'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.

Comments

Re:Working vs. not working

[Curunir_wolf]

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.