The winners in todayâs economy work worse hours than yesterdayâs losers
Thatâs precisely the reason why my family are Union household. The average wage earner worker is under 24/7 assault to be an inhuman animatronic robot without a personal life. Sadly they arenât even aware itâs happening to themâŚ
The Protestant Ethic is Killing Us.
And people are surprised when I say I am satisfied with my current position. Everyone (in my workplace) that pushes their career forward as fast as possible do little besides working, I already met my lifelong salary goals and enjoy the level of work I do to earn that salary. I have no interest in becoming a manager or advancing on a technical path when it means 5-10 more hours per week (on salary) and less flexibility for a title and a small pay bump.
Dickbags graduate Standford with MBAs. They come out and say shit like⌠I wish their was a reverse lottery. We need to find the person willing to do this task for the least amount of money possible! I sit. Explain to them what will happen. They agree. Get pissed. At me because they are dumbfucks.
The left the school with the same stupid ideas they came in with, despite being told about the years of liberal capitalism ethics they spend all this time trying to explain all this time.
I blame the rich.
They keep taking these kids, putting them in fantastic schools, giving them every advantage, and they come out of them ignorant sheltered dumbfucks with craziness rattling around in their heads⌠and they show up ready to lead things.
Hereâs my son. Rich. Richie Rich. Heâs going for the gold in 2018. Stanford swimteam⌠I think you know the story.
Headline: Cory shocked - Supply curve crossing Demand curve actually sets Prices!
Let me get this straight, the article is written as somewhat of a complaint that the longer and harder we work the more money we make at the higher levels.
The unskilled or lower skilled canât find work beyond the 30 hours a week. Further complaint that they are being ârobbedâ of benefits. I canât stand blaming any and all problems on Obama and Obamacare but reduced hours of work is definitely an major result of it.
Not all jobs are equal. If I need baby sitting, I donât pay $15 an hour minimum wage and offer benefits. And I donât provide âModicum of Fairnessâ with a benefits package. If I started a baby sitting business matching sitters with parents, you better believe I would limit the hours of my employees to prevent the requirement to provide benefits. Otherwise I will lose business and possibly go out of business.
We can cry about capitalism all we want, and we clearly donât live in a true free market (or a totally controlled market) but the complaint about high end workers who are highly skilled âlosingâ because they get paid to do something they agree to do is ludicrous. Then to compare that to low skilled not having enough jobs or hours is a false comparison. If it were worth it for the business owner to have them work longer, they would. Plus which is better 20 jobs at 30 hours a week with no benefits or 15 jobs at 40 hours a week with benefits plus 5 unemployed?
Distinctly off-topic, but I do wish âjournalistsâ would stop lazily reaching for stills from âModern Timesâ to illustrate this sort of story. Cliched image choice (and clickbait writingâŚ) really doesnât help convey a message.
Well, sure, but if the ads are any indication, I love working and not vacationing or spending time with friends or family so that I can afford to have a new Cadillac!
Plus, I can afford a classy hotel room for all the adultery I have to commit to fill my desperate need for human contact.
I think everyone gets all that. Doesnât mean itâs a good thing. Adjust the socioeconomic filter a little, and one might draw the conclusion that:
A) Itâs a dynamic of unfettered capitalism thatâs driving a very destructive societal trend toward unhealthy imbalances of wealth and unemployment.
B) Itâs turning into a root cause of same.
C) It cannot continue if the nation is to remain viable economically and socially.
D) The old âsupply and demandâ model generally works well for products and servicesâŚbut itâs a shitty way to think of peopleâs lives, family prosperity, and economic fairness.
E) It misses a fundamental truth: the most highly compensated individuals are often NOT the most highly skilledâŚand certainly not the hardest working.
F) It further misses the BIG point: the most highly compensated individuals are very often NOT producing the greatest value to society, the economy, and progress. Cough!.. FINANCIAL SECTOR!!!..Cough!..
G) All of the above to some degree or another.
Feel free to disparage all that of course. That seems to be the prevailing trend in certain areas of civic leadership and policyâŚnot to mention a running tactic for a certain candidate to be the leader of the free world.
That said: no sympathy here for those who buy into the system for big bucks. But on balance, it may not turn out well for anyone.
By gollyâŚyou may well have discovered the secret to happiness!
âSorry, Sal, but youâre just not worth it anymore.â
âLook, Meg, Iâm not asking for a handout here, but my wifeâs been in a car accident, my kidâs real sick, and the landlord just raised rent.â
âSal, itâs the Free Market. You, your wife, your kid, your home, your healthâŚyouâre just not worthy of the money.â
âIâm a fuckinâ human being, Meg! Iâve got two jobs, and both of 'em together donât pay me enough to live! What the hell am I supposed to do?â
âLook, Sal, I like you. Todayâs payday. Iâd suggest you take that check, grab that family of yours, pile 'em into your car, buy as much gas as that checkâll get you, and take 'em on a nice vacation to the bottom of Lake Woebegone. You can drive right in, and then, a little struggle, and youâre all drowned and both of our problems are solved.â
ââŚMeg. My wife was in a car accident. How many cars do you think we can afford to have?â
Did you notice the part about how the reverse used to be true? And about how thatâs the whole point of the article?
Supply and demand doesnât work as advertised in the labor market, for a bunch of reasons. For one thing, a salaried worker is expected to work until the work is done, whether itâs 80 hours or 20, they earn the same salary. Too much goofing off may get them fired, but it wonât make them earn 20% less. Also, privilege makes a huge difference. Thatâs why bankers could go play golf at 3pm and not earn less - and thatâs the thing thatâs changing.
One of the underlying points here is the issue of coercion. Loss of freedom. Limited opportunity.
It doesnât matter how much you earn if it earns you a heart attack.
How does Germany manage, eh?
We start a babysitting business. You and I. In competition.
You use the free market.
I hire off duty cops as babysitters. I pay them $40 an hour. I charge $50 an hour for my services.
My babysitters make sure you canât get babysitters to work for you.
Then I go and get laws passed. With my new fat stacks of babysitter money.
They say that you need a license to babysit. Those licenses come from a governmental institution. I set up. With money and friends and off duty cop connections.
I get a regulation passed, and a corporate license to operate risk free. Now people can invest in my babysitting company, without the liability associated with being involved with a thug hiring other thugs to exploit money from people.
And pretty soon people hear that without a babysitter⌠leaving your kids home alone at night is a bad idea.
Maybe I can get a tax passed⌠and we just socialize the risk of not having one of my off-doty cops as a babysitter. Its really risky not to. I make sure of that.
And you? I got one of my babysitters to burn your corpse in a dumpster fire years ago. One of many loser schmucks who learned how the world worked from Sesame Street. Corpses in dumpster fires all the way down.
Thats America in a nutshell⌠1900-2000. How it went down.
Read more.
I thought âbankerâs hoursâ referred to the fact that banks used to close at 15:00, not so Bankers-with-a-capital-B could go play golf (which they could presumably do whenever they wanted to anyway,) but because there were two hours of manual bookkeeping left for tellers to do before counting machines and computers. Like how teachers still have hours of work to do every day after school lets out.
Loan at 6, borrow at 5, leave at 4.
I guess we all have no reasonable choice but to work for the government.
What? Then why are they running around on the playground, giggling and chasing butterflies after school lets out?
I couldnât take that kind of pay cut.
So it would seem. But those legends you heard about the Land of Retirement? Iâve seen people go there and come back to tell the tale. The legends are true!
Completely OT: As I was looking for material to reply with I came across this:
Dozens of butterflies swarm around the yellow-spotted turtleâs face to drink its tears
