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'Flexible' Working Can Keep You Stressed Out For Longer, Lead to Illness (theguardian.com)
schwit1 sends news about the effects of flexible working schedules on the people who try them. Research has found that many employees fall into a "grazing" pattern for work — constantly being interrupted while working, and continuing to keep up with work emails when not — which results in having elevated stress levels for a longer period of time. This can make such workers more susceptible to illness, and it shows distinct biological consequences to having a poor work-life balance.
Flexible working policies can also raise the risk of poor working conditions, and create resentment among colleagues ... The findings are a blow to advocates of more sophisticated measures for enabling people to achieve a work-life balance in rich economies that tend to overwork some people while underutilising millions of others. With an estimated 10m working days lost to work-related stress in the UK last year, finding a good balance between the demands of home and the job now dominates concerns about the impact of work on health.
I work four 10-hour days a week, which my employer calls a "flex schedule", and I telecommute.
It's a pretty sweet deal. And I totally ignore work when I'm off the clock.
Yeah like corporate handouts !!!!
Death to corporate handouts!!!
I had a flexi-remote working job for two years and it was the best gig I ever had. Yes I'd reply to emails at all hours of the day, but I also worked an average 6 hours a day and found it easy to maintain a life/work balance. I ended up moving to Barcelona for six months and had my dream life for a while traveling around the world and working from wherever I happened to be that day.
If you have a job that you enjoy, a good boss and co-workers then it's great. But you have to be someone who can copy with blurred lines in your life and the idea that working/non-working isn't a binary distinction.
It's the same with being on-call in an IT-support gig. Some people are happy to carry a pager and responded to it now and then, others for some reason that I don't understand get really stressed by it and feel on edge the whole time the pager is on their belt.
Then why are you still working? If being out of work is so great with everything being paid for you, what kind of masochist are you that you're still trying to keep a job?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It usually means "I want to be lazy, not do any planning, not do my job and you'll be at my beck and call to iron out my blunders".
And yes, that's going to stress you into a burn-out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In other news flexible working allows flexible approaches to working and less stress and less conflict between work and home :)
I work flexible hours, and I'm the happiest and most stress-free I've ever been. Didn't realize it until lately when I started experiencing stress again in my personal life. What a change! Don't let work dictate when your working hours are if you can help it. And especially don't *be* flexible about when work can schedule your hours if you can't set your own. The not-knowing of next week's schedule is what will cause your a constant tremor of worry, but being able to say "Oh, something came up, boss, I'll finish Wednesday's hours on Saturday" is like removing the weight of the world.
When did he say everything was being paid for him?
How is your response even related to his statement?
FTFA:
Working away from the office or part-time can isolate employees from social networks and career opportunities while fostering a “grazing” instinct that keeps dangerous stress hormones at persistently high levels, they said.
I don't see part-time work as a problem, as long as you are free to say that you don't work during those hours/days. On Wednesdays, I'm off. That means I don't respond to emails and of course don't come in to meetings or some such.
As for working away from the office, it's fine as long as I'm not actually working at home. Often, I'll just go to the local university library and work there for a day. Excellent wifi and absolute silence.
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If you job is keeping you stressed 24/7, then maybe you are doing a poor job? The way to deal with the stress of being fulling responsible for something, is to do such a good job that their is no need to worry about it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The commenter is pointing out that a person on welfare programs likely also doesn't have everything they need, and very likely also has to try to find work or do something to maintain a balance. For example I've a family member that is trying to get into a new career later in life. They can't do fulltime work (for a piss poor pay rate of $9.50) which would help them get into a position they want, or they lose medical benefits that they need in case something hits the fan, which is likely.
There are many cases where people will be poorer for making more money.
In other words, welfare for individuals isn't enough to live on, and the Opportunist was attempting a rhetorical question to show a fallacy in the general assumptions made.
At your income level, the amount of money that the government takes is negligible.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have a flexible schedule and sometimes it is great. During slower periods I can put aside work, go for a walk, go do something fun, relax. During busy times, my work day gets stretched and i end up doing more and more.
It's important to set limits on a flexible schedule. For example, try to stay below a set number of hours, or only work during certain times of the day. I find I handle the stress and workload a lot better if I force myself to take an hour off for lunch or only respond to e-mails between, say, 8am-8pm. Boundaries are important, perhaps even more so when none are required.
Flexible tasks though really help from being burnt out on any one thing
I can spend my time just about any work day either doing some website work, teaching a workshop, exploring new stuff that is job related or could be job related, answering phone calls, doing individual support for one or two people at a time, dealing with emails and our online ticketing system, etc.
My two coworkers and I split things up as we see them as being "fair". But when one of us gets tired with doing a particular thing, or dealign with a particular person, we can swap out. "I'll deal with $asshat_needing_help if you'll go do this intro to the web workshop for me"
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Flexible working policies can also raise the risk of poor working conditions ...
I know an office manager who has the reverse problem when finding employees: There's no overtime but staff must work 3-5 days a week depending on how close the reporting date is, which is known months in advance. But many prospective employees don't organize their lives around their work schedule. Work, to them, is just something to do when they've got nothing happening in their personal life. The manager calls it 'working for shoe (shopping) money'.
The conclusions made on the article are fundamentally flawed from an English perspective, because looking at a Dutch company.
Historically harsh Calvinistic work ethics prescribe a strict work-life separation and that's one of the more blatant causes of stress, anxiety, irritation and frustration in a Dutch-only workspace. Rather than flexibility, isolation and alienation at work, so common in such environments, are the problem. People stress themselves due to lack of normal social interaction even when sitting at the office, that makes them also lose interest and systematically refuse any enthusiasm for whatever they do. Some call the lack of social interaction as "being professional", some others call it just plainly "inhuman".
In such workspaces, very differently than in a British, American or Spanish workspace, colleagues hardly ever socialize. They never or very rarely share interests or speak about anything else than the bad weather. They never, ever get to know each other on a personal level, neither they take initiative on their own to share drinks at the pub after a long working day, unless forced to do so or offered free beer. Socializing, in the good or bad, is an essential feature of English workplaces that a dutchman often sees as an annoying nuisance, preferring to go out in the evening with friends from their own community (or "pillar" as segregated communities where called in the past), but mostly never during the work week.
So going to office is boring and alienaing; the moment people keeps working and answering mails also from home, after the 9am-5pm working day, that alienation spreads into private life, breaks the balance and the removal mechanisms, causes stress. This in the Dutch society.
The English, and much more so the American work ethics, traditionally mix private and working life. Logically, since you have to spend 40 hours a week with the same people for the same scope, you accept to make that part of your life and you do not try to work mechanically until it's finished and then forget about the badness of it by seeing entirely different people. In a large American IT company you are on a mission together with your colleagues to make something happen. You know each other, sometimes even each other's families, and you gladly help each other A dutchman would see such strong commitment offending ("as if we can't help ourselves!"). The American way can be very stressful in terms of hard challenges, tiredness and (lack of) rest, but the kick of it, the "mission" in it may make it bearable, even when you have to connect your VPN at 2AM to help out a colleague or keep things running.
Flexibility, as opposed to bigot limitations (can you imagine? forbidding Whatsapp at the office?) in a human and especially in a social work environment is a Good Thing(TM), that may fill and shape a life. Stress can be controlled by sharing with others and knowing and respecting each own's limits. And if one knows and respects its limits, and his employer incidentally does that too, a private life can be built all around the working life, like an onion. Both working life and private life are life.
I work from home 100%.. 5x8. Problem is I'm also on call, which can add another day to my week without notice. My employer is fully supportive of me taking that time back but they've been making it more and more difficult to find replacements for myself when I do. They do not like me leaving accounts unsupported.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That's by design. It is to keep a class of dependant voters and subsidizing businesses while maintaining the appearance they are not. Is it any wonder that before welfare was a government thing that a family could commonly survive off a single income? Or that medical expenses, while still hitting the pocket book hard, could largely be paid by these single income households before they inflated sky high after the introduction of Medicare?
Or they bill hourly.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The point isn't that it's "great", the point is that giveaways to non-workers are a burden on workers. In return, non-workers should be asked to give back to society and to try to take less if they can do with less.
Many non-workers who receive government giveaways are wealthy enough or capable enough to not need them.
It's by far my largest expense. More than housing, more than food, more than energy, more than health insurance.
I'd actually be more stressed if I had people robbing me on the way to work because they didn't have money but to each their own.
A flexible work schedule literally cannot mean less stress if that is a goal.
It's vastly less stressful to drive outside of core rush hour times.
Work is less stressful if you have more flexibility as to when it can get done, or you can do it at home without interruption. As for being "outside of social circles", how many slashdot readers would KILL for the chance to work at least one step removed from a typically politicized company org structure? That part is amazing!
The other reason why flexible working arrangements can lead to LESS stress and sickness, is that you can not be in the office when either YOU are sick, or everyone else is. There's times when a place I've worked at sounds like a plague ward, I can just pack up and not expose myself for hours on end to sickness in a cold environment.
People who feel more stress in a flexible work arrangement probably are those who are not really very good workers, only able to do what they are told. I imagine they might be more stressed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I just had a creative gig and, for me, creativity doesn't happen only between 8am and 5pm. And it may strike for a few minutes or ten hours. Maybe I wake up at 3am with a flash of inspiration and I'm back to sleep by 3:30. Or nothing clicked until 4pm and I worked until 2am. I did the job for a flat rate with a couple check-in points to be sure I was producing what they wanted but how I managed my time was my business because I was working alone.
On the flip side, most of my career has required that I be available during regular business hours because I was working directly with other employees and clients who kept regular business hours. It's hard to work as a team if everyone floats in and out whenever they feel like it.
As for removing stress, I've found the best way to do that is have a big chunk of money in the bank and no debt. I highly recommend it.
wow talk about taking things out of context.
inflation has gone up so much that you need two incomes to compensate for it. When women started working people suddenly had extra income. which they then spent on things. businesses expanded, which hired more workers, and the situation pushed farther and farther. now you need two incomes to survive.
Also back then medical expenses where cheap yes but then so was the care. no mri, no cat scans, more people died on the table than lived. etc. medical expenses are sky rocketing because we have old people who need constant care, but can't pay for it. however if we take away that care they get pissy. try it. in the USA our budget is easily broken down into 30% for medicare, 30% for SS and 30% for military with he balance for every thing else.
not once will you hear any political talk about cutting SS down sharply to pay for the ever growing debt.
now back to inflation. yes officially the USA government puts it 2% a year more or less, however it all secondary markets (not food, gas, etc) it goes up on average 5%. with some goods like TV's or dishwashers actually going down -2%. that is why new tv's keep coming out, and why refrigerators are still $500-$1000 the same price they were 30 years ago. Car however keep going up. with base models of basic cars used to $12k in 2000, it is closer to $18k for the same model(mostly) now.
lastly before medicare. 60% of the population didn't have any health care. doctors are for the rich after all. that is your moto is it not? Currently 30% of the population doesn't have decent medical care. I can't afford visits to my primary care doctor. I can't afford the co-pay even with health care. I don't have an extra $100 per visit to spend.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
How can the US expect to continue to be the world leader when we can't even take care of our people? We need to have a national safety net, along the lines of giving everyone a minimum of $15/hour just to live here.
Workers need a right to disconnect to give them downtime to recover.
That is a great example of how we all should work. We work to live and not live to work. No one should make others feel guilty or shame them into putting in more time than they should.
inflation has gone up so much that you need two incomes to compensate for it.
Wrong. Inflation isn't one-way. The cost of everything goes up with inflation, including labor. You can't explain the disparity in work/lifestyle changes by simply blaming inflation - which will affect incomes just as much as expenditures.
medical expenses are sky rocketing because we have old people who need constant care, but can't pay for it.
Incorrect. Medial expenses grew so fast because of the dual issues of new, expensive "maintenance" medications (the pharmaceutical industry), and the non-payers utilizing the most expensive type of care (hospital emergency rooms) because it's the only place they could get treatment without insurance. To maintain, hospitals raised the rates for the paying customers to make up for the non-paying customers.
Car however keep going up. with base models of basic cars used to $12k in 2000, it is closer to $18k for the same model(mostly) now.
That's caused by the finance industry (banks, and central banking intervention in the free market). It's also caused by the reams of federal regulations requiring certain specifications for all cars. Ford, for instance, stopped making the "Aerostar" vans because they became illegal. There was no way to continue manufacturing them to meet the federal regs. (The Windstar was a horrible, poor substitute).
lastly before medicare. 60% of the population didn't have any health care. doctors are for the rich after all.
No, that's just complete bullshit - you have no idea WTF you're talking about. Doctors used to be community professionals that helped everyone, and people paid what and when they could. There just not as many entitled indigents demanding free care - people tried to pay their way.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You're telling us this, on the very first day of the New Year, here, in a country that is either way too loud We're number one!!,or too obnoxious Did I mention, We're number wan!to stop for a moment and consider that there is no other country that ignores vacation.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I have to worry about being robbed every day on the way to work -- by the police. The government calls it traffic enforcement but it's just an organized scheme to steal money from random people.
What a load of horse shit.
How the fuck are you paying more in taxes than you're paying in Housing? 15% of my Paycheck goes to taxes, while 33% of my paycheck goes to housing.
No one expects the US to be a world leader. The US is full of people who hate their fellow Americans and want to use the government to bully them and steal from them. Haters can only lead other haters. The world needs better leaders than the US produces.
This has more to do with wages not keeping up with inflation rather than anything else. We're in a race to the bottom and it seems we're losing by getting there first.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now imagine how much of a burden people who don't have anything to lose would be. Because if the choice is to starve to death or to kill you and take the 20 bucks in your wallet, your chances to reach retirement age are rather low.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My employer is fully supportive of me taking that time back but they've been making it more and more difficult to find replacements for myself when I do.
That just means that both of you are doing it the wrong way. It shouldn't be your responsibility to find somebody to cover for you; that's your boss's job.
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Or you can cut prices for basic necessities like housing, food and health insurance so that even a $15/hr person can live comfortably.
Go to this payroll calculator web site. Enter a monthly salary of $8333 ($100k per year). Set one federal and state exemption. Tax comes out to $2900 per month. My rent is much lower than that, and I live in a higher than average rent location.
$2900 is more than I pay for rent, fuel, and utilities combined.
I am so gonzo confused how your post got down-modded. You state a clear fact, you provide a link to double check, and somebody mods you down? The best guess I have is the person judging you badly thinks you couldn't possible make $100k/year?
In the San Francisco Bay Area, programmers and IT make around $100k/year. If you work at Google or Facebook or Netflix and are compensated for being one of the harder working programmers, it's probably closer to $150k/year. If you type $150k into the calculator you reference, your state and federal tax burden is $3,884.88 / month and that's being really really generous and not including Social Security, Medicare, or things like property tax (if you own a house) and sales tax and gas tax, alcohol and sin taxes, etc. If you really do add in all these extra tax, I really believe MANY people are spending more on taxes than on their housing.
I'm not saying this is morally wrong or that it needs to change. I think most sane people see that the rich (and upper middle class) MUST pay more than the poor to keep all the infrastructure running. In this Wall Street Journal article, it says the top 20 percent of income earners pay an astounding 84% of all federal taxes while the bottom 20 percent essentially paid nothing. http://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-income-tax-1428674384
I'll buy that for a dollar.
Seriously though. The only way wages can "not keep up" with inflation is if the government or some other entities make up the difference. You can track a lot of this to when the government started guaranteeing that they would take care of you. Of course that is a lie but the damage was done. Welfare for the people is welfare for businesses. The only way they can pay so little is if someone else picks up the difference.
So asking non-workers to give back to society, or to take less if they can afford to take less, or to work if they are capable of working, is exactly the same as people starving to death...? If $1 less is paid out to any non-worker (including rich people on Medicare), they'll have to resort to canibalism to ward off starvation?
How about we ask non-workers to give up cable TV first? Maybe live with a roommate (like college students do) or a family member instead of demanding a bigger rent subsidy? Learn to cook so they can stretch their food budget and eat healthier? Get married to the father or mother of their child? Volunteer at a non-profit to help out the society paying their way (and learn some work skills in the process)? Anything at all?
Wow, quite a bit of assumptions there. Lemme guess: You've never been "down there" and your information, I'll use that word loosely here, comes from various, let's say, less than unbiased reports (again, for a lack of a civil term that would describe it more aptly) in various TV shows?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh yeah, if we'd get rid of welfare people would immediately get paid better.
Care to explain the logic behind that? Why the fuck should I pay the slave more money just 'cause he can't get welfare money anymore? For all I care he can starve to death, there's plenty more where he comes from.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Even for half as much in salary ($50k), tax is still well over $1000 per month. If you're willing to live with roommates, it's very easy to find a reasonably nice place to rent for less than $1000/month (per person) in 99+% of the US.
I'm doing the flexible work schedule thing myself, right now, to an extent. (Essentially, I work for a company that would ideally like me to stay in the office from 9-6PM every Monday through Friday -- but I've always pushed back against that, since so much of the I.T. support and maintenance I do can be done just as well from a computer at home over the VPN. I live 50+ miles from the office and the commute can really start to wear you down after a while.)
I have a great boss who is understanding, but other "higher ups" in the company are occasionally a little less understanding, if they feel they should get instant attention and help by just walking in and asking for it. We've started "reprogramming" people's expectations in that regard by implementing a ticket system it's pretty much mandatory to use. If you walk by and ask for help, we ask if you put in a ticket.....
As long as that's used, I get pop up alerts on my mobile devices the minute new tickets are put in and we can prioritize things pretty efficiently and get back to people from wherever we are. So I've sort of self-imposed a routine where I try to come into the office 2-3 days per week and work from home the others. The problem with these flexible schedules, though, is they require some discipline on YOUR part as the employee. People who need your help have NO idea if you're in the middle of trying to get a quick haircut, or putting gas in your car, or grabbing a late lunch, or ?? So yes, it requires some juggling if you're going to try to use your "not in the office" time to get other tasks done while taking support calls and doing your job. And doubly so if the flexible schedule includes the idea you'll work at least some of your hours as "off hours" vs. the 9-5 or 9-6 that others are in the office.
It really sounds to me like many of the people experiencing higher stress levels with all of this are unable to pull themselves away once they've put in their fair share of time? I guarantee if you work odd hours, you'll hear that phone beeping and see instant messages flying with people who just want to ask you a quick question, or need a quick password reset, or have a crisis where something crashed..... You have to remember that if you were working normal hours in the office, you'd be home and oblivious to all of that until the next morning, so pretend it's the same situation. Otherwise, it will slowly make you crazy.
Can we ask anything of non-workers? Why are you ducking this question?
What is it about being a non-worker that makes them exempt from being asked to even try to contribute to society?
Yes and when I complain and tell him to hire someone to cover for me he just laughs. He has no control over it, his boss has no control over it. The people who have control over it are bean counters somewhere who no one in my group has met. The company won't pay for 50% of a person to be idle around waiting to cover for time off. Basically their attitude is increasingly that its a waste of money if everyone isn't 100% busy with important stuff all the time.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
In that case, I can only advise you to update your resume and start quietly looking for a new job. Any company that has so little regard for their employee's health and morale isn't worth working for, but it's always best to make sure they don't know you're even looking until you turn in your notice.
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Funny, I'm there right now and pretty much agree with the idea--we used to teach people basic life skills like cooking in school, what happened?
Yup, trying! Unfortunately even though there are a lot of people on Slashdot that say they get regular requests for $150K a year, that has not been my experience.
I have two choices when it comes to politics:
#1 is to cut welfare and benefits, then pay for police, soldiers and such to deal with inner city people who have absolutely nothing, wonder where their next meal is coming from, and decide to take it out on the local stores and populace. This sounds "cool" in theory, especially having police constantly raid and "keep order", selling fear about how these people are coming for you.
#2 is to have some benefits, perhaps a negative tax, or welfare and food stamps.
IMHO, #2 is FAR cheaper than #1:
1: It is a lot cheaper to even pay people a minimum income for doing nothing but watching cable TV, as opposed to having to pay for the amount of trained soldiers or police needed to keep the peace, especially with people who are actually hungry, and truly have nothing to lose.
2: When people are desperate for food, it breeds crime. Right now, it may be an occasional meth-mouth or crackhead that does something stupid, but in general, crime is low in the US. Having policies where people don't know where their next meal is coming from, with just a few miles away, the population is trying to decide between a Lexus or a Mercedes, it just means more carjackings, home invasions, and other violent crime. The US is so homogenized with neighborhoods, that people moving from an open street between the "wrong side of the tracks" and wealthier neighborhoods would be expensive, as people build their own compounds (think Iran and Saudi Arabia.) Plus, it is far more expensive as a person to build those high walls, have one's own security forces, and further segregate neighbors to an extreme... far more than to just pay for government benefits.
3: It looks a lot better internationally when there are not images of people being shot or otherwise attacked, just because they are poor and hungry. This might be acceptable in Syria or a Middle Eastern shithole, and it might be acceptable to the libertarian mindset where if someone can't/won't work, they should starve to death. However, the US, especially after World War 2 was supposed to be the light on the hill. Even if sounds distasteful to have "the dole", it is a lot distasteful to have constant footage shown internationally of brutality done to a government's own people, especially by a democracy.
4: We already had #1 done here in the US. It worked well during the Gilded Age where someone mentioning the word, "union" would be killed, their family blacklisted from work... and at that time, there were no soup kitchens, and beggars were just outright shot, hanged, or ran out of town on vagrancy laws. However, this type of government nearly caused the nation to collapse back in 1929, and what got the US from depression to being on the map was FDR's "liberal" ideas.
5: Jobs are getting ever-thinner. NEVER think your job will be there tomorrow. Especially if you are in the IT industry, where your job can be offshored or an H-1B hired to replace you in a heartbeat. Notice the economic patterns of the past decade? Economic crunch, then expansion... and the jobs gained by the expansion are far fewer than what was around before the contraction. Then, another contraction. It doesn't help that unemployment statistics are fucked with to hide these results, especially people working 2+ shit jobs to pay for rent. So, those benefits that are supposedly for the "human debris" may be what keeps you fed in the future. Telling people that they need to work and they are lazy bums doesn't help when there are no jobs out there for them to work at.
A good example of this was a Wal-Mart that opened up. It had a few positions at the usual Wal-Mart pay levels. Over 2000 people were in line applying. For retail store clerks and checkers. Another store "auctioned" its jobs off to whomever worked for the least amount per hour. It took seconds before the wages went to minimum wage level. So, people -want- to work, but the manufacturing jobs are in China, the software jobs are in India, so there isn't
It's really the only solution.
Show me a case of anyone being POORER for making more money!
I dare you!
You will find people who are poorer for doing MORE WORK, but not for making MORE MONEY.
Medical expenses when diagnosis to death for cancer was 3 months? Sure, it was much cheaper to let people die. DUH!
Oh b.s.. That 30% military is a bare faced lie. How much off budget is there for war?
Biowar? Dept of Ag.
Chemical warfare? Pest control.
Brainwashing? Dept of ed.
Nuclear weapons? Dept of energy
The true cost of the warfare state including the VA costs and retirement approaches 50% of the total budget.
And SS, as we ALL KNOW, is off book entirely, being a separate trust fund!
I work from home 100%.. 5x8. Problem is I'm also on call, which can add another day to my week without notice
But what if you had an appointment with a friend or somesuch?
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No, households which started to send two people out for work to improve their station started to leave single income households at a disadvantage, for example by being able to pay more for housing. Dual income households then became common. Now we are paying for the same housing but need two incomes to pay for it.
Jesus Christ, is it now unreasonable to want your own place rather than "living with roommates"?
We can only be free if we drop ALL handouts, regardless of corporate or private.
Western society has degenerated into a big mess where everybody tries to steal from the public purse. This is not productive.
So no more theft - no more bailouts, no more subsidies, no more handouts.
Socialism makes the lives of everybody (except the 1% elite, even when it's no longer called politburo) miserable.
To complain about that does not imply - not for one second - that you "envy" some street bum.
If you give non-workers a place to sleep, three meals per day but NO MONEY and NO FOOD STAMPS then nobody has to fear starvation.
And I'm sure we will see a 90% reduction in welfare dependence.
This right here. The article makes it sound like flexible times are stress, but I would define stress as having to settle mortgage documents but not being able to leave work to do it. Having to go to the bank / post office for something important but unable because I'm clocked in till 5pm. Having to go to the supermarket during the bloody peak hour of the day, and drive to work stuck in peak hour.
That last one is a real kicker for me. If I work 30min longer every day due to my flexible work hours and my boss expecting email replies somehow I still end up spending more quality time at home with the family on account of not having to sit in an endlessly and life draining queue on the highway (traffic here goes to utter shit at 7:45 so I aim to be at work an hour early and leave likewise). Need to go to the bank? Work late one night and then go to the bank the following morning on the way to work at 9am when it's open.
For me, it's the opposite of stress.
If the welfare wasn't there, the slave would starve to death anyways. This motivates the slave to work elsewhere where they are not a slave. When you cannot get employees because they will not work for you, you have a choice to either go out of business or change whatever it is stopping them from working for you.
Now how does that help? Or do you support making it easy for businesses to pay less than livable wages by getting government to step in and make up the difference?
You lost the point. Dropping welfare and food stamps, where people would not know where his/her, or his/her child's meal would be coming from the next day, would result in higher crime. If someone's kid is starving, they start to not give a rat's ass about a system or country that allows this to happen. I'd rather have social programs, than military garrisons every city block and larger prisons to house all the people with nothing to lose.
Actually, that is a solution to all our problems! Lets just build more prisons.
Nay, lets contract the prisons out to private firms for them to build for dollars on the penny, and pass more mandatory sentencing laws. If someone falls below a certain income level, the penalty will be 6-12 months in the slammer. Works with out of work deadbeat dads, why not extend it to the whole population? Don't forget debt... that should be criminal not civil too. While we are at it, lets implement vagrancy laws as well. We can also stick the mentally ill in there too, with a mandatory minimum sentence for having depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorders. We are #1 in incarcarations in the world, why not solve all our nation's problems with more private prisons?
Who will pay for it? Who cares, as long as one's stock in those companies is going well.
Yes, we can of course ask people who want money to perform a service in exchange. As long as you don't turn it into forced labor that is, that slippery slope is a bit too greasy for my tastes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What happened was a few food industries that don't really entertain the idea that you could cook yourself. That's their bottom line we're talking about!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ah, so you have an "elsewhere" to work where they pay better? Really? Where is that magical place?
They won't pay more. And people will STILL go there and work for them. And get a third job on top of the two they already have. Because there are 3 jobs available, 10 people want one and even getting a third of the money you need to make ends meet is more than getting NONE of the money you need.
Businesses won't pay more. They will always find people desperate enough to work for them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Add some whips and we're back to 1850.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem is that, with things as they are, we'll kind of need those "handouts" for quite some time to come - perhaps at an increasing rate as automation increases. If you're advocating allowing the disabled, less-fortunate, or less lucky people be allowed to starve then, by all means, just say so. However, roving hordes of disenfranchised people who are motivated by basics such as hunger doesn't sound like a good long-term plan.
It's probably cheaper to feed them than it is to hire goons to ward them off. It's probably better to educate them than it is to deal with their mistakes. It's probably better to keep them in good health than it is to deal with the plague. It's also more likely to make you wealthier in the long run but it does take some initial investment - a bit like growing food and then keep those plants in good condition to maximize the likelihood of a good harvest.
I'm a pretty staunch Libertarian but even I see the need for things like universal health care, education, and not letting people reach the point where they're disenfranchised and hungry. I dare say that many people never actually managed to read to the end of Atlas Shrugged. It is a long book, after all. If you're going to advocate letting them starve then, well, I'd submit that it would be less risky to isolate them and ensure that they're incapable of causing harm to the "productive" people. However, I'd further submit that it's unlikely to result in the utopia and freedom that you're probably envisioning.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Here's a fun one. Given the person tidbits you've shared about you and your spouse and what I know of tax rates, I can reasonably presume that I pay lower percentage in taxes than you. Add to that, I'm able to buy things that last longer so I'm putting (theoretically, realistically - I'm kind of bad at this) less back into the system with consumption. Then, I've the time and means to do things like have a giant garden and hunt/fish for a good portion of my food then I'm putting even less back into the system.
It's quite likely that I pay a greater sum in taxes than you but, added up, I may actually put less back into the system than you do - at least most years. I've been, shall we say, a bit spendy this past year and have been on the road since September. It's not unheard of for me to stay home for long period of time and not actually need to consume anything or even spend any money other than various vehicle, fuel, and property taxes. Even those can be minimized, sometimes legally avoided, and aren't really that expensive.
Oh, I understand why my tax rate works out to be (at worst) something like 23% (15 federal, 8 State - I only do long-term investing and my interest is also counted as long-term) but, let's be honest here... It's not like I'm gonna alter my lifestyle a whole lot if they raise taxes a little bit. Maybe they could start by making long-term investing mean longer than a one year period? (Short-term investment earnings are taxed not at capital gains rates but as income.) That probably wouldn't impact me so, maybe make it five years to be considered long-term? How about a 5% increase at both the State and federal levels? That's not gonna bug me - I'd probably not even notice.
Then again, as I've stated in the past, I don't really mind taxes. I mind how they're spent. For what we spend bombing little brown men, we could afford to fix our existing infrastructure and probably have enough left over to increase the effectiveness of our education systems. We might even have enough left over to do something like provide more small business loans to encourage people to go out on their own, give them a reasonable safety net to enable them to take the risks, and actually increase our productivity.
Nah, can't happen... There's terrorists in them thar hills!
And, as an aside: I had somewhere near 200 people on my lawn and it was awesome. I called Labor Ready and they're sending four people by to clean up the mess. I have not, in fact, dared to look outside this morning - and you can't make me! After that, of course, folks will be welcome back on the lawn but I'll have illegal immigrants (I assume they're really legal) meandering about for a few hours so I imagine the neighbors will be clucking silently behind their curtains even though they helped make the mess and weren't likely to assist in the cleanup.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This might come as a surprise but, and you can try this and get back to me, you might find that they steal less from you if you learn and adhere to the rules - regardless of what others are "getting away with." Seriously, I drive far more than most and have driven far more than most. They haven't ever stolen a thing from me. I agreed to abide by a certain set of rules (that's part of getting a license - an agreement) and then follow those rules. When I don't follow those rules, as I am wont to do from time to time, they may (per our earlier mentioned agreement) make me pay them some money - or even take away my right to operate a motor vehicle on public roads.
Because I've driven so many miles, oh so many miles, I've acclimated and I do not actually follow the rules but, instead, I've learned when and where I can get away with breaking those rules - to the point where I haven't had a moving violation in some 40 years or more. On top of that, I've not had a standing violation in something akin to 25 years. But, even with those infractions and the resulting financial penalties, they've never once stolen anything from me because I'd agreed to those rules when I agreed to the regulations required in order to drive on a public highway.
That only applies to the US and a few other countries that are mostly civilized. I have, on the other hand, been to places where the police didn't necessarily "rob" me so much as they asked for things like "documentacion." They sometimes have checkpoints outside of smaller towns and cities. At those places, they ask for you to provide the proper "documentacion." That could be considered robbery but I guess you could not pay - it's just going to slow you do a bit, and probably get you really robbed.
However, I strongly suspect that's not the case where you are, where you have been, or where you'll ever dare to go.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
We have to subsidize farms, otherwise they will overproduce, ruining the soil for a long time. Then we'll have a mass die off. You should be charged with crimes against humanity.
SO MUCH THIS.
If you have flexible work hours, split those work hours up in to your day in discrete chunks and do not do anything outside of those hours.
Preferably have a little rest between those chunks, with some exercise before that too.
Work, exercise, entertainment (can do both the Es together if you wish), sleep.
It is the method I have been using and I am even updating it just now to optimize it even better.
Mental work, physical, then relaxation just works so well to improving health and overall mood.
This article is about people that naturally get stressed very easily.
It matters not where, when or how they do their work, they will always suffer from it.
These people need some basic counselling to help them sort their life out and get those stresses out and away from their mind.
There is no reason to be constantly stressed unless you are in a stressful situation! Being stressed 24/7 is not healthy, because it just screws your body up so hard since it isn't being used to do anything.
$$$End-of-life care is in fact part of the problem.
So are treatments for cancer and such that extend life and put more people in $$$End-of-life care. Just look at the nursing home and related population and demand for nurses and home-care workers.
This is one reason the oligarchy has completely dismantled rational immigration systems in the west. Cheap foreign workers are desperately needed for relatively low-level medical jobs - aides, low-level nurses, transport, drivers, lab techs
Seriously though. The purchasing power of wages could fall, taking the workers' standard of living with it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This has less to do with macro economic than it does Federal-level financing in a society with a negative birth rate after the baby boomer generation. Boomers simply did not have enough children to support the ponzi schemes created by social security and the welfare state. Governments haven't dismantled immigration systems to support old people (they don't care about them), but to prop up the unsustainable central banking system which depends on constant growth and perpetual positive interest rates. These systems are based on debt instead of assets, and the only way to continue debt payments is perpetual growth, which requires an ever-increasing population of tax-paying workers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Be careful what you wish for. Many of these handouts make life as we know it possible. Streets, police force, judicial system, and administrations are often operated by handouts aka tax money. Sure, we can propel out society back to the stone age, but I doubt that is the right way to go. I do agree with reducing waste, the first proposal is to cut down the seats in all senates and houses by half. Most of these bodies are dysfunctional due to right-wing nay sayers, so might as well only waste half of the budget on paying them to sit on ass doing nothing other than shut down every proposal without having a single one of their own.
Then you are an idiot or a paid troll. Since I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt....I will just assume you are an idiot. There are plenty of examples of this happening. Here let me hold you hand and explain the tax code to you. You see lil Timmy there are these magical walls called 'tax brackets'. If you are making juuuust on this side of one of these walls and get even a 25 cent an hour raise you are grabbed by the scruff of your neck and stuck on the other side. The minor increase in wages does not make up for the - usually rather large - increase in taxes. The end result? You get a 'raise' but they take more money out of your pay check. Now these is the reallllly difficult part. If you lil Timmy take home less money every pay check you have less to spend. Thus your 'raise' caused you to be poorer. Welcome to the world of unfair taxes instead of a more 'flat tax' style affair to government sanctioned robbery.
Slaves don't calmly starve. They make a one last hoo-raa and cause damage to all of those around them in desperation to stay alive. The only way a slave class can't cause a lot of damage is if you can kill them without reason. Poor people cost a lot of money. Best to keep them not poor. Not "money" poor, just quality of life "poor".
Tax bracket is a bad example because the increased tax rate only applies to money past the bracket. You never make less money. A better example would be tax rebates. Made $1 over the limit? No $1,000 rebate.
So, no examples then? That figures
Nice projecting though.
And did you MAKE LESS MONEY, or did you get a smaller handout (which is what a rebate is)?
So. What I get on a tablet is the beta interface? I thought this had died long ago...
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
I appreciate the concern and suggestion, but I don't think that's an issue where I work. Maybe someday, when we have a different group of people managing I.T. But the thing is, we *do* come in on a regular basis and take care of anything from server or network upgrades to making sure a new hire has a computer configured and ready to go for them on their desk when they come in, in the morning.
The outsourced I.T. guy who lives 5,000 miles away can't be expected to agree to pop in on a Saturday afternoon while everyone's out of the office, to upgrade some of the hardware,or to be on site when they're having an important videoconference, just in case anything goes wrong.
We're trying to strike a balance between providing personal service and providing organized, FAIR service. It's really not fair that one person can jump over 5 other people who waited longer for help, just because he or she was in a position to come in to your office and drop a laptop on your desk, demanding an immediate solution.
On slashdot, truth called troll.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
If I assume rent and energy costs are highly correlated with cost of living and local incomes, then I can assume you're in the top 10% of where ever you live. So you pay 3% in taxes for making more money than 90% of the households in your area.
He didn't, you stupid cunt. He said that all his money was being taken away to give to the unemployed, and someone said that if it's so cushy being unemployed then why doesn't he join them.
The is one way this would work... And that is if all companies where required to have one fulltime employee per $100k they make in profit per year. Anything above that $100k per employee would be taxed at 50-75%. Would require some tricky stuff to prevent companies claiming losses in other countries to reduce their reported profits, but think that should be manageable.. Maybe random investigations on imported things too see that price reported matches what the goods actually costs.. If a mismatch is found the company is fined with x5 the difference + lots more scrutiny for 5 years.
Temporary workers would just be counted as a cost for the company....
Or maybe a formula like:
max profit per employee = MIN($100k, employee-salary)
Also, possibly, throw in that a company is not allowed to fire people for cost-reduction if they are making more than $10k profit per employee per year. That would cause companies to be forced to buy people out if they wanted to fire them, and a buyout would have to be a minimum of 6 months salary.
Would force a lot more companies to have full-time employees or raise the salaries for the already employed people.. As long as the company is making a profit.. If people are earning more they will be buying more services requiring other companies to produce more requiring more employees and so on..
10000 people at $50000 per year in salary == maximum profit per year: $500 million .. (think investment firm etc, and you have the $100k cap on the salary)
100000 people at $25000 per year in salary == maximum profit per year: $2.5 billion (think McDonalds etc)
100 people at $500000 per year in salary == maximum profit per year: $10 million
No need to look at what amount of hours each employee has to work per month.. Just have to look at what they are playing.. Instead of massive layoffs (with buyouts of the employees) a company could institure 5 hour days or 4day weeks etc for shorted periods of time..
you really have no clue what you're talking about.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Your including SS, medicaid, etc... None of these are included when people claim the poor don't pay any taxes.
The best example I know is medical care for welfare recipients. Many people find that they don't dare make too much money, since they're at jobs that don't have group medical insurance available for them, and if they go over the medical assistance limit they have a risk of being hit for lots of money, or risking their child's life, or something like that.
The best way to fix that is single-payer health insurance, but that's still going to be a while coming in the US.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A tax rebate is part of your taxes that you wind up not paying, not a handout. For example, there's a property tax rebate in my state, which I don't qualify for because we make too much (not to be construed as a complaint). It is intended as partial payment to offset property taxes. If we made a lot less, we'd be in a position where a single dollar could make a sizable difference.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
...constantly being interrupted is the real problem. I work a normal schedule and constant interruptions are my number one source of stress. It is understandable that working a flexible schedule would amplify the source of the real problem. Best solution: get rid of phones, instant messaging, email and let people work from home. If somebody needs you to do something for them, utilize a ticketing system and require all work requests to route through that. This goes beyond IT support and covers general office work as well. If people have no other way to contact you other than by ticket it would help bring clarity to issues with workflow and support levels.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Taxes pay for the countless things you are seemingly unaware of but which provide for you the life you lead, including letting you moan about taxes on Slashdot. Your life without taxes wouldn't be heaven, but quite the opposite. Hint: you are not an island.
... apart from when it doesn't, which judging by the quality of life scores around the world, is most of the time.
When do you want to give up the US military, as that's about as socialist as you can get? I mean, if you want to be consistent, there is a lot you'd have to get rid of, leaving you in a very precarious situation afterwards. It's almost as if you haven't though this through at all, and can't look past your own wallet.
Property tax being a great example of a handout, a gift to support one particular industry over others, I'd try again if I were you
And once again, MORE MONEY does not equal LESS INCOME. Doh. Do try again.
Could you clarify? What is the gift to support one particular industry, and how?
There's also the refund when I've overwithheld. It's money coming to me from the IRS, but it isn't a handout.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The request was to find people who were poorer because they made more money, not to find people with less income. There are tax credits and the like that depend on income, and they often have income ranges. If you're at the very top of the range, and make a bit more, you might well wind up with less money.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Real Estate Primary Residence Interest Tax Deduction
Commercial Fuel Tax Rebate
Need we go on?
Once again, with feeling.
Stop extrapolating your mythic tax victim and SHOW ME AN EXAMPLE of a real PERSON losing money thanks to rising income