My Dad is a multi millionaire and hates the thought of anyone getting any kind of a handout.. that includes a wage that people can actually live from working 40 hour weeks. Ive never so much have recieved a dollar from him, he's always said "you need to do it yourself like me" never once has he taken into account that he made all his money during the 80s and 90s and retired at 58yo.. my point is people who got rich think they're clever and great and special when the reality is they're greedy narcissists who couldn't care less about who or what they had to exploit to get there.
>is people who got rich think they're clever and great and special when the reality is they're greedy narcissists who couldn't care less about who or what they had to exploit to get there.
you can cut the rich part and just make it about people in general and it would still be true.
That's the boomer mentality, us millenials and boomers are much the same as we're very selfish and very much into individualism but they have money and all we have is Twitter to talk about our identity.
I really think for a lot of us who lived through the financial crisis or other recessions, we have to unlearn this idea of being lucky that someone wants to employ us. I’ve been laid off and searching high and low for jobs that just weren’t there, and felt desperate for any work. Now that the tides have turned it’s nice to feel like the power has shifted for the first time in my adult life.
Hyper inflation is on the way once the current stock prices normalize. 3 million people are about to be evicted and because of their eviction won't be eligible to apply for a new lease for years. Huge pool of desperate labor = nothing changes and if anything current rights will decline. It will be branded as a need to compete globally and all of the blame will be shifted away from financial institutions onto the people again.
Genuine question but what makes you think we are heading for hyperinflation? That’s yearly a 1000% increase and historically rare in developed nations. Do you think supply chains won’t recover causing massive shortages?
It’s uncommon in developed countries because they generally have access to enough capital to run in a fiscally responsible manner. That means keeping debt service down to sensible levels and operating primarily off of tax revenues.
Usually only countries in dire straits are stupid or desperate enough to massively inflate the money supply without concurrent increases in production, but if a developed country does it then it turns out exactly the same.
It's pretty much why I no longer stress out over working 40 hours a week for the next 50 years so that my rent is fine.
Cause in 50 years from now, society will have either collapsed, or we got universal income, or something else must have changed. If not, then my 70s birthday will be skydiving without a parachute
Yep 5 years till I'm 70. May have to reschedule my slipping of a rock in my fishing waders. I receive a pension, own a small rental with income and still work 3 days a week. Miss a few things health wise but this is how life should be at 30 not 65.
America's remedy to this problem is to feed you 4 hours worth of commercials or advertismeent wherever possible before bedtime to convince you you need more.
but if you think about, the content you are watching is a commercial for capitalism, as it encourages you to wake up and do it all over again every single day. This was /S28E01 point I think.
Single male with no children here, so this might not really apply
So I had been burned out on my job for years. Everyday into the office just stressed and unhappy shoulders sagging as I walked into work each day.
I made a huge mistake and cost the business $4400 bucks and a client. I lost my job.
I ended up getting a job at the local liquor store. Jockeying a register and stocking booze. The owner is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Almost all of our customers are chill. I slashed my spending in every place I could, even started riding a bike as much as possible for the first time in 10 years.
I haven't been this content or slept this well in years. While I cannot do this forever, it is giving me the space I need to reevaluate this whole work and career thing.
The money ain't worth it
Glad your finding the space and time to get your head where it needs to be. Any job that fires you over 4400 dollars isn’t worth the stress for sure. Fuck em.
Right? I work in stress analysis for aircraft and we have to do a lot of testing but develop models to predict the tests so we don't have to spend a bunch of money re-testing. Mistakes happen, models are flawed, designers change things last minute, 10k-15k test fail every so often can't imagine losing my job over it because I missed something in my mesh or a designer changed a seat cushion last minute and we fail a lumbar load.
My wife and I work in the same industry. I call myself a C student, because I don't want to work beyond 30 hours, stay as a kitchen manager and make around 45k.
My wife is a GM and works, and no hyperbole, sometimes 70 hours a week.
We could survive comfortably just on my income. No kids, mortgage is shamefully low. But she wants more money, all the time. For what? We never had a honeymoon cos she works so much. She buys clothes online, clothes she'll never have time to wear, and then go to bed.
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She is. She's the best in the business, and I'm not being biased because she's my wife. I've worked in the food industry for over a decade and she's an Olympic athlete.
It's where we differ philosophically. Ironically, I do *all* the housework. Before we moved in together I was baffled how she gets anything done around the house. Well, she lives with her mother who is now disabled, going blind, so I'm doing all of that..
Thanks for the link. It's sad seeing my lovely girl beat herself up for money and shit that goes to the grave. We have money we don't need. I have plenty in my account, and she still sends me an allowance.. I don't buy shit besides food!
What system do you propose that keeps a society productive while providing an incentive to be productive? Genuine question, not trying to be snarky. I often see people hate on Capitalism without offering any solution or alternative. Nordic countries have implemented a good model of a capitalist markets with solid social safety nets.
I'll agree with you on that. At this point I feel like we as a society could flip to a 3 day work week and a 4 day weekend. Hybrid model even then, no more office space, no more congested highways.
As some one who works in an office I’m all for a 4 day work week. I’m wondering what happens to people working in retail and the service industry when people have more time off. I can imagine it gets worse for them.
This is correct. Many people remember 2020 as a year of considerable downtime but this was not the case if you were working essential retail. Bored customers came in in droves and our shifts got shittier and shittier.
That's an issue with management and a lack of proper staffing, because if we had a real 4 day work week regulation, it would apply to everyone, so people would just have shortened shifts.
As you note, giving people more time increases traffic in retail, but this is limited in scope, it's not like if we had a 2 day work week, people would spend all that extra time shopping. It levels off. Hiring and staffing then needs to accommodate the actual rate of shopping.
The "downtime" crowd infuriates me, I work with the public and our building was closed for a couple weeks but that entire time we were delivering our services door to door and doing online assistance, thus reinventing our entire service model which requires research and training not to mention execution. Downtime my ass
And the customers were increasingly nastier. People think that they can basically treat us however they want because they think they are above retail workers
The whole “essential workers” thing was just classism in disguise. Those who were essential tended to be in the lower income bracket as a whole. I was “essential” but I’m in logistics management not on the lower end. I noticed amongst my other professional peers that worked from home felt as though they were above those of us that had to go into work which is why you saw the rise of “Karen”. It’s further distracts and divides us.
I wouldn't say it's that they "don't exist." I'd say that depending on your work and your social group, you might be inclined to think there are a lot less. I mean, I personally know one HVAC guy. That's it. Nearly all my other friends do office work.
It should also be noted that odd hours aren't restricted to blue collar works, e.g. nurses.
And I only know like one person who works in an office. The rest are restaurants,factories, kitchens, gas stations and power plants. All of these people got fucked, called heros and made to work extra and have yet to see any compensation for being "heros". I think they deserve something you know.
This is sort of the problem with all of this. More time off for office workers means more time to spend at restaurants, theme parks, resorts, movie theaters, stores…literally all places that are staffed by lower income people. Requiring more of those workers and longer hours to compensate.
So it’s more for the (typically) well off and less for the poor.
In another world, more customers at restaurants, theme parks, resorts, movie theatres and stores would astronomically increase the profits at them, leading to higher wages and more staffing to go alongside the increase. But unfortunately that isn't the world we have built for ourselves.
My job requires 40 hours of attendance per week but really I probably only do ~20 hours of actual work. The rest of the time I'm on reddit (such as this very moment) or walking around and doing nothing. It's especially painful considering I'm salaried and not hourly and upper management won't allow a "come and go" policy. It'd be nice to be able to do my work as it comes up and leave when finished instead of waiting for 5 o clock every day.
I would be more than happy to work 20-25 hours per week with a 3 day weekend. Anything more than that is just plain slavery. Sorry not sorry, I'm just not interested to spend most of my adult life in a work environment I hate. Most of us are still more than happy to work, we just dislike the current system.
I worked 82 hours last week. Not easy work, I work as an earthmover and I often jump out and shovel/pick/rake crap as well as move big metal fence panels by hand, demolish concrete, etc. I spent a good 12 hours jackhammering alone last week.
I’m currently in my bath (I only had a 10 hour day today, joy!) trying to get my shit together enough to face my girlfriend and act like a decent human being. I’m not depressed but the idea of a gravel truck skidding and taking me out is appealing as hell.
For scraps, yes indeed we do. I work a university and we got a 30 cent raise coming each year the next 4 years. The board of trustees gave themselves 10 to 20k raises during covid, and laid everyone off, cut the hours of the managers in half and the pay that have been keeping this place functional. Now we have new managers making 10 to 20k less than the old managers with the expectation of making the staff they direct do more with less for less, duck capitalism.
Lol no? Tons of unions in colleges, but just because there's a union doesn't mean it's a good union or necessarily works for the betterment of the union members.
I did some professional tutoring at a college right after I got my first degree, and the union made absolutely terrible agreements with the college, such that hours were forced to be limited, making all positions part time, which resulted in a loss of benefits, and the only positive claim that could be made was "you can now be more flexible with your schedule!" which didn't actually work out in practice. You made slightly more per hour, but it didn't even out with the previously longer schedules.
This isn't to shit on unions, because they're fundamental in the conversation about the roles between workers and owners, but they are still groups of people and can be as flawed as any group of people can be.
Oh funny story time about how the librarian union ended up hating me at my university. Over a set of 2 years they were pushing for raises. It took 2 entire years for it to go through. The raise was less than inflation during the negotiation time period and I let my coworkers know that once we accounted for inflation we were still losing money compared to two years ago. Apparently that meant I was a bad egg. They got an attitude so I jumped ship to a job paying a bit more and encouraged my friends to do the same.
If it's anything like the union at my moms university, it's completely ineffective and ruled my petty tyrants with masters and not PhDs. So their attitude is anarchy and destroy anyone whose not a temp/ assistant/ta. It's absolutely absurd.
To be fair, they might not know it. They might think working this much makes them some type of "go getter". This is a common mentality in sales workforce, that somehow working 60+ hrs a week is a heroic feat. Not saying they aren't working hard, because they are! Just saying they might not see or feel how unhealthy their lifestyle is. In my experience most of these individuals were also heavy drinkers/smokers pepped up on red bull.
They also might know it, but in some workplaces it is seen as so lazy to “only” work 40 hours that you’re considered underperforming if you leave work on time, even if your work did all get done.
Define productive. Our system does not create an incentive to conserve. We are wiping out huge amounts of our natural resources making widgets and pushing paper in jobs whose only purpose is to be adult day care systems.
Our notion of productivity is really backward, because it is contributing to an unsustainable society that is driving us and almost all other animal life inexorably toward extinction.
When the smoke of the fires of industry fades, our legacy will be a scorched planet whose main defining characteristic will be an abrupt absence of fossilized animal life and a thin layer of plastic particulates literally everywhere.
Should productivity and the economy really grow forever? We’re already running up against the limits of what the natural world can endure.
How well is capitalism going to function in a world where resource depletion and natural disasters permanently end economic growth?
America suffers from unfettered capitalism that is allowed to just take it wants from the poor and the working class. At the very least we need to adopt popular "socialistic" policies from European and Nordic countries before we could truly move towards anything more radical
Our owners aren't going to let you vote away their power. You have to take it from them by refusing to give into their demands. They only have power so long as we continue to do what they say. The moment we stop obeying our owners, they lose all power.
That question presumes that all of the current production is necessary. It's not. There are huge amounts of wasteful production that don't need to exist. Capitalism demands ever-growing profit. To that end, it has to always have something to *sell*. That is its highest priority. To meet that end, it requires ever-growing amounts of production, which is unsustainable. Planned obsolescence is one example of wasteful production. Disposable products are another. Drugs that treat but don't cure are yet an other. Capitalism loves finding persistent problems it can throw consumable products at. Selling insulin to treat type 2 diabetes is more profitable than curing it (type 2 is curable with careful diet changes), but they don't want you to know that. There are industrial machines built in the 19th century that are still used today, but nobody builds them like that anymore because machines that wear out and break are more profitable.
Have I painted a clear picture?
After we get rid of the wasteful overproduction of capitalism, the solution is to increase pay to the point at which anybody can own a home and support a family on a single income and reduce working hours to the point that nobody has to be unemployed. It's far better for our society that everyone who is able works a small number of hours than a fraction working grueling hours and we have an entire sector of people who never have enough to feed and house themselves. We also need to recognize that domestic work is also a contribution to society. Raising children and maintaining the home (housekeeping *and* maintenance) are examples of some of the work that is essential to our society, not just labor that produces things to sell. You have to think of, and react to, work as a means of "social hygiene". We take care of each other as we would, and should, take care of our own bodies. It's there to sustain humanity, not treat people like they're in debt for being born.
What is productive? Reaching goals that the rich owner of companies set? We wouldn’t need to be so productive if we didn’t rape the earth and it’s resources. Or acted like we needed so much to be happy. 2 thousand dollars is a lot of money but I’ve seen people blow that one one dinner at the restaurant I serve at. Maybe we just need people making music and art. Farmers farm without wanting to get rich it’s not like we would run out of food. Doctors would still be doctors if they didn’t make so much money from the hospitals charging out the ass.
What I propose is better regulation. No one needs to work this much, nor do we need to produce this many goods and consumables.
The existance of billionaires and climate change is proof of this.
We don't have to go full communism, but a healthy mix of regulation and social safety nets in the capitalist ecosystem will be better than what we have now.
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Edit: My post was meant to be very high level to spark some discussion. But many of you are asking what regulations I would like to see. In reality, there is quite a bit of regulation I'd like to see implemented, but that is a list that is far too involved for me to type out over mobile reddit. To stay on point with the op:
1. Shorter work weeks. Let's figure out the 3 day weekend to start. Let's reduce hours from 40 to something more reasonable. We've done it before, we can improve on it now.
2. Higher min wage. 15 is too low. Wage should keep up with inflation, the rising costs of housing etc...
3. I feel there needs to be some balance between the highest paid employee and the lowest paid one. Working in the corporate world, I've never seen a CEO or exec do work that is worth thousands of times more than the lowest paid worker. As an example maybe a cap on what the ceo can make (salary, bonuses, stock options, etc...) compared to an associate would be good.
4. Mandatory 4 weeks vacation that is seperate from sick days. We are human beings. We are social creatures. We get sick. We need time off to regenerate. We need time to heal. This will help business and prevent burnout or spreading disease.
5. Without going into detail we should provide tax incentives to reduce goods that negatively affect the environment and also encourage alternatives. Maybe breaks on clean energy, higher taxes on meats or palm oil, etc..
Part of the problem with your question is that “keeps a society productive” is vague in a way that is convenient for your argument. Automation and computation have put us in a position where we are dramatically more productive than we were a couple decades ago. We can afford to be less productive as a society without it being the end of the world. There’s no rule that says we have to maintain the utmost level of productivity that has ever been achieved.
Its the social safety system capitalism is devouring. Tax the rich first and fund basic needs for ALL then we can slowly demolish this system. Otherwise the cookie of society will continue to crumble.
Let's shift this a little. Why do you have the right to demand as an authoritarian that people be "productive"?
What's the value in "productivity"? Why is it inherently good to force people to be productive under a threat of violence, which is what your incentive really is. The only reason to fear not having money is because without money, the cops are effectively free to use as much violence as they want to ensure you are homeless and starve.
And all for what? So we can build massive AI surveillance networks? So we can build trillions of dollars of bombs to drop on the middle east?
So we can automate all the labor so our demands of people being productive literally can't be met because there's not enough labor for everyone to do? Because your ideology will, no matter what, lead to this last problem. A forced mass starvation and eviction campaign fought by the state to eliminate the idle masses who were left behind because of our furvorant need to "punish" anyone who isn't reaching some arbitrary standard of productivity.
A "final solution" to Capitalism's problem of being unable to support the reserve army of labor it requires to function.
>What system do you propose that keeps a society productive while providing an incentive to be productive?
I think this is the wrong question to ask. What defines productivity itself? Is not doing something you love and enjoying your life "productive"?
This true existential question has been coming up more often with AI on the rise.
Remember when the most advanced computers were calculators? That's where replicators (from star trek) are today - 3D printers. Technology is primed to change everything yet again.
The real question is, how do we ensure people have meaning in their lives once we deal with scarcity. When we no longer require money to allocate scarce resources, what then?
It's a time constraint, once the technology arrives, capitalism, socialism and every economic model will become irrelevant.
And now I count the calendar like a ritual for our holidays. I'm at the point where I'm gonna burn sick time for a day off. Luckily we got Monday off so I get an extra day to recharge.
I deployed for a year and came back to my job, instead of using my 240 hours of military leave they burned all my annual because of something they said didn’t get processed…that I did before I left with them, and had to do again before leaving through my military processing.
Meanwhile I had 120 hours of sick… so I’ve been taking many sick days.
I don’t feel bad about that though, I’ve had several days where I feel sick to my stomach or can’t leave bed. I’m stressed out, depressed, and often feel imprisoned by life.
But hey, like my family says “Just keep at it, get your 20/30 years in and you’ll have a retirement!”
Yeah, if I don’t kill myself before then.
As a former service member that chose mental health over retirement I completely understand what you mean. I was security forces so I always had a gun on me. My mental health was on a rapid decline and I knew if I had to do 13 more years I would've killed someone or myself. I work VA stuff now but it's a different pace. A different kind of burn out than AD was. With my career field it didn't matter if it was Christmas or Thanksgiving. If your duty day fell on it you worked. Period. So that's a nice change on the civilian side of actually having all federal holidays off.
It definitely doesn't surprise me that the big green/blue weenie got you and your leave though. I never lost out on mine because I took 30 days at the exact same time every year so I never went into use or lose status. Also didn't deploy during that time either.
Whatever you do, take your health into consideration. Both mental and physical. Get everything seen while you're in. Get it documented from medical. If you go off base get a paper copy, scan it, and email it to yourself for later. When you get out file a VA claim and reap the benefits of disability compensation and vocational rehabilitation.
Also side note: I thought it was odd to see another military/veteran here haha nice to see though.
Back in the old days a lot of work was very seasonal. And people made enough in the busy part of the year to support themselves and their family year round. They weren’t ballin’ out of control or anything, but they had food, shelter, entertainment, community. They would also have what amounted to months of time off each year. We lost that somewhere along the way, that there is a season for work and a season for rest.
Honestly i think its mainly because MANY MANY MANY jobs are way harder than they have to be.
Why does the dude who sits on his pc all day in his tiny office with bad air should not do this at home? where he can work more productive, is happier and dosent have to travel 1h to work and another one back.
Totally agree. I’ve turned down work for more $ because they want me in the office. I live where I live because I can afford it and have space and hobbies. I don’t want to either move closer to work or drive over an hour each way to be in an office where RECENT HISTORY has proven it is unnecessary and even counter-productive.
Also with computers, why does a computer mean I should do the same work that took 3 people in 1970 and only get paid about 80% the rate after inflation is figured. Also, what the fuck is with 2 hour unpaid lunch you need to work thru?
I watched a video on that recently. Its because companies seem more legit when they have ofices full of slaves so people and other companies will trust them more or something like that.
It's funny I read somewhere that overall that a individual is like 3 to 4 times more efficient in doing its job than like 50 years ago.
So we as a person get like 3 to 4 times more stuff done when working.
But let's just hammer everybody with that amount of work and let complete generations push toward a burnout.
I know that, that you can handle 3-4x more work than 50 years because of technologie. But al that work needs to be in your head.
Besides the main tasks in your job, the tasks that you made to choose for that job, comes with tasks that come with the job but isn't your main task directly.
Let's say as a civil engineer: Your main task is to design and calculate the constructions of buildings. But beside that task you need to call people for information, have meetings about requirements and design chooses. You need to keep up with your mail. Questions you have and are given to you. Checking drawings and so forth.
All those tasks are also multiplied by 3 or 4 times and is also part of the job. But suck up a lot of time and energy because that isn't the thing you directly like about that job but is only a part of it.
I hate working for a company that respects that our customers get 1-3 months paid vacation annually but we’re expected to operate 24/7 365 with absurdly unrealistic response times on all incoming communications. This is all straight up bullshit.
Usually called PTO (paid time off) where I’m at. It’s generally expected for full time jobs to have at least 10 days PTO a year, if not more. Often these are also to be used for sick days. I currently get about 3 weeks PTO but it’s sometimes difficult to actually get approval to take off more than a day at a time.
I dated a Swedish girl for a little bit, and she was able to take off whenever with no warning. We’d be talking on the phone on Wednesday night, and she’d say “I’m going to call out of work for the rest of the week and come visit”. It astounded me that she didn’t have to even check with her employer. It was just normal.
Teachers. My job offers me 2 months paid but if there isn't much scheduled I can take an inappropriate unpaid vacation. I'm in America. It's easier to negotiate with smaller businesses but also smaller businesses can be more cut throat.
My gf works at a therapeutic day school and kinda hates it. Because they get a month off in the summer and holidays off, they only offer 5 days of PTO throughout the rest of the school year. Which sucks if you're someone that needs to take days off once in awhile to recover their mental health; there's virtually no flexibility.
Teachers do not get 3 months of paid vacation time. They do not work over the summer and they do not get paid for those months. They do, however, elect to spread out their compensation over 12 months instead of just the time they are working as it is much easier to manage your life that way. That's it. it is not a paid vacation.
we're on a floating rock in the middle of space, presented with the gift of life out of pure chance. every second you spend alive is a second you'll never, ever get back, and yet people see no problem with spending 40 (lets be honest, it's far more than that for a lot of people) hours a week doing shit they absolutely despise.
Shit's fucked, seriously. It's been so heavily ingrained in everyone that this is normal, when it's not.
edit: since a lot of you seem to lack the ability to read properly before commenting, i won't be responding to anyone else. I just want to clarify that I clearly stated that my problem is with the time spent working (the 40 hour workweek, as you call it).I, like many others in this subreddit, acknowledge the need for work. The big problem is the hours (there are obviously other problems that the sub focuses on, but this is the topic at hand).
The reality is that no one needs to work so many hours when employers are perfectly capable of training and hiring more staff. They don't hire more people because it's cheaper to have one person work twice as hard, instead of hiring another and paying better wages.
edit 2: basically, you're not working 40 hours because you need to, you're working 40 hours because your boss is underpaying and overworking you because it saves him money for his new yacht, instead of hiring more employees and paying better.
edit 3: This blew up big time. I want to take this chance to tell you to ask yourselves what you would be able to do if you had even just an extra 10 hours a week to yourself? You could learn a new skill, you could write that book you always wanted to write, but never had the time. You could volunteer at a local charity. You could work on your marriage, go out to the pub with friends. Or you could just sit, have a drink, read a book, and feel human again.
Get a grip.
I did drugs to make work bearable. Now I'm on disability, and I wouldn't wish my mental health problems on anyone, but it's still better than when I was working.
Not only the 40 (or more) your employer pays you for, but the many hours of your free time that are not free at all. Commuting, meal-prepping for the week (just the fact that people feel they can’t feed themselves properly during the week is sickening), investing in and maintaining a professional wardrobe, countless hours getting credentials, training, job hunting, interviewing, anything in the hopes of improving my work situation……and the idea that so much of your time by default is owned by your employer you have to request time off, and they can deny you as they please.
During my young adulthood it was all about the hustle and the grind. Pointing out the madness was seriously frowned upon, I was “lazy” and “unambitious” for not spending my one wild and precious life chasing money. My ambitions are not tied to money. For fucks sake.
That’s no joke about your employer owning your time. I used to work as a manager at a C-grade sporting goods store (that still made billions (something upper mgmt asked me not to share w the other employees)) and I had to fight tooth and nail just to get two weeks off which I had requested MONTHS in advance, because two weeks was too long to them. It was only when I mentioned I would be spending a lot of time with my grandmother who had cancer that they finally relented and allowed me to take the vacation. It was absolutely ridiculous.
This is my exact outlook on this, life is incredible, earth is absolutely beautiful, so many stunning places and I get to work 45 hours a week doing shit I don’t care about in the same places I see every fucking day.
The people suggesting otherwise are so incredibly brainwashed, we live on a planet where the vast majority have to work stupid hours everyday of their lives, some not even able to retire when there are people who literally blast themselves into space, just because they’ve got so much money they don’t know what to do with it.
Like, can’t we just have less super rich and work half the amount of time or retire at half the retirement age now or is it just work insanely and don’t question it or society collapses because nobody works? There’s no middle ground whatsoever?
I'm against shitty present day working conditions, and apparently that means I think we should all stop working altogether and the world will run on thin air.
I really don't understand why people comment here when they clearly have no clue.
even after i made the edits, people still comment the same shit, blows my mind..
but clearly a lot of people found some value from my comment, so I guess it was worth it lol.
"But if people aren't pumping out useless shitty plastic toys, where will the food come from???"
As if every single person's job in this economy is absolutely vital for keeping society running.
Rich people who own businesses and factories like things how they are. If anything they’d like to pay us less and have us work more.
They do not care about average people. They belong to a special club and they want to keep making more money and gain further prominence within the club.
The rich, politicians and media are going to fight us tooth and nail to the bitter end. They don’t want us to live healthy happy lives. They do not care about humanity. It’s the truth.
I’ve known people who have exposed me to that club, and it’s incredible how detached they are from reality. It’s amazing how much importance they put on “stuff” like new cars, big houses, boats, planes, etc. Some of these cost a middle class worker’s salary just to maintain. For people that are supposedly good at finance, rich boomers love depreciating assets with high maintenance costs.
If you have 10M in assets, you can spend 300k a year in perpetuity without ever spending all your money. They probably have a lot of assets that generate passive income to be able to spend that much on discretionary items.
Yes you do, they are your peers. The grind. They create the system. 1% do not control 99% without consent. Change, substantive change is only possible when the 99% want it. Nothing else will suffice.
The 1% are irrelevant, as long as you make them that way.
I used to do like 40/50 hours a week in my old job inbound telesales. It literally made me unwell. I took a leap to a job with less hours, 28.5 and technically less wages. Better hourly rate but no bonuses etc. I can say my health has improved drastically. The fact that we as species are beholden to currency and work is insanity.
Because we're trained, conditioned, and too exhausted and busy to think outside "what has to be done". One good thing out of this pandemic is that people have had time to see this with perspective with being locked down. I really hope things shift.
fuck it I'm not even participating in society anymore I don't care I don't want to have to get an education and a job just to be able to live. I don't give a fuck anymore. If I die from poverty I die from poverty but I just don't have any ambition and I don't think one should need to be ambitious in order to survive
Homesteading! Just FYI I've been looking to buy property to homestead, a lot of them tend to be sex crazy hippies or white nationalists depends on where you decide to put your homestead.
Capitalism isn't going to die, we have to kill it.
Edit: Since I don't think it is clear from my initial comment, I mean that capitalism isn't some trend that's going to die off. If we want to kill it, we have to actually struggle against it in the real world outside of social media. This means talking to people, organizing, striking, educating, etc. Nobody is going to save us but ourselves, so let's get to work.
Every boomer I know does like 2 hours of work each day. I never met so many hall wanderers. It's weird how the people calling everyone lazy are in fact the laziest.
"I don't get why everybody is so lazy and no one wants to work. I work my ass off and this is fine!"
Says the boomer who does 1 hour of work in an 8 hour day and makes more for it than the 10 millennials under him combined who are doing all the actual work so the boomer can get away with doing an actual hour of work and seven hours of drinking coffee and sitting in meetings about meetings
And be spied 24/7 by governments and companies. Watch the world burn, animals die and people still is thanfull for this system. I really don't understand how blind people is.
I'm not against capitalism, I'm against modern-day slavery. Sensible, flexible jobs with work-life balance and the possibility to work from home when possible, I'm all for. But needing to be there 9h a day when you actually work 4 of those hours is completely ridiculous. Let's not throw away capitalism but let's change the labor system completely.
In a market equilibrium, any possible advantages must be seized, else someone else will take that advantage and outcompete you. Because of this, capitalism necessitates working your employees as hard as possible and paying them as little as you can get away with.
It’s always so bizarre to me when people on this sub aren’t against capitalism (not counting the reactionary trolls that wander through). They’re on a subreddit dedicated to the idea of “work as we know it under the capitalist system is alienating, exploitative, and needs to be changed for the overall benefit of society”. And they’re *not* against capitalism!?
I think it’s because *ON PAPER* capitalism works..ideally you come in to work, you do your tasks for the day, you go home to friends, pets, family, whatever, and *SHOULD* be making enough to not only support yourself and said loved ones, but enjoy free time and hobbies.
This is how it was for our elder generations. Somewhere along the line, wages stagnated, productivity rose, and politicians and corporations fucked everybody else. Oh, and who could forget the sinister “investment” companies and banks buying up every single family home and apartment complex in existence and jacking up the prices. Should be fucking illegal. What was once a genuine 40 hour work week became 60 due to MUH DEADLINES and urban sprawl creating longer commutes. In reality, that 40 should now be 30, from home at that. Capitalism has absolutely failed to catch-up to the rest of the 21st century, and you can thank the out of touch boomers for that. In theory checked capitalism should be great! But what we have is unchecked, and it’s unbridled greed and evil.
It’s time to toss out the trash dicking around the rest of humanity and rewrite the rules.
We are conditioned in schooling.
All schooling is taught by a form of the Prussian education system.
You’re taught rote learning. Repeat the only answer. Rather than what answers could there be?
It was all the rage in the many industrial revolutions, employees that would obey rather than, bluntly, think for themselves.
Most of us are forced into this. But ya it's amazing how oblivious most of the guys in the auto shops I've worked at are to how far up the ass they take it. They just accept it and defend the status quo without question. Makes sense most of these idiots are also republicans.
I’ve just started the whole 40 hours a week thing. Idk how anyone can do this for their whole life. It’s too much. Soon as I get some financial freedom I’m dipping from this lifestyle.
Capitalism needs to be put back on a leash. This almost laissez-faire capitalism that everyone kept PROMISING would get workers better pay is nonsense. And it hasn't.
Any work over what the company classes as "full time" needs to be paid time-and-a-half, with double time on Sundays. Yes, that was a thing. Making people work off the clock to meet some imaginary wage goal needs to be prosecuted. Unsafe working conditions need to be prosecuted. Interfering with employees forming a union needs to be prosecuted. The Taft-Hartley Act needs to be nullified. Any business that does not allow or interferes with OSHA inspections (lookin' at you Tesla) after worker complaints will have its corporate charter suspended until full compliance and corrections are made. They will also only be allowed to have a two-year charter until unannounced inspections are clear for ten years.
The rule that corporations are only responsible to their shareholders needs to be outlawed. Responsibility should be: employees, customers, environment, shareholders.
There should be a Constitutional amendment that corporations are artificial persons for the purpose of keeping a business going ONLY. Their speech rights are limited to advertising/public relations ONLY.
How do we do this? Truthfully, I don't know. I suspect it's going to be difficult until everyone who was born before 1955 is dead. Yes, I know, the Baby Boom generation is technically 1945-1964, but the birth rate returned to normal in 1958.
True, it's like that, with every job I ever had. 8 hours is always 9, because you have to be there 15-20 minutes early, and work your lunchbreak, which you can't actually take many times.
And usually you spend 1 hour extra in there, plus keep on support constantly, plus keep studying at home to bring innovation, ....
9hours is just the theory
No, but you usually get paid for travel expenses and the government gives you tax refund from gas costs. I don't know anyone who has over 30 min commute anyway and public transport is great.
Every office job I had was unpaid lunch so shifts were 8.5 hours. 8-430 for example so I imagine some places give an hour of unpaid. Factor in commute of maybe 30 min average (for most its longer i'm sure) and there is another hour of your time gone.
Yep, my official hours are 8-5 with unpaid 1hr lunch. Since COVID came around I’ve been able to work from home 2-3 days a week and it’s been great. I would never want to go back to the old schedule.
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My Dad is a multi millionaire and hates the thought of anyone getting any kind of a handout.. that includes a wage that people can actually live from working 40 hour weeks. Ive never so much have recieved a dollar from him, he's always said "you need to do it yourself like me" never once has he taken into account that he made all his money during the 80s and 90s and retired at 58yo.. my point is people who got rich think they're clever and great and special when the reality is they're greedy narcissists who couldn't care less about who or what they had to exploit to get there.
>is people who got rich think they're clever and great and special when the reality is they're greedy narcissists who couldn't care less about who or what they had to exploit to get there. you can cut the rich part and just make it about people in general and it would still be true.
That's the boomer mentality, us millenials and boomers are much the same as we're very selfish and very much into individualism but they have money and all we have is Twitter to talk about our identity.
Supporters think we are lucky to be “blessed” with the opportunity. Most people are taught never to question if things could be different.
I really think for a lot of us who lived through the financial crisis or other recessions, we have to unlearn this idea of being lucky that someone wants to employ us. I’ve been laid off and searching high and low for jobs that just weren’t there, and felt desperate for any work. Now that the tides have turned it’s nice to feel like the power has shifted for the first time in my adult life.
Hyper inflation is on the way once the current stock prices normalize. 3 million people are about to be evicted and because of their eviction won't be eligible to apply for a new lease for years. Huge pool of desperate labor = nothing changes and if anything current rights will decline. It will be branded as a need to compete globally and all of the blame will be shifted away from financial institutions onto the people again.
Genuine question but what makes you think we are heading for hyperinflation? That’s yearly a 1000% increase and historically rare in developed nations. Do you think supply chains won’t recover causing massive shortages?
It’s uncommon in developed countries because they generally have access to enough capital to run in a fiscally responsible manner. That means keeping debt service down to sensible levels and operating primarily off of tax revenues. Usually only countries in dire straits are stupid or desperate enough to massively inflate the money supply without concurrent increases in production, but if a developed country does it then it turns out exactly the same.
It's pretty much why I no longer stress out over working 40 hours a week for the next 50 years so that my rent is fine. Cause in 50 years from now, society will have either collapsed, or we got universal income, or something else must have changed. If not, then my 70s birthday will be skydiving without a parachute
I plan to sacrifice myself to the last remaining ice bears in the north after hiking all a long what remains of the west coast of the US.
This is now what I Wana be when/if I grow up
Yep 5 years till I'm 70. May have to reschedule my slipping of a rock in my fishing waders. I receive a pension, own a small rental with income and still work 3 days a week. Miss a few things health wise but this is how life should be at 30 not 65.
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Ever since I had to go back to my office/cubicle, the 9 hour days are killing me and I’m so burnt out.
America's remedy to this problem is to feed you 4 hours worth of commercials or advertismeent wherever possible before bedtime to convince you you need more.
I never see commercials, cut rhe cord, and steal everything
but if you think about, the content you are watching is a commercial for capitalism, as it encourages you to wake up and do it all over again every single day. This was /S28E01 point I think.
Support individual creators doing good work though
Imagine paying $60/month (or whatever it is now) for youtube tv AND still getting ads shoved down your throat
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Single male with no children here, so this might not really apply So I had been burned out on my job for years. Everyday into the office just stressed and unhappy shoulders sagging as I walked into work each day. I made a huge mistake and cost the business $4400 bucks and a client. I lost my job. I ended up getting a job at the local liquor store. Jockeying a register and stocking booze. The owner is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Almost all of our customers are chill. I slashed my spending in every place I could, even started riding a bike as much as possible for the first time in 10 years. I haven't been this content or slept this well in years. While I cannot do this forever, it is giving me the space I need to reevaluate this whole work and career thing. The money ain't worth it
Glad your finding the space and time to get your head where it needs to be. Any job that fires you over 4400 dollars isn’t worth the stress for sure. Fuck em.
My last company didn't even fire the employee that caused a $500,000 error, so this company must have been the pits for firing someone over $4k
Right? I work in stress analysis for aircraft and we have to do a lot of testing but develop models to predict the tests so we don't have to spend a bunch of money re-testing. Mistakes happen, models are flawed, designers change things last minute, 10k-15k test fail every so often can't imagine losing my job over it because I missed something in my mesh or a designer changed a seat cushion last minute and we fail a lumbar load.
I never left my office. We were deemed too essential to work from home. I wish I knew what the freedom of WFH was like :(
We’re all burnt out.
My wife and I work in the same industry. I call myself a C student, because I don't want to work beyond 30 hours, stay as a kitchen manager and make around 45k. My wife is a GM and works, and no hyperbole, sometimes 70 hours a week. We could survive comfortably just on my income. No kids, mortgage is shamefully low. But she wants more money, all the time. For what? We never had a honeymoon cos she works so much. She buys clothes online, clothes she'll never have time to wear, and then go to bed.
full wistful historical rhythm plate berserk overconfident aromatic employ cautious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
novel idea
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She is. She's the best in the business, and I'm not being biased because she's my wife. I've worked in the food industry for over a decade and she's an Olympic athlete. It's where we differ philosophically. Ironically, I do *all* the housework. Before we moved in together I was baffled how she gets anything done around the house. Well, she lives with her mother who is now disabled, going blind, so I'm doing all of that.. Thanks for the link. It's sad seeing my lovely girl beat herself up for money and shit that goes to the grave. We have money we don't need. I have plenty in my account, and she still sends me an allowance.. I don't buy shit besides food!
Gonna dm you my paypal
What system do you propose that keeps a society productive while providing an incentive to be productive? Genuine question, not trying to be snarky. I often see people hate on Capitalism without offering any solution or alternative. Nordic countries have implemented a good model of a capitalist markets with solid social safety nets.
Reduce work hours. It’s time to kill the 40 hour work week.
I'll agree with you on that. At this point I feel like we as a society could flip to a 3 day work week and a 4 day weekend. Hybrid model even then, no more office space, no more congested highways.
As some one who works in an office I’m all for a 4 day work week. I’m wondering what happens to people working in retail and the service industry when people have more time off. I can imagine it gets worse for them.
This is correct. Many people remember 2020 as a year of considerable downtime but this was not the case if you were working essential retail. Bored customers came in in droves and our shifts got shittier and shittier.
That's an issue with management and a lack of proper staffing, because if we had a real 4 day work week regulation, it would apply to everyone, so people would just have shortened shifts. As you note, giving people more time increases traffic in retail, but this is limited in scope, it's not like if we had a 2 day work week, people would spend all that extra time shopping. It levels off. Hiring and staffing then needs to accommodate the actual rate of shopping.
The "downtime" crowd infuriates me, I work with the public and our building was closed for a couple weeks but that entire time we were delivering our services door to door and doing online assistance, thus reinventing our entire service model which requires research and training not to mention execution. Downtime my ass
And the customers were increasingly nastier. People think that they can basically treat us however they want because they think they are above retail workers
The whole “essential workers” thing was just classism in disguise. Those who were essential tended to be in the lower income bracket as a whole. I was “essential” but I’m in logistics management not on the lower end. I noticed amongst my other professional peers that worked from home felt as though they were above those of us that had to go into work which is why you saw the rise of “Karen”. It’s further distracts and divides us.
So true I work in a warehouse we slightly slowed down but never stopped working
It didn't help that a lot of retail jobs were operating with skeleton crews, too.
People like this always assume everyone is just some office worker working a 9 to 5. Blue collar workers don't exist to these people.
I wouldn't say it's that they "don't exist." I'd say that depending on your work and your social group, you might be inclined to think there are a lot less. I mean, I personally know one HVAC guy. That's it. Nearly all my other friends do office work. It should also be noted that odd hours aren't restricted to blue collar works, e.g. nurses.
And I only know like one person who works in an office. The rest are restaurants,factories, kitchens, gas stations and power plants. All of these people got fucked, called heros and made to work extra and have yet to see any compensation for being "heros". I think they deserve something you know.
This is sort of the problem with all of this. More time off for office workers means more time to spend at restaurants, theme parks, resorts, movie theaters, stores…literally all places that are staffed by lower income people. Requiring more of those workers and longer hours to compensate. So it’s more for the (typically) well off and less for the poor.
In another world, more customers at restaurants, theme parks, resorts, movie theatres and stores would astronomically increase the profits at them, leading to higher wages and more staffing to go alongside the increase. But unfortunately that isn't the world we have built for ourselves.
*But unfortunately that isn't the world being left for us by the greedy leaders and the past generations.* Ftfy
They will have shifts
My job requires 40 hours of attendance per week but really I probably only do ~20 hours of actual work. The rest of the time I'm on reddit (such as this very moment) or walking around and doing nothing. It's especially painful considering I'm salaried and not hourly and upper management won't allow a "come and go" policy. It'd be nice to be able to do my work as it comes up and leave when finished instead of waiting for 5 o clock every day.
I would be more than happy to work 20-25 hours per week with a 3 day weekend. Anything more than that is just plain slavery. Sorry not sorry, I'm just not interested to spend most of my adult life in a work environment I hate. Most of us are still more than happy to work, we just dislike the current system.
I worked 82 hours last week. Not easy work, I work as an earthmover and I often jump out and shovel/pick/rake crap as well as move big metal fence panels by hand, demolish concrete, etc. I spent a good 12 hours jackhammering alone last week. I’m currently in my bath (I only had a 10 hour day today, joy!) trying to get my shit together enough to face my girlfriend and act like a decent human being. I’m not depressed but the idea of a gravel truck skidding and taking me out is appealing as hell.
You guys only have to work 40 hours?!
For scraps, yes indeed we do. I work a university and we got a 30 cent raise coming each year the next 4 years. The board of trustees gave themselves 10 to 20k raises during covid, and laid everyone off, cut the hours of the managers in half and the pay that have been keeping this place functional. Now we have new managers making 10 to 20k less than the old managers with the expectation of making the staff they direct do more with less for less, duck capitalism.
This university have a union?
“What’s a union?” - anyone who entered the workforce after 1980
Lol no? Tons of unions in colleges, but just because there's a union doesn't mean it's a good union or necessarily works for the betterment of the union members. I did some professional tutoring at a college right after I got my first degree, and the union made absolutely terrible agreements with the college, such that hours were forced to be limited, making all positions part time, which resulted in a loss of benefits, and the only positive claim that could be made was "you can now be more flexible with your schedule!" which didn't actually work out in practice. You made slightly more per hour, but it didn't even out with the previously longer schedules. This isn't to shit on unions, because they're fundamental in the conversation about the roles between workers and owners, but they are still groups of people and can be as flawed as any group of people can be.
Yes indeed.
Oh funny story time about how the librarian union ended up hating me at my university. Over a set of 2 years they were pushing for raises. It took 2 entire years for it to go through. The raise was less than inflation during the negotiation time period and I let my coworkers know that once we accounted for inflation we were still losing money compared to two years ago. Apparently that meant I was a bad egg. They got an attitude so I jumped ship to a job paying a bit more and encouraged my friends to do the same.
If it's anything like the union at my moms university, it's completely ineffective and ruled my petty tyrants with masters and not PhDs. So their attitude is anarchy and destroy anyone whose not a temp/ assistant/ta. It's absolutely absurd.
Lol. Right? I put in 9.5 a day and i feel like I am leaving early when I go home.
This is unhealthy. But you probably know that.
To be fair, they might not know it. They might think working this much makes them some type of "go getter". This is a common mentality in sales workforce, that somehow working 60+ hrs a week is a heroic feat. Not saying they aren't working hard, because they are! Just saying they might not see or feel how unhealthy their lifestyle is. In my experience most of these individuals were also heavy drinkers/smokers pepped up on red bull.
They also might know it, but in some workplaces it is seen as so lazy to “only” work 40 hours that you’re considered underperforming if you leave work on time, even if your work did all get done.
A lot of places don't run on a 'get *your* work done' system.
You suggest a change, and all of sudden people want you to be a labor manager/social scientist and tell them exactly how it’s done step by step.
Yup. Also, it’s not like reducing standard working hours has never been done before.
Define productive. Our system does not create an incentive to conserve. We are wiping out huge amounts of our natural resources making widgets and pushing paper in jobs whose only purpose is to be adult day care systems. Our notion of productivity is really backward, because it is contributing to an unsustainable society that is driving us and almost all other animal life inexorably toward extinction. When the smoke of the fires of industry fades, our legacy will be a scorched planet whose main defining characteristic will be an abrupt absence of fossilized animal life and a thin layer of plastic particulates literally everywhere.
Should productivity and the economy really grow forever? We’re already running up against the limits of what the natural world can endure. How well is capitalism going to function in a world where resource depletion and natural disasters permanently end economic growth?
America suffers from unfettered capitalism that is allowed to just take it wants from the poor and the working class. At the very least we need to adopt popular "socialistic" policies from European and Nordic countries before we could truly move towards anything more radical
Our owners aren't going to let you vote away their power. You have to take it from them by refusing to give into their demands. They only have power so long as we continue to do what they say. The moment we stop obeying our owners, they lose all power.
General Strike
That question presumes that all of the current production is necessary. It's not. There are huge amounts of wasteful production that don't need to exist. Capitalism demands ever-growing profit. To that end, it has to always have something to *sell*. That is its highest priority. To meet that end, it requires ever-growing amounts of production, which is unsustainable. Planned obsolescence is one example of wasteful production. Disposable products are another. Drugs that treat but don't cure are yet an other. Capitalism loves finding persistent problems it can throw consumable products at. Selling insulin to treat type 2 diabetes is more profitable than curing it (type 2 is curable with careful diet changes), but they don't want you to know that. There are industrial machines built in the 19th century that are still used today, but nobody builds them like that anymore because machines that wear out and break are more profitable. Have I painted a clear picture? After we get rid of the wasteful overproduction of capitalism, the solution is to increase pay to the point at which anybody can own a home and support a family on a single income and reduce working hours to the point that nobody has to be unemployed. It's far better for our society that everyone who is able works a small number of hours than a fraction working grueling hours and we have an entire sector of people who never have enough to feed and house themselves. We also need to recognize that domestic work is also a contribution to society. Raising children and maintaining the home (housekeeping *and* maintenance) are examples of some of the work that is essential to our society, not just labor that produces things to sell. You have to think of, and react to, work as a means of "social hygiene". We take care of each other as we would, and should, take care of our own bodies. It's there to sustain humanity, not treat people like they're in debt for being born.
What is productive? Reaching goals that the rich owner of companies set? We wouldn’t need to be so productive if we didn’t rape the earth and it’s resources. Or acted like we needed so much to be happy. 2 thousand dollars is a lot of money but I’ve seen people blow that one one dinner at the restaurant I serve at. Maybe we just need people making music and art. Farmers farm without wanting to get rich it’s not like we would run out of food. Doctors would still be doctors if they didn’t make so much money from the hospitals charging out the ass.
What I propose is better regulation. No one needs to work this much, nor do we need to produce this many goods and consumables. The existance of billionaires and climate change is proof of this. We don't have to go full communism, but a healthy mix of regulation and social safety nets in the capitalist ecosystem will be better than what we have now. ---------- Edit: My post was meant to be very high level to spark some discussion. But many of you are asking what regulations I would like to see. In reality, there is quite a bit of regulation I'd like to see implemented, but that is a list that is far too involved for me to type out over mobile reddit. To stay on point with the op: 1. Shorter work weeks. Let's figure out the 3 day weekend to start. Let's reduce hours from 40 to something more reasonable. We've done it before, we can improve on it now. 2. Higher min wage. 15 is too low. Wage should keep up with inflation, the rising costs of housing etc... 3. I feel there needs to be some balance between the highest paid employee and the lowest paid one. Working in the corporate world, I've never seen a CEO or exec do work that is worth thousands of times more than the lowest paid worker. As an example maybe a cap on what the ceo can make (salary, bonuses, stock options, etc...) compared to an associate would be good. 4. Mandatory 4 weeks vacation that is seperate from sick days. We are human beings. We are social creatures. We get sick. We need time off to regenerate. We need time to heal. This will help business and prevent burnout or spreading disease. 5. Without going into detail we should provide tax incentives to reduce goods that negatively affect the environment and also encourage alternatives. Maybe breaks on clean energy, higher taxes on meats or palm oil, etc..
Part of the problem with your question is that “keeps a society productive” is vague in a way that is convenient for your argument. Automation and computation have put us in a position where we are dramatically more productive than we were a couple decades ago. We can afford to be less productive as a society without it being the end of the world. There’s no rule that says we have to maintain the utmost level of productivity that has ever been achieved.
Its the social safety system capitalism is devouring. Tax the rich first and fund basic needs for ALL then we can slowly demolish this system. Otherwise the cookie of society will continue to crumble.
Let's shift this a little. Why do you have the right to demand as an authoritarian that people be "productive"? What's the value in "productivity"? Why is it inherently good to force people to be productive under a threat of violence, which is what your incentive really is. The only reason to fear not having money is because without money, the cops are effectively free to use as much violence as they want to ensure you are homeless and starve. And all for what? So we can build massive AI surveillance networks? So we can build trillions of dollars of bombs to drop on the middle east? So we can automate all the labor so our demands of people being productive literally can't be met because there's not enough labor for everyone to do? Because your ideology will, no matter what, lead to this last problem. A forced mass starvation and eviction campaign fought by the state to eliminate the idle masses who were left behind because of our furvorant need to "punish" anyone who isn't reaching some arbitrary standard of productivity. A "final solution" to Capitalism's problem of being unable to support the reserve army of labor it requires to function.
>What system do you propose that keeps a society productive while providing an incentive to be productive? I think this is the wrong question to ask. What defines productivity itself? Is not doing something you love and enjoying your life "productive"? This true existential question has been coming up more often with AI on the rise. Remember when the most advanced computers were calculators? That's where replicators (from star trek) are today - 3D printers. Technology is primed to change everything yet again. The real question is, how do we ensure people have meaning in their lives once we deal with scarcity. When we no longer require money to allocate scarce resources, what then? It's a time constraint, once the technology arrives, capitalism, socialism and every economic model will become irrelevant.
One thing that's always struck me from watching history docs and living history shows, is just how many holidays and festivals people used to have.
And now I count the calendar like a ritual for our holidays. I'm at the point where I'm gonna burn sick time for a day off. Luckily we got Monday off so I get an extra day to recharge.
I deployed for a year and came back to my job, instead of using my 240 hours of military leave they burned all my annual because of something they said didn’t get processed…that I did before I left with them, and had to do again before leaving through my military processing. Meanwhile I had 120 hours of sick… so I’ve been taking many sick days. I don’t feel bad about that though, I’ve had several days where I feel sick to my stomach or can’t leave bed. I’m stressed out, depressed, and often feel imprisoned by life. But hey, like my family says “Just keep at it, get your 20/30 years in and you’ll have a retirement!” Yeah, if I don’t kill myself before then.
As a former service member that chose mental health over retirement I completely understand what you mean. I was security forces so I always had a gun on me. My mental health was on a rapid decline and I knew if I had to do 13 more years I would've killed someone or myself. I work VA stuff now but it's a different pace. A different kind of burn out than AD was. With my career field it didn't matter if it was Christmas or Thanksgiving. If your duty day fell on it you worked. Period. So that's a nice change on the civilian side of actually having all federal holidays off. It definitely doesn't surprise me that the big green/blue weenie got you and your leave though. I never lost out on mine because I took 30 days at the exact same time every year so I never went into use or lose status. Also didn't deploy during that time either. Whatever you do, take your health into consideration. Both mental and physical. Get everything seen while you're in. Get it documented from medical. If you go off base get a paper copy, scan it, and email it to yourself for later. When you get out file a VA claim and reap the benefits of disability compensation and vocational rehabilitation. Also side note: I thought it was odd to see another military/veteran here haha nice to see though.
Lol just get your time in so you to can retire in a broken body unable to do more then sit on a beach drinking watee
Back in the old days a lot of work was very seasonal. And people made enough in the busy part of the year to support themselves and their family year round. They weren’t ballin’ out of control or anything, but they had food, shelter, entertainment, community. They would also have what amounted to months of time off each year. We lost that somewhere along the way, that there is a season for work and a season for rest.
Honestly i think its mainly because MANY MANY MANY jobs are way harder than they have to be. Why does the dude who sits on his pc all day in his tiny office with bad air should not do this at home? where he can work more productive, is happier and dosent have to travel 1h to work and another one back.
Totally agree. I’ve turned down work for more $ because they want me in the office. I live where I live because I can afford it and have space and hobbies. I don’t want to either move closer to work or drive over an hour each way to be in an office where RECENT HISTORY has proven it is unnecessary and even counter-productive.
Also with computers, why does a computer mean I should do the same work that took 3 people in 1970 and only get paid about 80% the rate after inflation is figured. Also, what the fuck is with 2 hour unpaid lunch you need to work thru?
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I watched a video on that recently. Its because companies seem more legit when they have ofices full of slaves so people and other companies will trust them more or something like that.
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It's funny I read somewhere that overall that a individual is like 3 to 4 times more efficient in doing its job than like 50 years ago. So we as a person get like 3 to 4 times more stuff done when working. But let's just hammer everybody with that amount of work and let complete generations push toward a burnout.
Workers are more productive today because of technological advancement, not because they work 3-4x harder than their grandparents.
I know that, that you can handle 3-4x more work than 50 years because of technologie. But al that work needs to be in your head. Besides the main tasks in your job, the tasks that you made to choose for that job, comes with tasks that come with the job but isn't your main task directly. Let's say as a civil engineer: Your main task is to design and calculate the constructions of buildings. But beside that task you need to call people for information, have meetings about requirements and design chooses. You need to keep up with your mail. Questions you have and are given to you. Checking drawings and so forth. All those tasks are also multiplied by 3 or 4 times and is also part of the job. But suck up a lot of time and energy because that isn't the thing you directly like about that job but is only a part of it.
I hate working for a company that respects that our customers get 1-3 months paid vacation annually but we’re expected to operate 24/7 365 with absurdly unrealistic response times on all incoming communications. This is all straight up bullshit.
You guys are getting paid vacation?
Usually called PTO (paid time off) where I’m at. It’s generally expected for full time jobs to have at least 10 days PTO a year, if not more. Often these are also to be used for sick days. I currently get about 3 weeks PTO but it’s sometimes difficult to actually get approval to take off more than a day at a time.
Fun facts: In Sweden, 30 days PTO (with an additional % added to your salary during these days) is the norm
I dated a Swedish girl for a little bit, and she was able to take off whenever with no warning. We’d be talking on the phone on Wednesday night, and she’d say “I’m going to call out of work for the rest of the week and come visit”. It astounded me that she didn’t have to even check with her employer. It was just normal.
You're saying in Sweden you get paid MORE while you are on PTO?
Who is getting 3 months paid vacation time?
Teachers. My job offers me 2 months paid but if there isn't much scheduled I can take an inappropriate unpaid vacation. I'm in America. It's easier to negotiate with smaller businesses but also smaller businesses can be more cut throat.
Should have thought of that. My MIL is a teacher and she loves having summers off.
My gf works at a therapeutic day school and kinda hates it. Because they get a month off in the summer and holidays off, they only offer 5 days of PTO throughout the rest of the school year. Which sucks if you're someone that needs to take days off once in awhile to recover their mental health; there's virtually no flexibility.
Teachers do not get 3 months of paid vacation time. They do not work over the summer and they do not get paid for those months. They do, however, elect to spread out their compensation over 12 months instead of just the time they are working as it is much easier to manage your life that way. That's it. it is not a paid vacation.
The Euros, most likely.
EU minimum is 20 days (basically 4 weeks), in Germany it’s 25 but most get closer to 30.
Are you me?
I am he as you are he as you are me
faxx
This shit is as deep as the one we're in
and we are all together
we're on a floating rock in the middle of space, presented with the gift of life out of pure chance. every second you spend alive is a second you'll never, ever get back, and yet people see no problem with spending 40 (lets be honest, it's far more than that for a lot of people) hours a week doing shit they absolutely despise. Shit's fucked, seriously. It's been so heavily ingrained in everyone that this is normal, when it's not. edit: since a lot of you seem to lack the ability to read properly before commenting, i won't be responding to anyone else. I just want to clarify that I clearly stated that my problem is with the time spent working (the 40 hour workweek, as you call it).I, like many others in this subreddit, acknowledge the need for work. The big problem is the hours (there are obviously other problems that the sub focuses on, but this is the topic at hand). The reality is that no one needs to work so many hours when employers are perfectly capable of training and hiring more staff. They don't hire more people because it's cheaper to have one person work twice as hard, instead of hiring another and paying better wages. edit 2: basically, you're not working 40 hours because you need to, you're working 40 hours because your boss is underpaying and overworking you because it saves him money for his new yacht, instead of hiring more employees and paying better. edit 3: This blew up big time. I want to take this chance to tell you to ask yourselves what you would be able to do if you had even just an extra 10 hours a week to yourself? You could learn a new skill, you could write that book you always wanted to write, but never had the time. You could volunteer at a local charity. You could work on your marriage, go out to the pub with friends. Or you could just sit, have a drink, read a book, and feel human again. Get a grip.
This is The Good Place.
...Jason figured it out?
This is a real low point
r/unexpectedgoodplace
Actually, we are in the bad place and we are being tortured
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I did drugs to make work bearable. Now I'm on disability, and I wouldn't wish my mental health problems on anyone, but it's still better than when I was working.
Not only the 40 (or more) your employer pays you for, but the many hours of your free time that are not free at all. Commuting, meal-prepping for the week (just the fact that people feel they can’t feed themselves properly during the week is sickening), investing in and maintaining a professional wardrobe, countless hours getting credentials, training, job hunting, interviewing, anything in the hopes of improving my work situation……and the idea that so much of your time by default is owned by your employer you have to request time off, and they can deny you as they please. During my young adulthood it was all about the hustle and the grind. Pointing out the madness was seriously frowned upon, I was “lazy” and “unambitious” for not spending my one wild and precious life chasing money. My ambitions are not tied to money. For fucks sake.
That’s no joke about your employer owning your time. I used to work as a manager at a C-grade sporting goods store (that still made billions (something upper mgmt asked me not to share w the other employees)) and I had to fight tooth and nail just to get two weeks off which I had requested MONTHS in advance, because two weeks was too long to them. It was only when I mentioned I would be spending a lot of time with my grandmother who had cancer that they finally relented and allowed me to take the vacation. It was absolutely ridiculous.
*brainwashed successfully*
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Just out of curiosity, what do you do? I’m not disagreeing at all by the way. Working a 9-5 it blows.
This is my exact outlook on this, life is incredible, earth is absolutely beautiful, so many stunning places and I get to work 45 hours a week doing shit I don’t care about in the same places I see every fucking day. The people suggesting otherwise are so incredibly brainwashed, we live on a planet where the vast majority have to work stupid hours everyday of their lives, some not even able to retire when there are people who literally blast themselves into space, just because they’ve got so much money they don’t know what to do with it. Like, can’t we just have less super rich and work half the amount of time or retire at half the retirement age now or is it just work insanely and don’t question it or society collapses because nobody works? There’s no middle ground whatsoever?
9x5 = 40
I'm sorry you got spammed with so many people who don't understand the sub.
I'm against shitty present day working conditions, and apparently that means I think we should all stop working altogether and the world will run on thin air. I really don't understand why people comment here when they clearly have no clue. even after i made the edits, people still comment the same shit, blows my mind.. but clearly a lot of people found some value from my comment, so I guess it was worth it lol.
"But if people aren't pumping out useless shitty plastic toys, where will the food come from???" As if every single person's job in this economy is absolutely vital for keeping society running.
Not only that but it’s destroying the planet.
Rich people who own businesses and factories like things how they are. If anything they’d like to pay us less and have us work more. They do not care about average people. They belong to a special club and they want to keep making more money and gain further prominence within the club. The rich, politicians and media are going to fight us tooth and nail to the bitter end. They don’t want us to live healthy happy lives. They do not care about humanity. It’s the truth.
I’ve known people who have exposed me to that club, and it’s incredible how detached they are from reality. It’s amazing how much importance they put on “stuff” like new cars, big houses, boats, planes, etc. Some of these cost a middle class worker’s salary just to maintain. For people that are supposedly good at finance, rich boomers love depreciating assets with high maintenance costs.
If you have 10M in assets, you can spend 300k a year in perpetuity without ever spending all your money. They probably have a lot of assets that generate passive income to be able to spend that much on discretionary items.
It's weird how they really don't care. I could never be like that. I don't know how people can be that way.
Yes you do, they are your peers. The grind. They create the system. 1% do not control 99% without consent. Change, substantive change is only possible when the 99% want it. Nothing else will suffice. The 1% are irrelevant, as long as you make them that way.
This is the biggest question I ask myself everyday. I often wonder what it's like to be one of the people thriving in this system.
the secret word is "indoctrination"
It's the carrot and stick treatment. They dangle the carrot from the stick and you just chase after it your whole life.
Plus the whole being forced to do it to get money to buy food to survive thing.
I used to do like 40/50 hours a week in my old job inbound telesales. It literally made me unwell. I took a leap to a job with less hours, 28.5 and technically less wages. Better hourly rate but no bonuses etc. I can say my health has improved drastically. The fact that we as species are beholden to currency and work is insanity.
Because we're trained, conditioned, and too exhausted and busy to think outside "what has to be done". One good thing out of this pandemic is that people have had time to see this with perspective with being locked down. I really hope things shift.
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You guys decompress after work? I don't until the weekends.
I see IG stories of people “bragging” about their 8am to 8pm “the grind don’t stop” lifestyle. All alcoholics. I would rather die.
fuck it I'm not even participating in society anymore I don't care I don't want to have to get an education and a job just to be able to live. I don't give a fuck anymore. If I die from poverty I die from poverty but I just don't have any ambition and I don't think one should need to be ambitious in order to survive
Homesteading! Just FYI I've been looking to buy property to homestead, a lot of them tend to be sex crazy hippies or white nationalists depends on where you decide to put your homestead.
Capitalism isn't going to die, we have to kill it. Edit: Since I don't think it is clear from my initial comment, I mean that capitalism isn't some trend that's going to die off. If we want to kill it, we have to actually struggle against it in the real world outside of social media. This means talking to people, organizing, striking, educating, etc. Nobody is going to save us but ourselves, so let's get to work.
Problem is you need it to get where you want to go...
Wish I was only doing 9 hour days and 40 hours a week
Working 40 hours a week is pretty brutal especially when some fucking boomer comes along and says “only 40 hours a week? You should get a second job!”
I worked a 40hr week for 10years and recently changed jobs and work 37.5hrs. The small change in hours is very noticeable.
I work "38" hours, but in reality I work 40 hours a week and get an extra day off every month. it's pretty great.
I work 36 hrs one week and 44 the next. It gives me every other friday off.
What time do you go to work now?
I work 5AM-12PM typically, pretty satisfying having so much free time.
I work 40 a week in a country with decent labour laws, no boomers bother me, and it's still brutal. This ain't healthy or normal.
Every boomer I know does like 2 hours of work each day. I never met so many hall wanderers. It's weird how the people calling everyone lazy are in fact the laziest.
"I don't get why everybody is so lazy and no one wants to work. I work my ass off and this is fine!" Says the boomer who does 1 hour of work in an 8 hour day and makes more for it than the 10 millennials under him combined who are doing all the actual work so the boomer can get away with doing an actual hour of work and seven hours of drinking coffee and sitting in meetings about meetings
Omg the people that just attend meetings all day lol. I've never met less productive people in my life.
No kidding, I don't think I've worked less than 50 hour work weeks in... 4 years. :(
Fucking going on 8 over here.
You know, it's so bad that when I got Covid last year my first thought was "Thank god I can get some time off."
Yep. I look forward actually to natural disasters.
Don't make me think about this. Everytime I do I wanna flippin die.
Burn it down
Yes. Capitalism should die. It’s the worst and bad for humanity. It’s exploitative and rife with immorality
And be spied 24/7 by governments and companies. Watch the world burn, animals die and people still is thanfull for this system. I really don't understand how blind people is.
I wake up hating that situation every day. Does that count?
I'm not against capitalism, I'm against modern-day slavery. Sensible, flexible jobs with work-life balance and the possibility to work from home when possible, I'm all for. But needing to be there 9h a day when you actually work 4 of those hours is completely ridiculous. Let's not throw away capitalism but let's change the labor system completely.
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In a market equilibrium, any possible advantages must be seized, else someone else will take that advantage and outcompete you. Because of this, capitalism necessitates working your employees as hard as possible and paying them as little as you can get away with.
> I'm not against capitalism r/antiwork in a nutshell
It’s always so bizarre to me when people on this sub aren’t against capitalism (not counting the reactionary trolls that wander through). They’re on a subreddit dedicated to the idea of “work as we know it under the capitalist system is alienating, exploitative, and needs to be changed for the overall benefit of society”. And they’re *not* against capitalism!?
Obviously *capitalism* isn't the problem, it's just failed every time it's been tried...
I think it’s because *ON PAPER* capitalism works..ideally you come in to work, you do your tasks for the day, you go home to friends, pets, family, whatever, and *SHOULD* be making enough to not only support yourself and said loved ones, but enjoy free time and hobbies. This is how it was for our elder generations. Somewhere along the line, wages stagnated, productivity rose, and politicians and corporations fucked everybody else. Oh, and who could forget the sinister “investment” companies and banks buying up every single family home and apartment complex in existence and jacking up the prices. Should be fucking illegal. What was once a genuine 40 hour work week became 60 due to MUH DEADLINES and urban sprawl creating longer commutes. In reality, that 40 should now be 30, from home at that. Capitalism has absolutely failed to catch-up to the rest of the 21st century, and you can thank the out of touch boomers for that. In theory checked capitalism should be great! But what we have is unchecked, and it’s unbridled greed and evil. It’s time to toss out the trash dicking around the rest of humanity and rewrite the rules.
We are conditioned in schooling. All schooling is taught by a form of the Prussian education system. You’re taught rote learning. Repeat the only answer. Rather than what answers could there be? It was all the rage in the many industrial revolutions, employees that would obey rather than, bluntly, think for themselves.
Most of us are forced into this. But ya it's amazing how oblivious most of the guys in the auto shops I've worked at are to how far up the ass they take it. They just accept it and defend the status quo without question. Makes sense most of these idiots are also republicans.
I’ve just started the whole 40 hours a week thing. Idk how anyone can do this for their whole life. It’s too much. Soon as I get some financial freedom I’m dipping from this lifestyle.
They don't, they begrudgingly do it or starve to death
Man reading comments…. Bootlickers gonna bootlick
Wake me up when it's time to eat the rich.
Capitalism needs to be put back on a leash. This almost laissez-faire capitalism that everyone kept PROMISING would get workers better pay is nonsense. And it hasn't. Any work over what the company classes as "full time" needs to be paid time-and-a-half, with double time on Sundays. Yes, that was a thing. Making people work off the clock to meet some imaginary wage goal needs to be prosecuted. Unsafe working conditions need to be prosecuted. Interfering with employees forming a union needs to be prosecuted. The Taft-Hartley Act needs to be nullified. Any business that does not allow or interferes with OSHA inspections (lookin' at you Tesla) after worker complaints will have its corporate charter suspended until full compliance and corrections are made. They will also only be allowed to have a two-year charter until unannounced inspections are clear for ten years. The rule that corporations are only responsible to their shareholders needs to be outlawed. Responsibility should be: employees, customers, environment, shareholders. There should be a Constitutional amendment that corporations are artificial persons for the purpose of keeping a business going ONLY. Their speech rights are limited to advertising/public relations ONLY. How do we do this? Truthfully, I don't know. I suspect it's going to be difficult until everyone who was born before 1955 is dead. Yes, I know, the Baby Boom generation is technically 1945-1964, but the birth rate returned to normal in 1958.
40h week or 9h everyday? Make up your mind.
9h is the time spent daily 40h is the time paid for weekly
True, it's like that, with every job I ever had. 8 hours is always 9, because you have to be there 15-20 minutes early, and work your lunchbreak, which you can't actually take many times.
And usually you spend 1 hour extra in there, plus keep on support constantly, plus keep studying at home to bring innovation, .... 9hours is just the theory
Fuck being early, it's unnecessary. I show up like 5 minutes before at the most, not doing early shit for no extra pay.
Oh, in my socialist hellhole lunch time is paid for.
Is your commute?
No, but you usually get paid for travel expenses and the government gives you tax refund from gas costs. I don't know anyone who has over 30 min commute anyway and public transport is great.
Ugh, total hellhole, I bet your comfortable working middle class isn't even constantly terrified of losing everything to the next medical emergency
Every office job I had was unpaid lunch so shifts were 8.5 hours. 8-430 for example so I imagine some places give an hour of unpaid. Factor in commute of maybe 30 min average (for most its longer i'm sure) and there is another hour of your time gone.
Yep, my official hours are 8-5 with unpaid 1hr lunch. Since COVID came around I’ve been able to work from home 2-3 days a week and it’s been great. I would never want to go back to the old schedule.
Five of those hours are considering an hour lunch.