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This is from a 1993 book. There's no mention of the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education, compared to preindustrial labourers sta

by dash2 7y ago

This is from a 1993 book. There's no mention of the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education, compared to preindustrial labourers starting work before age 11. Or of the concept "retirement", which would have been hard for medieval peasants to imagine. There's also this pertinent commentary from 1995: https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%20events/publications/economic%20commentary/1995/ec%2019950115%20the%20myth%20of%20the%20overworked%20american%20pdf.pdf https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%... "The central message of this Economic Commentary is that the presumption of declining leisure is in fact a fallacy. Previous studies purporting to have uncovered such a fact have not adequately disentangled time spent in home production..."

tryitnow 7y ago
I think it's very hard to "pretty pleasant" - I'm glad that your educational experience was that way, but for a lot of people education is a form of work. In fact, I would bet most students would prefer work to education - and indeed many vote with their feet and drop out of education. Heck, even on HN there are many of us who hated "education" - it wasn't pleasant at all. As for retirement, well that's an unfair comparison, life expectancy at middle age was a lot lower in pre-industrial times, mostly as a result of poor public health knowledge and practice. Furthermore, there was de facto retirement as families and communities took care of elders - but who knows how that related to retirement today. The author of this book probably doesn't know and you certainly don't know. The Cleveland Fed's Economic Commentary is absolutely positively not pertinent. It is comparing the 1950s to the 1980s, not pre-industrial labor to industrial labor. Did you just google "myth of XYZ" and copy and paste the first result without reading it? And by the way, even on its own merits that Economic Commentary is pretty suspect. It doesn't look like it takes into consideration commute times, time spent shopping, time spent on administrative overheard like paying bills figuring out insurance payments and the whole host of bureaucratic non-sense that a market economy requires customers to engage - all of that is work, it's not leisure and it needs to be accounted for.
- greyhair 7y ago
  Preindustrial you didn't spend time shopping, you spent time growing your own food and preserving it. You didn't spend time figuring out insurance, because there was no health care, at all. You didn't have bills because you paid up front, or you did without. The part about the commute though, I'll grant you that. During the last thirty five years, my commute was two and a half hours each day for eighteen years. They rest has been reasonable, but that eighteen was awful.
inscionent 7y ago
15 - 21 I had at least one job, usually two, and was in school full time. School was an additional job. School was a ladder out of devastating poverty. School was an opportunity to not be used for my base physical labor. School was hope. It was not 'Pretty Pleasant'. Medieval peasants couldn't imagine modern dentistry either but I'm sure we have it good enough and can stop improving working conditions. Most Americans don't have saving to handle a one time emergency, much less free capital to fully retire. A leisurely retirement sounds like a realistic proposition for a lucky few.
banannaise 7y ago
> the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education From everything I've seen in the US, high school (age 14+) and college are more work than a full-time job, and many students also work a part-time job on top. I'm not sure "pretty pleasant" is quite so accurate.
- danzig13 7y ago
  And you pay for the privilege.

by dash2 7y ago

tryitnow 7y ago

I think it's very hard to "pretty pleasant" - I'm glad that your educational experience was that way, but for a lot of people education is a form of work. In fact, I would bet most students would prefer work to education - and indeed many vote with their feet and drop out of education. Heck, even on HN there are many of us who hated "education" - it wasn't pleasant at all. As for retirement, well that's an unfair comparison, life expectancy at middle age was a lot lower in pre-industrial times, mostly as a result of poor public health knowledge and practice. Furthermore, there was de facto retirement as families and communities took care of elders - but who knows how that related to retirement today. The author of this book probably doesn't know and you certainly don't know. The Cleveland Fed's Economic Commentary is absolutely positively not pertinent. It is comparing the 1950s to the 1980s, not pre-industrial labor to industrial labor. Did you just google "myth of XYZ" and copy and paste the first result without reading it? And by the way, even on its own merits that Economic Commentary is pretty suspect. It doesn't look like it takes into consideration commute times, time spent shopping, time spent on administrative overheard like paying bills figuring out insurance payments and the whole host of bureaucratic non-sense that a market economy requires customers to engage - all of that is work, it's not leisure and it needs to be accounted for.

greyhair 7y ago
Preindustrial you didn't spend time shopping, you spent time growing your own food and preserving it. You didn't spend time figuring out insurance, because there was no health care, at all. You didn't have bills because you paid up front, or you did without. The part about the commute though, I'll grant you that. During the last thirty five years, my commute was two and a half hours each day for eighteen years. They rest has been reasonable, but that eighteen was awful.

inscionent 7y ago

15 - 21 I had at least one job, usually two, and was in school full time. School was an additional job. School was a ladder out of devastating poverty. School was an opportunity to not be used for my base physical labor. School was hope. It was not 'Pretty Pleasant'. Medieval peasants couldn't imagine modern dentistry either but I'm sure we have it good enough and can stop improving working conditions. Most Americans don't have saving to handle a one time emergency, much less free capital to fully retire. A leisurely retirement sounds like a realistic proposition for a lucky few.

banannaise 7y ago

> the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education From everything I've seen in the US, high school (age 14+) and college are more work than a full-time job, and many students also work a part-time job on top. I'm not sure "pretty pleasant" is quite so accurate.

danzig13 7y ago
And you pay for the privilege.