There are so many aspects of that article, that frankly piss me off. This condescending scumbag, wants to reduce your income by 50%. This will somehow eliminate the "evil" practice of purchasing consumer goods.
Every central planner is the same. They somehow perceive, that they have the all knowing knowledge, to decide what is best for the general population. And of course, central planners are entitled to receive high government salaries. This is required to attract bright minds, to the noble calling of the civil service.
Folks, here is the big attraction of socialism and why they have supporters. The central planners themselves, get to live at a much higher standard of living, and maintain an elitist lifestyle. There is also an ego boast from this elitist lifestyle. They get to decide how the great unwashed are going to live their lives.
They are stupid because their ideology is essentially impossible to refute. Take the current clusterfuck in the global economy with stimulus..if things get better they can claim keynesian stimulus worked. If they don't get better they can claim not enough stimulus was applied. how the hell do you argue with that?
At my workplace we work about 60 hours a week in part because we have to screen 1000 resumes to find someone with the right mix of skills and mindset to do the work. Where are we going to find two more complete sets of us.
I suspect most of the trades are in the same boat: plumbing, welding, HVAC and so on have so few qualified people already overtime is common.
If we spent more time encouraging people to learn useful skills instead of subsidizing the dreams of puppetry majors but economically and with social status or pinning for the loss of mindless, no skill requiring assembly line jobs and taught people useful things we'd probably solve a lot of overworked and unemployment issues.
I typically work around 55 hours per week and am salaried. That 55 hours doesn't include any fooling around except lunch. I work a lot of evenings and weekends too. I have to work like this to keep my job.
I know lots of others who do the same routine with a couple of low paid jobs to stay alive.
Tell this moron that I'd love to be able to work a 40 hour week without having any risk of damaging my career or risk loss of my job.
A very interesting idea. As soon as all the government and unionized workers make due with only 21 hours of paid labor a week, I'm all in. After all, shouldn't we do some smaller scale testing first?
Not that I share the views of the author of the article, but I think people would be surprised at how little our standards of living would decline if we had people cut back on the amount they worked.
I worked for a company a few years back that had a benefit where every second week in the summer was a day off. While this substantially altered the amount of working hours within the company the productivity of an employee actually saw a modest increase over this time. While there are obviously limits to how far it can be taken, from my experience happier and better rested employees are far more productive.
While I fully admit I could be wrong, I suspect if you cut back the hours of the average full time employee by 10% the decline in productivity would be far less than 10%.
With that said, cutting hours of the average employee in half would have a massive impact on the standard of living of everyone; and is a pretty moronic suggestion.
I don't doubt that there are diminishing returns on work, but for productivity to increase with fewer hours worked it must be that people are working with negative productivity. I don't believe we are so overworked that we're to that point.
Full employment is bad. Some people produce negative work (Cause problems that take more work to fix than they actually work.)
I work 40 hours a week on a job and 24 hours a week on my own software business. I do more work on my own software in a single day than in a whole year working at a huge IT company. A company that only stays afloat by issuing stock and accountaing tricks, like most other Western Corporations.
I'm really quite serious about the amount of work. When working for the huge IT company I got so derpressed (Yes derpressed) that I decided to do an experiment. Just how long will it take to get fired while writing not a single line of code? My only responsibility you understand.
The answer?
...
I don't know. The experiment was discontinued after 7 months when I quit.
Yeah, everyone will love a 21 hour work week. Right up until they find out they are only getting paid for 21 hours of work, instead of 40.
Then the government will get petitioned to raise the minimum wage so that no one has to take a penny pay cut.
Why, seriously in the name of the patron saint of frick, do none of these morons recognize that human nature and human greed are just as much of a motivating factor in economics as supply and demand are?
"Why, seriously in the name of the patron saint of frick, do none of these morons recognize that human nature and human greed are just as much of a motivating factor in economics as supply and demand are?"
But greeeeed is baaaad, man.
Most of those idiots I've spoken to have reasoning that goes like this: greed is a vice, therefore any impact greed has on the economy must be negative.
Well, the usually can't articulate it very well, but that's the underlying reason. If you suggest that someone pursuing their own ends might end up doing better for society than if they set out to benefit society they just dismiss the notion as ridiculous. If you explain that that's what the invisible hand is all about, they usually make some inane remark about trickle down economics (because somehow that's relevant, I guess?) and act smug like they've proven something.
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11 comments:
There are so many aspects of that article, that frankly piss me off.
This condescending scumbag, wants to reduce your income by 50%. This will somehow eliminate the "evil" practice of purchasing consumer goods.
Every central planner is the same. They somehow perceive, that they have the all knowing knowledge, to decide what is best for the general population. And of course, central planners are entitled to receive high government salaries. This is required to attract bright minds, to the noble calling of the civil service.
Folks, here is the big attraction of socialism and why they have supporters. The central planners themselves, get to live at a much higher standard of living, and maintain an elitist lifestyle. There is also an ego boast from this elitist lifestyle. They get to decide how the great unwashed are going to live their lives.
They are stupid because their ideology is essentially impossible to refute. Take the current clusterfuck in the global economy with stimulus..if things get better they can claim keynesian stimulus worked. If they don't get better they can claim not enough stimulus was applied. how the hell do you argue with that?
What I'd love the answer to is this:
At my workplace we work about 60 hours a week in part because we have to screen 1000 resumes to find someone with the right mix of skills and mindset to do the work. Where are we going to find two more complete sets of us.
I suspect most of the trades are in the same boat: plumbing, welding, HVAC and so on have so few qualified people already overtime is common.
If we spent more time encouraging people to learn useful skills instead of subsidizing the dreams of puppetry majors but economically and with social status or pinning for the loss of mindless, no skill requiring assembly line jobs and taught people useful things we'd probably solve a lot of overworked and unemployment issues.
I typically work around 55 hours per week and am salaried. That 55 hours doesn't include any fooling around except lunch. I work a lot of evenings and weekends too. I have to work like this to keep my job.
I know lots of others who do the same routine with a couple of low paid jobs to stay alive.
Tell this moron that I'd love to be able to work a 40 hour week without having any risk of damaging my career or risk loss of my job.
A very interesting idea. As soon as all the government and unionized workers make due with only 21 hours of paid labor a week, I'm all in. After all, shouldn't we do some smaller scale testing first?
Not that I share the views of the author of the article, but I think people would be surprised at how little our standards of living would decline if we had people cut back on the amount they worked.
I worked for a company a few years back that had a benefit where every second week in the summer was a day off. While this substantially altered the amount of working hours within the company the productivity of an employee actually saw a modest increase over this time. While there are obviously limits to how far it can be taken, from my experience happier and better rested employees are far more productive.
While I fully admit I could be wrong, I suspect if you cut back the hours of the average full time employee by 10% the decline in productivity would be far less than 10%.
With that said, cutting hours of the average employee in half would have a massive impact on the standard of living of everyone; and is a pretty moronic suggestion.
PeppermintPanda,
I don't doubt that there are diminishing returns on work, but for productivity to increase with fewer hours worked it must be that people are working with negative productivity. I don't believe we are so overworked that we're to that point.
Full employment is bad. Some people produce negative work (Cause problems that take more work to fix than they actually work.)
I work 40 hours a week on a job and 24 hours a week on my own software business. I do more work on my own software in a single day than in a whole year working at a huge IT company. A company that only stays afloat by issuing stock and accountaing tricks, like most other Western Corporations.
I'm really quite serious about the amount of work. When working for the huge IT company I got so derpressed (Yes derpressed) that I decided to do an experiment. Just how long will it take to get fired while writing not a single line of code? My only responsibility you understand.
The answer?
...
I don't know. The experiment was discontinued after 7 months when I quit.
Yeah, everyone will love a 21 hour work week. Right up until they find out they are only getting paid for 21 hours of work, instead of 40.
Then the government will get petitioned to raise the minimum wage so that no one has to take a penny pay cut.
Why, seriously in the name of the patron saint of frick, do none of these morons recognize that human nature and human greed are just as much of a motivating factor in economics as supply and demand are?
"Why, seriously in the name of the patron saint of frick, do none of these morons recognize that human nature and human greed are just as much of a motivating factor in economics as supply and demand are?"
But greeeeed is baaaad, man.
Most of those idiots I've spoken to have reasoning that goes like this: greed is a vice, therefore any impact greed has on the economy must be negative.
Well, the usually can't articulate it very well, but that's the underlying reason. If you suggest that someone pursuing their own ends might end up doing better for society than if they set out to benefit society they just dismiss the notion as ridiculous. If you explain that that's what the invisible hand is all about, they usually make some inane remark about trickle down economics (because somehow that's relevant, I guess?) and act smug like they've proven something.
Then they get stabbed in the neck. Well, I wish.
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veгу skilled blοgger. I've joined your rss feed and look forward to seeking more of your excellent post. Also, I have shared your web site in my social networks!
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