4 ms·

Out of curiosity, how much is the stress in those jobs linked to the fear of losing the job, and how much to the job itself?

throwanem 9y ago
Neither, mostly. Or both. Let me see if I can usefully elucidate. In the short term, the stress originates in the fact that the pay sucks; even if you work as hard as you can all the time and get all the hours you can handle, you still barely get by in the best of times - and one serious medical issue, for example, is more than enough to wipe you out financially for good. In the long term, these jobs entail extensive physical labor, and it takes very little time to realize that there's eventually going to be a hard limit on your ability to continue to do such work - especially if you work as hard as you can all the time and get all the hours you can handle. Sooner or later, you're just going to be too old and too beat up to continue, and the longer you do this kind of work, the higher your risk of the kind of injury whose repair costs will wipe you out as I describe above. And even if you beat all the odds and never get sick or get hurt, what happens when you can't work any more? Funding even a minimally feasible retirement runs to the mid- to high six figures at best, and doing this kind of work all your life, you're lucky to top out at fifty thousand a year - and that's if you can get such work at all, when illegal day labor is so much more cost-effective. So you're pretty much screwed both ways, when this kind of work is the best your abilities enable you to find. You don't make enough money to provide a stable life for yourself and your family, and when you run up against the physical infirmities that come to us all but most quickly to those who use their bodies hardest, you cease being able to make even that much, and then what the hell do you do?
- danmaz74 9y ago
  Thanks for the answer. In most of the EU your healthcare costs are mostly covered by the State and, if you become unable to work, you usually get some kind of disability pensions. But I understand that, without this kind of "insurance", there is a lot more stress even in jobs where you don't have big responsibilities.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    In most of the EU, the US subsidizes your defense budget, too.
    - danmaz74 9y ago
      Do you really think that, if we spent more on our armies, you would spend less? Anyway, I'm not saying that our system is better - for example, here it's more difficult to find a job, and wages are usually lower enough (also because of the taxes necessary to finance the welfare state). What I was really thinking about is how much having to worry about medical expenses and retirement money changes the stress level in certain kinds of jobs.
      - throwanem 9y ago
        I think that if we spent less on our armies, we'd have more to spend on the sorts of social benefits Europeans regard as table stakes and pride themselves on having. In the abstract sense, it'd also be curious to see what effect on those social benefits would result from a termination of the security guarantees which the US has extended to an ever broader fraction of Europe since 1949. I'm not so cruel a man as to actually wish such an outcome on anyone, but I certainly would like to see the people charged with the responsibility of governing my nation take an interest in the wellbeing of my nation, rather than investing so much expense and effort in defending an entire continent which can barely be moved even to a token expression of gratitude, much less any actual quid pro quo, in exchange for it. As regards the remainder of your comment - yes, without social guarantees of medical care and a livable retirement, life is much more stressful than it would otherwise be, and this additional stress is inversely proportional to socioeconomic standing, with an exponential term in the function. Is this really such a novel thought as your comments here make it seem? I find it obvious beyond the point of triviality, but I suppose someone who's never actually lived with it might not previously have had cause to give it any consideration.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- _Tev 9y ago
  Wow, USA is pretty terrible place to live. Here cashiers and such actually ARE stress-free jobs. Managing people is always bigger PITA than just smiling all day on the customers ...

throwanem 9y ago

Neither, mostly. Or both. Let me see if I can usefully elucidate. In the short term, the stress originates in the fact that the pay sucks; even if you work as hard as you can all the time and get all the hours you can handle, you still barely get by in the best of times - and one serious medical issue, for example, is more than enough to wipe you out financially for good. In the long term, these jobs entail extensive physical labor, and it takes very little time to realize that there's eventually going to be a hard limit on your ability to continue to do such work - especially if you work as hard as you can all the time and get all the hours you can handle. Sooner or later, you're just going to be too old and too beat up to continue, and the longer you do this kind of work, the higher your risk of the kind of injury whose repair costs will wipe you out as I describe above. And even if you beat all the odds and never get sick or get hurt, what happens when you can't work any more? Funding even a minimally feasible retirement runs to the mid- to high six figures at best, and doing this kind of work all your life, you're lucky to top out at fifty thousand a year - and that's if you can get such work at all, when illegal day labor is so much more cost-effective. So you're pretty much screwed both ways, when this kind of work is the best your abilities enable you to find. You don't make enough money to provide a stable life for yourself and your family, and when you run up against the physical infirmities that come to us all but most quickly to those who use their bodies hardest, you cease being able to make even that much, and then what the hell do you do?

danmaz74 9y ago
Thanks for the answer. In most of the EU your healthcare costs are mostly covered by the State and, if you become unable to work, you usually get some kind of disability pensions. But I understand that, without this kind of "insurance", there is a lot more stress even in jobs where you don't have big responsibilities.
- throwanem 9y ago
  In most of the EU, the US subsidizes your defense budget, too.
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    Do you really think that, if we spent more on our armies, you would spend less? Anyway, I'm not saying that our system is better - for example, here it's more difficult to find a job, and wages are usually lower enough (also because of the taxes necessary to finance the welfare state). What I was really thinking about is how much having to worry about medical expenses and retirement money changes the stress level in certain kinds of jobs.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      I think that if we spent less on our armies, we'd have more to spend on the sorts of social benefits Europeans regard as table stakes and pride themselves on having. In the abstract sense, it'd also be curious to see what effect on those social benefits would result from a termination of the security guarantees which the US has extended to an ever broader fraction of Europe since 1949. I'm not so cruel a man as to actually wish such an outcome on anyone, but I certainly would like to see the people charged with the responsibility of governing my nation take an interest in the wellbeing of my nation, rather than investing so much expense and effort in defending an entire continent which can barely be moved even to a token expression of gratitude, much less any actual quid pro quo, in exchange for it. As regards the remainder of your comment - yes, without social guarantees of medical care and a livable retirement, life is much more stressful than it would otherwise be, and this additional stress is inversely proportional to socioeconomic standing, with an exponential term in the function. Is this really such a novel thought as your comments here make it seem? I find it obvious beyond the point of triviality, but I suppose someone who's never actually lived with it might not previously have had cause to give it any consideration.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
_Tev 9y ago
Wow, USA is pretty terrible place to live. Here cashiers and such actually ARE stress-free jobs. Managing people is always bigger PITA than just smiling all day on the customers ...