4 ms·

I've often wondered about this. As some commenters have pointed out, we don't work quite as hard as people used to have to. But we still work a lot. I suspec

by pg 13y ago

I've often wondered about this. As some commenters have pointed out, we don't work quite as hard as people used to have to. But we still work a lot. I suspect the short answer is healthcare costs. I was an expert in the earn-little-spend-little lifestyle for a while, but I knew it only worked because I was a healthy 25 year old with no one I had to take care of.

simonbarker87 13y ago
That might be the case for the US but in the UK and most other developed countries that isn't a factor and we still work a lot. I think the main factor is that we both do more (waste time and push paper/design etc) than in the past thanks to computers. Also, many jobs are simply a function of population size, more people = more emails to send, calls to take etc.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  I don't really understand what you mean about population size. If the need for a job scales at O(P) and you have O(P) workers, population cancels out. Not many jobs grow per-capita when population rises.
  - simonbarker87 13y ago
    No, but large, divers populations give opportunities for work that didn't previously exist and create an extra overhead in many sectors that requires more staff (not 1 for 1 relationship but it will impact)
- glesica 13y ago
  I've thought for some time now that corporate inflexibility was part of the cause. More of us work for large, bureaucratic companies than in the past. These sorts of companies often won't employ someone on a flexible or part-time schedule because it would be too complicated to manage. It's actually easier and cheaper to let you site at your desk and waste time for 10-20 hours a week than it would be to figure out and manage an alternative. Do you think this rings true in the UK? It certainly does (in my experience and observation) in the US, though I think in the US healthcare is at least as important a factor.
  - simonbarker87 13y ago
    Part time and "work when needed" contracts for the 20 - 30 year old bracket is growing in the UK and has been cited as one of the ways the unemployment figure has fallen. It is concerning some workers groups according to some of the papers and the BBC. I think if you want part time work in the UK it is easy enough to come by (engineers at many companies I know can go part time until management level if they wish) but there is a growing trend of only part time positions becoming available in some sectors and you either have to like it or lump it sadly.
    - makomk 13y ago
      Yeah, see for example http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/economics-blog/2013/aug/04/zero-hours-contract-workers-reserve-army-labour http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/economics-blog/2013/aug/0...
      - simonbarker87 13y ago
        Thanks for finding that - I'd forgotten they were called zero hour contracts
- claudius 13y ago
  The UK and every other developed country also has to somehow finance their healthcare system. Regardless of whether people pay privately or via taxes (or insurance or…), the cost still has to be covered somehow – of course, these costs can be distributed more evenly among the high earners and those earning less if they are re-routed through the tax system, but the value still has to be created somewhere. Note that this holds even though (or in addition) the cost of healthcare per person in the US seems to be slightly higher than on average in the western world.
  - jeremysmyth 13y ago
    the cost of healthcare per person in the US seems to be slightly higher than on average in the western world. Try "considerably higher than on average in the rest of the world": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal...
    - claudius 13y ago
      It’s about twice as high as in the rest of western Europe (that Americans spend more on healthcare than, say, Senegalese, is not really a surprise), which I, in my orders-of-magnitude mindset, would classify as ‘slightly’. Especially if you look at the % of GDP spent on healthcare, the picture becomes much more varied – curiously with some other pacific countries (nearly) besting the US.
rattray 13y ago
That may ring true in the States, but in countries with universal health care? (Not having lived abroad, I wouldn't know) Something more fundamental about our present economics may be at the heart of it here.... I'm no economist, but with expanding technology (Capital), diminishing demand for Labor could make for a mass prisoner's dilemma of sorts. Employees everywhere have such little negotiating room due to increasing job scarcity that they have to compete on hours worked and can't "cooperate" by working less. This seems to even hold true at the national level -- France has managed to keep most players "cooperating" (working fewer hours) but the country's economy has suffered in the global competitive landscape. Another way to look at it could be more polarizing. The best of the new white collar class (engineers, entrepreneurs, executives, etc) has each unit of labor multiplied so significantly by the internet that there is tremendous incentive to work a lot. On the flip side, the blue collar of today -- those mentioned as call center workers, filing clerks, etc -- are just warm-blooded, more versatile machines, doing noncreative work of too little value to be worthwhile without long hours.
soneca 13y ago
I would say that we no long have certainties about our future life, not just in healthcare. We used to know where we were going to be when we became older. Because the chances were you would be dead by 50, or because your social status, or nobility, would guarantee your lifestyle when you were old, or because you had 10 children and better odds one of them would take care of you. Now, with the benefits, like social flexibility, life expectance, and, sure, better medicine (that comes with a cost), we all live longer, entering decades we have no idea what is going to be of us. So, uncertainty, make we work harder. Ps: as a non-native english speaker, it was very hard to deal with all those different verb tenses. I hope people can understand it...
cclogg 13y ago
Funny that you mention the earn-little-spend-little 25 year old lifestyle... I'm currently living that lol (though contract work here and there has given me a decent amount of money). I find myself fighting between that happy/relaxing fantasy world, and the other side which is a goal/dream to go big with a project. Though I guess there is a 3rd side which is work your ass for a company making a good salary to support yourself later, should you be injured or retired. Anyway, I've always believed in work smart over working hard, but I think the 'work hard' mentality will take a while to shake off... but eventually robots/machines WILL do most everything and we just won't need to be employed (or everyone will have to know engineering?).
- heurist 13y ago
  > but eventually robots/machines WILL do most everything and we just won't need to be employed (or everyone will have to know engineering?). Yeah, even now I'd say working is essentially about making more money than the government will give to you through welfare programs. When/if welfare payouts increase or a basic universal income is implemented there will be less demand for jobs and people from all classes will actually begin choosing whether to work or not. I think it will be a long time before basic incomes are implemented or welfare is increased in the US though.
yummyfajitas 13y ago
The thing about healthcare is that the value of healthcare has risen drastically. It would be very easy to earn enough money to pay for 1950 or 1970 style healthcare. But we want 2013 healthcare, which is far more labor intensive. I have a herniated disk. In 1950, a doctor would spend an hour telling me I'd have to live with back pain for the rest of my life. In 2012 many doctor hours were spent on my MRIs and laparoscopic surgery. Net result is that my deadlift is now about 285 - nothing impressive, but not possible in 1951. So the short answer is that including healthcare, we work more because we want more. Many of the things we want more of require more labor in 2013 than in 1950.
- xtc 13y ago
  Is it justifiable to assume that the cost of health care has been rising to approximately match the quality and technological improvement worldwide? Or is it more likely that the cost has sky-rocketed out of proportion with the quality of health care (in this country or in the world) with no good reason?
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    In the US I'd have probably paid $20-30k for my surgery (I had it done in India for 85k rs) and it has drastically increased my quality of life. I like boxing, lifting weights, biking, sexual positions other than girl on top, and walking without pain - any one of these is worth at least $30k to me. The ultimate question; are you willing to give up medicine invented since 1950 in return for paying 1950's prices? I'm not.
    - xtc 13y ago
      I don't think the two need to be mutually exclusive. Why can't high quality medicinal practices be coupled with lower costs if there's not reason for the costs to be higher? That was my question. Just accepting high costs and arguing the opposite extreme isn't going to help anyone or drive down prices.
      - 13y ago
nazgulnarsil 13y ago
The people preaching about flat income ignore that household size has decreased in the same period. And that's ignoring consumer surplus. We've collectively chosen a higher standard of living rather than less work.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Yeah I don't really think it has anything to do with healthcare. yummyfajitas pointed out the difference between 1950's health care and today, but that applies to just about everything. Compare a 1950's house to one of today. Compare the amount of stuff people have IN their house today. Everything is bigger, more elaborate. I also think it is deeply engrained in our instincts that idleness is bad. If we don't keep reasonably busy in ways that result in feelings of accomplishment, we eventually become unhappy and depressed. We as a species are driven to work, as it has always been necessary for our survival.
aidenn0 13y ago
I think it's simply that mechanization has increased wealth of only a few, and the remainder of the population still has needs and wants that require money.
jdietrich 13y ago
As others have commented, healthcare is not a relevant factor in most of the developed world; Even in countries with a privatised or semi-privatised healthcare system, it just isn't a big expense outside of the US. I think that the key explanation is very simple - our expectations increase with our income, creating a ratchet of consumption. There is a very good body of research showing that people feel the benefit of increased consumption only briefly, and that they feel the effects of a loss far more acutely than the effects of an equivalent gain. We also tend to value our relative status far more highly than our absolute status - "keeping up with the Joneses" is a very powerful drive. We tend to feel worse about ourselves if the people around us are becoming relatively wealthier, even if our absolute living standards have not diminished at all. The great post-war promise of the leisure society could easily be realised if we maintained post-war standards of living. It's not very expensive to live in a small house without central heating or A/C, to eat fairly humble food and rarely eat out, to replace clothes and household goods only when they wear out etc. I know of a great many hackers and artists who have made that choice, but they are very much in a minority. Most people would far rather work >~40hrs a week and benefit from the increased purchasing power. Frankly, I think that most people wouldn't gain any real life satisfaction from extra leisure time - fully half of the average American's leisure is taken up with television viewing.
- Shorel 13y ago
  Your last sentence can really explain it all: television and mass media.

by pg 13y ago

simonbarker87 13y ago

That might be the case for the US but in the UK and most other developed countries that isn't a factor and we still work a lot. I think the main factor is that we both do more (waste time and push paper/design etc) than in the past thanks to computers. Also, many jobs are simply a function of population size, more people = more emails to send, calls to take etc.

Dylan16807 13y ago
I don't really understand what you mean about population size. If the need for a job scales at O(P) and you have O(P) workers, population cancels out. Not many jobs grow per-capita when population rises.
- simonbarker87 13y ago
  No, but large, divers populations give opportunities for work that didn't previously exist and create an extra overhead in many sectors that requires more staff (not 1 for 1 relationship but it will impact)
glesica 13y ago
I've thought for some time now that corporate inflexibility was part of the cause. More of us work for large, bureaucratic companies than in the past. These sorts of companies often won't employ someone on a flexible or part-time schedule because it would be too complicated to manage. It's actually easier and cheaper to let you site at your desk and waste time for 10-20 hours a week than it would be to figure out and manage an alternative. Do you think this rings true in the UK? It certainly does (in my experience and observation) in the US, though I think in the US healthcare is at least as important a factor.
- simonbarker87 13y ago
  Part time and "work when needed" contracts for the 20 - 30 year old bracket is growing in the UK and has been cited as one of the ways the unemployment figure has fallen. It is concerning some workers groups according to some of the papers and the BBC. I think if you want part time work in the UK it is easy enough to come by (engineers at many companies I know can go part time until management level if they wish) but there is a growing trend of only part time positions becoming available in some sectors and you either have to like it or lump it sadly.
  - makomk 13y ago
    Yeah, see for example http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/economics-blog/2013/aug/04/zero-hours-contract-workers-reserve-army-labour http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/economics-blog/2013/aug/0...
    - simonbarker87 13y ago
      Thanks for finding that - I'd forgotten they were called zero hour contracts
claudius 13y ago
The UK and every other developed country also has to somehow finance their healthcare system. Regardless of whether people pay privately or via taxes (or insurance or…), the cost still has to be covered somehow – of course, these costs can be distributed more evenly among the high earners and those earning less if they are re-routed through the tax system, but the value still has to be created somewhere. Note that this holds even though (or in addition) the cost of healthcare per person in the US seems to be slightly higher than on average in the western world.
- jeremysmyth 13y ago
  the cost of healthcare per person in the US seems to be slightly higher than on average in the western world. Try "considerably higher than on average in the rest of the world": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal...
  - claudius 13y ago
    It’s about twice as high as in the rest of western Europe (that Americans spend more on healthcare than, say, Senegalese, is not really a surprise), which I, in my orders-of-magnitude mindset, would classify as ‘slightly’. Especially if you look at the % of GDP spent on healthcare, the picture becomes much more varied – curiously with some other pacific countries (nearly) besting the US.

rattray 13y ago

That may ring true in the States, but in countries with universal health care? (Not having lived abroad, I wouldn't know) Something more fundamental about our present economics may be at the heart of it here.... I'm no economist, but with expanding technology (Capital), diminishing demand for Labor could make for a mass prisoner's dilemma of sorts. Employees everywhere have such little negotiating room due to increasing job scarcity that they have to compete on hours worked and can't "cooperate" by working less. This seems to even hold true at the national level -- France has managed to keep most players "cooperating" (working fewer hours) but the country's economy has suffered in the global competitive landscape. Another way to look at it could be more polarizing. The best of the new white collar class (engineers, entrepreneurs, executives, etc) has each unit of labor multiplied so significantly by the internet that there is tremendous incentive to work a lot. On the flip side, the blue collar of today -- those mentioned as call center workers, filing clerks, etc -- are just warm-blooded, more versatile machines, doing noncreative work of too little value to be worthwhile without long hours.

soneca 13y ago

I would say that we no long have certainties about our future life, not just in healthcare. We used to know where we were going to be when we became older. Because the chances were you would be dead by 50, or because your social status, or nobility, would guarantee your lifestyle when you were old, or because you had 10 children and better odds one of them would take care of you. Now, with the benefits, like social flexibility, life expectance, and, sure, better medicine (that comes with a cost), we all live longer, entering decades we have no idea what is going to be of us. So, uncertainty, make we work harder. Ps: as a non-native english speaker, it was very hard to deal with all those different verb tenses. I hope people can understand it...

cclogg 13y ago

Funny that you mention the earn-little-spend-little 25 year old lifestyle... I'm currently living that lol (though contract work here and there has given me a decent amount of money). I find myself fighting between that happy/relaxing fantasy world, and the other side which is a goal/dream to go big with a project. Though I guess there is a 3rd side which is work your ass for a company making a good salary to support yourself later, should you be injured or retired. Anyway, I've always believed in work smart over working hard, but I think the 'work hard' mentality will take a while to shake off... but eventually robots/machines WILL do most everything and we just won't need to be employed (or everyone will have to know engineering?).

heurist 13y ago
> but eventually robots/machines WILL do most everything and we just won't need to be employed (or everyone will have to know engineering?). Yeah, even now I'd say working is essentially about making more money than the government will give to you through welfare programs. When/if welfare payouts increase or a basic universal income is implemented there will be less demand for jobs and people from all classes will actually begin choosing whether to work or not. I think it will be a long time before basic incomes are implemented or welfare is increased in the US though.

yummyfajitas 13y ago

The thing about healthcare is that the value of healthcare has risen drastically. It would be very easy to earn enough money to pay for 1950 or 1970 style healthcare. But we want 2013 healthcare, which is far more labor intensive. I have a herniated disk. In 1950, a doctor would spend an hour telling me I'd have to live with back pain for the rest of my life. In 2012 many doctor hours were spent on my MRIs and laparoscopic surgery. Net result is that my deadlift is now about 285 - nothing impressive, but not possible in 1951. So the short answer is that including healthcare, we work more because we want more. Many of the things we want more of require more labor in 2013 than in 1950.

xtc 13y ago
Is it justifiable to assume that the cost of health care has been rising to approximately match the quality and technological improvement worldwide? Or is it more likely that the cost has sky-rocketed out of proportion with the quality of health care (in this country or in the world) with no good reason?
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  In the US I'd have probably paid $20-30k for my surgery (I had it done in India for 85k rs) and it has drastically increased my quality of life. I like boxing, lifting weights, biking, sexual positions other than girl on top, and walking without pain - any one of these is worth at least $30k to me. The ultimate question; are you willing to give up medicine invented since 1950 in return for paying 1950's prices? I'm not.
  - xtc 13y ago
    I don't think the two need to be mutually exclusive. Why can't high quality medicinal practices be coupled with lower costs if there's not reason for the costs to be higher? That was my question. Just accepting high costs and arguing the opposite extreme isn't going to help anyone or drive down prices.
    - 13y ago

nazgulnarsil 13y ago

The people preaching about flat income ignore that household size has decreased in the same period. And that's ignoring consumer surplus. We've collectively chosen a higher standard of living rather than less work.

ams6110 13y ago
Yeah I don't really think it has anything to do with healthcare. yummyfajitas pointed out the difference between 1950's health care and today, but that applies to just about everything. Compare a 1950's house to one of today. Compare the amount of stuff people have IN their house today. Everything is bigger, more elaborate. I also think it is deeply engrained in our instincts that idleness is bad. If we don't keep reasonably busy in ways that result in feelings of accomplishment, we eventually become unhappy and depressed. We as a species are driven to work, as it has always been necessary for our survival.

aidenn0 13y ago

I think it's simply that mechanization has increased wealth of only a few, and the remainder of the population still has needs and wants that require money.

jdietrich 13y ago

As others have commented, healthcare is not a relevant factor in most of the developed world; Even in countries with a privatised or semi-privatised healthcare system, it just isn't a big expense outside of the US. I think that the key explanation is very simple - our expectations increase with our income, creating a ratchet of consumption. There is a very good body of research showing that people feel the benefit of increased consumption only briefly, and that they feel the effects of a loss far more acutely than the effects of an equivalent gain. We also tend to value our relative status far more highly than our absolute status - "keeping up with the Joneses" is a very powerful drive. We tend to feel worse about ourselves if the people around us are becoming relatively wealthier, even if our absolute living standards have not diminished at all. The great post-war promise of the leisure society could easily be realised if we maintained post-war standards of living. It's not very expensive to live in a small house without central heating or A/C, to eat fairly humble food and rarely eat out, to replace clothes and household goods only when they wear out etc. I know of a great many hackers and artists who have made that choice, but they are very much in a minority. Most people would far rather work >~40hrs a week and benefit from the increased purchasing power. Frankly, I think that most people wouldn't gain any real life satisfaction from extra leisure time - fully half of the average American's leisure is taken up with television viewing.

Shorel 13y ago
Your last sentence can really explain it all: television and mass media.