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Who Stole the 4-hour Work Day/ vice article

What? Nobody thinks we deserve a shorter work day or more paid vacation time?
 
Bull crap pro-union garbage. Typical of a radically-leftist site like VICE.

No...you do NOT "deserve" a shorter work week or more vacation time simply because you dug up some pre-depression pro-union trash. STFU and get back to work. Honor the arrangement you have with your employer, which is work 'x' amount of hours for 'x' amount of pay. If you do not like that arrangement, then you are free to go find an arrangement you agree with.
 
I spent a career in the military. When that was over I decided I wanted to have more control over my schedule and pay so I started my own business. Best decision of my life.

The best way to ensure you are paid what you are worth and that you are treated fairly by your employer is to be your own employer.
 
TGN said:
What? Nobody thinks we deserve a shorter work day or more paid vacation time?
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Quit your job, get welfare and bitch about how hard it is to make it on a fixed income. Problem solved. You can retire early and bitch about it all at the same time. Want money, work for it. Pretty simple.
 
BrewerBob said:
I spent a career in the military. When that was over I decided I wanted to have more control over my schedule and pay so I started my own business. Best decision of my life.

The best way to ensure you are paid what you are worth and that you are treated fairly by your employer is to be your own employer.
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What do you do Bob? I was doing home residential rehabs, then went to work for a large road company driving dumps, and now back doing rehabs.

I can't believe that I lasted a year and a half working for someone else, even though my boss was a great guy.
 
Velvet Elvis said:
No...you do NOT "deserve" a shorter work week or more vacation time simply because you dug up some pre-depression pro-union trash. STFU and get back to work. Honor the arrangement you have with your employer, which is work 'x' amount of hours for 'x' amount of pay. If you do not like that arrangement, then you are free to go find an arrangement you agree with.
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Obvious problem: once all the means of production are owned, the owners decide which arrangements are available. All the means of production have been owned for a very, very long time. You make it sound as if employees are completely free to put themselves in a fair situation, but that is simply--and obviously--not true.
 
ashurbanipal said:
Obvious problem: once all the means of production are owned, the owners decide which arrangements are available. All the means of production have been owned for a very, very long time. You make it sound as if employees are completely free to put themselves in a fair situation, but that is simply--and obviously--not true.
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Exactly. We need a more level playing field.
 
ashurbanipal said:
Obvious problem: once all the means of production are owned, the owners decide which arrangements are available. All the means of production have been owned for a very, very long time. You make it sound as if employees are completely free to put themselves in a fair situation, but that is simply--and obviously--not true.
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How is it not fair? What laws are being broken?

This still sounds like whiney little millennials just looking for an unearned reward.
 
ashurbanipal said:
Obvious problem: once all the means of production are owned, the owners decide which arrangements are available. All the means of production have been owned for a very, very long time. You make it sound as if employees are completely free to put themselves in a fair situation, but that is simply--and obviously--not true.
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That's interesting because new businesses are started virtually every single day in America. I wonder why those who own all the means of production are allowing that.
 
VelvetElvis said:
How is it not fair?
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See Marx's point about surplus value. Or, if you don't like Marx (as I suspect you don't), see Adam Smith's point about surplus value, which was basically just the same as Marx's point.

To conceptualize it a little further, roughly speaking, a man-made economy ought to reward roughly equally two people who work equally hard. Moreover, rewards ought to scale with the effort put forth. But our economy, for various reasons, does not do that. Those at the very top of the economic ladder make orders of magnitude more than those at the bottom, but do not work orders of magnitude harder (that would be impossible anyway).

VelvetElvis said:
What laws are being broken?
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I don't know. In some cases, surely none, and in other cases, surely many. However, it is clearly the case that legality has nothing to do with fairness.

VelvetElvis said:
This still sounds like whiney little millennials just looking for an unearned reward.
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I'm rather older than that, and while I am now a professor, I was once VP of operations for a mid-cap grocery distribution company. From there, I went on to start my own business, which I ran successfully for nine years, before realizing I wasn't doing what I wanted with my life. My observations about how our economy works come from my evaluations of, and reflections on, my experiences as a former employer and member of the one percent.
 
braindrain said:
That's interesting because new businesses are started virtually every single day in America. I wonder why those who own all the means of production are allowing that.
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You needn't wonder--they're the ones starting those businesses...Ok, ok, actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. A few people do get lucky. Finding a few counterexamples to a general trend isn't enough to make a point, at least when that point is about the existence of the general trend.
 
ashurbanipal said:
You needn't wonder--they're the ones starting those businesses...Ok, ok, actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. A few people do get lucky. Finding a few counterexamples to a general trend isn't enough to make a point, at least when that point is about the existence of the general trend.
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It's quite abut more then a few.

There are close to 30 million small business in the US and another 23 million people are self employed.

The biggest thing keeping people from succeeding in this country are their own bad choices and unwillingness to work hard.
 
How would a four day work week work. Would factories work four days and close three? Or hire a three day crew and run seven days?

Are you willing to work four ten's? (Which is actually eleven with lunch). I've done it. It's a long day.
 
BrewerBob said:
I spent a career in the military. When that was over I decided I wanted to have more control over my schedule and pay so I started my own business. Best decision of my life.

The best way to ensure you are paid what you are worth and that you are treated fairly by your employer is to be your own employer.
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Except the liberal nitwits think that if they're their own boss they can work a four-hour day and have twelve weeks vacation every year. I had a man working for me who was a union thug. He quit, bought a small restaurant, and a year later he was out of the restaurant business, divorced, and looking for a job where he could be in a union.
 
ashurbanipal said:
See Marx's point about surplus value.
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I don't subscribe to Marxist thinking. Period.

I'm rather older than that, and while I am now a professor, I was once VP of operations for a mid-cap grocery distribution company. From there, I went on to start my own business, which I ran successfully for nine years, before realizing I wasn't doing what I wanted with my life.
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Wow...and here I am without any cookies to give you.
 
A 4 hour work day? Don’t laugh it may be on its way to your town in the very near future........

Robots are expected to replace some five million jobs by 2020 and artificial intelligence will replace the needs for millions more of what is today called “white color jobs

It’s hard not to see the radical transformations revolutionizing the way we work. One of those major changes is the evolution of modern robotics, or artificial intelligence (AI), which has made our lives easier…but also stirred some worries as to how human workers will be affected………..

According to researchers “current trends could lead to a net employment impact of more than 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labor market changes over the period 2015–2020.” estimates are a grand total of 7.1 million jobs will be lost as a direct result of many of our proudest innovations, and that two-thirds of these jobs will be “concentrated in the Office and Administrative job family.” Concurrently, two million jobs will be gained in what the WEF calls “several smaller job families… Jobs at isk of being replaced by machines are those in “administrative and routine white-collar office functions.” Furthermore, some industries where machines already play a large part, like manufacturing and production, will see further robot substitution humans “retain relatively good potential for upskilling, redeployment, and productivity enhancement through technology rather than pure substitution.”…

upskillingwill be crucial for humans looking to retain or attain employment over the next few years. Not only will machines compete for positions...obal population growth and a rather stunted job market will make competition all the fiercer…

Examples of future today:

• The futuristic Henn-na Hotel in Japan, which opened its doors this month, and you’ll be greeted by a robotic staff that’s said to run 90% of the hotel's operations. The other 10% is handled by the hotel's only 10 human employees.
• In New York, there’s YOTEL, which employs robots to take care of guests’ belongings, make coffee, deliver laundry, clean rooms, and take on many other service-related jobs. Last year, hotel giant Starwood introduced its robotics staff called "Botlrs", responsible for delivering amenities to guests by navigating around hotels and using elevators without human assistance.
• In hospitals, robots have been delivering trays of food and drugs, cleaning linens, and carting away trash since as early as 1992. At home-improvement chain Lowe’s, the customer-service OSHbot robot, which stands about 4 feet tall, can shows customers where items are throughout the store.
• There’s Amazon, which uses 15,000 robots in its warehouses to keep up with customers’ orders.
• Even the U.S. Army is reportedly considering replacing tens of thousands of soldiers with robots.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s business school, someone who is working from home can come to meetings as a robot.

Some believe the robotics workplace will sabotage jobs for humans and a 2013 Oxford study reports that work automation will put 47% of existing jobs in the U.S. at "high risk," meaning human workers in those jobs will be replaced by robots within 20 years… for the next decade where the unemployment aspect taking our jobs will be less of a factor, but we’ll be dealing with displacement. People where their skills are obsolete will have to reposition themselves with training for different careers…


Now machines can diagnose cancer, trade stocks, and write symphonies, they're not just going to make humans more efficient as they have in the past—and doing so faster, with fewer errors and at less costs and there's reason to be believe that we really are entering a new age. An age when people will work less...a new age of artificially intelligent and robotic machines. And will be used not so much tools to improve the efficiency of workers but really will be the tools to replace workers themselves.

It will be a fundamental shift from most tasks being performed by humans to one where most tasks are done by machines. That includes obvious things like moving boxes around a warehouse; but also many "higher skill" jobs as well, such as radiology and stock trading. And don't kid yourself about your own importance: that list almost certainly includes your job.

In the near future, 10’s of thousands jobs will be replaced by robots and Artificial intelligence (AI) And with it new efficiencies will further reduce the need for number of hours need.

How do we meet the upcoming problem? Too many people with not too much to do? What will people do with all the free time they will have? Issuesthe future which will challenge society with new problems requiring solutions of how to find new ways of using time.

The 4 hour work day sounds not to silly..


REFERENCE upon request
 
ashurbanipal said:
You needn't wonder--they're the ones starting those businesses...Ok, ok, actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. A few people do get lucky. Finding a few counterexamples to a general trend isn't enough to make a point, at least when that point is about the existence of the general trend.
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Really?:lol:

I know dozens of small business owners and what you just said is absurd. It is far, FAR more common for a large corporation to come in and buy the small business well after it has been established. It's called the "Growth by acquisition" model, common in virtually every industry worldwide.
 
Jack Fabulous said:
Really?:lol:

I know dozens of small business owners and what you just said is absurd. It is far, FAR more common for a large corporation to come in and buy the small business well after it has been established. It's called the "Growth by acquisition" model, common in virtually every industry worldwide.
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Ah, but those business owners have to get lucky enough in the beginning for the value of their businesses even to be considered by a large corporation.
 
Velvet Elvis said:
Honor the arrangement you have with your employer, which is work 'x' amount of hours for 'x' amount of pay. If you do not like that arrangement, then you are free to go find an arrangement you agree with.
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Guess what, Rambo. You also have the right to bargain with your employer to modify the arrangement.
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Ah, but those business owners have to get lucky enough in the beginning for the value of their businesses even to be considered by a large corporation.
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Get lucky?

Couldn't possibly have anything to do with intelligence, effort, and determination, NOOOooooo!!!
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Ah, but those business owners have to get lucky enough in the beginning for the value of their businesses even to be considered by a large corporation.
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Yes it is nothing but luck that a small business is considered valuable i.e. Making a profit. And so what if a big business doesn't buy your company. If it is making s profit who cares. Many small business owners actually have zero interest in selling their business
 
Jack Fabulous said:
Get lucky?

Couldn't possibly have anything to do with intelligence, effort, and determination, NOOOooooo!!!
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I know right. The only thing that separates a successful business and one that goes out of business is luck.

The type of thinking on display by DD and the OP is exactly is why so many folks will be unsuccessful. Rather then making good choices and working hard they would rather just complain that the reason they are unsuccessful is simply bad luck.
 
braindrain said:
It's quite abut more then a few.

There are close to 30 million small business in the US and another 23 million people are self employed.
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Did all of those people start from nothing and make it in the last day? You said that new businesses start every day. I'm happy to cut you 365 times as much slack as your claim staked out. Did all of those people start from nothing and make it in the last year?

The questions are not meant rhetorically. Consider persons A and B. A can (maybe) scrape together a couple grand in an emergency, mostly through cash advances on credit cards or a home equity loan. B has a couple hundred thousand dollars in savings.

Person A is something like 75% of American adults. Person A isn't starting any businesses, but person B might. And most importantly for this discussion, person B owns some of the means of production, while person A does not.

braindrain said:
The biggest thing keeping people from succeeding in this country are their own bad choices and unwillingness to work hard.
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Give me some evidence this claim is correct. In the meantime, here's a small sampling of evidence it's not correct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time

People in the U.S., on average, work more hours per year than people in Japan. Hours in the U.S. in a working year are above the OECD average; the U.S. clusters around such affluent nations as Ireland, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania. Simultaneously, affluent countries such as Britain, Sweden, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland all have lower hours per work-year. While people in India and South Korea work harder than do Americans, it is simply false that Americans have an "unwillingness to work hard."

America Is Even Less Socially Mobile Than Economists Thought - The Atlantic

Social mobiity in the U.S. is shockingly low, especially when compared to the narrative of the American dream. As this and the previous link show, Americans are working hard (as hard as people motivated by poverty typical of Ireland or Turkey), and generally not getting ahead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States

America Is Even Less Socially Mobile Than Economists Thought - The Atlantic

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/soci.../27/inequality-and-social-mobility-be-afraid/

http://www.economist.com/news/unite...obile-it-was-generation-ago-mobility-measured

Social mobility in the U.S. is low; your parents' income is the biggest factor determining what your income will be. By contrast, in Denmark (where people work far fewer hours, on average), social mobility is much higher.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115000062

People in the U.S. grossly overestimate the level of social mobility in their society.

Finally, though this was not addressed to me:

braindrain said:
The only thing that separates a successful business and one that goes out of business is luck.
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No one (at least not me) is making this claim. Of course intelligence and hard work are usually necessary conditions of success. The point, which you have misunderstood, is that the claim that hard work and smarts are sufficient for success is false, despite the fact that it is often trotted out by folks on your side of the fence.
 
Jack Fabulous said:
Really?
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Why, yes.

Jack Fabulous said:
I know dozens of small business owners and what you just said is absurd.
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Now it's my turn: really? See below.

Jack Fabulous said:
It is far, FAR more common for a large corporation to come in and buy the small business well after it has been established. It's called the "Growth by acquisition" model, common in virtually every industry worldwide.
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Sure. Why in the world does this have any relevance? Look, unless you think people start businesses for no, or negative, amounts of money, you have to acknowledge a difference between the average person, who can maybe scrape together a grand or two, and those who start small businesses, who typically have a hundred thousand dollars or more in net worth. The latter own part of the means of production, the former do not.

See my reply to braindrain for further context and argument.
 
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