11 ms·

Why didn’t we get the four-hour workday?

89 points by feross 4y ago

eitau_1 4y ago
Housing costs, which are proportional to average population income, force us to compete in a Red Queen's race - everyone's earnings have to catch up with others'.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  There are other, more hedonic treadmills as well. Aluminium used to be expensive enough to make fancy tableware from, but now that it is dirt cheap, people want to buy iPhones instead. I hope there are some among us who (cf Carnegie) might view building the equivalent of libraries as a positional good?
  - jrpt 4y ago
    An iPhone every few years is a very insignificant cost compared to a house.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Cars are a significant one. Most people spend way more than they have to on cars for luxury features they don’t need for transport. Personally I opted for no car even though I can easily afford it. It’s a huge amount saved and honestly the lifestyle of walking to places is nicer anyway.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        Living somewhere I didn't need a car would be way more expensive for me than owning a car--even if I didn't care about the lack of mobility.
        Gigachad 4y ago
        That wasn't how it worked out for me. The average cost of a car in Australia a few years ago was $10,000/year factoring in everything with the car value depreciation. This is much worse now with the increase in fuel and car values. Your increase in rent would have to be over $200AUD/week to be more expensive than owning a car. Not to mention the fact you benefit from living in a much more desirable area and everything else that comes with.
        ghaff 4y ago
        It depends. I live in an exurb of a major US metro on the East Coast. It's hard to compare costs directly as I own a house but anything remotely equivalent in the city on public transit lines would be much pricier. As for desirable? Well I have forest trails right out of my house. Don't care that much about walking to cafes and restaurants.
    - lossolo 4y ago
      It's about keeping up with joneses more than an specific item like iPhone, which is just an example of this phenomenon.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  What decade do you live in where housing costs are proportional to the average population's income? Asking for a friend.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Monthly rents and mortgage payments are proportional to disposable incomes, pretty much by definition. People competitively bid up the prices in terms of what they can each afford.
    - brailsafe 4y ago
      I think it's more closely related to scarcity and how much someone's mortgage can be subsidized by monthly rents, and a lack of choice for renters to have other options. I don't think a lot of mortgage holders would be able to realistically pay their mortages if they weren't renting their basement out, and I know a lot of people who have houses now wouldn't be able to buy them because their salaries are wildly inadequate for servicing what they'd list for. But generally you're right if that dynamic weren't so insane. A 1 bdr condo in my city would cost an overall ~$4000 for a really old condo in a shitty building, and there's <9% of people on record in the country who'd be able to afford that without a ton of pressure, and the only people I know that own anything more than that absolutely couldn't pay for it without renting our all of their rooms. I guess it's still proportional in the sense that eventually renters will literally just have no money left
    - srveale 4y ago
      House price to income ratio is increasing, meaning price is not proportional to income, pretty much by definition.
      - HPsquared 4y ago
        It depends on the definition of "housing costs". Monthly payments determine whether something is possible on a given income. Total cost is more a question of whether it's a good deal or not.
    - 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  I blame bullshit jobs and management. I can be productive with less than 40 hours, I can't be a manager/PM/VP's butler if I'm away from my computer.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Then why are there rich and poor sides of a town? In many cases, people earning high incomes spend extra time to drive past lower priced housing to get to their higher priced housing. No one forced them to pay more than the minimum for housing.
  - kiba 4y ago
    No one forced them to pay more than the minimum for housing. Not all land in a given area are equal in their attribute and there's fundamental scarcity in desirable lands. The richest presumably purchases houses in locations that has the most amenities, while everybody scrambles for the rest.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Hence it is not housing costs “forcing” people to compete, it is people’s desire to have more than others. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, it is very well possible the lower priced housing has unacceptable attributes, but that leads to different causal factors.
      - kiba 4y ago
        Where you live also determine access to jobs, educations, and other opportunities. Cities are more valuable for this reason. It is also determined by housing supply in a given location and transportation policies, how we decided that homes are investments which increases exclusionary NIMBY behaviors. It is not merely 'desire to have more' than the other that determine the cost of living.
      - dropit_sphere 4y ago
        lower-priced housing often has unacceptable attributes simply by virtue being lower-priced, as crime rates and schools are worse.
  - marmadukester39 4y ago
    Its because of the schools. Since we in the US tied school funding to property taxes, getting your kid a good education if you arent truly wealthy enough to pay for private schools (now 30kish per kid per year) means living near other better off people , or sacrificing your kids future and perhaps their safey.
- akgerber 4y ago
  Housing costs are a basket of the cost of the housing unit itself and land costs. Regulation limiting how densely housing may be built atop land, when this limit is lower than the number of housing units demanded, is what causes the Red Queen's race dynamic.
  - torben-friis 4y ago
    Land is still limited (given an interest in low distance to a hub) and density is physically limited as well, regardless of regulation.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Hubs can be built, though.
- ZainRiz 4y ago
  Housing can be very cheap if you're willing to live in a small town. It feels expensive only when people want to cluster around the same, limited number of areas. If you're not tied by an employer, then you can be way more flexible about how you spend your housing budget
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > It feels expensive only when people want to cluster around the same, limited number of areas. Yes, it is cheaper to live where fewer people want to live. But, usually, there are reasons fewer people want to live there.
    - yamazakiwi 4y ago
      Most adults are tied to an employer unfortunately
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        I work remote and chose to buy an apartment in a highrise. There is so much more to life than just working. Being close to everything improves so much. It’s hard to explain how good life is when you live within walking distance of friends and can spontaneously decide to go to the cafe for breakfast rather than having to schedule an event days in advance so people can transport in.
        twelve40 4y ago
        I've been thinking about this recently. I have friends who happily move out to pretty remote places, like the Pocono mountains or remote parts of Koh Phangan, etc, none of which is walkable and typically requires a 1+hr trip on a car or a scooter. Yet, they seem to have no problem socializing and having over tons of friends and partners. I guess it depends on charisma or something? If your friends or tinder dates think it's totally worth heading out to boondocks every time. I'm more with you, really want to be in the middle of things and everything walkable, but I have seen very sociable people thrive without that.
- lossolo 4y ago
  It's not housing costs for most societies in developed countries, it's keeping up with joneses, which constantly change the meaning of "standard way of living". 1000 years ago most people would kill to live in standard of currently developed countries poverty level.
johnea 4y ago
Ha Ha 8-) Nice history lesson! The author left out the most probable hypothesis of why it didn't happen though: ownership kept all that extra productivity and kept working labor just as hard for no more money. The author left out that same option in the concluding statement: Some of them might have just been saying that productivity could be much higher, regardless of whether that turned into shorter working hours, higher wages, or a combination of both ... or neither, all of the money can be diverted to "shareholder value". This is fact the way it's almost always been. Only in situations where labor has been highly organized has the outcome be any different, i.e. workers benefiting from productivity increases.
- rendang 4y ago
  At least in the US, labor share of total income has declined but not nearly enough to counterbalance all productivity growth over the same period https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG
hintymad 4y ago
How many parents would rather have a 5-day daycare or schools, so that they won't be exhausted for staying with their kids for so many hours?
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  In my country, not only 100%, but also 80% and 60% jobs are commonly available, and people do take them — often in order to spend more time with their kids.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > How many parents would rather have a 5-day daycare or schools, so that they won't be exhausted for staying with their kids for so many hours? Wow. I (and many people I know) have switched to jobs with fewer hours but lower pay just to be able to spend more time with my kids. This mindset that ones' own kids are to be avoided as much as possible is mind boggling to me.
  - s0rce 4y ago
    I mean its not too surprising that some people don't like spending time with their children, it would certainly be very depressing if this was the norm.
  - hintymad 4y ago
    Yeah. I was not advocating that people would rather work than spending time with kids. I asked the question simply because people in the tech circle, or at least my circles, half jokingly complain how weekends are more exhausting than weekdays for taking care of kids or how they wish they would have more time reading and writing programs for fun without being interrupted
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  If parents didn't have to work so many hours, I am extremely confident that many of them would choose to spend many of those freed hours with their kids. Of course different people are different. Either way, it's a huge problem that currently most of the people paid to take care of kids (very especially but not only pre-public-school age) are underpaid and overworked -- this does not lead to the kind of care for our collective kids that we would want. Those paid to do childcare especially should be able to work no more hours than they can do while still being attentive and caring and fully invested, and be able to access continuing education and mentorship in how to raise kids, and still live a comfortable life. That is currently not at all how it works in the USA.
readthenotes1 4y ago
I knew a bunch of people who manage to squeeze less than 4 hours of work in an 8 hour work day. I kinda think TikTok, wow, candy crush, etc are are secretly funded by communists to bring down the capitalist west from within
- HWR_14 4y ago
  TikTok is publicly funded by communists to bring down the west.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
obblekk 4y ago
The prediction is $400k/yr income and 4 hours a day. We made it approx 1/6th of the way to the income goal and maybe 1/6th of the way to the time goal, when you account for improved vacation time, sick leave, mat/pat leave, remote work time, etc. all of which consume some of the productivity gain. The big gap is that productivity growth rates didn't really sustain after 1970s leading to slower income growth and slower free time growth (see flattening of curve https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours).
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Grind enough leetcode and this becomes reality though, at least until very recently.
pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
Everyone is quick to say something like, "You're not living by the same standards that were the norm 90 years ago." The response is wanting. Notably, it's not the same as saying, "You could work that much if you wanted--so long as you're willing to endure the same living standards as 90 years ago." That doesn't seem to be true; the choice to opt for those standards doesn't seem to be there.
- icepat 4y ago
  I think you may be right, at least in the developed Western nations. However, there are plenty of countries someone could settle in that have less developed infrastructure, and economies. You would be able to live in the same standards as several decades ago if you worked remotely for a small number of hours a day. I don't mean this to denigrate these countries, but the living standards in some countries are very different. These countries are often "cheap" by Western standards. You could settle in the Balkans, for example, and work a few hours each day, four days a week, and cover expenses very easily with a freelance salary. I know several Americans who moved to Croatia on DN visas specifically because they could only afford to live there on their freelance salaries.
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  A good example with cars : GM has been selling a 5K USD EV in China[0] for 5 years, yet in North America the Bolt EV (which I believe is the cheapest EV) starts at 27.5k USD. Sure, the 5K car is a death trap on wheels, but I doubt it's more dangerous than the cars we had 90 years ago. [0]:https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/07/autos/gm-china-electric-car/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/07/autos/gm-china-electric-car...
  - z3t4 4y ago
    You set the price as high as you can. The production is highly automated. There is some price elasticity meaning if you lower the prise you would sell more, but you are limited by how many buyers there are on the market.
- akgerber 4y ago
Qem 4y ago
The collapse of the Soviet union in the late 80s gave rise to a unipolar capitalist world. That reduced the propensity of governments and corporations to share with workers the big computer-tech fueled productivity gains realized from the 90s onwards. In the previous decades it was easier to workers to negotiate better conditions, as their employees feared they would become communist-friendly if too mistreated. With fear from communism gone, corporations and governments feel free to squeeze their employees, sabotage unions, etc cetera. So productivity gains now go straight to billionaires pockets, instead of reducing the working hours for the rest of us.
- runesofdoom 4y ago
  While I doubt the lack of any major competitor to the capitalist West is the only factor, it certainly get very little attention compared to how plausible it seems.
- dinkumthinkum 4y ago
  That really needs several citations. You really think because the “great” Soviet Union collapsed that businesses decided “wow, we were worried about communism so now that’s not a thing. Now, we can treat workers however we what.” So, you think during the Cold War, Ford was really minding their P’s and Q’s because the threat of Marxist revolution, overthrowing U.S. Constitution, etc was a thing?
- bilegeek 4y ago
  The PATCO strike[1] was '81, and Reagan's admin was RIFE with greed. The trends we see today didn't just spring up with the fall of the Berlin wall in '89; it has deep roots as a reaction[2] to the 70's and 80's. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr... [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tppeGYoWDxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tppeGYoWDxg
anon291 4y ago
People hate being bored. This means if you make people have too much leisure time, they seek alternatives. In the past, this was mainly family and community events. As the strength of both the family and civic social institutions declined, we became dependent on businesses to provide us things our families used to (child care, elder care, parties, dinners, storytelling, entertainment, music, etc). These cause demand for more commercial businesses. As the article states, all the commentators were envisioning a work week dominated only by making sure you had enough to survive. If people actually wanted this, they would be able to achieve it. However, people really want iphones, vacations, nice clothes, etc as well. So there is demand for labor, and where there's demand and a buyer with excess cash, we will step up.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> The technocrats promised every family on the continent of North America $20,000 a year [about $400,000 today], and a sixteen-hour work week. This is perhaps the peak of promises based on an abundance economy. Charles P. Steinmetz saw a two-hour working day on the horizon These projections always read like something that would come from a person who doesn't understand where their food comes from, how much work goes into building and maintaining their housing, or that most people's preferred entertainment options require a lot of work to produce. I could see us arriving at some of these extreme estimates if everyone universally agreed to eat the cheapest synthetic food we could produce with the most automation, live in the most bare-bones housing, and exclusively choose free or cheap entertainment and hobbies. But in the real world, it takes a lot of work to get food to people, build and maintain housing, and the things people like to do and own are also labor-intensive to produce at various stages. There's definitely more room to squeeze labor out of the market through more automation, but that doesn't result in higher wages for people.
- petermcneeley 4y ago
  >There's definitely more room to squeeze labor out of the market through more automation, but that doesn't result in higher wages for people. This statement is kinda in odds with what proceeded it. You are suggesting that "in the real world" this is impossible. But then also conclude with the line of reasoning that you seem to be arguing against.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > These projections always read like something that would come from a person who doesn't understand where their food comes from From a smaller and smaller proportion of the population working in the agricultural field-- about 25-30% of the population in 1930 to about 10% now-- despite producing more calories per person and more meat, etc.
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > From a smaller and smaller proportion of the population working in the agricultural field-- about 25-30% of the population in 1930 to about 10% now-- despite producing more calories per person and more meat, etc. The graphs in the linked article show weekly working hours declining from 50H to 40H over that time frame. Taking agricultural workplace participation from 10% to a hypothetical 1% isn't going to drop working hours from 40H to 10H.
Tarsul 4y ago
We are always talking about 4-day work week or stuff like in this article. However, I am much more interested in the question how much hours one could chip off of the usual 8 hour (office) work day and still be basically 100% productive. My guess is that around 6-7 hours should probably be AS productive as 8 hour-days. But, of course, this is dependend on a lot of factors (e.g. do you still have enough opportunities to communicate with colleagues etc.) which is why I would really like to see more studies about it. Personally, I have just reduced my hours from 40 to about 35 and I love it. It's not just the extra hour that I have in the evening but also that I am way less tired after work (thus can enjoy the rest of the day more). Also, this last hour (to me) always felt like "I have to do it although it ain't productive at all". But that's me. Just one anecdata. I would like more.
Nifty3929 4y ago
One thing not mentioned is that productivity increases in one area free up some of those people to do entirely new jobs that did not previously exist, just because society couldn't afford to allocate people to those jobs. Not many doctors and dentists and so forth 1000 years ago, because the agricultural base couldn't support it. It took 95% of people being farmers to produce enough food for themselves and the remaining 5% of the others. Now 5% of people can produce enough food for the other 95%, which allows them to be doctors and programmers and whatnot.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Alternatively how much of our labor force is working in useless jobs? Aka jobs that just exist because people need a job to survive?
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    first you need to define “useless” which is probably the difficult task
    - sli 4y ago
      This book is about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs It defines them this way: "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case." It goes further and defines various types of thse jobs, with examples for each. Those are included in the Wikipedia article.
      - Nifty3929 4y ago
        I hadn't heard of this book before, but I appreciate this from the wiki article: "As a potential solution, Graeber suggests universal basic income, a livable benefit paid to all, without qualification, which would let people work at their leisure." I think the 'without qualification' part is really important, so that there is no incentive NOT to work, and no stigma attached to receiving the money. Just give it to everybody and otherwise leave them alone.
ricardobeat 4y ago
The table shows the Netherlands with an average 38 days off from work, this looks... wrong? The minimum is 20 days, and ~30 is on the high end for most companies. There is no way that 38 is the average unless the study counted something else.
- sophacles 4y ago
  It's the sum of vacation days and holidays. I don't know how it works in the Netherlands, but in many places the day off for a national holiday is not charged against the vacation days granted by an employer.
  - Tarsul 4y ago
    yeah but when doing this statistic they probably did not cut out the national holidays that fall on weekends (and thus aren't worth anything). I say this as someone who just had to go through December 2022.. ;) Although I've heard that there are a few countries/holidays where the holiday will be put on a workday if it falls on the weekend. However, my home country (Germany) is not such a country.
- rendang 4y ago
  The 20 days is just paid vacation time though, does it also include holidays? https://www.government.nl/topics/working-hours/question-and-answer/public-holidays-in-the-netherlands https://www.government.nl/topics/working-hours/question-and-... shows 11 holidays in NL if I'm counting right
drbeast 4y ago
Because 4 hour work days aren't tenable. Here's a novel concept Why do we have 7 day weeks? Why don't we have a 6 day week with a 2 day weekend? That way we get the benefit of 4 working days, we can standardized the calendar to not have this 31, 28 day nonsense (30 days only), and more importantly working day lengths stay the same. We just get to the weekend faster. I propose the day to be deleted be Saturday because Saturn's mythology is a righteous c*nt. Here's a calendar of what a 6 day week would look like https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/calendars/images/9/93/Calendar-new.png/revision/latest?cb=20140325015724 https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/calendars/images/9/93/Cale...
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >Here's a novel concept Why do we have 7 day weeks? Same reason we have 6 based arithmetic for time and circles. Standardizing on something is more important than what you standardize on in many cases. I'm sure someone will stop by shortly to try and score a few cheap virtue points by claiming the French Republican Calendar was thriving before municipalities killed it at the behest of lobbyists for Big Nobility.
  - drbeast 4y ago
    Get over yourself. We have 7 days because the ancients attached the 7 classical planets to the days. Not rocket science.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      Yes that's the origin of it but why stick with 7? 7 is a shitty prime number and makes slicing and dicing into fractions of weeks hard. It doesn't work perfectly with the lunar calendar either. The point is that there is inherent value in having an adopted standard.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  The French Revolutionary Calendar did attempt to move to 10 day weeks.
aogaili 4y ago
duh, that is trivial question. Because humans are in a constant sexual arm race. People (and mostly men) are judged by economical status which is competitive, some men will use every extra minute to gain any advantage possible. And even if you decide not to participate in this game, then you will be working under someone who does and this person will want to max the output from you.
- aogaili 4y ago
  For the downvotes, I'd like to hear why so I can improve my thinking please.
ernestipark 4y ago
When looking specifically at the tech and startup sector, there's a couple things worth pointing out: * Though the 40 week is still standard, more and more tech people are making their living as independent consultants/contractors, working part-time, advising, retiring early, etc. When you look at the amount of wealth created by tech and software, but also the flexibility and ability to do things like remote work, we actually have made a ton of progress here * In the US at least, as long as health care is tied to full-time employment which is quantified by some arbitrary # of hours, it will be the predominant way to work * Working hours are ultimately set by founders/owners, not by the employees (unless you're in a union like situation). Many software businesses have enough leverage that they can be run fully on fewer than 40 hours/wk, but generally investor interests, greed, desire to grow quickly, wanting to optimize profits, etc etc. Ultimately, culture and precedent is a really strong thing. I'll hypothesize though that after the grind that was COVID, a refocusing on profits vs growth, we're going to see many more balanced businesses taking a far more progressive approach to working hours and reduced time roles. The 4-day work week is just one movement in this direction, and we're going to see a lot more tech companies that offer 20/hr week positions and more.
- silvestrov 4y ago
  > more tech people are making their living as independent consultants/contractors For me it looks like the opposite: today companies want full time employees (with a good LinkedIn profile). Unlike the 90'ies they no longer want independent consultants solving individual projects. And all companies absolutely wants full time no matter the efficiency. Partial time gray beards not wanted.
twelve40 4y ago
> the peak of promises based on an abundance economy What an odd thing to write in 1934, at the very bottom of a terrible depression. Is it an equivalent of a starving person fantasizing of a huge dinner some day?
freddyym 4y ago
In some ways, we did. 0 hour contracts have been on the rise for a while [0] and these can result in drastically varied shifts. One day you could be working for seven hours, another for only four. You could be set to work from 9-5 and get sent home at 3 because you weren't needed. It probably happens more than most expect... [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/414896/employees-with-zero-hours-contracts-number/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/414896/employees-with-ze...
xena 4y ago
Because billionaires can't make more money giving us that.
- twelve40 4y ago
  That's not a very good explanation because the billionaires have always wanted to make more money, but the working conditions have improved (or not) in a more complicated pattern.
antiquark 4y ago
Because there will always be someone willing to work a five-hour workday.
twelve40 4y ago
I think stuff from the recent "people checking out of workforce" threads may also contribute to this: "In 1950, 14 percent of men were out of the labor force. Today, that figure stands at 31 percent." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/men-unemployment-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/men-unemployment... If we take 40 hours (and that's less, according to the original article), then this factor alone would make it 31% less for an average man! So 8 hours a day just turned into 5.52 hours, for men at least. It's just that the rest of the time is not spent puffing cigars at the gentlemen's club as Keynes might have imagined, but stuffing your face with hot pockets playing Call of Duty on your aging parent's couch. However, from the original rootsofprogress.org article, i didn't quite get this part: men aged 20 Work hours Other hours 70,612 (20%) 276,522 (80%) Ok, so retirement, sure. They mentioned child labor, holidays and education, but for most men aged 20 in the US that doesn't even apply (20 is not a child, number of holidays barely went up on their graph, education is irrelevant for 70% of men aged 20). They don't seem to consider the 31% men checking out of workforce. So what is this huge number of non-work hours that makes up 80% of your life? Guess I have to go read the reference.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Okay and what about women?
  - twelve40 4y ago
    i have no idea since i'm just a rando googling things, but there seems to be a ton more data available for men, and it's probably because in the 30's and before that, women were stereotyped much more than today and it's hard to do apples-to-apples. But feel free to pull up more data and contribute to the conversation!
  - metaphor 4y ago
    In the U.S., labor force participate rate for women[1] increased from ~33% to ~58% over the same period, peaking at 60.3% circa Apr 2000. In contrast, participation rate for men[2] bottomed at 66.1% circa Apr 2020...for the time being. Here's some data on aggregate U.S. labor force[3], and breakdowns of men[4] and women[5] constituent components. I'll leave it to the passersby to contemplate. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000001 [5] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000002
SinisterAlex 4y ago
Because people work to fill time.
worfcolderthana 4y ago
If you saw your CPU/GPU went from 99% usage to 1% would you let it chill?
ghaff 4y ago
Maybe I'm unusual but I'd rather see more time off than a shorter every-week workweek. Though the latter is probably easier to achieve to some degree informally.
z3t4 4y ago
Labour is cheep. There is high unemployment, yet companies are crying for talents. You do not get rich by working, you get rich by having others work for you. Just like the old merchants bying from one market and selling for 5x in another market. Many good and service are produced with the help of automation and sold with high margins. Demand is artificially high, or prices are fixed.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > There is high unemployment At least in North America unemployment is very low right now.

89 points by feross 4y ago

Housing costs, which are proportional to average population income, force us to compete in a Red Queen's race - everyone's earnings have to catch up with others'.

082349872349872 4y ago
There are other, more hedonic treadmills as well. Aluminium used to be expensive enough to make fancy tableware from, but now that it is dirt cheap, people want to buy iPhones instead. I hope there are some among us who (cf Carnegie) might view building the equivalent of libraries as a positional good?
- jrpt 4y ago
  An iPhone every few years is a very insignificant cost compared to a house.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Cars are a significant one. Most people spend way more than they have to on cars for luxury features they don’t need for transport. Personally I opted for no car even though I can easily afford it. It’s a huge amount saved and honestly the lifestyle of walking to places is nicer anyway.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Living somewhere I didn't need a car would be way more expensive for me than owning a car--even if I didn't care about the lack of mobility.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        That wasn't how it worked out for me. The average cost of a car in Australia a few years ago was $10,000/year factoring in everything with the car value depreciation. This is much worse now with the increase in fuel and car values. Your increase in rent would have to be over $200AUD/week to be more expensive than owning a car. Not to mention the fact you benefit from living in a much more desirable area and everything else that comes with.
        ghaff 4y ago
        It depends. I live in an exurb of a major US metro on the East Coast. It's hard to compare costs directly as I own a house but anything remotely equivalent in the city on public transit lines would be much pricier. As for desirable? Well I have forest trails right out of my house. Don't care that much about walking to cafes and restaurants.
  - lossolo 4y ago
    It's about keeping up with joneses more than an specific item like iPhone, which is just an example of this phenomenon.
brailsafe 4y ago
What decade do you live in where housing costs are proportional to the average population's income? Asking for a friend.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Monthly rents and mortgage payments are proportional to disposable incomes, pretty much by definition. People competitively bid up the prices in terms of what they can each afford.
  - brailsafe 4y ago
    I think it's more closely related to scarcity and how much someone's mortgage can be subsidized by monthly rents, and a lack of choice for renters to have other options. I don't think a lot of mortgage holders would be able to realistically pay their mortages if they weren't renting their basement out, and I know a lot of people who have houses now wouldn't be able to buy them because their salaries are wildly inadequate for servicing what they'd list for. But generally you're right if that dynamic weren't so insane. A 1 bdr condo in my city would cost an overall ~$4000 for a really old condo in a shitty building, and there's <9% of people on record in the country who'd be able to afford that without a ton of pressure, and the only people I know that own anything more than that absolutely couldn't pay for it without renting our all of their rooms. I guess it's still proportional in the sense that eventually renters will literally just have no money left
  - srveale 4y ago
    House price to income ratio is increasing, meaning price is not proportional to income, pretty much by definition.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      It depends on the definition of "housing costs". Monthly payments determine whether something is possible on a given income. Total cost is more a question of whether it's a good deal or not.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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candiddevmike 4y ago
I blame bullshit jobs and management. I can be productive with less than 40 hours, I can't be a manager/PM/VP's butler if I'm away from my computer.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
Then why are there rich and poor sides of a town? In many cases, people earning high incomes spend extra time to drive past lower priced housing to get to their higher priced housing. No one forced them to pay more than the minimum for housing.
- kiba 4y ago
  No one forced them to pay more than the minimum for housing. Not all land in a given area are equal in their attribute and there's fundamental scarcity in desirable lands. The richest presumably purchases houses in locations that has the most amenities, while everybody scrambles for the rest.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Hence it is not housing costs “forcing” people to compete, it is people’s desire to have more than others. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, it is very well possible the lower priced housing has unacceptable attributes, but that leads to different causal factors.
    - kiba 4y ago
      Where you live also determine access to jobs, educations, and other opportunities. Cities are more valuable for this reason. It is also determined by housing supply in a given location and transportation policies, how we decided that homes are investments which increases exclusionary NIMBY behaviors. It is not merely 'desire to have more' than the other that determine the cost of living.
    - dropit_sphere 4y ago
      lower-priced housing often has unacceptable attributes simply by virtue being lower-priced, as crime rates and schools are worse.
- marmadukester39 4y ago
  Its because of the schools. Since we in the US tied school funding to property taxes, getting your kid a good education if you arent truly wealthy enough to pay for private schools (now 30kish per kid per year) means living near other better off people , or sacrificing your kids future and perhaps their safey.
akgerber 4y ago
Housing costs are a basket of the cost of the housing unit itself and land costs. Regulation limiting how densely housing may be built atop land, when this limit is lower than the number of housing units demanded, is what causes the Red Queen's race dynamic.
- torben-friis 4y ago
  Land is still limited (given an interest in low distance to a hub) and density is physically limited as well, regardless of regulation.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Hubs can be built, though.
ZainRiz 4y ago
Housing can be very cheap if you're willing to live in a small town. It feels expensive only when people want to cluster around the same, limited number of areas. If you're not tied by an employer, then you can be way more flexible about how you spend your housing budget
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > It feels expensive only when people want to cluster around the same, limited number of areas. Yes, it is cheaper to live where fewer people want to live. But, usually, there are reasons fewer people want to live there.
  - yamazakiwi 4y ago
    Most adults are tied to an employer unfortunately
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      I work remote and chose to buy an apartment in a highrise. There is so much more to life than just working. Being close to everything improves so much. It’s hard to explain how good life is when you live within walking distance of friends and can spontaneously decide to go to the cafe for breakfast rather than having to schedule an event days in advance so people can transport in.
      - twelve40 4y ago
        I've been thinking about this recently. I have friends who happily move out to pretty remote places, like the Pocono mountains or remote parts of Koh Phangan, etc, none of which is walkable and typically requires a 1+hr trip on a car or a scooter. Yet, they seem to have no problem socializing and having over tons of friends and partners. I guess it depends on charisma or something? If your friends or tinder dates think it's totally worth heading out to boondocks every time. I'm more with you, really want to be in the middle of things and everything walkable, but I have seen very sociable people thrive without that.
lossolo 4y ago
It's not housing costs for most societies in developed countries, it's keeping up with joneses, which constantly change the meaning of "standard way of living". 1000 years ago most people would kill to live in standard of currently developed countries poverty level.

johnea 4y ago

Ha Ha 8-) Nice history lesson! The author left out the most probable hypothesis of why it didn't happen though: ownership kept all that extra productivity and kept working labor just as hard for no more money. The author left out that same option in the concluding statement: Some of them might have just been saying that productivity could be much higher, regardless of whether that turned into shorter working hours, higher wages, or a combination of both ... or neither, all of the money can be diverted to "shareholder value". This is fact the way it's almost always been. Only in situations where labor has been highly organized has the outcome be any different, i.e. workers benefiting from productivity increases.

rendang 4y ago
At least in the US, labor share of total income has declined but not nearly enough to counterbalance all productivity growth over the same period https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG

hintymad 4y ago

How many parents would rather have a 5-day daycare or schools, so that they won't be exhausted for staying with their kids for so many hours?

082349872349872 4y ago
In my country, not only 100%, but also 80% and 60% jobs are commonly available, and people do take them — often in order to spend more time with their kids.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> How many parents would rather have a 5-day daycare or schools, so that they won't be exhausted for staying with their kids for so many hours? Wow. I (and many people I know) have switched to jobs with fewer hours but lower pay just to be able to spend more time with my kids. This mindset that ones' own kids are to be avoided as much as possible is mind boggling to me.
- s0rce 4y ago
  I mean its not too surprising that some people don't like spending time with their children, it would certainly be very depressing if this was the norm.
- hintymad 4y ago
  Yeah. I was not advocating that people would rather work than spending time with kids. I asked the question simply because people in the tech circle, or at least my circles, half jokingly complain how weekends are more exhausting than weekdays for taking care of kids or how they wish they would have more time reading and writing programs for fun without being interrupted
jrochkind1 4y ago
If parents didn't have to work so many hours, I am extremely confident that many of them would choose to spend many of those freed hours with their kids. Of course different people are different. Either way, it's a huge problem that currently most of the people paid to take care of kids (very especially but not only pre-public-school age) are underpaid and overworked -- this does not lead to the kind of care for our collective kids that we would want. Those paid to do childcare especially should be able to work no more hours than they can do while still being attentive and caring and fully invested, and be able to access continuing education and mentorship in how to raise kids, and still live a comfortable life. That is currently not at all how it works in the USA.

readthenotes1 4y ago

I knew a bunch of people who manage to squeeze less than 4 hours of work in an 8 hour work day. I kinda think TikTok, wow, candy crush, etc are are secretly funded by communists to bring down the capitalist west from within

HWR_14 4y ago
TikTok is publicly funded by communists to bring down the west.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

obblekk 4y ago

The prediction is $400k/yr income and 4 hours a day. We made it approx 1/6th of the way to the income goal and maybe 1/6th of the way to the time goal, when you account for improved vacation time, sick leave, mat/pat leave, remote work time, etc. all of which consume some of the productivity gain. The big gap is that productivity growth rates didn't really sustain after 1970s leading to slower income growth and slower free time growth (see flattening of curve https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours).

Der_Einzige 4y ago
Grind enough leetcode and this becomes reality though, at least until very recently.

pwdisswordfish9 4y ago

Everyone is quick to say something like, "You're not living by the same standards that were the norm 90 years ago." The response is wanting. Notably, it's not the same as saying, "You could work that much if you wanted--so long as you're willing to endure the same living standards as 90 years ago." That doesn't seem to be true; the choice to opt for those standards doesn't seem to be there.

icepat 4y ago
I think you may be right, at least in the developed Western nations. However, there are plenty of countries someone could settle in that have less developed infrastructure, and economies. You would be able to live in the same standards as several decades ago if you worked remotely for a small number of hours a day. I don't mean this to denigrate these countries, but the living standards in some countries are very different. These countries are often "cheap" by Western standards. You could settle in the Balkans, for example, and work a few hours each day, four days a week, and cover expenses very easily with a freelance salary. I know several Americans who moved to Croatia on DN visas specifically because they could only afford to live there on their freelance salaries.
maximus-decimus 4y ago
A good example with cars : GM has been selling a 5K USD EV in China[0] for 5 years, yet in North America the Bolt EV (which I believe is the cheapest EV) starts at 27.5k USD. Sure, the 5K car is a death trap on wheels, but I doubt it's more dangerous than the cars we had 90 years ago. [0]:https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/07/autos/gm-china-electric-car/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/07/autos/gm-china-electric-car...
- z3t4 4y ago
  You set the price as high as you can. The production is highly automated. There is some price elasticity meaning if you lower the prise you would sell more, but you are limited by how many buyers there are on the market.
akgerber 4y ago

Qem 4y ago

The collapse of the Soviet union in the late 80s gave rise to a unipolar capitalist world. That reduced the propensity of governments and corporations to share with workers the big computer-tech fueled productivity gains realized from the 90s onwards. In the previous decades it was easier to workers to negotiate better conditions, as their employees feared they would become communist-friendly if too mistreated. With fear from communism gone, corporations and governments feel free to squeeze their employees, sabotage unions, etc cetera. So productivity gains now go straight to billionaires pockets, instead of reducing the working hours for the rest of us.

runesofdoom 4y ago
While I doubt the lack of any major competitor to the capitalist West is the only factor, it certainly get very little attention compared to how plausible it seems.
dinkumthinkum 4y ago
That really needs several citations. You really think because the “great” Soviet Union collapsed that businesses decided “wow, we were worried about communism so now that’s not a thing. Now, we can treat workers however we what.” So, you think during the Cold War, Ford was really minding their P’s and Q’s because the threat of Marxist revolution, overthrowing U.S. Constitution, etc was a thing?
bilegeek 4y ago
The PATCO strike[1] was '81, and Reagan's admin was RIFE with greed. The trends we see today didn't just spring up with the fall of the Berlin wall in '89; it has deep roots as a reaction[2] to the 70's and 80's. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr... [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tppeGYoWDxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tppeGYoWDxg

anon291 4y ago

People hate being bored. This means if you make people have too much leisure time, they seek alternatives. In the past, this was mainly family and community events. As the strength of both the family and civic social institutions declined, we became dependent on businesses to provide us things our families used to (child care, elder care, parties, dinners, storytelling, entertainment, music, etc). These cause demand for more commercial businesses. As the article states, all the commentators were envisioning a work week dominated only by making sure you had enough to survive. If people actually wanted this, they would be able to achieve it. However, people really want iphones, vacations, nice clothes, etc as well. So there is demand for labor, and where there's demand and a buyer with excess cash, we will step up.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> The technocrats promised every family on the continent of North America $20,000 a year [about $400,000 today], and a sixteen-hour work week. This is perhaps the peak of promises based on an abundance economy. Charles P. Steinmetz saw a two-hour working day on the horizon These projections always read like something that would come from a person who doesn't understand where their food comes from, how much work goes into building and maintaining their housing, or that most people's preferred entertainment options require a lot of work to produce. I could see us arriving at some of these extreme estimates if everyone universally agreed to eat the cheapest synthetic food we could produce with the most automation, live in the most bare-bones housing, and exclusively choose free or cheap entertainment and hobbies. But in the real world, it takes a lot of work to get food to people, build and maintain housing, and the things people like to do and own are also labor-intensive to produce at various stages. There's definitely more room to squeeze labor out of the market through more automation, but that doesn't result in higher wages for people.

petermcneeley 4y ago
>There's definitely more room to squeeze labor out of the market through more automation, but that doesn't result in higher wages for people. This statement is kinda in odds with what proceeded it. You are suggesting that "in the real world" this is impossible. But then also conclude with the line of reasoning that you seem to be arguing against.
mlyle 4y ago
> These projections always read like something that would come from a person who doesn't understand where their food comes from From a smaller and smaller proportion of the population working in the agricultural field-- about 25-30% of the population in 1930 to about 10% now-- despite producing more calories per person and more meat, etc.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > From a smaller and smaller proportion of the population working in the agricultural field-- about 25-30% of the population in 1930 to about 10% now-- despite producing more calories per person and more meat, etc. The graphs in the linked article show weekly working hours declining from 50H to 40H over that time frame. Taking agricultural workplace participation from 10% to a hypothetical 1% isn't going to drop working hours from 40H to 10H.

Tarsul 4y ago

We are always talking about 4-day work week or stuff like in this article. However, I am much more interested in the question how much hours one could chip off of the usual 8 hour (office) work day and still be basically 100% productive. My guess is that around 6-7 hours should probably be AS productive as 8 hour-days. But, of course, this is dependend on a lot of factors (e.g. do you still have enough opportunities to communicate with colleagues etc.) which is why I would really like to see more studies about it. Personally, I have just reduced my hours from 40 to about 35 and I love it. It's not just the extra hour that I have in the evening but also that I am way less tired after work (thus can enjoy the rest of the day more). Also, this last hour (to me) always felt like "I have to do it although it ain't productive at all". But that's me. Just one anecdata. I would like more.

Nifty3929 4y ago

One thing not mentioned is that productivity increases in one area free up some of those people to do entirely new jobs that did not previously exist, just because society couldn't afford to allocate people to those jobs. Not many doctors and dentists and so forth 1000 years ago, because the agricultural base couldn't support it. It took 95% of people being farmers to produce enough food for themselves and the remaining 5% of the others. Now 5% of people can produce enough food for the other 95%, which allows them to be doctors and programmers and whatnot.

aaomidi 4y ago
Alternatively how much of our labor force is working in useless jobs? Aka jobs that just exist because people need a job to survive?
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  first you need to define “useless” which is probably the difficult task
  - sli 4y ago
    This book is about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs It defines them this way: "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case." It goes further and defines various types of thse jobs, with examples for each. Those are included in the Wikipedia article.
    - Nifty3929 4y ago
      I hadn't heard of this book before, but I appreciate this from the wiki article: "As a potential solution, Graeber suggests universal basic income, a livable benefit paid to all, without qualification, which would let people work at their leisure." I think the 'without qualification' part is really important, so that there is no incentive NOT to work, and no stigma attached to receiving the money. Just give it to everybody and otherwise leave them alone.

ricardobeat 4y ago

The table shows the Netherlands with an average 38 days off from work, this looks... wrong? The minimum is 20 days, and ~30 is on the high end for most companies. There is no way that 38 is the average unless the study counted something else.

sophacles 4y ago
It's the sum of vacation days and holidays. I don't know how it works in the Netherlands, but in many places the day off for a national holiday is not charged against the vacation days granted by an employer.
- Tarsul 4y ago
  yeah but when doing this statistic they probably did not cut out the national holidays that fall on weekends (and thus aren't worth anything). I say this as someone who just had to go through December 2022.. ;) Although I've heard that there are a few countries/holidays where the holiday will be put on a workday if it falls on the weekend. However, my home country (Germany) is not such a country.
rendang 4y ago
The 20 days is just paid vacation time though, does it also include holidays? https://www.government.nl/topics/working-hours/question-and-answer/public-holidays-in-the-netherlands https://www.government.nl/topics/working-hours/question-and-... shows 11 holidays in NL if I'm counting right

drbeast 4y ago

Because 4 hour work days aren't tenable. Here's a novel concept Why do we have 7 day weeks? Why don't we have a 6 day week with a 2 day weekend? That way we get the benefit of 4 working days, we can standardized the calendar to not have this 31, 28 day nonsense (30 days only), and more importantly working day lengths stay the same. We just get to the weekend faster. I propose the day to be deleted be Saturday because Saturn's mythology is a righteous c*nt. Here's a calendar of what a 6 day week would look like https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/calendars/images/9/93/Calendar-new.png/revision/latest?cb=20140325015724 https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/calendars/images/9/93/Cale...

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>Here's a novel concept Why do we have 7 day weeks? Same reason we have 6 based arithmetic for time and circles. Standardizing on something is more important than what you standardize on in many cases. I'm sure someone will stop by shortly to try and score a few cheap virtue points by claiming the French Republican Calendar was thriving before municipalities killed it at the behest of lobbyists for Big Nobility.
- drbeast 4y ago
  Get over yourself. We have 7 days because the ancients attached the 7 classical planets to the days. Not rocket science.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Yes that's the origin of it but why stick with 7? 7 is a shitty prime number and makes slicing and dicing into fractions of weeks hard. It doesn't work perfectly with the lunar calendar either. The point is that there is inherent value in having an adopted standard.
sidewndr46 4y ago
The French Revolutionary Calendar did attempt to move to 10 day weeks.

aogaili 4y ago

duh, that is trivial question. Because humans are in a constant sexual arm race. People (and mostly men) are judged by economical status which is competitive, some men will use every extra minute to gain any advantage possible. And even if you decide not to participate in this game, then you will be working under someone who does and this person will want to max the output from you.

aogaili 4y ago
For the downvotes, I'd like to hear why so I can improve my thinking please.

ernestipark 4y ago

When looking specifically at the tech and startup sector, there's a couple things worth pointing out: * Though the 40 week is still standard, more and more tech people are making their living as independent consultants/contractors, working part-time, advising, retiring early, etc. When you look at the amount of wealth created by tech and software, but also the flexibility and ability to do things like remote work, we actually have made a ton of progress here * In the US at least, as long as health care is tied to full-time employment which is quantified by some arbitrary # of hours, it will be the predominant way to work * Working hours are ultimately set by founders/owners, not by the employees (unless you're in a union like situation). Many software businesses have enough leverage that they can be run fully on fewer than 40 hours/wk, but generally investor interests, greed, desire to grow quickly, wanting to optimize profits, etc etc. Ultimately, culture and precedent is a really strong thing. I'll hypothesize though that after the grind that was COVID, a refocusing on profits vs growth, we're going to see many more balanced businesses taking a far more progressive approach to working hours and reduced time roles. The 4-day work week is just one movement in this direction, and we're going to see a lot more tech companies that offer 20/hr week positions and more.

silvestrov 4y ago
> more tech people are making their living as independent consultants/contractors For me it looks like the opposite: today companies want full time employees (with a good LinkedIn profile). Unlike the 90'ies they no longer want independent consultants solving individual projects. And all companies absolutely wants full time no matter the efficiency. Partial time gray beards not wanted.

twelve40 4y ago

> the peak of promises based on an abundance economy What an odd thing to write in 1934, at the very bottom of a terrible depression. Is it an equivalent of a starving person fantasizing of a huge dinner some day?

freddyym 4y ago

In some ways, we did. 0 hour contracts have been on the rise for a while [0] and these can result in drastically varied shifts. One day you could be working for seven hours, another for only four. You could be set to work from 9-5 and get sent home at 3 because you weren't needed. It probably happens more than most expect... [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/414896/employees-with-zero-hours-contracts-number/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/414896/employees-with-ze...

xena 4y ago

Because billionaires can't make more money giving us that.

twelve40 4y ago
That's not a very good explanation because the billionaires have always wanted to make more money, but the working conditions have improved (or not) in a more complicated pattern.

antiquark 4y ago

Because there will always be someone willing to work a five-hour workday.

twelve40 4y ago

I think stuff from the recent "people checking out of workforce" threads may also contribute to this: "In 1950, 14 percent of men were out of the labor force. Today, that figure stands at 31 percent." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/men-unemployment-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/men-unemployment... If we take 40 hours (and that's less, according to the original article), then this factor alone would make it 31% less for an average man! So 8 hours a day just turned into 5.52 hours, for men at least. It's just that the rest of the time is not spent puffing cigars at the gentlemen's club as Keynes might have imagined, but stuffing your face with hot pockets playing Call of Duty on your aging parent's couch. However, from the original rootsofprogress.org article, i didn't quite get this part: men aged 20 Work hours Other hours 70,612 (20%) 276,522 (80%) Ok, so retirement, sure. They mentioned child labor, holidays and education, but for most men aged 20 in the US that doesn't even apply (20 is not a child, number of holidays barely went up on their graph, education is irrelevant for 70% of men aged 20). They don't seem to consider the 31% men checking out of workforce. So what is this huge number of non-work hours that makes up 80% of your life? Guess I have to go read the reference.

aaomidi 4y ago
Okay and what about women?
- twelve40 4y ago
  i have no idea since i'm just a rando googling things, but there seems to be a ton more data available for men, and it's probably because in the 30's and before that, women were stereotyped much more than today and it's hard to do apples-to-apples. But feel free to pull up more data and contribute to the conversation!
- metaphor 4y ago
  In the U.S., labor force participate rate for women[1] increased from ~33% to ~58% over the same period, peaking at 60.3% circa Apr 2000. In contrast, participation rate for men[2] bottomed at 66.1% circa Apr 2020...for the time being. Here's some data on aggregate U.S. labor force[3], and breakdowns of men[4] and women[5] constituent components. I'll leave it to the passersby to contemplate. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000001 [5] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11000002

SinisterAlex 4y ago

Because people work to fill time.

worfcolderthana 4y ago

If you saw your CPU/GPU went from 99% usage to 1% would you let it chill?

ghaff 4y ago

Maybe I'm unusual but I'd rather see more time off than a shorter every-week workweek. Though the latter is probably easier to achieve to some degree informally.

z3t4 4y ago

Labour is cheep. There is high unemployment, yet companies are crying for talents. You do not get rich by working, you get rich by having others work for you. Just like the old merchants bying from one market and selling for 5x in another market. Many good and service are produced with the help of automation and sold with high margins. Demand is artificially high, or prices are fixed.

barbazoo 4y ago
> There is high unemployment At least in North America unemployment is very low right now.