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Why should you exclude unemployed or underemployed? What would be the reason for that, other than to turn statistics into lies?

swiftcoder 7mo ago
Because the vast majority of underemployed folks aren't underemployed by choice. The wealthy folks who decide to work 100-hour weeks on their startup, on the other hand, are making an explicit choice to spend their time that way, instead of lounging by the pool. If the argument is "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time", that's a very different argument than "poor people have more free time" There's also the confounding factor of the type of work folks are doing by socioeconomic status. The person packing heavy crates part time in an amazon warehouse may be working fewer hours than the software engineer at AWS, but they also may need higher recovery time due to the toll the physical nature of the work takes on their bodies.
- carlosjobim 7mo ago
  In this subject matter - the health benefits of a sauna - it doesn't matter why somebody has enough free time to take a sauna. Is eating healthy more healthy for somebody who is rich and can hire a private chef, than it is for somebody who is unemployed and has a lot of time to cook healthy food. Is exercise more healthy for a rich person than for a poor person?
- azan_ 7mo ago
  > If the argument is "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time", that's a very different argument than "poor people have more free time" I'm sorry but are you seriously considering "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time" to be real and widespread - among rich - phenomenon?
  - swiftcoder 7mo ago
    Having worked in a couple of FAANGs, for/alongside a whole raft of IPO-winning folks who had no real need to ever work again, my experience is that it absolutely is a widespread phenomenon (though I'm sure they view it more as "finding meaning through work" than "play-acting")
    - azan_ 7mo ago
      How can you think it's widespread when you restrict your analysis to top 0.1% outliers?
      - swiftcoder 7mo ago
        Because the rich are by definition a tiny group of outliers? Pretty much every FAANG engineer is in the top 5% of US by net worth. The ones who got lucky on an IPO are top 2% at worst, often top 1%.
        azan_ 7mo ago
        > Because the rich are by definition a tiny group of outliers? Not in the context of this discussion. Here both rich and poor have to be group large enough to actually introduce significant bias to the sauna study. Top 1% is unlikely to do that.

swiftcoder 7mo ago

Because the vast majority of underemployed folks aren't underemployed by choice. The wealthy folks who decide to work 100-hour weeks on their startup, on the other hand, are making an explicit choice to spend their time that way, instead of lounging by the pool. If the argument is "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time", that's a very different argument than "poor people have more free time" There's also the confounding factor of the type of work folks are doing by socioeconomic status. The person packing heavy crates part time in an amazon warehouse may be working fewer hours than the software engineer at AWS, but they also may need higher recovery time due to the toll the physical nature of the work takes on their bodies.

carlosjobim 7mo ago
In this subject matter - the health benefits of a sauna - it doesn't matter why somebody has enough free time to take a sauna. Is eating healthy more healthy for somebody who is rich and can hire a private chef, than it is for somebody who is unemployed and has a lot of time to cook healthy food. Is exercise more healthy for a rich person than for a poor person?
azan_ 7mo ago
> If the argument is "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time", that's a very different argument than "poor people have more free time" I'm sorry but are you seriously considering "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time" to be real and widespread - among rich - phenomenon?
- swiftcoder 7mo ago
  Having worked in a couple of FAANGs, for/alongside a whole raft of IPO-winning folks who had no real need to ever work again, my experience is that it absolutely is a widespread phenomenon (though I'm sure they view it more as "finding meaning through work" than "play-acting")
  - azan_ 7mo ago
    How can you think it's widespread when you restrict your analysis to top 0.1% outliers?
    - swiftcoder 7mo ago
      Because the rich are by definition a tiny group of outliers? Pretty much every FAANG engineer is in the top 5% of US by net worth. The ones who got lucky on an IPO are top 2% at worst, often top 1%.
      - azan_ 7mo ago
        > Because the rich are by definition a tiny group of outliers? Not in the context of this discussion. Here both rich and poor have to be group large enough to actually introduce significant bias to the sauna study. Top 1% is unlikely to do that.