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> 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 t

> 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.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > Taking agricultural workplace participation from 10% to a hypothetical 1% isn't going to drop working hours from 40H to 10H. Yes-- the point is that your argument that it requires eating the cheapest synthetic food seems faulty; if 10% of our work hours are going to agriculture and related industries (including, as a sibling points out, restaurants and stores and manufacturing of junk food), then it's not a huge driver of our work week. Similarly, it's not as huge a portion of our labor going to maintain and construct housing as you imply.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  My understanding is that the 10% number included all food related jobs such as cook, waiter, food manufacturing etc. not just farming which is 1.3% of jobs. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/ag-and-food-sectors-and-the-economy/#:~:text=Agriculture%20and%20its%20related%20industries%20provide%2010.3%20percent%20of%20U.S.%20employment https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
- z3t4 4y ago
  And if we need more calories we can just crank up the production. The food industry is highly automated.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
HPsquared 4y ago
If people today were satisfied with a 1930s level of luxury, we could absolutely get by on a 16 hour week. Probably a lot less, in fact. There would be no need for content marketing.
- kiba 4y ago
  Most of the cost of living is fundamentally related to housing and transportation, which are determined by land use policies. In this respect, people of the 1930s may be better off than us depending on the metrics.
  - skedaddle 4y ago
    "Cost of living" must have meant something different back then. To me, it doesn't survive very well as a concept in the interwar period.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  On an individual level it's not particularly hard to do for a little while when you're young. The only problem is healthcare.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  One thing that irks me is how keeping up with tech is almost mandatory. I see sms two factor being deprecated a lot now and am curious how people without smart phones work around that - just as one example of many
  - eikenberry 4y ago
    Switch to using TOTP based second factor and just use your computer to generate the TOTP secrets. Plenty of apps do it, no need for a phone of any sort.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    It doesn’t cost that much to have a phone. Supermarkets sell smart phones for $50AUD and older phones can be had for free which still work fine. No one _has_ to have the latest iPhone pro.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Eh, I think that a pretty huge portion of labor in the USA is spent on things that are not at all necessary for things people need or want for their quality of life. (Including the jobs of much of HN readership). cf David Graeber Bullshit Jobs. I don't think it's at all true that those people didn't understand the labor that is needed to create food (especialy this; they correctly predicted that agricultural labor has gone down drastically), housing, or even entertainment. I think they actually had it right, and that we don't work less is not about material necessity but just about the way our present economic structure works.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Graeber was no more careful or truth seeking with Bullshit Jobs than with the rest of his work. Other, better scientists have tested his bullshit and found b it lacking. > Alienation is not ‘Bullshit’: An empirical critique of Graeber’s theory of BS jobs > David Graeber’s ‘bullshit jobs theory’ has generated a great deal of academic and public interest. This theory holds that a large and rapidly increasing number of workers are undertaking jobs that they themselves recognise as being useless and of no social value. Despite generating clear testable hypotheses, this theory is not based on robust empirical research. We, therefore, use representative data from the EU to test five of its core hypotheses. Although we find that the perception of doing useless work is strongly associated with poor wellbeing, our findings contradict the main propositions of Graeber’s theory. The proportion of employees describing their jobs as useless is low and declining and bears little relationship to Graeber’s predictions. Marx’s concept of alienation and a ‘Work Relations’ approach provide inspiration for an alternative account that highlights poor management and toxic workplace environments in explaining why workers perceive paid work as useless. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09500170211015067 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095001702110150...
wahnfrieden 4y ago
that's all fair, but how do you account for the dramatic increase in individual productivity vs the steady level of hours? >Productivity in the United States averaged 63.33 points from 1950 until 2022, reaching an all time high of 115.97 points in the fourth quarter of 2021 and a record low of 26.24 points in the first quarter of 1950. it seems wrong to ignore this. productivity 5x'd since 1950, but hours roughly 1x'd. you're not speaking to why this doesn't result in higher wages for people or a shorter work day. which is implicit support of whatever the benefiting factor is.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Wages were $3300 -- or about $40.8k inflation adjusted-- in 1950. It's about $54k now. So, it's not 5x, but hours went about .8x and wages went about 1.32x, so we're about 1.65x better off per hour. The overwhelming quantity of the benefit from productivity went to capital, though... which perhaps in unsurprising because a lot of the benefit to productivity has come from capital expenditure.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Or another thing that just came up on HN today... "Excess Management Is Costing the U.S. $3 Trillion Per Year" https://hbr.org/2016/09/excess-management-is-costing-the-us-3-trillion-per-year https://hbr.org/2016/09/excess-management-is-costing-the-us-... > Here’s the arithmetic. According to our analysis of occupational data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 23.8 million managers, first-line supervisors, and administrators in the American workforce in 2014. (This figure includes both the public and private sectors but does not include individuals in IT-related functions.) That works out to one manager and administrator for every 4.7 employees. Overall, managers and administrators made up 17.6% of the U.S. workforce and received nearly 30% of total compensation.

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.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > Taking agricultural workplace participation from 10% to a hypothetical 1% isn't going to drop working hours from 40H to 10H. Yes-- the point is that your argument that it requires eating the cheapest synthetic food seems faulty; if 10% of our work hours are going to agriculture and related industries (including, as a sibling points out, restaurants and stores and manufacturing of junk food), then it's not a huge driver of our work week. Similarly, it's not as huge a portion of our labor going to maintain and construct housing as you imply.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
My understanding is that the 10% number included all food related jobs such as cook, waiter, food manufacturing etc. not just farming which is 1.3% of jobs. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/ag-and-food-sectors-and-the-economy/#:~:text=Agriculture%20and%20its%20related%20industries%20provide%2010.3%20percent%20of%20U.S.%20employment https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
z3t4 4y ago
And if we need more calories we can just crank up the production. The food industry is highly automated.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

HPsquared 4y ago

If people today were satisfied with a 1930s level of luxury, we could absolutely get by on a 16 hour week. Probably a lot less, in fact. There would be no need for content marketing.

kiba 4y ago
Most of the cost of living is fundamentally related to housing and transportation, which are determined by land use policies. In this respect, people of the 1930s may be better off than us depending on the metrics.
- skedaddle 4y ago
  "Cost of living" must have meant something different back then. To me, it doesn't survive very well as a concept in the interwar period.
jrumbut 4y ago
On an individual level it's not particularly hard to do for a little while when you're young. The only problem is healthcare.
dieselgate 4y ago
One thing that irks me is how keeping up with tech is almost mandatory. I see sms two factor being deprecated a lot now and am curious how people without smart phones work around that - just as one example of many
- eikenberry 4y ago
  Switch to using TOTP based second factor and just use your computer to generate the TOTP secrets. Plenty of apps do it, no need for a phone of any sort.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It doesn’t cost that much to have a phone. Supermarkets sell smart phones for $50AUD and older phones can be had for free which still work fine. No one _has_ to have the latest iPhone pro.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Eh, I think that a pretty huge portion of labor in the USA is spent on things that are not at all necessary for things people need or want for their quality of life. (Including the jobs of much of HN readership). cf David Graeber Bullshit Jobs. I don't think it's at all true that those people didn't understand the labor that is needed to create food (especialy this; they correctly predicted that agricultural labor has gone down drastically), housing, or even entertainment. I think they actually had it right, and that we don't work less is not about material necessity but just about the way our present economic structure works.

barry-cotter 4y ago
Graeber was no more careful or truth seeking with Bullshit Jobs than with the rest of his work. Other, better scientists have tested his bullshit and found b it lacking. > Alienation is not ‘Bullshit’: An empirical critique of Graeber’s theory of BS jobs > David Graeber’s ‘bullshit jobs theory’ has generated a great deal of academic and public interest. This theory holds that a large and rapidly increasing number of workers are undertaking jobs that they themselves recognise as being useless and of no social value. Despite generating clear testable hypotheses, this theory is not based on robust empirical research. We, therefore, use representative data from the EU to test five of its core hypotheses. Although we find that the perception of doing useless work is strongly associated with poor wellbeing, our findings contradict the main propositions of Graeber’s theory. The proportion of employees describing their jobs as useless is low and declining and bears little relationship to Graeber’s predictions. Marx’s concept of alienation and a ‘Work Relations’ approach provide inspiration for an alternative account that highlights poor management and toxic workplace environments in explaining why workers perceive paid work as useless. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09500170211015067 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095001702110150...

wahnfrieden 4y ago

that's all fair, but how do you account for the dramatic increase in individual productivity vs the steady level of hours? >Productivity in the United States averaged 63.33 points from 1950 until 2022, reaching an all time high of 115.97 points in the fourth quarter of 2021 and a record low of 26.24 points in the first quarter of 1950. it seems wrong to ignore this. productivity 5x'd since 1950, but hours roughly 1x'd. you're not speaking to why this doesn't result in higher wages for people or a shorter work day. which is implicit support of whatever the benefiting factor is.

mlyle 4y ago
Wages were $3300 -- or about $40.8k inflation adjusted-- in 1950. It's about $54k now. So, it's not 5x, but hours went about .8x and wages went about 1.32x, so we're about 1.65x better off per hour. The overwhelming quantity of the benefit from productivity went to capital, though... which perhaps in unsurprising because a lot of the benefit to productivity has come from capital expenditure.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Or another thing that just came up on HN today... "Excess Management Is Costing the U.S. $3 Trillion Per Year" https://hbr.org/2016/09/excess-management-is-costing-the-us-3-trillion-per-year https://hbr.org/2016/09/excess-management-is-costing-the-us-... > Here’s the arithmetic. According to our analysis of occupational data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 23.8 million managers, first-line supervisors, and administrators in the American workforce in 2014. (This figure includes both the public and private sectors but does not include individuals in IT-related functions.) That works out to one manager and administrator for every 4.7 employees. Overall, managers and administrators made up 17.6% of the U.S. workforce and received nearly 30% of total compensation.