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A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 12:27:40

Ibon - I've had similar experiences throughout my 41 year career. In my case it was CUTTING NUMBERS. Either proved recoverable reserves or reducing the probability of success of a drilling prospect. I've had more then one project taken away and given to a more "optimistic" geologist. In fact once I had a consulting contract cancelled by a drilling fund because I didn't recommend a single prospect of the dozens I analyzed over a 3 month period. I told them I could recommend prospects if they lowered the probability of success they required. They said no and I was replaced. A year and a half later after losing $60 million they closed down. The company was run by a former oil trader who thought buying and selling oil qualified him to drill for it. He was wrong. LOL.

And believe or not in hundreds of projects not once has my estimates been proven to be too pessimistic. But a % did prove to be a tad too optimistic: can't completely eliminate risk in the oil patch and still makd a profit. And the reason I was hired for my current position with a private company owned by a $billionaire is because of that reputation. Which is how you become a $billionaire: my owner is purely success oriented since we're risking his family's money. Drill good wells and we're nicely rewarded. Fail and he wouldn't hesitate one minute to run any of us off. We've all been here 8 years now.

And in my 4 decades this is the longest I've held any position.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 12:52:54

Ibon wrote:Way back in 1978 while in the university I had an internship that lasted 5 months working in The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. There was a study on surveying the status of the salamander population and my job was to visit the different water sheds on the park, collect specimens and record numbers of individuals. At the end of my internship one of the lead researchers came up to me and said that I screwed up completely their data census because every where I went I brought back specimens and recorded numbers of individuals that were far and above what all the previous data collectors had gathered :)

Some peoples metabolism just burns hotter especially when you have passion.

And that happens a lot with young, healthy, energetic, and idealistic people.

In my summer internship at IBM while in college, my department laughingly showed my manager the file cabinet where the new software was stored.

My set of listings, flow charts, etc. was far bigger than the entire regular staff department's, and there were roughly 12 to 15 people in that department. They did it to make two points -- to put in a good word for my work ethic (which I appreciated, as I was hoping to be offered a job when I graduated), and to show how much meetings and nonsensical paperwork detracted from their ability to DO THEIR JOB -- writing and testing software.

...

In my senior year in college, the happiest time of my life was working on my chess program. In 1981, that was still relatively new and largely uncharted territory. I was working about 20 hours a day, and sleeping on a table two hours a night in the computer room (waiting for compiles of 6000ish source lines). Very hard and productive work, and pure bliss as I watched my creation grow in ability.

....

If only we stayed under 25 and weren't shown how frequently such hard work is mostly wasted effort re being rewarded by most employers -- maybe there would be far more amazing productivity.

And maybe there is for people who own their own company -- or in the top rungs of a small company where (for awhile) such effort is actually rewarded in rough proportion to productivity.

...

Unfortunately, overall, our system doesn't work like that. For example:

I generally kicked ass pretty seriously at IBM the first half of my career. Why not? I was treated with respect, given large and frequent raises, thanked and given tangible awards for my best projects, promoted several times, etc. Oh, and being the curious sort, the intellectual rewards for all the stuff I was learning along the way was a huge motivator in itself.

I generally drifted from that toward being an unproductive employee the last half of my career. Why not? Things moved toward where there were few if any raises, what raises there were were tiny and tended to be all the same. There were few if any promotions. We were treated poorly. Management changed so they had nary a clue what we did, and didn't care. Oh, and I was so busy putting out fires and doing paperwork and attending STUPID meetings that there was very little time to focus and learn anything meaningful -- that was the worst part of all. Huge boredom.

The sad thing is I went from doing something like 5 peoples' work to something like half a person's work over 13 years -- and IBM at the end couldn't seem to tell the difference. It makes you wonder how such organizations survive over the longer term.

I'm betting the second half of my career is by far the most common input people experience in their work. No wonder they're often demotivated.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 25 Oct 2017, 08:37:07

NY Times on death by over work and more. And when I was not working for “the man” I was persuing some other goal, night school or my PE license.

I’m reminded of some managers who are famous for sending our emails at 3am and calling folks all weekend. For many years I worked 40 to 60 hours myself, always took my work computer on vacation and know many who do the same to his day.

Https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/w ... book.com/m

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/19/world ... death.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karōshi

https://newint.org/features/2002/03/05/karoshi/

“This makes America’s Protestant work ethic a Puritan plague and affirms anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’s comment that the market system has handed down to human beings a sentence of ‘life at hard labour’.“
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 25 Oct 2017, 10:16:57

Newfie wrote:“This makes America’s Protestant work ethic a Puritan plague and affirms anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’s comment that the market system has handed down to human beings a sentence of ‘life at hard labour’.“


There were HG cultures that looked at some of the early agriculturalists and their endless toil working the soil and they slipped back into the forest thinking to theselves saying "no fxxking way".

It seems bad habits die hard.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby cephalotus » Fri 27 Oct 2017, 07:12:26

As an engineer in Germany I work 40h per week. Imho this is to much for a nice work to live Balance. I neither want to work so much of my time nor do I need all the money that comes with it. Thankfully there are at least 30 days paid vacation + the typical free days + the overtime hours that I can convert to days off.

I acuumulated some Money so my new plan is to buy a small flat and repay the dept during the next 10-12 years. Not a good time, because prices have risen significantly while rent is still cheap. But I can not turn back time.
Assuming staying in my actual Job at 50-55 I would already have accumulated a decent (=average) amount of "Rentenpunkte" for the public retirement system, so while I'm not rich enough to ritire early I could easily take a significantly lower paying job by than, after the mortgage is paid off. Maybe there will be a nice option to work for 20h a week by than.

So health insurance will still be payed from a part time job and I will accumulate a bit more "Rentepunkte" until 67 (or 70?) when it will be time to retire...

I hope to be healthy and fit in my fifties to be able to do demanding trips around the world even if it needs to be by bike post peak oil ;-).

If people want to work long hours to earn huge amount of money that's fine for me. I prefer free time and less consumption instead...
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 01 Nov 2017, 08:52:39

WSJ article relevant to this topic, what to do with your spare time and why we don’t.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-person ... 0?mod=e2fb
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Thu 02 Nov 2017, 01:54:22

Newfie wrote:WSJ article relevant to this topic, what to do with your spare time and why we don’t.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-person ... 0?mod=e2fb


But small actions like vacuuming and returning videotapes can have a positive impact on our well-being.

Returning videotapes? (The above linked piece was written 10/26/17).

Either this is a riff on "American Psycho", or the author of this piece is losing it. Given his anti-depression recommondations are right out of the 70's, the idea of him trying to tie these points to new tech. seems pretty silly. (But such authors need to write articles and get paid -- but not necessarily good articles).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Shaved Monkey » Thu 02 Nov 2017, 03:37:21

The problem seems to be low wages and cost of living pressures.
35 hour weeks will need to address that but it makes sense to job share and reduce work times to be more family friendly.
Unfortunately as we exported manufacturing jobs to China and cut back and streamlined business the slack was supposed to be taken up by the service industry,that needs cash rich, time poor people, to get their dog washed, nails painted and grass mowed.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 02 Nov 2017, 08:23:58

The idea of automation improving our lives and giving us time to enjoy ourselves ibased on the hidden assumption that our labor will decrease but wages will remain the same. If it take 40 hours to make 100 widgets but the new gizmo lets me do 100 widgets in 20 hours I have 20 hours off. No, 1/2 of folks get fired.

Then there is the belief that if we work hard we will be rewarded. No, if I do twice as much work as my coworker he will be fired and I won’t get a raise.

Society adjusts by having low productivity jobs. It’s really a form of workfare. My fave is our health insurance system.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 02 Nov 2017, 08:44:59

Newfie wrote:
Then there is the belief that if we work hard we will be rewarded. No, if I do twice as much work as my coworker he will be fired and I won’t get a raise.



Hard work is different from unfulfilling work which at the end of the day is the most exhausting of all. When you submit yourself every day to the drudgery of mind numbing employment this is exactly what makes so many people look for compensation by then increasing consumption.

When you really work hard on something you love doing you end up being a very frugal consumer because you are not compensating for a boring stuck existence. Same when you own your own business.

It becomes a self perpetuating imprisonment being a wage slave because the increased consumption to compensate for an unhappy work life is done by increasing debt. And then you are only more trapped. This is why we have such a huge percentage of the population stuck, debt burdened and not able to come up for air and look around and reconfigure their lives.

You notice the difference when you see for example a mexican immigrant coming in fresh off the boat, saving, sharing homes with other families, living frugally, buying used old cars, pooling together incomes, starting their own businesses, upbeat and positive. Whereas the debt burdened wage slave going nowhere then becomes resentful because they don't understand why this mexican immigrant seems so happy and willing while they are depressed and often on anti depressant medications.

When I am in South Florida finding workers to fix my home or do landscaping I reach for a Guatemalan or Mexican or Haitian everytime before I will offer the job to a so called "professional". There is no comparison in attitude, willingness to work and actually quality. Most of these immigrants worked a few decades in construction back in their home countries before immigrating.

What I am saying here is that there is a huge psychological component to this topic that has created a population that is no longer able to break out of a deadly pattern. This is also why we have the political situation we have at the moment.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Shaved Monkey » Fri 03 Nov 2017, 20:02:54

Ibon wrote:Hard work is different from unfulfilling work which at the end of the day is the most exhausting of all. When you submit yourself every day to the drudgery of mind numbing employment this is exactly what makes so many people look for compensation by then increasing consumption.
What I am saying here is that there is a huge psychological component to this topic that has created a population that is no longer able to break out of a deadly pattern. This is also why we have the political situation we have at the moment.

One of the side effects is the political exploitation of downwards envy.
An attack on the welfare system and safety nets.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-05/l ... vy/5649898
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby dissident » Sun 05 Nov 2017, 15:28:58

The five day work week needs to be retired and replaced with a 4 day work week. If people want to work the 5th day then they are free to do so. I would prefer to take a 20% pay cut and get 3 day weekends. Instead there is no freedom for me to organize my work to take four days even if I offer a 20% pay cut. The employer wants serfs who will work 7 days a week. The argument that it is workers who want longer work hours does not fly. It is a miracle we have a two day weekend. You can thank the much maligned unions for that.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 05 Nov 2017, 15:43:57

Dissident

I was fortunate enough to work for 2 companies allows me to work under 40 hours. Each in a different way. In the first job I change from a 40 hour base to a 36 hour base, but continued to work 40 hours, banking 4 hours of vacation a week. That got me an extra 4-5 weeks vacation a year.

It listen to this.....
Coworkers would ask me how I did it. I would say “I asked. Why don’t you?.”

The answer was always negative, some excuse. They can’t affird it (all making $100k a year), my job won’t allow it (I’m too important), or (my fave) my employer won’t allow it, even though they allowed me to do it. Maybe they were afraid of missing promotions?

In all cases these folks, and there were many, we shackling themselves.
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Re: A 35 hour Workweek would create Millions of Jobs

Unread postby Shaved Monkey » Sun 05 Nov 2017, 20:30:14

In Australia its pretty common to have a RDO (rostered day off) to make the hours add up for a 35 hour week.
You get a Monday or Friday off once a month.

Not all places have 35 hour weeks though
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