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Wharton Professor Says America Should Shorten the Work Day By 2 Hours (cnbc.com)
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, New York Times best-selling author, and The Wharton School's top professor, says Americans should work two hours less. Instead of the typical 9-to-5, people "should finish at 3pm," says Grant in a recent LinkedIn post. "We can be as productive and creative in 6 focused hours as in 8 unfocused hours." CNBC reports: In the LinkedIn post, Grant was weighing in on an Atlantic article about the time gap between when school and work days end, a bane for many parents. But it's not the first time Grant has given his stamp of approval to less work with more productivity. "Productivity is less about time management and more about attention management," Grant tweeted in July, highlighting an article about a successful four-day work week study. For the study, a New Zealand company adopted a four-day work week (at five-day pay) with positive results; the company saw benefits ranging from lower stress levels in employees to increased performance. In a recent blog post, billionaire Richard Branson also touted the success of a three-day or four-day work week. "It's easier to attract top talent when you are open and flexible," Branson said in the post. "It's not effective or productive to force them to behave in a conventional way."
"Many people out there would love three-day or even four-day weekends," said Branson. "Everyone would welcome more time to spend with their loved ones, more time to get fit and healthy, more time to explore the world."
"Many people out there would love three-day or even four-day weekends," said Branson. "Everyone would welcome more time to spend with their loved ones, more time to get fit and healthy, more time to explore the world."
More like 8-6 in much of the US, if not worse.
I envy people in places like France and Quebec who take their free-time seriously -- closing time is 6 pm for many business that would stay open until 8 or even 10 pm in the US.
Clearly a great school!
Such ideas only work when mandated, because when you have one company where people only work four days a week, and another where they work 5+ the results are inevitable when they compete...
If you really believe it results in better work go ahead and try it out in the real world.
I do think there is something to rest and being away from a problem being helpful. However there are absolutely also times when sheer volumes of work applied over a long period of time are very useful as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you work > 40 hr/wk, you should be entitled to additional compensation, regardless of salary. Fair's fair. Should discourage employers from abusing knowledge workers.
Who the fuck works 9 to 5 anymore?
Working hours vs. productivity
Working hours vs. premature deaths
Ezekiel 23:20
But we elected Ronald Reagan instead.
is the employer who urges you to exercise outside of work (to keep health care benefit costs low), then expects you to work long hours, leaving you little free time to exercise. Who wants to exercise for an hour or so right before going to bed? I can't sleep when I do that. Working fewer hours would solve that problem for me.
... that includes how long I want to work, how many days I want to work, my end of the compensation negotiation... etc.
Third parties have no stake in the matter. It is between employer and employee.
What stake does any third party have in this matter?
Here someone will say "but what about the exploited worker"... sure, which is why high demand workers are only paid minimum wage... right?
Of course not... We're all paid according to supply and demand. And we generally want to work based on our valuation of our own time vs whatever we're being offered. Offer people very little and people often don't apply or show up for those jobs. Offer them a competitive rate and people show up. Offer them a lot of money and you get to pick and choose from the applicants as well as attract higher quality employees.
All these choices... when we work, how long we work, how much we're paid... it is all supply and demand.
Third parties have no stake in the arrangement and unless they're willing to bias the value of the labor in a manner that is accepted by the market it won't do anything.
Actually, work hours have a direct effect on society, from economy to traffic. This is why the traffic in major US cities is so horrible. People work these long hours the entire day and rush home at the same time. If the work day was shorter, they may come in later and/or leave earlier; thus reducing traffic. Also, when people work less; they usually go on more vacations, watch movies, spend time with family. All these activities cost money and thus; a huge boom to the economy. Thirdly, it forces employers to hire more people; thus reducing unemployment.
You do realize that you can thank one single company for the 8 hour workday, right?
Yes I know, but the results are telling - the U.S. has been pretty much an economic powerhouse ever since, and more R&D seems to get accomplished here.
Other countries could have copied us but so far they all seem to prefer to fall into decline...
Now what DOESN'T make sense is our incredibly rigid school system.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"We can be as productive and creative in 6 focused hours as in 8 unfocused hours."
Assuming people will focus more if they only work 6 hours a day.
Also assuming when people work has no impact.
A lot of people work the hours they do because they're providing a service to customers over that time period. No matter how hard they work for 6 hours won't let them answer a phone between 3 and 5 when they're not working.
I wonder if this policy applies to Wharton interns.
LOL no I don't really.
That's one company doing a 2 month trial.
It would be interesting to see the results of making the change permanent, after the employees don't have the incentive of "if this goes well, you can have 3 day weekends for life"
It's all your choice, eh?
Well, you can choose to work less and then your landlord will choose to throw you out onto the street, the grocery store will choose not to give you their products, and doctors will choose not to treat you etc.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. I think this must be the most hard to learn lesson in human history. The second must be the law of supply and demand.
People keep trying to come up with ways to get around having to pay for things. Countless millions have been subject to poverty and starvation because some fool somewhere thought they could legislate there way around basic laws of economics (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Soviet Union etc.).
You can't create something from nothing. Somebody has to pay for it with finite resources.
We humans keep trying to cheat the basic laws of economics, time and again, thinking that surely this time must be the time things will automagically work. How many millions will starve to death before this kind of foolishness is considered a crime against humanity?
Shortens my average work day to only 9 hours. Woo hoo!
Sorry, you've got nothing to refute the studies with. That was just the latest in a series all showing the same thing - it works quite well. You've got nothing to say about it of any actual value, just worthless speculative opine like Ken Doll.
Work harder, get a 33% hourly raise.
J
lol at the mod down, someone sure is mad at their boss
In the 60s, automation was supposed to make us more productive and therefore we'd have more time for leasure and family. Instead, we go through education longer because computers can do almost anything a high schooler can, but cheaper, so we need to stay abreast of technology in order to earn a paycheck. More time for family? Pfft, more like hardly having time for family, if we can struggle to have one in the first place.
Technology isn't all bad, farming is here to stay, hopefully for an eternity, but maybe we can't have everything and technology doesn't magically solve all problems.
That will give me two extra hours each day to drink beer and smoke dope.
Shifts work great for McDonalds because the work is mindless and easily scalable.
Lots of professional or analytical work is not so easy to hand of between shifts, not to mention when you are talking salaried employees you would have to have benefits for far more employees if you took a shift approach. It would greatly increase your overhead so while you might then be able to keep up with other companies (assuming you could really hand off work so easily), you would still end up losing simply because you never could be as profitable as competitors (or more likely never be able to turn a profit if the competitors are already on a thin margin).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why not double two 6 hour shifts into one 12 hour shift every other day. It has many advantages.
â The worker's commute and prep time is twice as efficient.
â Saves water, and water is scarce. You only bathe every other day, LOL.
â Saves petrol. You commute half as many times per week.
â Makes you more productive. You can complete a larger task in twelve hours, compared to six hours.
â Makes scheduling store hours more efficient. Stores open 9 AM to 9 PM.
â Makes scheduling shifts more efficient. The one hour overlap between shifts is eliminated.
â Standardizes the six day work week. Continuous production lines run on a six day week, with five or six holidays throughout the year, and with 30 day, 5 week months.
â Gives the worker more time to rest, relax, and recuperate every other day.
â Gives the worker an opportunity to attend school three days per week.
yes. cut the workweek to 4 days from 5. but, to make it less onerous, cut the WEEK from 7 days to 6. that gives us a nice even numbered week 4 days on, 2 days off who needs a 3 day weekend every weekend. 2 is enough. then, 5 weeks per month, each month 30 days, the year 12 months or 360 days. 4 unnumbered days at the beginning of each season, and 1 unnumbered day for new year. thats 365, a permanent calendar, january 1 is always monday, calendar sales plummet, christians revolt, businesses rejoice.
Think of the savings. Not 40 hours, no healthcare.
In this free country of ours, no law requires people to stay after 3pm. Companies are free to take the good professor's advice — or ignore it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This idea has been around since the 1930s. It doesn't work, unless you work in one of the bullshit jobs that David Graeber claims make up 40% of the modern workforce. and then zero hours a day would be better.
Sweden ran an experiment to test this idea in a hospital. The staff claimed they were more productive and it was great and that everyone should do it. The hospital on the other hand found they had to employ more people and pay more for overtime. Their wages bill went up by E6m. So they cancelled it. Then had to deal with forcing the staff to work 8 instead of 6 hours a day for the same money or less money if f they were doing 2 hours overtime a day), and laying off people. France's medical system couldn't cope with reducing doctors and nurses hours from 38 to 35 a week.
In real jobs people can't just do 30% more in the same time just because you want it to be so.
You'd have more of a point in a completely competitive market but with fewer employers than employees the bosses have the advantage and labor regulation is one way to counterbalance that
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I only do about 6 hours worth of work anyway. The real problem is that my boss doesn't give me enough to do.
Now that all workers are at 29 hours we don't have Health Care any more.
Now, with widespread computing, automation and the rise of 'thinking' machines, every employee does not need to work for 40 hours to maintain output. Yet, we still define society as needing full employment and unemployment as a (temporary) failure.
The 3 day week is the expected consequence of increased productivity ('The Jetsons' predicted the 15-hour week.) but society has refused to adopt it. In consequence, underemployment is systemic and causing social expectations to be questioned.
"There is no such thing as a free lunch."
BS, there are free lunches available, just not for everyone. What do you think inflation is? It's increasing the money supply by borrowing more money and giving that money to a subset of the population. Sure, you might spread it out (e.g. tax reductions on passive income, plus tax cuts for those quoted companies to increase that passive income, plus dump the debts on the next generation, knowing that by then it will be even more paid by the middle class).
It's whether the free lunches go to the rich (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Soviet Union, USA) or are more equally spread (Switzerland, Sweden, Germany etc.).
It's great! I work Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Having Tuesday off right after just one day of work is really nice, as is the 3 day weekend.
Now if I could just get some benefits...
", the lazy can vote, and they vote for bread and circuses paid for with OPM* and deficit spending. " - Shanghai Bill destroys Republicanism in the US in one shot.
I'd prefer a 4 day workweek, or 3 day workweek. I'd even give up salary for more vacation time.
The distribution of the dots don't appear to form a trend anything like the black line. Looking at the dots, it looks like premature deaths start at an average 4000 years of life lost at 1500 hours worked (6 hours/day @ 5 days/wk, 50 weeks/yr). Rises to an average 6000 years of life lost at 2000 hours worked (8 hours/day). Then drops back down to 4000 years of life lost at 2400 hours worked (9.6 hours/day). Based on the dots, it would appear 1800-2000 hours worked per year is the most dangerous (roughly 7.2-8 hours/day at 5 days/week, 50 weeks/yr). And fewer or more hours worked is healthier.
The huge range in the vertical axis (a difference of 3x to 5x in least/most years of life lost) also suggests the correlation is rather weak. And that other factors matter a lot more than hours worked.
Also, the first graph seems rather obvious. A person working will pick off the lowest-hanging fruit first - complete the tasks first which generate the most productivity for the least effort. Subsequent work is less productive not necessarily because they're tired and less productive, but because the easier tasks have already been done, leaving only the harder tasks which take more time.
Total productivity per worker is actually the product of the two axes (productivity per hour worked times number of hours worked). And that's the figure which matters here. If you're working so many hours that your total productivity actually decreases compared to working fewer hours, then that's incontrovertible proof that you're working too many hours - so many that it's hurting your productivity. That graph would form a nice curve with a peak, which is your optimal number of hours worked for maximum productivity.
The peak for the graph you've presented (productivity per hour worked) would (extending the trendline) be at 0 hours worked. Which does nothing to support the assertion that fewer hours worked is more productive, since no hours worked would result in zero productivity. But it does support my interpretation that workers prioritize tasks to complete the easier most-bang-for-the-buck tasks first.
Learn to be better at delegating.
Kendall you haven't demonstrated the honesty or ability to read required of even the lowest McDonalds employees yet. Your blathering is scalable as you demonstrate, accomplishing nothing at all. Zero dollars worth.
"Professional analytical work" is another massive diverse series of fields you demonstrate zero knowledge or understanding of beyond the most basic blathered assumptions.
It's obvious you don't run a business, blathering on slashdot all day as your record indicates in reality. You need an outlet to your angry lack of business chops. Go outside, play with the other children. Something.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all about work-life balance. But honestly, if my days were 6 hours, my projects would be perpetually unfinished, and my skills would get rusty. 8-10 is really my sweet-spot; with maybe a light friday. You start sending people home, and their effectiveness and cohesiveness as a team also suffers (if they're working as a team).
That said: I don't have any problem with remote work (for those in jobs where that can work, like software engineering). If you have the right tools, team, skills, discipline, and methodology, I think having 1-2 remote days can actually improve productivity in a lot of cases.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
All the management come in late an leave early. Seems to work well for them.
I work in a secondary school, and praise the ability to be able to wander around and fix issues when the school has yet to be filled with kids. When the kids are in, it's actually much harder to arrange meeting with teachers and solve issues, as they're either busy teaching, or busy eating/having a break. A 9-3 shift pattern would make my job almost impossible.
On the other hand, i left the catering industry 3 years ago. Now if you want awful shift patterns, that's the job to have. I'd work split shift 11-3 and 5-10. Thats 8 hours a day with a gap in between. It gives you very little time to yourself, and the time you do have, you spend fretting away about the fact you have to go back to work.
Ditch the shift work! Keep the 9-5!
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
I'm free to work fewer hours per day right now if I want to. But I'm scrambling as fast as I possibly can to dig myself out of the hole I was born into before I die, so I don't. Are you going to force me to work less for less pay? Cause I don't want that; I could have that right now if I did. Are you going to somehow make me paid the same for less work? I don't know what magic you think will accomplish that but if you've got something bring it on.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I know lots of people at work that reduced the working hours to 30 minutes a day. What I don't get is why they usually stick around for another 7-8 hours....
---
You should not.
For years (maybe 40 years by now) France is shooting itself in the foot.
We (French) take strong laws for people wellness (reduced work hours, ban on pesticids, food regulation...).
Those laws are fundamentaly good laws BUT it STRONGLY hurts our economy and employment.
So, paradoxically, this reduces the wellness (or perceived wellness)
This would work IF and only IF France taxed the imported products that were produced with lowest standards.
But Europe prevents that.
For the knowledge workers posting here insisting that they need 8 hours to be productive, how many of those 8 (or 10 or 12) hours that you insist you work are spent on the web, “training”, shopping, or hanging with co-workers?
I’ve worked in software since the beginning of the web as a developer, manager, founder, and executive with highly productive teams developing technical software. You know what’s been constant regardless of the company or team? “Down time” throughout the day, either via the web or smoking breaks or exercise breaks. No one who’s honest with themselves will claim to work a full day every day. Sure, some days you’re heads down in code and bang out 12 hours of solid work, but most days, if you’re honest about the downtime, you did much less.
I had one employee once who worked closer to 6 hour days. He’s the only person I’ve seen not slack off regularly. He came in and got to work. He was more productive than most of the 8 hour employees. N of 1 but I noticed it then and have since paid attention to how much people actually work. It’s closer to 6 hours.
Your civilization will not survive the next 100 years, you are actively deluded.
Over the last month I've altered my balance in my daily routine.
I'm doing at least 2hr's on something I want to do that is unpaid, could be learning something new, working on a side project, watching tv, posting on slashdot...
Then the rest of the day is for my clients. What I have found is despite less hours available to the clients, I'm getting the same, if not more work done, so maintaining the same level of income. If I'm getting more work done, I then free up even more time for myself.
If I try work a full day for my clients, it becomes obvious by mid afternoon I'm slowing down and not getting as much done. Jobs then seem to take longer and drag on.
I think finding a balance where you can spend time doing something you want to do during the working day, has certainly improved my daily outlook, and at the same time I'm learning and producing better quality work.
It won't work for everyone, it won't work for every role/industry but certainly an improvement for some.
In the job shop / small manufacturing world I now inhabit, it takes about 1/2 hour or so to get everything going in the morning, and about the same time to shut it all down at the end of the day. So, we'd get about 70% of our current productivity if we took this approach. There are many other types of work, as stated above (ER, Medical care, Service industry), where you'd have hire 33% more workers to get coverage. Where's all that money going to come from to pay all and train all these new hires?
Some old white dude (like me) probably wrote this in a comfy office.
Yea that would be nice, Only working 10 hours a day would be great...
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty
Download a PDF file of the book: Entire book, 312 pages (PDF file)
Review of the book.
...have to work to 7pm just to serve YOU? They should get off at 5pm too. In fact all work should happen from 9-5.
My job is 8-5. I get there around 7 most days and peel myself away at 530-6 in the evening. There is absolutely no way I could do what I get done in 2 hours less.
I suppose if you were a professor who doesn't have much experience in the real world, you wouldn't know what the relevant data is that would figure into a model though...
Sounds like you suck at what you do then, PHB.
Somehow, I suspect if this gets support by businesses then everyone will suddenly find themselves to be part-time workers. Now you don't get any benefits. Aww, too bad......
Of course, you can now work seven days a week to put you back over 40 hours. <Insert evil laugh here>
What makes people think people will be more focused for 6 hours than 8. What about service jobs where customer support has fixed hours and forced focus? I'm already reading there is a labor shortage. If take home pay remains the same, we're talking a 33% increase in hourly rate - that's inflationary.
What dream world do these people live in?
Greed is the root of all evil.
Be careful when applying to these jobs! I took one with a car dealer that promised 10 hour days, you had to be there 30 minutes before start, you got two 30 minute breaks BUT if you were with a customer you lost that. One hour lunch BUT again if you were with a customer you lost that so you really worked 12.5 hours and got paid for 10 :(
Another job was 9 hour days so every other week was 4 days, that I loved!
People that work 8 hours do 6 hours of work. Tell them 6 hours and they'll work 6. God, if I could get in at 6 am and be done at noon every day I'd be so happy!
FedEx or UPS had a problem during the holidays. Things were late. They started telling employees at large hubs that they will get paid for 8 hours and can go home when the work was done. POOF! No extra cost to the company and all the delays disappeared.
Before we start talking about reducing the 40-hour work week, let's start talking about and acting upon how to get the current work week to 40 hours.
So how exactly does this work for , oh I dunno.... companies that run 24/7 such as electric generation facilities? What about service industries which are open from 9am until 9pm (ie best buy and other retailers) ?
We either work over 40 hours because we have to, or comfortable work under 40 hours. Either way we should adjust the hours and not the pay.
Not that I disagree with most of your comment but it seems like Slashdot has this bunch of people that somehow know each other enough to create drama. I have been reading this site since shortly after its inception and I've never been able to get as...involved...as a regular forum. Is this because I'm on the east coast, far away from any big tech company besides Indian Business Machines?
...as long that the minimum wage is $20/hour with 1.5 overtime over 30 hours/week. We can live on that.
As a manager you really don't have to work more hours then your employees.
Besides even as a manager or even a boss, there probably is a few hours of downtime, where you just don't have the energy doing any work. So you either goof off in in your office. Or wander the cubes jabbing with your employees telling yourself it is some sort of team building or raising spirits. While all you are doing is distracting them because you don't want to do your work.
However to note, if those other employees who are working less hours, means 2 less hours you need to work managing them.
As you move to management, you should learn to drop much of the fine detail work, that is what the employees are for. You need to focus on the bigger picture and make sure the employees are going in that direction. The further up you go the bigger the picture, and less on the details.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This would only work if the pay was increased to compensate for the 2 hours not worked. People who live paycheck to paycheck rely on those two hours of work to pay the electricity bill, or car insurance, or groceries. Some people really cannot afford to lose 2 hours of pay a day.
Not everyone lives in Silicon Valley.
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver --Proverbs 25:11
at one point I was on a 37.5 hour contract in a technology development environment. honestly people functioned better. Just that 1/2 hour meant that very gained a bit on the commute allowing them to focus on family a bit more so they were more focused at work.
Does this mean I got to only work 4 hours a day? Cause I already decided a while back to switch to a 6 hour day.
France has pretty much the most productive labor force in the world. France will be fine.
I have always wondered what jobs these studies are talking about?
The majority of jobs are Truckers, teachers, nurses.
Sure, a Trucker can deliver their loads faster, in exchange for increased risk. But my understanding of society is that this option is off the table.
Can students really learn just as much in 4 hours of class time as 6? Or is it lunch that you want to cut, or teacher prep time?
For me, I have worked construction and IT.
For IT, to really be the best asset we could be, we aimed to be available 24 hours a day as we were reactive problems that popped up as much as we were there for daily maintenance and upgrading. And honestly, you can only click through menus so fast, or walk down the hall so fast. I see the relationship of work accomplished to time spent as directly linear.
For construction. There is a general feeling that it would be pretty nice if we could skip lunch and breaks and go home 2 hours earlier. But that is doing the exact same amount of work over the same amount of time. You don't work faster in construction without increasing your skill level or getting yourself and others killed.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
And its easy to espouse this nonsense when you're already a 1%'er and don't have to worry about paying the mortgage and feed the family.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
I hate to be the one to break it to Wharton Boy, but not that many people work 9-5 now that the 1950's are over. Many, many full-timers work longer hours than, and many work less traditional hours - evenings, early mornings, and rotating or irregular shifts. The people working banker's hours are not the ones we should be most concerned about. We should be worrying about the people who work irregular schedules 50-60 hours or more every week with, no real benefits and no vacation time, and still can't make ends meet in supporting a family. I find it sad that some people still only see "workers" as people who work 9-5 in air conditioned offices, 48 weeks a year. Why doesn't anyone worry about the well being and "productivity" of burnt out factory workers or service industry workers who bust their asses every day for low pay? The American Dream is but a dream for most.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
with resulting lowering of my wage because my employer is in a bit of a work slump. Been doing this since May of this year. Having Thursday as Friday, and a 3 day weekend has been WONDERFUL, even I stand to lose about $8 - 10,000 this year. A mixed blessing. And yes, I am looking for another job with a more stable company.
Antiquated fucking bullshit
As much as I want this ... I think this professor needs to learn how to make a business case.
... the one working X hours less achieves Y% more". I would consider it.
I would never breath a word about any of this to my boss. It just isn't very compelling.
But if there were a case were, "Between two isolated, controlled groups
In fact I said something like that to one of my bosses once, but he said I was speculating, and I kind of was.
What, you mean, from 70 to like, 68? What *will* I do with all that extra time?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Now get back to work you freefumb luvin gun toting cunts!
You're doing it wrong.
I'm a manager too and also do work and delegate. I rarely put in more than 8 hours a day.
The people who need shorter days, ie the ones whose bodies wear out, are the ones who will keep doing six day weeks. A lot of us, even surgeons, would certainly not do more in 75% of the time!
Here's some data related to your claim. http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/01/09/of-productivity-in-france-and-in-germany/. Note that the blog post is January 2017 for data ending in 2015, and that the publication is French.
In summary: The US, France, and Germany are close to equally productive (money per hour), but Germany and especially the US make more (dollars per person) because they work more hours.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Don't have to, but, I do 2-3 days a week because IT'S QUIET, no phones, no email, text, NOTHING. I can do things & check on the stuff I want to research without interruption. One thing I refuse it to "take it home" with me. My work email is on do not disturb from 5:30pm to 6:30am during the week and from 5:30pm Friday, to 6:30am Monday. If it is an emergency, flipping call 911.
I take 2-hour breaks every 15 min.
Please study harder so you can GTFO back to your little-slice-of-paradise (you know, the one that apparently can't produce grad schools worth attending.) Sayonara/Adios/Anyounghi Gasayo/Ciao/whatever.
so fek off. I need my 40 hour work week.
And what does your mom do?
I mean aside from giving shit advice.
True, however by fewer you don't mean like "5" employers... you have hundreds of thousands. There is competition.
The issue is not a lack of competition, but rather a SUPPLY vs DEMAND issue.
You don't resolve that by legislating value. You do it by shifting the balance. To increase the value of labor you have to decrease the supply vs the demand.
We're seeing that happen right now even though that is "politically incorrect."
Cutting down H1B visas etc.
Regulators are not going to bias the market in the way that you want. It doesn't work with other products in the market. You can't just say the price of socks is 10 dollars and expect everyone to buy just as many socks for 10 dollars. What you're going to see is more people going around in sandals. Various people will find citing labor as just another market factor that is coldly calculated by the market as... immoral or unethical... this is like calling the winter wind unethical or tide tables unethical. It is naive to impose arbitary moral standards on something that is not plastic to such considerations and has dramatically more power to impose its nature on you than the other way around. The wise course is to understand and work with these forces rather than wasting a lot of energy trying slap the tide away with your bare hands.
If you want to balance power between employer and employee... then you have to shift the supply/demand curve more in the labor seller's favor and away from the labor buyer's favor. There are a lot of ways to do that. But it is going to require some re-posturing by the various political and economic tribalists that have ideologically associated themselves with policies that... sadly have a track record of failure at this point.
Anything short of that is going to have a lot of unsustainable consequences.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Are you saying you SHOULDN'T have to go and get a second or third job to make ends meet? You think that's ok for minorities and white trash, but you DEMAND respect and compensation, amirite?
Pointing out traffic issues doesn't get us to "contracts should be proscribed by non-stake holding third parties."
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Okay, so you think if I force your employer to give you two less hours of work, you'll therefore be able to pay your rent?
As to choices, yes you have the choice to rent an apartment you can't afford and then work hours that ensure you'll be evicted.
This is a choice.
I suspect you're an adult and will take appropriate actions to see that your needs are met.
As to the suggestion that you need the government to come in and force "the man" to give you what you think you're worth.
"IF" you were worth that, then the market would see you be paid that.
"the man" only pays you that because many areas have been used to a glut of labor in relation to jobs.
This means you have an over supply of labor and insufficient demand to soak it up.
Now, there are different ways to deal with this... one of them is to move. Often economic issues like this are regional and you can address them by going somewhere else. This is something americans used to do all the time but since the 1970s it has become increasingly less common. Various theories for this exist but it does mean that when regional issues occur labor tends to stay in those regions and go unemployed. This depresses wages and creates a generally nasty economic situation.
Forcing the companies to pay you more, often will cause the companies to hire fewer people or do what you should have done... and leave. The statistics on this are pretty clear and not especially open to debate. It is objective reality.
Now if you issue is "how do I address the issue, get paid more, have a better life, have more control" etc... we can do that. There are solutions for that.
But the solution is not "force the government to make them pay me more"... you might see that as an easy fix but you're not factoring time. As in... okay... you did that ONCE... now that "the man" knows you're going to do that, is he just going to put his neck in the noose and let you do it again tomorrow and every day there after?
Most really bad economic theories explicitly do not do a time calculation. Look at their equations and look for a time variable. You'll often find it doesn't exist... for some reason. And that's because they're not factoring long term consequences.
We can cook the golden goose right now... but you're going to starve tomorrow.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Reasons for anything I've said being in error were not provided.
This is a null argument.
What you basically said was that you rudely disagree and that my opinion is as bad as someone I've never heard of before. Given that you're posting under AC... I don't know why you even bother with names.
Should we all just be ACs at this point so that we can shit post and there isn't even any pretense of having a point?
Regardless, you didn't provide a reason for why I was wrong. Until you do, this is a null argument.
Try again.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... that includes how long I want to work, how many days I want to work, my end of the compensation negotiation... etc.
Probably not to the extent that one ideally ought to. If you want a full-time position, with benefits, etc, you will almost certainly have to work 40 (or more) hours per week. And for most of us, those 40 hours come close to 9-5 M-F. If you have some other way to get health insurance (at minimum) then part time work might be just fine for you. But if you get an employment offer for a full time position and you counter by saying you would like to only work 30 hours a week you likely will find their counter will be to show you the door.
Offer people very little and people often don't apply or show up for those jobs
If supply and demand were the dominant forces here - working without interference - then that would be the case. However there are other forces that need to be considered here as well. For one employers know how to make the labor market a buyer's market; keeping wages very similar across an industry for the same type of work makes it less worth the effort for an employee to go looking elsewhere. Two, we have a continuous supply of new, green workers all the time as more kids reach the age where they can seek out their first jobs - which helps employers to keep wages down for basic work. Three, we still have plenty of people who will work under the table for various reasons, which also keeps wages down.
No way. I'm not tripling the amount of time I spend in the office.
As to the presumption you can pass a law and force the market to do what you want... Look at Detroit or Venezuela. The market has a response if you want play games.
If I hated someone... I'd tell them to do it. It is one of the crueler things I could wish upon a people.
It won't work. It will backfire. The data makes that clear. We can pull up information if you want.
As to "employers know how to make the labor market a buyer's market"... I'm not disagreeing... but I think when you cite "how" they're doing that, it will reveal other solutions. I know how they do it. I want you to say it. It will come back to supply and demand. Thus making supply and demand the dominant force. It was dominant in Soviet Russia and is dominant in North Korea. You can't stop it. It exists in maximum security prison. It is everywhere in every economy.
As to new kids always entering the labor pool... depends on the profession... if you're exclusively talking about unskilled labor... that is work literally "for" children. As an adult, you should not be competing with children anymore than you should be getting beaten in a spelling bee by a toddler. Between the time you were a kid and now... did you really develop no skills at all? Because "that" is actually the problem if so.
Go to welding school or something... takes a few months... they are paid pretty well from what I understand.
You're killing me.
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It's easy to sit behind your classroom podium and prognosticate about how long the work week should be. But try running an actual business, and you'll find out just how hard it is to get everything done, even with an 8-hour day!
How does one get a US worker to focus for 6 of 6 work hours, when we cannot get 6 of 8 work hours out of them?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Workplace culture is far more important than scheduling, imo... I left a job that was six figures with a schedule of 1000-1500, a 25 hour work week in favor of a position with similar pay but 0800-1600, a 40 hour work week. 60% more hours for about 2% more pay, but I'm exponentially happier in the new position. Bottom line, the old company was absolute shit... disrespectful, unappreciative, amoral executives without any sense of integrity or honesty and a generally poor atmosphere all around. The new company is just staffed by better people, top to bottom, who care about what they're doing and it's reflected in the atmosphere every minute of the day. The actual job is the same, IT doesn't change too much from one spot to the next, but everything else about work is so much better that I have no qualms at all about being here longer. Folks bring their dogs to work and generally enjoy being at work here whereas the old company was a life sucking, soulless grind regardless of how few hours I was there or how easy the work was.
Easy way to do that. Become an entrepreneur. You get to choose which 120 hrs a week you work -- AND a 9 out of 10 chance to go bankrupt.
Maybe? I don't know anyone else here at al though I do recognize some names when I post... but every response from me is basically independent from anything I've ever posted before in response to anyone. Even if some other post from someone before was stupid everyone makes mistakes or changes, no reason to hold any grudges I say. Besides, who wants to remember the history of a bunch of people on the internet you have no real connection with?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"IF" you were worth that, then the market would see you be paid that.
That assumes a benevolent market, that is working to ensure that the most optimal solution for all parties is reached. The market does not work that way, however. The market works towards maximum profit, with wages only a side effect that impedes profit. Employers on the market will pay as little as possible to employees, and will seek out employees who will work for less. The value of the worker in terms of actual wage is not a reflection of what they are worth. If that were the case then hedge fund managers would be destitute after losing millions of other peoples' dollars and farm workers would be able to afford housing.
You're right and wrong. The market is not the problem but the political system which allows politicians to bias the economy.
There are mechanisms to inflate the labor supply with suppresses price.
What you keep not appreciating is that it is SUPPLY and DEMAND.
Contrary to your suggested knowledge of the matter, it is by manipulating SUPPLY that employers lower price.
IF you want to be paid more, then you have to DECREASE SUPPLY. Just as that will increase the selling price of nickel or rubber... it will also increase the price of labor.
Control immigration, regulate the H1B visa system better... and labor prices will come up. It is fundamental and unstoppable. You can get around that as easily as you can get around the laws of thermodynamics. Many say they can dictate the market... hyper-inflating currencies and famines tend to be the reward of such people.
How then were labor prices suppressed? Well, look at a graph of WHEN US labor prices started to go down:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
We can see it started to crash in the 1970s. What happened in the 1970s? Globalism was an element. There were changes in trade, changes in labor, and that put pressure on US wages.
If you want to improve US wages, you don't do it by passing a law that says companies have to pay people more. You do it by increasing the value of US labor... which means shifting the supply/demand curve.
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