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If you can bill $craploads per hour, why work 50-60 hours a week? I'd work 30. Maybe 20.
by hugh3 16y ago
If you can bill $craploads per hour, why work 50-60 hours a week? I'd work 30. Maybe 20.
- philwelch 16y agoYes, this is what economists call the "backwards-bending supply curve for labor". Turns out if you pay people craploads per hour, you get fewer hours out of them, not more. This is unlike every other supply curve--if you pay $1,000 per hour of labor you get less labor than if you pay $100 per hour of labor, but if you pay $1,000 per gross of self-sealing stem bolts you get way, way, way more self-sealing stem bolts than if you pay $100 per gross of self-sealing stem bolts. The worst you get from ordinary supply curves is diminishing returns. If you paid $1,000,000 per bushel of apples, well, you're just throwing away money--I'm sure we'd max out the earth's apple-growing capacity well before $500,000 per bushel. Labor's the only supply curve that actually bends back.