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Why Do Americans Work So Much?
HughPickens.com writes Rebecca Rosen has an interesting essay at The Atlantic on economist John Maynard Keynes' prediction in 1930 that with increased productivity, over the next 100 years the economy would become so productive that people would barely need to work at all. For a while, it looked like Keynes was right: In 1930 the average workweek was 47 hours. By 1970 it had fallen to slightly less than 39. But then something changed. Instead of continuing to decline, the duration of the workweek stayed put; it's hovered just below 40 hours for nearly five decades. According to Rosen there would be no mystery in this if Keynes had been wrong about the economy's increasing productivity, which he thought would lead to a standard of living "between four and eight times as high as it is today." Keynes got that right: Technology has made the economy massively more productive. Now a new paper Benjamin Friedman says that "the U.S. economy is right on track to reach Keynes's eight-fold multiple" by 2029—100 years after the last data Keynes would have had. But according to Friedman, the key reason that Keynes prediction failed to come true is that Keynes failed to allow for the changing distribution of wealth.
in my experience at least have gone from being happy with 1 TV and one stereo in the "family" .... If we lived with the stuff you had in 1930's yeah we could work a lot less.
But a pre-1980's TV was built by hand while today robots do most of the work. The effort that went into that 1950's TV or 1930's car would make a dozen today.
The real reason for more work today is that most of it is non-productive. As automation has replaced much real work, new non-jobs have been created. It is doing stuff like safety inspections, progress chasing, advertising (half the cost of some stuff today goes to its advertising), making financial cases (that can cost more than the work) and so on ad nauseum. In the book "How to be a Wally" it gives a "Wally's" job description : - "To liaise with other Wallys". That's it, in in a nutshell.
I am a power station engineer and I spend hours sitting in meetings with a dozen other qualified engineers discussing eg whether to replace a slightly leaking seal on a large valve, whether it is cost-effective, whether we have a safety case, whether we can spare a fitter to do it. I generally take the line "Just give me a fucking spanner and I'll go down and do it this morning"; but I am treated as if that would be spoil the meeting.
(a) there isn't enough work for everyone because the people who have work are doing too much of it.
(b) work isn't some virtuous act that we should all do as much of as possible.
The problem we have is that work is the only metric we have for determining how to share wealth. Think about it.
It's really simple. Reagan entered office in 1981. China opened its economy to the West starting in 1978. Ever since then, the Chinese economy has grown at about 10% per year, and inequality has increased in the US as lower-wage jobs go to China. Any questions?
The baby boom started increasing the supply of entry level labor about 1970.
Women's liberation started increasing the supply of entry level labor about 1970.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 started increasing the supply of labor (not just entry level) about 1970.
The Donor Party liked this because it lowered labor costs. Oh, did I say "Donor"? I meant "Republican".
The Elect A New People Party liked this because 2 of the 3 sources of new labor would vote to Elect A New People. Oh, did I say "Elect A New People"? I meant "Democratic".
So you have a huge influx of labor and this is interpreted as a "labor shortage" by both parties.
Combined with the fact that FDR's "New Deal", in effect, nationalized many of the functions previously performed by the labor unions -- turning the national border into a de facto picket line that, for example, that neoNazi Eisenhower enforced with "Operation Wetback" (deporting most of the illegal immigrants) -- and the labor movement effectively collapsed.
Elizabeth Warren, before she got conned into becoming a politician, was the only mainstream academic to come close to documenting even part of this. See her Jefferson Lecture titled "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class.
Since 1992, I've been advocating replacing taxes on economic activity with what amounts to an insurance premium for the protection of property rights, and distributing the revenue in a citizen's dividend. In that white paper I predicted a lot of what has now come to pass as a result of centralization of wealth and burgeoning welfare state rent seeking.
Here is a link to a recent synopsis of that proposal.
Seastead this.
When Volkswagen experimented with 4-workday weeks 20 years ago, local plumbers and carpenters fell on hard times because everyone now used the extra day to fix things themselves, or even work on the side on that extra day. While the unions keep telling you that workers would relax during the extra time resulting from reduced work, in reality everyone tries to make a little extra on the side.
Also, having a job gives meaning to your life. Being told that you will be needed less is like telling you that you are a burden - nobody wants to hear that. That is also why today both parents work, even though they could enjoy the standard of living of a single-earner household of 50 years ago. But to keep up with the Joneses and to feel better for themselves both are now working, and the downside of less parenting seems to be generally accepted.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
You're mistaking fault with reason, as many people do. There's inherent barriers to entry--capitalism is about capital used to make further capital which is inherently a self-enriching system for the rich. Further, the overall standard of the living of the world has vastly increased if you include all the Chinese who now have (relatively) good paying jobs along with all the (relatively) cheap goods produced as a by-product of a lot of manufacturing being done in China--the last part materially helps everyone.
The real issue with wealth inequality isn't the inequality per se. At some level, it functionally is equivalent to just a number in a bank or a portfolio with a set number of stock. There's still plenty of opportunity to functionally advance into the very-well-off business owner, even if very few can enter the realm of the super rich; the argument that such has to be a real possibility is absurd for the same reason it'd be absurd to think that every musician must have the opportunity to be a mega star or there won't be enough music made.
No, the real issue is how money in politics has a corrupting influence over the process and the mega rich are quite capable of altering the laws so that, oh, we see workers in the US who are compoundedly hurt by the influx of investments from factories (and the like) from China. It's cheaper to buy a smear campaign against raising minimum wage or raising taxes, even by 1%, on the top 1% of earners to offset the massive budget deficits that the 1% so heavily, indirectly, benefit from. Personal dogma of the 1% is enshrined in law above the will of the people. And while all of this will in the long-term being corrected as China's economy moves much closer to a developed state, that still means potentially decades of an oppressive "elite" who have undue influence over the system.
But, again, in the long-term, it doesn't (mostly) amount to a lot. The drug war isn't a by product of this. General "tough on crime" over-sentencing isn't a by product of this. The US won't default on its debts, even if it finally comes to raising taxes on the top 1%, because the 1% doesn't want to move from the tax/regulation paradise it bought. In general, so long as the 1% continue to be focused on numbers in a bank as more of a game, the actual real harm is mostly minimized and doesn't matter a lot*.
* One could argue about the cutting of social services, but I think that's a broader egotistical issue of Americans who subscribe to Social Darwinism and has been, sadly, a cornerstone of the US for a long, long time. The same with racism, issues of gun violence, etc. Cultural issues like that are mostly unrelated to the China/US trade relation.
Way too many workers are too stupid or lack the backbone to tell their boss, "no, I will not give up my life because you are an asshole and refuse to hire the workers needed"
It's rational under US labor laws where you'll get laid off at the next opportunity, if they don't fire you on the spot for calling your boss an asshole. They'll hire the next guy, the "good" company you find that gets 40 hours/week is out-competed by the "bad" company that gets 60 hours/week and they either change their tune or go bankrupt. As long as it's one worker against the company, the blackmail is going to work. That is why most European countries have mandatory overtime pay where few are exempted.
I don't think I could work at any place without overtime pay, unless it's genuinely management which is exempted here too. It's not about the total compensation, it's about the incentive. One hour isn't free for me, so it shouldn't be free for my manager to ask for another hour. All businesses have something they want to do worth more than $0, so that just mean pile on the tasks until I am working overtime no matter how efficient I am. Sure that means that short term I could stretch my hours and bill overtime. Or more correctly, I have to say to my boss this can't get done in normal time, do you approve use of overtime. Maybe he feels he must approve to reach the deadline, even though he feels I shouldn't have needed it.
But that is not something that should be compensated with free hours, if my boss is not happy with the work/$ he's getting from me the correct time to deal with that is performance reviews and raises. If my work was poor, regular hours or not I should get laid off anyway. So we're talking about the cases where the work is good, but the boss just wants it cheaper. It's like a constant "renegotiation" of your hourly wage, doesn't matter if it's creative work one hour of "software development" is an hour. You get what you get inside that time slot.
Or the tl;dr version:
If you have 120 hours of work that needs doing, hiring 3 people costs 300%.
In the US, hire two and hound them to work 150% and it costs 200% + whatever compensation you manage to get.
In Europe, hire two and pay 150% for the last 20 hours and it costs 200% + 150% = 350%.
That makes it pretty obvious why Americans work so much and Europeans so little. We get more expensive the more you work us, you get cheaper.
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