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The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure?
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We underestimate the shock that it must have been for rural workers to move into a factory during the industrial revolution.
In the countryside work was sparse and dictated by weather, season and community. Farmers enjoyed half of the year of holiday, and their work days were rarely more than 7 hours long interspersed by long breaks. Religious holidays were plentiful and there was no concept of "work week". Even serfs in the east didn't have modern schedules, and were allowed plenty of rest before corvee duties.
The myth of the farmers toiling on the field all day was largely propaganda to entice people to move into cities and definitely toil all day in front of a deadly machine. Sleeping patterns that existed since the dawn of civilization had to be changed in order to make industrial workers more productive.
The rapid urbanization led to an equally rapid industrialization of agriculture due to the need to feed secondary industry workers, and by doing that not only those who move to the cities lost their free time, but also those who stayed in the countryside.
Then the "worker" concept became so ingrained in sociology, that humans are entirely measured by their productivity metrics, regardless of their nature, existence and ambitions. Even purely intellectual tasks such as researchers now are defined by productivity.
Sources:
The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor
Segmented Sleep in Preindustrial Societies, by A. Roger Ekirch, PhD
> Its one of the better simulations I have seen. What elements of their model do you object to/consider incorrect? > > > > Also you understand that all econ papers on BI systems use models right? That's how you look at econometric data.
The entire approach. It seems foolish to rely on simulations when REAL WORLD DATA is available.
It's a lot like studying gravity, but instead of going outside and dropping the apple yourself, you use Garry's mod.
I'd need to reread the entire paper again if I wanted to nitpick exact disagreements I have with it, but honestly, just the way the simulation was set up for starters, you're making tons of assumptions about human nature, which may or may not be accurate, running them through a machine, and reaching a conclusion. What if your parameters are wrong? What if the entire simulation oversimplifies the complex experience that is real life? This just seems way too limited, considering that we actually have studies on this matter.
>Full employment is the ideal, if you don't have full employment you introduce structural issues outside of the labor market. Having a job isn't simply about economic productivity, its how we ensure mobility, reduce crime, increase social cohesion etc.
As someone who approaches these things more from sociology, political science, etc., I understand that to some degree, but you have no idea how creepy or distopian that sounds to me. Basically it really betrays the protestant work ethic attitude of "idle hands are the devil's work." I'll object to your approaches from a mere standpoint of values, that we need to bludgeon people over the head with work to stop them from committing crimes or enforce a system of conformity on people. Having studied criminology, I honestly think criminal behavior is a very complex thing and that there is a lot of motivations behind it. In some ways, filling peoples' time with busy work might keep them from other pursuits, but those pursuits could be good or bad. Moreover, the very need for work and the disconnect as far as the amount of work available creates problems of its own, and could lead to crime. A lot of crime is done to acquire wealth. Theft, embezzlement, etc. Admittedly, a lack of legitimate means to get ahead lead to a lot of crime, so it's good to have OPPORTUNITY available for people, but at the same time, forcing people into jobs they otherwise would not do carries with it a lot of problems as well.
>Also beyond this we are moving in to a period of serious and sustained labor shortage in advanced economies which is going to put increasing upwards pressure on prices, how would you suggest we deal with this with high voluntary unemployment and how would we adjust a BI fiscal policy to respond to this without an inflationary spiral?
Where do you get this idea from?! Capitalism almost always has significantly high unemployment, and this leads to poverty and people being screwed. With the threat of automation looming in the coming decades, I think the problem is finding work for people to do, not that we run into issues with wage price spirals and labor shortages.
>As the Mincome study pointed out labor discouragement measured can't be considered representative as the participants understood it was temporary. The best data we have for labor discouragement under a BI system is EITC not the experiments.
Not really, EITC is only given to people who work. And while yes, there are limitations to the mincome studies and the like, they're still the best data we have available on the subject of UBI.
>As goods demand rose not because the cost of basic goods rose faster then wages. A 1960 family living today and consuming precisely the same goods (and the same quantities) they did in 1960 would have lower household spending relative to income today then they would in 1960.
In some areas yes. In other areas no. See ridiculous rent prices for instance. Or education. Or healthcare.
>How many hours should we work?
As few as we can while still meeting our needs as a society. I dont value work for work's sake, only as a means to an end.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Overworked-American-Unexpected-Decline/dp/046505434X (not expecting you to read this one since it costs money)
>First wages are neither dropping nor stagnant, total compensation growth is about right for what AD has been doing, ~1.1%, and wage growth stands at ~0.41% controlling for cyclic effects. The most significant factor holding down wage growth is transfers from wages to compensation, retirement is growing extremely quickly and formally healthcare was also transferring from wages. There are a whole bunch of things we could do to improve wage growth, given congresses reluctance to listen to economists I doubt anything of merit will be done though.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/economy/middle_class/
>In terms of working hours its a utility decision, labor drives working hours long term not employers (with the exception of low-income labor, but looks similar to other income cohorts). Working n hours is our attempt to maximize our leisure utility, if we worked n-1 hours then we would have more leisure time but less income to maximize how we spend that leisure time.
This is actually a complicated topic to discuss, but I think the results are pretty complex and our current system DOES lead to chronic overwork in a cancerous fashion, and it ultimately can be traced back to employers.
With low wage, and even middle class jobs, you do what you're told, you have a boss that tells you when to work, what to do, and if you dont like it, there's the door. Of course, you're not gonna take the door because you'll starve if you do.
In upper class jobs, this can take different forms, but the general process is the same. A lot of jobs have generous vacation, but workers dare not take them because of peer pressure. If you arent seen as being a martyr, working hard and keeping up pace with everyone else, you're seen as an outcast, and this will cause you to lose your job. A lot of pressure in our economic system to perform isnt formal, so you might pin it on the workers themselves as "choosing" to work harder, but just know that that "choice" isn't always clear cut and is often times made under duress, because if you dont constantly seek to keep up or outperform, you're left in the dust and lose it all. It's a treadmill you gotta keep on running as fast as possible until you drop dead, because if you don't, you're screwed. But remember, you "choose" to keep running, no one is "forcing you" deranged grin and evil laugh.
>You understand how that impacts prices and the wages of other labor actors right?
Depends on the extent to which labor is reduced. I think in small increments, it can be quite beneficial, since as it is companies are raking in high profits while wages are stagnant. It can be bad in excess though.
>That's not what labor discouragement is about. People reducing hours worked to the average is a very good thing indeed, much work suggests it would actually improve productivity of labor, the problem is people reducing hours worked beyond this without the reason being family or education (and even with education, it largely depends on what they are studying).
Well, here's the thing, and this is something that might explain our differences in perspective. I'm not an economist. I understand a little econ, but I'm more into political science and sociology among social sciences. I think economics is useful, but it has a different set of assumptions built into it than the disciplines I emphasize though. I notice economists focus more on things like productivity and stuff. So when you say labor reduction can be a good thing because it leads to productivity, understand I think there's more to life than just productivity. Same thing with the assumptions in the first paragraph, you saw how I approached the issue of encouraging conformity and the like in a way different way than you, and I actually see that as a bad thing to some degree.
Due to our differences in outlook, please understand that some things you consider to be good I consider to be bad, and vice versa. You might not be big on some of my ideas because I dont highly emphasize productivity, and think that the heavy emphasis on productivity in our economy resembles an all consuming cancer that threatens other important aspects of life. We can let the constant pursuit for more stuff consume our lives, our environment, everything, but I see such an existence as bleak and slave like. The economy is made for man, not man the economy. THe economy is meant to enhance human existence, not consume it. I think we allow the economy to dominate our lives to too great of an extent. It tells us when to wake up, when the eat, when to sleep, when to work,w hen to play. Some of these things are neglected. A lot of people are too busy working the idea of a day off is foreign to them. Some of them skimp on sleep, which has health effects, etc. I really do think our emphasis on economics as central to our lives as it is really does come at the expense to other aspects of the human experience, and I am perfectly a okay with a moderate reduction in work effort to the extent that it doesnt cause the whole system to collapse via wage price spirals and rampant inflation and shortages. Again, the economy exists for us, we should not be slaves to the economy.
>Distortionary costs are far more significant then simply capital flight.
Care to explain?
>FYI examples from developing economies are largely not relevant to advanced economies,....
And I freely admit that, which is why I prefer to emphasize the US/CA studies over the third world ones.
No study is perfect btw. I admit that freely. I just think they're a massive step up from abstract models.
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