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What Is Your Time Worth?
- daniel-cussen 6y ago> Benjamin Franklin, in between spending time flying kites and visiting prostitutes What the hell is your problem with Ben Franklin, NPR? Can't you talk about any of the thousands of things he did before jumping straight to his sins? Otherwise it's a good article.
- throwawaysea 6y agoThe cynic in me feels this type of jab is part of a broad trend by activists (and activist journalists) in tearing down the 'founding fathers' or 'fundamental principles' of America. Attacking those symbols leaves open a vacuum for other ideologies to come in - it's a key part of making a pivot happen towards different principles (whether that is anti-free-speech or pro-collectivism or whatever else).
- kace91 6y agoThis reaction is pretty unusual for me, coming from Europe. Glaring sins is basically how we can tell our historical figures apart in history class (you know the king that was extra ugly due to inbreeding, the one that liked to have a bajillion lovers, the one that was a religious nut, etc). I can't think of a single historical figure that is treated with reverent respect to the point that such a jab would cause even a blink, _including religious figures._
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThere's been a recent (say 15yr, picking up a lot of speed in the last 5) to use these failings as an excuse to ignore everything that these people had to say. The fact that Jefferson owned slaves doesn't really cast any shade on what he had to say about aborculture.
- throwaway03857 6y agoGotta agree with this. From the outside the American habit of venerating national symbols in a quasi religious manner, be it the "founding fathers", constitution, flag, office of the president, national anthem etc. is really weird and something more often seen in dictatorships than democracies.
- franciscop 6y agoThat is throwawaysea point isn't it? We point out the sins of the monarchs of the past since we have given to a new political system. For that matter, you will rarely see a teacher referring to a recent politician they like by their glaring sins (though if they are good teachers they will at least point them out once).
- majormajor 6y agoIt's probably something of a response of a 20th century trend to turn US history into religion. "Patriotism" has been promoted to extreme lengths in the last century, with fun shit like the Pledge of Allegiance. (Where would we be had we pledged allegiance to the king instead of having a revolution?) And "un-American" heretical ideas like communism were weeded out with religious fervor. I think the massive reduction in frequency of Constitutional amendments is related. We were supposed to be improving and adapting our democracy on the fly, but now we've been convinced we're supposed to treat is as holy writ instead.
- burntoutfire 6y agoBut, also, prostitution is supposed the be viewed just as a morally neutral "sex work", not different from being a hairdresser or sandwich artist?
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- mdgrech23 6y agoit's the age of retribution. If you were male and european no matter how great your accomplishments were when you were alive you will be judged by the standards of today. On the other hand I think a lot of ppl forget that actions they take for granted today like eating meat or having a heavy carbon footprint may not be taken so kindly by history.
- gonzo41 6y agoIn other parts of the world, like europe, visiting prostitutes isn't a sin. That's an American sin.
- cathyreisenwitz 6y agoI think the better question is what the hell is your problem with prostitutes
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThe author was the one who brought it up in a negative light. I personally think Benjamin Franklin's antics make him even more qualified to give life advice.
- franciscop 6y agoI am not sure of that; was flying kites brought in a negative light? No, right? It reads to me like two "amusing" things he used to do (without moral judgement), but it could be meant to be a positive and a negative for contrast as well. I don't think flying a kite is strongly positive, more like just amusing, so I'm inclined to say those are two surprising facts.
- cookie_monsta 6y agoBut isn't that just the result of your moral judgment on his pastimes (as sinful I guess). For me, the idea behind lumping visiting prostitutes together with flying kites was about pointing out that, regardless of reputation, BF did some frivolous stuff (and then went on to write an essay about how important time was).
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago> BF did some frivolous stuff He wasn't an autist who had an obsession with kites, he was conducting expirements with electricity during a thunderstorm.
- aminozuur 6y agoA lot to myself. Next to nothing to most others.
- claudiawerner 6y agoApparently 26000 GBP a year, which is somewhat depressing.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago"Half of what your household makes working that amount of time" sounds like a better evaluation than a flat $19/hour for anyone... and might actually end up as the same (though somewhat meaningless) average considering that they worked with expensive cities to get the data!
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- bla3 6y agoThe article says that the government came up with $14/h. It also says that Lyft can measure this by what people are willing to pay for an earlier ride, and that works out to $19/h. Then it claims that that's in conflict. But people who use Lyft likely want to go somewhere else, so it's not an unbiased sample. For that reason, isn't it unsurprising that Lyft gets a somewhat higher figure?
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoAlso there's a huge slice of the population that takes a "screw that, too expensive" approach to Lift/Uber/Taxis. Their transit needs still presumably fall under the scope of the DOT though, so that would drag the government's number down relative to Lyft's.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoA common beginner mistake I see on finance forums is when people calculate some notional hourly wage for their time, usually from their salary divided by working hours in a year, and then use that to justify any time saving purchase they want to make. This misleads people into thinking that they're actually saving money by hiring house cleaners or dining out to save time. The mistake is that this only holds true in very narrow situations. If you're an hourly freelancer with more work in your queue than hours in the day, it can make sense to order DoorDash so you can continue working billable hours. The alternative is to stop working, prepare food, and lose out on that marginal income. Meanwhile, most salaried people or hourly workers on fixed schedules aren't actually saving any money this way because they were never giving up billable hours in the first place. A more accurate way to read this story is "How much are people willing to pay to save time?"
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>A common beginner mistake I see on finance forums is when people calculate some notional hourly wage for their time, usually from their salary divided by working hours in a year, and then use that to justify any time saving purchase they want to make. I see people talking about "what's your time worth" on hobby forums all the f-ing time. At this point I just assume they're justifying laziness because that's what it is far more often than not. Interestingly enough, you pretty much never see people who are self employed and could be booking billable hours instead of doing other things invoking the "value of my time" argument for doing or not doing things.
- christiansakai 6y agoI think this is even pushed by the idea like 4 Hour Workweek and some other self-help books.
- porknubbins 6y agoHaving been on exactly the hourly pay schedule you mention, I still kind of hated the “what is your time worth” question because I could never justify things like cooking my own food so I should order 100% of meals delivered and work 12 hour days never leaving the office.
- motohagiography 6y agoI consult, and when clients ask why my rate is higher I tell them they're not paying me for my time, they're paying for theirs. Your time is worth however much time you save for the organization paying for it.
- conductr 6y agoI managed $20M+ of consulting spend over past few years. I get what you’re saying. I do. I need results and I need SMEs so I’ll gladly pay the rates. But, I’ve come to think of contractor rates are actually just market rates and thus appear to be colluded. A similar thing I see happen in construction contracting as well. A “going rate” is informally decided (eg. price per foot for flooring installation), so I could get 10 quotes and they will look very similar; the outliers being fly by nights and the white gloves. I don’t see the rates as tied to much else than what they feel the market will bear. It will go up as quickly as the market will allow.
- kube-system 6y agoSurely the demand for these services is not completely inelastic. If purchasers as an aggregate did not think that that the service was worth the price, other people would have to drop their rates or they'd not get business. The fact that their rates are similar does not suggest they're colluded -- the going rate is expected to be similar between competitors in a competitive market. People with higher than average rates will be encouraged to drop their rates when people do not hire them, and people with low rates will be encouraged to raise them when they are swamped with work and are continually told they were the cheapest.
- conductr 6y agoI said as much > contractor rates are actually just market rates and thus appear to be colluded But I’ve also seen these rates “protected” on the supply side (eg keeping resources benched, etc). Typical salary “bands” for same role, experience, etc. are usually pretty wide. Hourly rate quotes are extremely consistent. Yet underlying value is labor. To be clear, I’m not asserting that any foul play. Just an interesting observation.
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- owenversteeg 6y agoIf you didn't read the article (you should, it's a very short read), the answer is basically that an hour of your free time is worth $14/hr according to the government and $19/hr according to some economists doing experiments at Lyft. The economists of course see their study as groundbreaking and claim their value of time is "significantly larger than what the U.S. government values people's time at". But $19/hr is only 35% more than $14/hr, and they measured the value of people's time in 9 US cities. Sounds to me like that's simply because most numbers in US cities - salaries, cost of living etc - are at least 35% higher. In any case, I think that number is very individual. For example, tons of people in America who make in the $7-15/hr ish range spend hours of their time on "beermoney" tasks, which pay only a few dollars an hour. Is their time, then, worth the $2ish/hr they make with beermoney tasks? Then you have the marginal value of time. Say you're buying tickets to an event: you might spend, say, $8 to skip a 20 minute line, but you wouldn't spend $50 to skip a 2 hour wait - that is, as the duration gets longer, your hourly rate gets lower. And of course people will often pay exorbitant amounts of money to save time in specific situations (you're late for a date so you call a taxi, you're late for a meeting so you take the high speed train etc.) Personally, I have saved insane amounts of money by "setting my rate low", so to speak, doing everything to save money from taking cheaper flights to building my own home (a boat.) Firstly, a penny saved is actually between 1.6-2 pennies earned after taxes and other benefits. Secondly, additional work has many hidden costs - commute, stress, time spent finding a job, etc etc - that mean your job costs a lot more time than the time you're paid for. And finally, saving has a bit of a "momentum" behind it. Change your own oil and the first time might be difficult, but the third time will be easy, and oh hey, maybe I can change that light myself, and soon enough you'll save tons of money over the life of your vehicle. Expensive habits, however, tend to build on each other: oh, you got an iPhone, those Airpods do go well with it, oh and the Apple watch would work great with the fitness app to track my health... and suddenly you've spent $2000 on unnecessary consumer electronics - which, to earn back, you'd need to make an additional ~$3200-$4000 of pre-tax, pre-benefit income! I think a big problem is that people don't really understand the "cost" of each additional dollar earned. For most people reading this, of each additional dollar of income, the amount you actually get after accounting for everything is somewhere between $0.48 and $0.60. Seriously! It's not just your federal marginal tax rate, it's many other things - state taxes, many forms of government benefits, reduced insurance rates below a certain income, you pay more for your kids' college, etc etc etc. And that $0.48-$0.60 is assuming you make a decent income (if you don't make a decent income, or have kids, this number is even worse!) If anyone's interested in this kind of thing, I would highly recommend the interactive page on benefits cliffs by the Atlanta Fed.