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Old 05-19-2014, 08:36 PM
 
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I’ve often heard about folks in Europe working fewer hours than we do in the US, and I came across this explanation in a book I read. It’s Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? by Jared Bernstein (2008).

I’m referencing his words from part 2, and the chapter titled (and they're all in a question-and-answer format): “Economists and business reporters seem to go gaga over productivity growth. Why is it such a big deal?” (p.71)

The author discusses productivity. Say your company makes doughnuts, producing 100 an hour. The following week, you make 110 doughnuts an hour. It could be due to a new doughnut maker, reorganization of workflow, or a boss cracking the whip.

Quote:
The reason why productivity growth is so important is that it’s a primary determinant of living standard. Greater efficiencies create more opportunities. [...] So, the main way society advances its living standards is through more efficiently providing the goods and services that people want and need. It doesn't mean that folks will necessarily own more stuff, though that’s certainly how it’s played out here in America [...] In France, on the other hand, they take their higher productivity growth in more time off. In fact, consumption makes up about 70% of US GDP [...] compared with about 55% in France.

And that’s the beauty of productivity growth. If productivity grows 2.5% (about the underlying annual growth in the US since 2000), that means we can either have 2.5% more stuff for each hour we work, or the same amount of stuff with fewer hours worked.

So, is it possible for the US to change how we do things? Have more time off, less stuff? I can see how this would work where people are producing goods, but what about services? For those with a better understanding of economics, is this concept as simple as it sounds?
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Old 05-20-2014, 12:49 AM
 
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It may not have anything to do with it.....but the first thing I thought of when I saw that
Quote:
consumption makes up about 70% of US GDP [...] compared with about 55% in France.
....is that the French are taxed so damn much they don't have as much money left in their pockets as Americans do to spend on consumption.

I lived in Europe for a while, and I will say I found that women there didn't have as many clothes as women in the U.S.
-- for one the closets are puny, but aside from that -- they wear their clothes until the threads are bare. French women wear their scarves all the time, and Italians wear their jeans and leather jackets to get ALL their money's worth out of them.
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Old 05-22-2014, 03:08 AM
 
Location: Sector 001
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guys I work with who would rather work more and be 'doing something' all the time, one said to me that they don't get the 'toys' that we can buy with all our extra cash from the overtime, that it was worth it to work hard to have these toys. I personally take the opposite viewpoint, I'd rather live simple, live cheap, work no overtime, and have more time off.

I LOVE my job right now, I've been very lucky to not have to work a lot of overtime with the 4-shift rotation. The norm where I work is 20% overtime per employee per year, which for those who know basic math.. they calculate overtime percentage based on total hours worked in a week, so 20% is 50 hours.... 50 minus 40 is 10 hours, 10 hours divided by 50 is 20%.. so the average person works 50 hours a week, every week, all year. Of course to get weeks off with vacation, that means there are other weeks where they are working 56-60 hours or more.

Basically we are 'perpetually behind' and it's a never ending state of 'being behind' with brief, maybe month long spurts of being 'caught up' that happen once in a while, usually when the weather is crappy in the fall, November timeframe. It's a balancing act to allow people who want to work to work all they want, while giving those who don't want to work their time off. That's called "level 2" by us, meaning overtime is voluntary that week.
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Old 05-22-2014, 04:57 AM
 
Location: The Triad
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tatooine View Post
Productivity growth: more consumption vs. more time off?
vs the THIRD option: fewer people doing the work that actually needs doing.
Very much as we have now but without the social welfare burden.
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Old 05-22-2014, 06:38 AM
 
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We already reduced our working hours to 40 in the past, we could certainly do it again. At some point it's probably inevitable, if we don't want 30% unemployment because we only need a subset of the population to produce as many goods as the whole country wants. Over the past century the US has chosen more consumption, but as someone said we can only consume so much.
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Old 05-22-2014, 06:44 AM
 
Location: The Mitten.
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As a dog walker, I'm in and out of peoples' houses all day long. One thing almost all my clients have in common: too much stuff. And this is just from brief impressions of their homes!
I choose to work about 23-24 hours a week. I simply "want" less stuff.
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Old 05-22-2014, 11:54 AM
 
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That depends on what you want only as we are all different. As a dog walker for instance you free up some people time so they can produce more. If they decide to do less by what they want then your job would not be needed.
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Old 05-22-2014, 12:23 PM
 
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The problem is that we, in this nation, have a very "pro-contract" notion of working arrangements. The idea of the government limiting the number of hours people can work (and buttressing that with a greater provision of centralized social services or higher minimum wages and EITC) strikes a large number of conservatives as inherently bad. As anyone who has seen me post knows, I can't disagree more strongly with the conservatives on this issue, but our political split on the issue is the exact reason we don't look more like Europe on these issues.

Indeed, a Democrat in the House attempted to introduce a provision guaranteeing a minimum of one week's paid vacation for all workers, and it was instantly attacked as a restriction on the rights of companies (!) to do what they wish. Conversely, every nation in the EU guarantees at least 4 weeks of vacation from the first year on, and most guarantee 5 or 6 weeks vacation. They also guarantee generous paid maternity and paternity leave, more generous sick leave, etc...

The problem is that without guaranteed vacation provisions and maximum workweeks and/or industry union contracts (where a union sets the "base" wages and benefits for a given industry), we are stuck in a constant prisoners' dilemma/race-to-the-bottom. Even if 9 out of 10 people want to work fewer hours and live a simpler life, they can constantly be threatened with unemployment due to not knowing if that 10th person (or all the unemployed people) will take their job if they try to work towards such a condition. And with such a large number of people working low-wage jobs, part-time jobs, or being unemployed, the fear is more realistic. Only a social legislation that applies to all can prevent the prisoners' dilemma of making us work long hours against our own self-interests.
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Old 05-22-2014, 12:40 PM
 
4,873 posts, read 3,588,470 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kwhitegocubs View Post
Even if 9 out of 10 people want to work fewer hours and live a simpler life, they can constantly be threatened with unemployment due to not knowing if that 10th person (or all the unemployed people) will take their job if they try to work towards such a condition. And with such a large number of people working low-wage jobs, part-time jobs, or being unemployed, the fear is more realistic. Only a social legislation that applies to all can prevent the prisoners' dilemma of making us work long hours against our own self-interests.
Even if 10 out of 10 want to work fewer hours, if there are only 9 jobs nature takes its course.
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Old 05-23-2014, 12:13 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankMiller View Post
Even if 10 out of 10 want to work fewer hours, if there are only 9 jobs nature takes its course.
Which is why it's so maddening. While I am aware of the "lump of labor fallacy", 10 people working fewer hours keeps 10 jobs (at some rate). Instead, we get 9 people working longer hours, one person unemployed, and that dynamic drives down wages (or keeps them stagnant) while keeping that tenth person unemployed.
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