund kids", that is inadvertently exposing a severe unpatched exploit which has nothing to do with protestant work ethic. It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game entirely. Systemically, the correct winning strategy is already to have huge sums of capital. I'm not sure if there's a half-measures strategy for starting with only a little capital: perhaps it's primarily luck, as it is for most/all big investors? But there's certainly no strategy for beginning with only sweat equity and having that turn efficiently into capital, so the 'protestant work ethic' is a mighty sad and inappropriate thing to have right now. I think the combination of this ethic and huge capital holdings is largely a thing of the past, and can hold people back from larger wealth because they're looking for ways to expand that involve work, and this competes against more efficient, purer capital strategies based around pure capital manipulation (which is strongly incentivised, for instance with tax incentives).
- coldtea 10y ago
  >It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. Currently? And why would "how hard you work" play any role? A surgeon doing 20 hour shifts gets way untold times less money than e.g. Tim Cook or some absentee CEO -- as their pay, not as their returns from capital investments. And let's not compare a miner who risks their life (and lungs) underground with some cushy executive.
archevel 10y ago
> Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility. One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts an important point. The US as the land of opportunity is clearly a false image, since you have a lower chance of climbing out of poverty there than in a lot of other countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States#Comparisons_with_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...
rmc 10y ago
> Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic? The UK has Protestantism as an official state religion and yet it has the NHS, mandatory paid holidays etc.
- coldtea 10y ago
  The average UK citizen hardly cares for any religion, much less have the protestant work ethic being pervasive. In fact the Church of England if often jokingly called the closest thing a church has to atheism. Don't conflate nominal state religions with actual ideas at play in citizen's heads...
cyphunk 10y ago
Upward mobility in the US is a myth fed through fables. Measured by % of population that transitions from the lower 5th economic ladder to the top 5th the US ranks lower than the large majority of OECD peers [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study...
rsync 10y ago
"Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?" Actually, that's testable, to a degree ... The largest and most potent concentration of "the protestant work ethic" produced switzerland, which is the nicest and best place on earth. I don't think too much PWE is our problem.

by cbanek 10y ago

SwellJoe 10y ago

Some might say "too much capitalism". I don't know many protestants.

WaxProlix 10y ago
"Too much capitalism" would imply that the people who get money funneled to them at the top don't work hard enough (or take enough risk) to earn that money. Surely you don't believe that? edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that.
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  I believe that. Family connections matter far more than how hard you work. I don't think it's unfair, or that there's too much capitalism, but it's the nature of the system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that. Well, look at what Steve Jobs did for Apple. Regardless of whether he would've done that if he was paid less, how many workers was he worth? The natural follow-up question is then, why not pay them what they're worth? One reason CEOs are paid so much is to prevent them from making short-term decisions that optimize their stock price at the expense of long-term planning. If their entire compensation is tied to the stock price, there's no incentive for any CEO to try to do better than increase the stock price at any cost.
- ifdefdebug 10y ago
  Look, while there are enough people getting money funneled to them at the top for sure work very hard. But those are not the seriously rich. Those are the subalterns, they earn about seven or eight figures a year and work hard for it. The seriously rich get to chose how much they want to work, if they want to work at all. Surely you know that? Edit: sarcasm is best perceived when the argument leads ad adsurdum. Now people at the top working very hard and taking risks happens all the time and your "Surely you don't believe that?" could have been just an arrogant attitude, so your sarcasm was hard to spot. But I'm glad to hear it was just sarcasm :)
  - milesrout 10y ago
    'Seven or eight figures' is seriously rich.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  It's not at all about how hard you work. It's about working smart, i.e. working on the right things.
  - pikzen 10y ago
    Some people don't get to work on the right things. Hell, most people don't get to work on the right things, by virtue of not being born in the right social class, the right skin color, the right neighbourhood, the right family.
- 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
  The issue is not the sarcasm, the issue is that there is now no way to differentiate that sarcasm from a non-sarcastic opinion on HN, because you can find people legitimately believing this.
- rsync 10y ago
  "Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that." I don't think that's obvious, but let's stipulate that it's true. While there may be no amount of work that justifies it, there is an amount of ownership that justifies it. Not everyone is a up-the-ladder CEO that gets placed into a firm and then rent-seeks for a few years while waiting for a golden parachute. Some people founded their firms and reap the financial gains directly from what they've built - and if that is 400 or 500 or 600x what the janitor makes, so be it.
cbanek 10y ago
Right, I'd agree with that. But my point is that capitalist drive, and that feeling to "work hard and you'll succeed" rather than saying it's who you know and how lucky you are, some historians trace down to the early American protestants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
danmaz74 10y ago
If you mean "too much capitalism" as in "too little taxes for the rich, almost complete destruction of unions, too much power for lobbyists", then I think you're right. "Free market", democracy, government spending and unions are all imperfect, but they are IMHO all necessary counterbalances to the sheer power of money for a capitalist system that benefits most of the population. Instead, for too long the ideology that The Market is perfect and self-regulating and automatically works for the greater good, while Government/taxes/regulations/unions are all evil, has triumphed. Working to find a good balance is so much more difficult and so much less attractive than believing in a very well narrated oversimplification. But, instead of working in that direction (the good balance), lots of people are opting to believe in even worse oversimplifications - the ones that populists all over the West are spreading. Not an easy situation to fix.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  when somebody from left mentions taxes it's always to increase them, which makes most people turn their back immediately (me too). what US needs is to be smarter with taxes for the citizens, not more of them (because army/intelligence/state will happily take and consume any amount). don't wage super expensive useless wars that do pure evil in the world for generations to come is a good starter. tax megacorps like apple which laugh in your US face while you worship their products (and super rich if it makes sense too) appropriately. bureaucracy can always be leaner. and so on, we all know the drill
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> Some might say "too much capitalism" Competition is good. Aristocracies are not [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt

NTDF9 10y ago

>> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford. Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and the rich are going to contribute a larger share towards those collective resources. Thus, humans are not reduced to what they make but how they live and what their values are. Happy faces sharing a dining table, celebrating large families and friendships that last a lifetime. It's not protestant work ethic. It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college) and hoping you don't meet a "man-made" disaster like healthcare disaster, divorces, bankruptcies, lawsuits, prisons (completely ignoring natural disasters).

cbanek 10y ago
I'd agree with all of that. The differences between Europe and the US in terms of maternity leave / time off / healthcare are fairly stark. And now we're presently dismantling healthcare as a right in the US. Really hitting at least one disaster in your life seems almost inevitable, and the system is waiting there to profit from you. I'm definitely of the more socialist bent, in that I know that if people around me aren't healthy and safe, everyone is more at risk. But I feel in the minority these days.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- trome 10y ago
  58% of Americans would prefer a federally funded healthcare system[0], akin to healthcare in Canada. We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer. Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut closing 26 points of a 36 point gap by beating the streets with 500 volunteers[1], or Bernie in West Virginia going to town hall after town hall and talking to people about the very real issues that affect their lives. We can convert the "unwinnable" "red" states if we only dare put in the effort to beat the streets and call people, have one on one interaction and talk about issues that matter. Jobs, healthcare, workers rights, when you connect to people, even if you disagree with a person about "divisive" issues, they can often feel you are out there fighting for a better future for them and their family. So get out there, go join Wolf PAC, Our Revolution/Woke, go to a Womens Day protest, a BLM protest and fight for a better future. If we take action, we can create change! 0 - http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-funded-healthcare-system.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-... 1 - http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-is-the-young-turkss-cenk-uygur-talks-to-mediaite-about-organizing-volunteers-in-local-elections/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-i...

nefitty 10y ago

I'm sure there's a happy middle. Obsession with luxuries and consumption play a big part in getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill. Obsession with achievement probably plays a big role in burnout and overwork. Personally, I'm doing my best to get to a point where I can feel good in an outfit I've had for years, feel good with a cheap haircut, feel satisfied reading and meditating to relax and being able to leave work at work and sleep soundly no matter the occurrences of the day. Judge me by the way I treat you not by the number of zeros in my bank account.

brokenmasonjars 10y ago

I don't know.. I work about 15 hours a month opening up positions and closing them with my brokerage account. Have been doing this for a good 12 years or so now. Granted the earlier years were fraught with hard learned lessons that any newbee would make without proper mentorship. To me, it just seems like too many see that initial hamster wheel and jump on without thinking much about things. Then again, they lack proper education. I'm not even sure if it's about teaching them how to trade and invest, instead people need to be taught how to think critically and break out of the victimization trend. Then again, I'm not sure if that will help things much either.

pyrale 10y ago
You do realize your way of life can never become mainstream, right ?
- brokenmasonjars 10y ago
  It can act as an additional revenue source thus allowing you to cut on the hours you work per week. If you can train yourself, or find a proper mentor. Though I think a proper mentor is the real bottle neck, so too many try to train themselves and lack the proper knowledge for where to start; too many go to CNBC to start.. If it became mainstream it would just mean more volatility which for me.. volatility is a good thing. Yet were not even close to that, not many trade. Which is fine too, adaptability is key. I think the "you can't" stuff really flows out to other areas of the economy, e.g. starting up etc. So we get into this thing were people don't even try, or they try and fail once and don't bother getting back up. Granted, having a family etc is problematic .. though I do know someone who failed thrice starting businesses while being a mother of 5. That has to be pretty challenging and seeing her persevere tells me many more can be successful if they get past the initial hurdles.
  - joncrocks 10y ago
    I think what the parent means is that not everyone could do this and make money and then have to work less. If that were possible, then it would also be possible for no-one to ever have to work, which might be possible in the future, but not right now.

pavlov 10y ago

I'm not convinced that Protestant traditions are to blame. The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone. At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care and other worker-friendly policies. So it seems too simple to blame the dysfunctionalities of the American work environment on reformed Christian ethics -- at least, the Nordic example shows that a different, more employee-friendly interpretation of the same ethic is possible.

bildung 10y ago
AFAIK protestant work ethics are rooted in Calvinism, which heavily influenced many sects in the U.S., but not or to a lesser degree the northern european countries.
- iaskwhy 10y ago
  Can you guys expand on this? It's something I'm usually interested in but being raised in a Roman Catholic country doesn't make it obvious what differences might exist between Calvinism and Protestantism.
  - ikurei 10y ago
    Also catholic-raised, but from my understanding Calvino very strongly defended discipline and hard work over faith. In contrast, catholicism places a greater emphasis on... well, not sinning.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    This is probably a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
- piva00 10y ago
  Calvinism influenced the Netherlands a lot, I'm not really so much versed in Calvinism in America but if you want to compare I'd suggest starting there. Even more interesting because I consider Netherlands the closest you get in Continental Europe to a Scandinavian country (socially/economically speaking).

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Back in reality, working hours have no significant upward trend. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP More people simply don't work. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Consumption (note: figure adjusted for inflation) has only increased. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA Looks like that protestant work ethic/capitalism/etc is working pretty well for us.

coldtea 10y ago
Or, you know, this whole interpretation is misleading statistical BS, and as the caption says "Factors such as unpaid absenteeism, labor turnover, part-time work, and stoppages cause average weekly hours to be lower than scheduled hours of work for an establishment" -- and lowly paid part time work has replaced steady full time employment in many sectors. (As for the per capital consumption, does it add mr. Gates with Joe Average? Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, and they don't have much cushion left in the bank?)
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  All the factors you cite mean the number I provided is an overestimate. If you have any evidence we work harder than before, cite it. Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, That's definitely not the case, since the numbers I cited are adjusted for inflation. To determine whether average Joe has more buying power, simply compare the goods and services available to him to those of his parents. That's a clear win - when I was a kid, avocados were an expensive luxury to be consumed only once in a while, and I was often bored with nothing to read.

nostrademons 10y ago

Anyone who is successfully bilking the system so they can make large amounts of money doing a job they enjoy is not going to crow about it on social media. (Well, except for brokenmasonjars, who is currently downvoted to oblivion here.) You get a very skewed perception of reality reading human-interest pieces, because nobody wants to read an article about someone who is doing better than them in every way, having more fun too, and is going to act like a douche and crow about it to the news media. And if you have half a brain, you don't want that article to be written about you.

Applejinx 10y ago

If Fiverr is going on about "beating the trust-fund kids", that is inadvertently exposing a severe unpatched exploit which has nothing to do with protestant work ethic. It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game entirely. Systemically, the correct winning strategy is already to have huge sums of capital. I'm not sure if there's a half-measures strategy for starting with only a little capital: perhaps it's primarily luck, as it is for most/all big investors? But there's certainly no strategy for beginning with only sweat equity and having that turn efficiently into capital, so the 'protestant work ethic' is a mighty sad and inappropriate thing to have right now. I think the combination of this ethic and huge capital holdings is largely a thing of the past, and can hold people back from larger wealth because they're looking for ways to expand that involve work, and this competes against more efficient, purer capital strategies based around pure capital manipulation (which is strongly incentivised, for instance with tax incentives).

coldtea 10y ago
>It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. Currently? And why would "how hard you work" play any role? A surgeon doing 20 hour shifts gets way untold times less money than e.g. Tim Cook or some absentee CEO -- as their pay, not as their returns from capital investments. And let's not compare a miner who risks their life (and lungs) underground with some cushy executive.

archevel 10y ago

> Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility. One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts an important point. The US as the land of opportunity is clearly a false image, since you have a lower chance of climbing out of poverty there than in a lot of other countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States#Comparisons_with_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...

rmc 10y ago

> Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic? The UK has Protestantism as an official state religion and yet it has the NHS, mandatory paid holidays etc.

coldtea 10y ago
The average UK citizen hardly cares for any religion, much less have the protestant work ethic being pervasive. In fact the Church of England if often jokingly called the closest thing a church has to atheism. Don't conflate nominal state religions with actual ideas at play in citizen's heads...

cyphunk 10y ago

Upward mobility in the US is a myth fed through fables. Measured by % of population that transitions from the lower 5th economic ladder to the top 5th the US ranks lower than the large majority of OECD peers [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study...

rsync 10y ago

"Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?" Actually, that's testable, to a degree ... The largest and most potent concentration of "the protestant work ethic" produced switzerland, which is the nicest and best place on earth. I don't think too much PWE is our problem.