3 ms·

> people work far less than they ever did before Sure, if you look at the last 150 years, but the data you linked is basically flat since 1980: over the last 3

> people work far less than they ever did before Sure, if you look at the last 150 years, but the data you linked is basically flat since 1980: over the last 30 years in the United States, working hours are down 2%.

cableshaft 4y ago
Yeah, if anything that chart highlights how workers in the US are getting screwed compared to countries like Germany on number of hours worked. They're working only about 77% as many hours, on average.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  Yea, really screwed. Choosing the top country by least hours worked is not appropriate as a baseline. Look at Mexico, or any Asian country besides Japan. They work their asses off compared to Americans. Meanwhile software engineers in the U.S. make more than twice their German counterparts' salary: https://www.google.com/amp/s/codesubmit.io/blog/software-engineer-salary-by-country/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/codesubmit.io/blog/software-eng... Of course, not everyone is a software engineer. But it doesn't seem surprising there would be a correlation between fewer hours worked and lower salaries, likely because employers who are able to pick countries to hire from will avoid those where individual workers do the least amount of work.
  - cableshaft 4y ago
    It's not 1:1 for other reasons either besides just pay, like you don't have to pay anything for college tuition in Germany and they have universal healthcare, so you pay a ton less for healthcare expenses also, so that helps close the gap for lesser pay (also, you're working 30% less hours on average, so you have more free time to pursue other things, including a part time job if you really need to). $400/month of my take home pay for over a decade was just in student loan payments, and I got off easy compared to a lot of Americans there. My wife, for example, is still paying about $1000/month, and that's after knocking it down by about $30k recently thanks to a couple windfalls. And she's been paying hers for almost 10 years at this point as well. They also pay about 80% of your prior salary in unemployment, whereas here it's a hard cap at a really small amount (I think last time I was on it I was getting about a third of my previous salary, and my salary was a lot lower then).
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      You seem like a rational person. Why haven't you moved to Germany?
      - cableshaft 4y ago
        I don't know German, I don't think it's in the best location for geographic and geopolitical reasons (see Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy crisis, climate change), my family and friends are here and I value that a lot (also why I haven't moved to Silicon Valley despite living in the US), I already own a house where I'm at and it would be a pain to move, I've never visited and I don't tend to move to a place I haven't at least visited first (I had an opportunity to go in 2019 to volunteer to work a booth for a friend's company at the Essen board game convention, but got too busy), etc. Personally Canada appeals to me more and I might move there at some point (or at least closer to the Canadian border), but I can still acknowledge there being good things about Germany while having reasons not to move there myself. I do think I should probably move somewhere with universal healthcare before I get too old as I will probably have enough health problems that would either bankrupt me or wipe out my retirement if I stayed in the US, like has happened to several of my family and friends.

cableshaft 4y ago

Yeah, if anything that chart highlights how workers in the US are getting screwed compared to countries like Germany on number of hours worked. They're working only about 77% as many hours, on average.

listenallyall 4y ago
Yea, really screwed. Choosing the top country by least hours worked is not appropriate as a baseline. Look at Mexico, or any Asian country besides Japan. They work their asses off compared to Americans. Meanwhile software engineers in the U.S. make more than twice their German counterparts' salary: https://www.google.com/amp/s/codesubmit.io/blog/software-engineer-salary-by-country/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/codesubmit.io/blog/software-eng... Of course, not everyone is a software engineer. But it doesn't seem surprising there would be a correlation between fewer hours worked and lower salaries, likely because employers who are able to pick countries to hire from will avoid those where individual workers do the least amount of work.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  It's not 1:1 for other reasons either besides just pay, like you don't have to pay anything for college tuition in Germany and they have universal healthcare, so you pay a ton less for healthcare expenses also, so that helps close the gap for lesser pay (also, you're working 30% less hours on average, so you have more free time to pursue other things, including a part time job if you really need to). $400/month of my take home pay for over a decade was just in student loan payments, and I got off easy compared to a lot of Americans there. My wife, for example, is still paying about $1000/month, and that's after knocking it down by about $30k recently thanks to a couple windfalls. And she's been paying hers for almost 10 years at this point as well. They also pay about 80% of your prior salary in unemployment, whereas here it's a hard cap at a really small amount (I think last time I was on it I was getting about a third of my previous salary, and my salary was a lot lower then).
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    You seem like a rational person. Why haven't you moved to Germany?
    - cableshaft 4y ago
      I don't know German, I don't think it's in the best location for geographic and geopolitical reasons (see Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy crisis, climate change), my family and friends are here and I value that a lot (also why I haven't moved to Silicon Valley despite living in the US), I already own a house where I'm at and it would be a pain to move, I've never visited and I don't tend to move to a place I haven't at least visited first (I had an opportunity to go in 2019 to volunteer to work a booth for a friend's company at the Essen board game convention, but got too busy), etc. Personally Canada appeals to me more and I might move there at some point (or at least closer to the Canadian border), but I can still acknowledge there being good things about Germany while having reasons not to move there myself. I do think I should probably move somewhere with universal healthcare before I get too old as I will probably have enough health problems that would either bankrupt me or wipe out my retirement if I stayed in the US, like has happened to several of my family and friends.