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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy do we have to "Work so Hard" to make a living?
I hear all these politicians say over and over again this schtick about woking hard, making it, and getting ahead... Why? Why do we all have to "work hard" to have the basics of life, and these days, wages are basically paying for nothing, let alone allowing for one to "get ahead".
We have more technology and items that should make our lives better and easier. Shouldn't the technology and the innovations of our modern world allow for us to have better and easier lives where we can use the technology to work smartly, less during the day, and have more time for "freedom" and carefree ease?
AND exactly why do we have to work so damned hard to make ends meet, yet those with the most (inherited a lot of the time), wouldn't know what "work hard" even means?
I personally work a minimum of 42 hrs a week. The pay is less than I used to make before the recession, however, every tangible real cost has increased in my life... like food, electric rates, gas, insurance rates, etc... And I still have all of those other things in my life to attend to like cooking and cleaning and child rearing... I'm sorry, but with all the technology and with the other half of the gender species being able to enter the work force, I shouldn't be this tired and dragging all the time. I should have more time. I should have enough $ to pay my bills and enjoy a vacation. AND I certainly don't think I should have to work even harder to "make it" or "get ahead".
No, I'm tired of the meme. We as a nation, are on the go and worked to death. They keep us on the rat wheel running faster and faster trying to get that dangling treat, and we are literally running faster in circles and going no where. If Occupy could come up with One Demand that would appeal to people the most, I think that would be a great place to start with.... People ask why Americans are so apathetic. We aren't apathetic, we are tired and we're being worked to death. AND that rat wheel is so nearly impossible to escape from because escaping the wheel normally means losing one's home, or health care, or basic ability to buy food to eat.
If Americans had the time to stop, think, ponder, gather with friends, enjoy their families, be able to travel around the country or the world.... we might actually be able to Unite and create the type of country we know we could have.
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valerief
(53,235 posts)glowing
(12,233 posts)chance to even think about running for Dog Catcher, let alone the President of the United State.
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)blueamy66
(6,795 posts)and we have to hear about his world travels....his next cruise is coming up....the Amazon River.....or we have to hear about his box seats at the latest hockey game or his daughter's latest trip to Rome, without her husband....which I cannot fathom....she doesn't even work, she "volunteers"....as she gets a check every month from US
It stinks to high Heaven....
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)Everyone talks about the 1%, but isn't the problem the 20%?
I know it sounds cooler to say "We are the 99%" than "we are the 80%", but lets face it, those other 19% have a pretty comfortable life too. Time for their gravy train to screech to a halt.
We need to bring them down to size. Seize their bank accounts, homes, cars, bling, and investments and give it to the Federal government for equitable distribution or re-purposing. Make the thieves pay by losing their ill-gotten gains and going to work cleaning trash and fixing houses. If they refuse, they get a 3 meter by 3 meter cell to spend 23 hours a day in.
It's time to quit coddling the comfortable 60,000,000 while 240,000,000 people in America are living in deprivation.
guardian
(2,282 posts)According to Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States the top 20% of household income is $92,000+. So you want to take two married teachers each earning $46,000 per year and "bring them down to size" and "Seize their bank accounts, homes, cars, bling, and investments" and you consider them "thieves" and everything they have to be "ill-gotten gains". Or how about a plumber that busts his ass 70 hours per week and earns $92,000.
This sort of infantile jealousy and ranting does NOT help progressive causes. When most people hear this sort of rhetoric it just turns them off.
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)"In 2010, the top 20% of Americans earned 49.4% of the nation’s income, compared with the 3.4% earned by Americans living below the poverty line (roughly 15% of the population)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
The people at the top of income scale should be working to lift up the people at the bottom. Whether they are useless paper pushers like CEOs and company presidents, or professional "working people".
guardian
(2,282 posts)2 married teachers each earning $46,000 per year: You are saying you want to "bring them down to size" and "seize their bank accounts, homes, cars, bling, and investments" and you consider them "thieves" and everything they have to be "ill-gotten gains".
So now we know what you want to do with current crop teachers. Since, according to you, most teachers will be either (1) forced to do manual labor, or (2) spending 23 hours per day in a 3 meter by 3 meter cell; I'm guessing your proposal is to limit teacher salaries too for new teachers.
So what is the upper limit you will allow a teacher to earn before you force them into a 3x3 cell?
joeglow3
(6,228 posts)I am the son of a union drywaller. I went to college and worked 40 hours a week during classes and 80-100 hours a week during ALL breaks (summer, Christmas, spring, etc.). Anytime we had a day off school, I worked a 12-16 hour day between my 2 jobs (1 as a pizza delivery driver and 1 as a telemarketer). I managed to live in a shit house in a crime infested area of town and got hardly any sleep for 5 years. What was my reward? I graduated with a Masters Degree in Accounting and no student loans. I did not have a penny to my name. My only assets was that degree I busted my ass for.
Almost 15 years later and I live a good live. I am in your 20% (albeit, not by a lot). Explain to me how I am so criminal. Explain to me how I deserve to have all my assets stripped away and given to others.
My wife and I do what we can and donate 10-15% a year to charity. We help out friends when we can. However, I can't help but notice these friends (who are great people) didn't do shit when I spent those 5 years in college. While I feel an obligation to help them out occasionally, your mindset towards me is completely out of line.
valerief
(53,235 posts)
FarLeftFist
(6,161 posts)Edit: Republicans are always pushing the meme about producers and non-producers, meanwhile the ACTUAL producers are getting low wages while the non-producers are stealing the profits.
PassingFair
(22,434 posts)All Of Area Man's Hard Work Finally Pays Off For Employer
January 7, 2012 | ISSUE 48•01
By working overtime for the past six months and increasing his overall productivity, Hemstead has given himself the opportunity to earn his boss the San Diego Business Journal CEO of the Year Award.
SAN DIEGO—Following seven straight years of long hours at the office and sacrificed weekends and holidays, all of account manager Sam Hemstead's hard work and single-minded devotion to Pinnacle Automotive Insurance has finally paid off for CEO Charles Pardahee, Pardahee said Friday.
Saving Hawaii
(441 posts)Job creators are the only ones who matter.
FarLeftFist
(6,161 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)And people who can hit a ball with a stick... or throw a ball for Baby Jesus....
If people cared as much about politics as they do about sports.... just imagine!
You can't even get America to care about the arts... which improve the quality of your life... like singing or dancing... unless it's been turned into some kind of sports competition.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)glowing
(12,233 posts)I'm so much more than my job.. So many people ask that as a normal thing.. like your job is you. Its a means to being able to pay bills... So few people have jobs or careers they enjoy.. And if people could freely set up their own lives, their livelihoods would be much cooler and people would enjoy life so much more...
I love to knit, crochet, and quilt. I love it. Its what I would do for a "job"... along with Gardening and creating awesome meals with fresh veggies and herbs and spices I've grown myself.... I would love to have something neat-o like that... But I need health insurance.. so, what am I going to do?
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)as I would be doing more of all of the things you mention in your last paragraph.
And, I would eventually like to 'get out of the way' so a younger worker could take my place and have a chance, but we are all going to be hanging on and working until they cart us off.
Fuzz
(8,827 posts)C'mon. It's so simple.
glowing
(12,233 posts)If we emulated them, we'd all be ripping each other off and stabbing each other in the back.
Fuzz
(8,827 posts)American way. As American as apple pie.
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)evil bastards have no intention of letting that happen, EVER!
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)I tried it for 40 years and found it to be a highly overrated pastime.
glowing
(12,233 posts)completely over rated, and totally unnecessary... We just don't need to work so hard, so long, for nothing at the end of the day. Its kinda crazy that 99% of us are doing this like this.
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)that mentioned how slaveowners in the Old South always complained about how "lazy" their slaves (who were, of course, unpaid and would still be slaves no matter how hard they worked) were--while the slaveowners did absolutely no work themselves, but frittered away their days doing whatever they felt like.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)I don't think 18th & 19th century zeitgeists are of much use today. "Gone With the Wind" is not a documentary.
I used to design costumes, and when you do research into clothes, you get into people's daily, personal lives and activities.
I cannot imagine living in the 19th century! And the 18th century is even more unfathomable! Few of us would understand much less approve of what the most ordinary life was like back then. Some of the most common things we do now ...like, say, taking a bath, getting dressed or even writing a letter... are a huge labor intensive deal back then. Every "civilized" culture of course had a need for many servant-types. Slavery in the South, wage-slavery in the North, Upstairs-downstairs in England....The daily protocols expected of every class are mind boggling to us. There are, like, manuals on how young ladies should stand in public, youth should address older people... and so on.
I'm not defending slavery or servants.. but slave owners "always" complaining is not true. And wealthy people up North didn't "fritter away their days" or complain about the help?
Sounds like a pretty lousy and not very scholarly talk you remember.
intheflow
(28,460 posts)At least wealthy non-slave-owners could claim they weren't getting their money's worth. After the initial investment buying a slave (and of course, many slaves were free just from being born into slavery on site), it was free-and-clear labor.
And if you don't think there are manuals, like, on how young women should behave nowadays, you've never seen an issue of Seventeen magazine, or Vogue. 
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)and still managed to get dressed, cook meals, etc. Who dressed the servants?
My grandmother, born in 1899, spent her childhood with kerosene lamps, heat from a Franklin stove, carrying water from the well, cooking on a wood stove, and scrubbing clothes on a washboard. They had no servants.
The upper crust didn't even bring up their own children but handed them over to nursemaids and governesses and tutors and boarding schools. The middle and lower classes had no such options.
And I fail to see how writing a letter was much more labor intensive than it was here twenty years ago, except for having to dip the quill in ink every couple of words. Still, it wasn't the servants (or especially the Southern slaves, who were forbidden by law to learn to read and write) who wrote the letters. They had a grade school education, or more likely, none.
Compared to their servants, the upper crust had it easy. Their meals, even their fancy dinner parties, appeared as if by magic. Sure, they were expected to change clothes for dinner, but that was nothing compared to the labor of shopping (each food item from a different shop), preparing the meals, setting out the fancy tableware, and standing by to pour more wine or bring each course, not to mention cleaning up afterwards and washing all the dishes and silverware, and maybe the tablecloth, by hand.
Laundry was a major chore in those days (cf. "1900 House"
but the upper crust didn't do it themselves. All they had to do was stand still while other people dressed them.
The plantation owners didn't even manage their own plantations. That was what overseers were for.
Compared to their servants, the upper crust did NOTHING.
ieoeja
(9,748 posts)Just wanted to correct the "more likely, none" statement about servants. At least in the North.
In the South that statement would be correct. The literacy rate was less than 50% among free White Males. There were no public schools. In at least one state, public schools were illegal, i.e. city might have wanted to fund public schools, but the state made it illegal for them to do so. I don't know which state, but Louisiana would be my first suspect. With New Orleans a vastly different culture from the rest of the Old South, I could see New Orleans wanting to embrace upward mobility.
And Jim Crow laws like literacy tests and poll taxes existed *before* the Civil War to keep lower class Whites from voting.
The Old South aristocracy were largely descendants of Norman aristocracy. In fact, one of the reasons they had so much disdain for Yankees was that northerners were largely Anglo-Saxon. And they really hated anything that promoted upward mobility like railroads, schools and capitalism.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)
PA Democrat
(13,225 posts)(a) pay attention to what is going on and
(b) do anything about it.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)They only thing they DO want us talking about is sports and entertainment.
Also I believe there is a "misery loves company" component to this, in that those that want to live their lives on a treadmill, who want to be in the rat-race ( as long as they're reasonably competitive ) are trying to frame the debate in their terms. It helps justify their own calvanistic worldview.
EC
(12,287 posts)that making money on money is not working then. Unless sitting back and doing nothing is hard work?
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)have little or no value to the 1%. They feel that the only REAL form of work is sitting on one's ass and laughing at the Little People slave away, while watching investments earn interest. For that, they demand extremely high pay.
It's important work, you know.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Yes it is.... and only they can do it!
But of course when you ask that golden-parachute CEO where those billions that are missing went, it's "I don't know".
Isn't his JOB to know? Isn't that why it's "so important"?
Every big wig I've dealt with has an assistant that does everything! These CEO's job seems to be to go to lunch with other CEOs. I'm sure there actually are CEOs who do work hard... but they don't seem to be around much.
DU2012
(15 posts)So that Arab oil can keep on accumulating more petroDollars.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)All the technology was going to make this a worker's paradise, with short work weeks and plenty of free time. I swear this is what they were saying when they started to robotize the factories and computerize the offices.
Of course, we were also told that we would be driving jet cars and there would be no more need for roads. Or we could go back to what they were telling my mother's generation about atomic energy---that everyone would just have a little rock of radioactive material instead of a furnace and electicity, and it would run everything in the house.
They lie. They have always lied. And it is safe to assume that they will continue to lie. I am sure that behind closed doors, they say that hard work is for the lesser beings.
BiggJawn
(23,051 posts)I remember all the "labor-saving" tools that were supposed to allow us to have more leisure because we'd be doing 40 hour's work in 10 for 40's pay.
Then somebody got the idea that if we could do 40 hour's work in 10, why not do 160 hour's work in 40, for 40's pay.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)in the world...or at least we were last time I heard.
And that "somebody" who got the idea that we should keep working so much, and doing more and more in that 40 hours, is the same "somebody" who came up with the idea of laying off all the workers but a skeleton crew and making the remaining workers do the jobs of the ones who are now gone....because we will be one of the ex-employees if we don't. Those "somebodies" are the 1%.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)from Al Gore, we might of had solar powered flying cars by now.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)at least not to the extent we have here. This is an American attitude, to work people to death, give no benefits, no vacation, and if you are lucky, you will get a few holidays. And it is American to have to worry so much about the lack of job security.
So your question should be, when does America rebel....and the only answer I have is that they will not. The fear that they keep over us keeps people afraid to even speak up to their boss, much less the whole establishment. In my lifetime, the only way I have seen workers have a better work environment is when unemployment rates are so low that the bosses have to worry that you will go across the street for a better deal. And still we were not at a place where most are in Europe.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)We can't sustain an economy on a shortage of jobs and a recovery based on minimum wage work.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)I don't have much expectation of rebellion...or at least not complete rebellion. The biggest reason is that they give us just enough to survive. I always remember the saying "what shoes will you wear to the revolution?----the only ones I have." There are not enough people with only one pair of shoes.....yet.
Now I may revise my opinion if the Republicans have there way and remove all the safety nets we have available.
airplaneman
(1,239 posts)It did, the unemployed became the poeple with more time but all the money went to the top 1% which was not implied by the promise.
-Airplane
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)one of my mom's favorite sayings was "watch what you wish for".
Yep. Wish for more leisure time, and you have nothing but time---just not exactly how you meant it to be.
So....I wish for lots of leisure time and all the money I need to do everything I want to do.
TheKentuckian
(25,023 posts)more than a ten times there number could ever swallow and the many must divide a sliver.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Chapter 7 - Slack off for a better America.
"As Juliet Schor, author of "The Overworked American", says, society could choose to exploit the postwar productivity gain in any of several ways:
* we could all have double salaries
* we could be working twenty hour weeks
* we could work six months a year
Instead, some of us are working multiple jobs with insanely long hours for low wages, while others can't find work at all.
The money generated by that hidden boom in productivity didn't disappear. The vast majority of it went to create an unprecedented upper strata of wealthy Americans." pp 66-67
That's why you, and me, and everyone else, has to work hard. Because those at the top are stealing as much as they can to leave the rest with as little as possible. You have to work to get your own slice of the pie and to keep those at the top well supplied with whipped cream.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)here. I remember back at a time when I said I would retire early. All the dreams have disappeared when the employers did away with pensions and replaced them with 401K's.
airplaneman
(1,239 posts)And I am scared to death I could loose both jobs and not have anything but minimum wage possibilities.
Initech
(100,059 posts)Meanwhile, the fuckers who tell us this are actually stealing our money and making pay ratios that are literally off the scale. It's so wrong when the CEO of a company makes a $100 million salary and the highest paid employee makes $65,000. It's not right!!! 
socialindependocrat
(1,372 posts)for the past 35 years corporations have been
- moving responsibility down thru the levels
- finding more reasons to limit pay increases
- not promoting
- reducing benefits
- higher premiums for health insurance
- added deductables
- stop reimbursement for mileage (gas)
- lower or no cost of living increases
- Heavier work loads
Now, we are working harder for less pay
Just so the corporate heads can get bigger bonuses
Again - taking from the workers to give to the wealthy.
treestar
(82,383 posts)We let them get to us with that way too easily. We do work hard.
Remember Me
(1,532 posts)when computers and robotization were coming on strong, and unions and unionized workers were rightfully concerned it would mean a loss of jobs. My attitude at the time was that it was inevitable and the best thing the unions could do was to find a way to get IN the flow instead of try to stop it. But that's beside the point.
At the time, they -- the entrepreneurs and corporatists -- told Americans that with all the productivity gains from this technology, we could see 3-day work weeks, and a "leisure society."
You seen any leisure society around here lately, despite unbelievable productivity gains since then?
Nope.
Everything went into the pockets of the capitalists who simply refused to share as they'd promised.
NNN0LHI
(67,190 posts)A fair day's wage for a fair day's work is an objective of the labour movement, trade unions and other workers' groups, to increase pay, and adopt reasonable hours of work. It is a slogan and motto of the American Federation of Labor.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What people forget is that when they purchase a non-union made product or service over union they will eventually cut their own throat. This has been going on for decades.
Don
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)and it has been demanded of them to assume ALL the responsibilities of the person who was phased out.
We are increasingly rats running in wheels for their profit; your description is perfect. It is deliberate, and it is the inevitable result of giving corporations the power we have given them. There is no human motive when corporations are running things; the motive is and will always be the bottom line profit. There are no human beings. There are only "human resources" to be squeezed dry for the greatest possible profit before being discarded.
We MUST occupy now, because these entities have purchased our government and our media, and they are systematically putting authoritarian structures into place to prevent occupation in the future. And along with that we get the corporate spin, the Big Brother message about how virtuous it is to be a "hardworking American."
This is an important OP. K&R
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)In many European countries, they do not work as hard.
They do not work as many hours.
But they also do not make as much and are not able to buy as much.
In this country, we want our "stuff" so we work harder to get it.
It doesn't seem to make us as happy as those who don't buy as much stuff but yet we keep doing it.
TBF
(32,040 posts)But nice try.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)Denying that is denying reality.
"In the fourth quarter of 2011, an average of 46 percent of mobile customers owned a smartphone"
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-iphone-4s-sales-cut-into-android-market-share-nielsen/
"Apple sold more than 4 million iPhone 4S devices in the first three days after it was introduced"
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/17/BUJ71LILM4.DTL#ixzz1kF6OgqUj
Have you been to any stores or restaurants lately?
Have you looked at the cars people drive? Frankly, given the price, I don't know how there are so many sparkly BMWs, Lexuses, Mercedes, etc on the road. But there are a lot.
TBF
(32,040 posts)This may be helpful for you to visualize reality:
I'm sure it's the welfare mamas driving the sparkly cars, right?
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)with this conversation.
Please explain how that graph compares how European's spend their money compared to Americans.
Also "KNIGHTDALE, N.C. — The average size of a single-family home in the U.S. has jumped 150 percent in the past five decades, and some observers blame the desire to super-size the American dream for the current mortgage crisis gripping the nation."
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2443194/
The article we read is about home sizes in the UK. The Brits' homes are actually the smallest, on average, for all of Europe! Here's the conversion for the chart above, alongside an Albers just for fun (remember, these are averages and reflect new homes constructed since 2003):
US: 2,300sf
Australia: 2,217sf
Denmark: 1,475sf
France: 1,216sf
Spain: 1,044sf
Ireland: 947sf
UK: 818sf
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/average-home-sizes-around-the-151738
Compare houses, bellies, cars, almost everything, ours are larger and we have more.
TBF
(32,040 posts)the discussion has to do with why the 1% own nearly everything in this country, and the other 99% are working harder as more and more are laid off. You don't want to talk about that, so you come up with this red herring of "home ownership" with Europeans having smaller houses. WTF?
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)It is one example, of many, helping to explain why Americans "work harder". You can pretend Americans have and demand no more stuff than Europeans, aren't driven by a material culture, and that we are exactly identical to Europeans (except in where the rich have to put their money) but the issue is much larger than just that.
They get better results in education even though they spend less because they VALUE education. They walk and ride bikes more. They simply do not collect as much crap as we do. You can ignore that fact all you want, but that doesn't change the fact.
TBF
(32,040 posts)of spend, spend, spend ...
Americans are working harder because they are forced to. Folks continue to be laid off and others have to pick up the slack (longer hours). That top 10% who is benefiting from those still laboring are buying "stuff" and paying their medical co-pays because what else do you do with the money. We are quickly turning into a 3rd world country with that top group doing most of the spending. Everyone else is lucky if they have money to put gas in their car for the week (and don't even talk to me about public transportation - down here in Houston it is the top 1% who kill any public transportation plans so don't even tell me "Americans want their cars". They aren't given a choice).
It all goes back to the capitalism. Change the system and particularly the rewards, and you will see a change of behavior.
Capitalism is not forcing people to buy so much stuff, especially stuff they don't need.
You realize:
"It took 25 years for the industry to build its first billion square feet of storage space. The second billion square feet was added in just seven years, from 1998 to 2005, according to the Self Storage Association.
The average American home has grown from 1,400 square feet in 1970 to 2,300 square feet today, but the average size of the household has shrunk from 3.1 to 2.5.
In 1995, one in 17 American households rented storage space. By 2007, that ratio had increased to one in 10, according to the Self Storage Association."
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/TheHighPriceOfTooMuchStuff.aspx?page=2
We've got larger houses but yet still need 7 square feet of rental storage for every man, woman, and child in the US?
Capitalism isn't making people do anything. Just as commercials don't force people to buy crap (or give in to their kids who want them to buy crap). People choose to.
If I over produce a large amount of suppositories, are you going to buy them simply because I have a bunch to sell? even if i am selling them really cheap? I sure hope not.
And it is not the just the top 10%. Unless of course my neighbors and my kids parents all happen to be in the top 10% (which they aren't). Most of the servers at the restaurants we go to have better cars than I do. My daughter's best friend's mom is living with her parents because she couldn't afford an apartment, yet she has a nice new(ish) SUV.
Sorry, I'm just not buying it.
TBF
(32,040 posts)your right wing BS. I don't think we need 7 square feet of rental storage for every man, woman and child in the US. But until you and your 1% give up your luxury I will fight for every single worker in the US to have what you have. It is incredibly ridiculous that we continue to buy into an economic system that is so unequal by design and only rewards greed and other sociopathic behaviors towards others.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)Where shall I have them send the bills?
Are you sure you really want what I have?
It's nice that you don't think we need that storage space. Or the large houses. Or the nice vehicles. But the fact is, they are out there.
Pretending they aren't and that only 1% of the population is "living large" still doesn't change reality.
I also think it is nice that you think every single worker plans equally as well (including long-term), works equally as hard, and performs equally as well. It must be nice in your world. Let us know when you want to come out and meet humanity.
TBF
(32,040 posts)as I said before you and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum. I don't know what else to say. We simply disagree completely. Well, I will bow out and wish you a good day because with this much of a gulf I doubt we would ever find points of agreement.
Thanks for the conversation though
treestar
(82,383 posts)Case closed.
TBF
(32,040 posts)Yes I detest capitalism and I support workers 100%. YMMV.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)The US and Australia have a lot of empty land. So larger, more spread-out houses are cheaper. That drives the average size up a lot.
You'll note in your list there's a big drop between US/Australia to Denmark, and then it goes down fairly smoothly from there.
As for cars, that too is about land area. When we're all spread out in the suburbs, mass transit becomes prohibitively expensive.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)Yet house size has grown significantly.
The number of cars in America doesn't surprise me. However, the number of nice, new cars does.
Yes, numerically, the average age of used cars has risen. But that is in part due to Cash for Clunkers. Yes, I realize it is counter-intuitive, but with C4C, a lot of the middle-aged cars were crushed. This drove the price of used cars up. For those of us who never buy new cars but just upgrade to newer used cars, it means we hang onto our old vehicles longer, increasing the average age.
I simply do not know how people afford all of those new cars.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)People used to be greatly compressed into cities. Because our primary transportation system was "feet" (horses were for the wealthy or work animals).
It wasn't until widespread use of cars that we could realistically start spreading out from the cities. That spreading out doesn't require any growth at all. Just movement from urban areas to suburban areas. And there was a lot of movement away from the cities from the 60's through the 90's.
It takes a while to build new infrastructure to support a suburb, and it also takes a while for an area to not feel "remote" anymore. Plus you start with wealthy people moving out of the cities, so it takes a while for builders to make affordable suburban houses. As a result, it takes a long time for us to spread out into those larger, more distant houses.
As for car age, one huge factor in that is the large reliability improvements in cars. It wasn't that long ago that a 12-year-old car required tons of work to keep it running. As a result, older cars weren't that affordable unless you happened to have a way to do some of the work yourself. Today, a 12-year-old car was built in 2000. It's far more reliable and requires far less repairs than a 1980 car did in 1992. My 2002 has some rust and other cosmetic issues, but generally runs quite well.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)Definitely in the reliability of the cars. I forgot to add that as an enabler for keeping the cars longer, driving up the average age.
I disagree on the some of the points about housing. Originally in America, there was a lot of land and much of the housing was spread out and rural. Buildings began growing vertically, allowing city concentration to grow. And yes, mobility did allow the suburbs to grow.
But if you look at 70-80 year old farmhouses, they were generally pretty small with smaller rooms. The land available was not the issue.
House size began growing as people began demanding larger houses and more room. Many of the older suburbs have very small houses. In the suburbs of Cincinnati I grew up in, most of the 4 bedroom houses were 1200-1400 sq ft. That is unheard of for a new build.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Homebuilding was pretty damn difficult until the latter half of the 20th century. You built small because you were sawing every board by hand....starting from a log. Time passes and lumber is finally available directly, but you still are cutting it by hand. Power tools weren't ubiquitous on job sites until the 50s.
As for the farmstead, you have to remember every square foot used for "house" was a square foot you couldn't use for "farm". They had a pretty strong incentive to minimize the size of the house.
Yes, there is a degree of what's "normal" involved. But the ability to demand more space is directly related to how far we will now drive, and how much land we will now purchase for the house. For example, the countries you listed with smaller average home sizes don't have the concept of "exurbs" because they don't have enough land.
But this begs the next question....so what?
Yes, the bigger house will take more raw materials to build. But not that much more from an environmental impact perspective. And the really environmentally bad part (concrete) tends to be minimized as we build a lot more two-story houses than the first generations of suburbs.
Ironically the bigger house will actually take less energy to heat and cool it. To say insulation is "much better today" is a massive understatement. Lighting requirements are probably not that much different - since the house is big there's probably some rooms not occupied at night, which thus have lights off. Water demand is based on people, not house size.
About the only real negative for us is the increased miles we put on cars in order to have enough space to fit the big houses.
glowing
(12,233 posts)what you may or may not see as far as cars people are driving and restaurants that are open and full.
As far as smart phones and one's girth determining "stuff" or value and comparing that with Europe, isn't exactly the same. There is less land space in Europe..... its more like comparing it to NY city... The United States is quite large with land space. The homes did get quite large... But now, they are sitting un-used and will more than likely begin being chopped up and made into duplex living types of spaces OR families will combine together and put multiple generations under the roofs of the larger homes.
These are just symptoms of the large issue which to me is finding the direction we wish to see towards the future. What type of world do we want to live in? What is "enough" and how do we create if fairly for everyone now that we are so globally connected?
AND "working hard" to "get ahead" for what? Shouldn't work contribute to the betterment of humanity? and shouldn't that work reward at the very least the basics of home, food, clean air, clean water, access to health care, and enjoyment in one's life of friends, family and personal downtime? And doesn't every human deserve at least these essential basics?
These are more philosophical based questions that are needed to be dealt with on a larger collective basis. They won't be solved in a day or maybe even a generation, but we could begin with some basic fairness.... Like Fair Trade, where all people who work in any country have the basic essentials of safe working conditions, limited amount of time to work, a living wage, and environmental protections implemented. Another basic fairness would be access to health care when one is sick. Food that is nutritious and gained in humane manners. There are things we can do to address certain areas that will help us to answer the bigger questions that 7 billion of us really need to think about if we expect to continue on as a species on this planet.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)Despite having more population density than the US, what surprised me most on my first trips to Germany and the UK was how much "green" space there was (woods, farmland). I expected it to be packed. One reason for that is the people live closer together in smaller home. Even in rural areas.
To answer your question, I spend most of my time in DC, LA or Colorado Springs. At most restaurants, the waiting list begins at about 4:45 PM for dinner.
Finally, to address the "working hard"/"get ahead" issue, there are quite a few cases on here of people who live well (have the basics they need) BECAUSE they decided to simplify their lives. Honestly, I'd have to go back to find actual handles, but I've read of plenty of such cases on here. Most Americans are not willing to return to that sort of simple living.
TBF
(32,040 posts)while there is nothing wrong with "simple living" - I actually prefer it - I will not listen to that right wing meme either. That is a smokescreen for pushing austerity - which again is you and your 1% living in extreme luxury with your multiple residences and overseas travel while the other 99% are engaging in "simple living". Don't even go there.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)If you can't support your arguments on their own merit, just admit it, don't try to hide behind that RW BS.
Saying people buy too much is not a RW meme. Isn't the RW all for consumption? Yes. I'm pointing out we consume too much.
Not everything is a RW meme. Living simply is an old "hippy" meme. Trying to paint simple living as a RW meme is just plain stupid.
My overseas travel was in the military, which I joined to pay for college. My time in other cities is due to work travel, which I would prefer not to do. Your ugly biases are showing.
TBF
(32,040 posts)and ensuring that all men, women and children in this country have an economic system that treats them fairly. I suggest socialism - jobs, homes, health care, education - for ALL as opposed to the top .01 percent living in extreme luxury while others barely survive day to day.
If that is an "ugly bias" so be it.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)I do not believe "fairly" means "completely equally, regardless of decisions, effort given by the individual, skill, etc.)"
TBF
(32,040 posts)"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" has always resonated with me. I know others feel differently.
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)just saying
glowing
(12,233 posts)putting myself thru college and buying a small 2 bedroom/ 1 bath home with less than 1000 ft that includes the garage. I live very simply. I prefer simple. Less to dust. What I don't like is having my time so limited to enjoy or to have enough to save up so that I can take a trip back to Europe at some point.
I was blessed to have parents who were more medium middle class... They were able to help me out with items like college a little bit and they saved up to send me to Italy for my graduation gift from college.
I'm originally from VT, I'm a Vermonter and they are too. Simple living is what we do and where we come from. But even there, they too, are now being worked to death to make ends meet... My Uncle lost his family milk farm eventually to competition from bigger producers and the costs that continued up each and every year... So, one more loss of a dairy farmer who treated his animals like a small family farmer does, to the factory farms which do "farming" in un-healthy ways and only seek a profit.
It is hard to find the line between equality that makes us drones and individuality that makes us creative... I think a moderate mix of sharing resources that one's country has, free access to education (which is becoming more and more an aspect of one's bank account whether its a private, charter, or zip code that allows for better resources to the college/ university model today which literally is making young adults barely starting out in life mortgage their futures), access to health care, and the ability to live in a clean environment ALONG with the ability to be productive and creative to "work" in a manner that allows for society to reap the best of its people...
If a child is growing up in poverty and has more to worry about in making it back and forth safely to their small, roach infested apt where the lights aren't on or the water isn't running this month along with being tired and hungry from lack of adequate nutrition in the home, then we are losing those children to a future of potential. That child sitting at home in his/her dark, cold apartment going to bed hungry could potentially be the one who finds the cure to cancer or discovers some modern miracle or goes beyond the vision of what Steve Jobs could ever imagine having created, but the way the system is set up now, we would probably never know... That child is more likely to end up repeating the cycle of poverty OR end up on the streets using drugs, selling drugs, or worse, selling their bodies.
And I realize everything is rather situational depending on where one is born. It can be so much worse living in a 3rd world impoverished setting. But its a global world and we are all connected. So, the type of world we wish to see and live in has to look beyond the squiggly lines drawn on a map by man and encompass compassion and a future which allows for all people's to enjoy more equitable living conditions, while still allowing people to be individuals with the ability to give back to the world what is the best that is inside of them, and also allow them time to just enjoy being free with their own thoughts and their own time.
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)And I agree with most of them. The only thing I don't really agree with is the free education one. Obviously I support it as the primary/secondary level. However, in our country, with its current attitudes, I don't agree at the collegiate level.
Here's why: Too many young Americans simply see college as a rite of passage to go and socialize and put off having to grow up. They come in unprepared (another issue) but more importantly, unmotivated to really learn and excel. They want to do the minimum they can to stay in college, have their parents off their back, and possibly graduate with a degree. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of young adults working their butts off to make it in college. I'm not talking about those folks. But there are quite a lot who are as I have described and would be even more if it were completely free to them.
I would love to have the gov't fund merit-based scholarships for areas where there is a national shortage of folks with documented credentials. Obviously this would be in addition to need-based scholarships. However, the student loan industry needs more regulation. Like mortgages, loans should be given based on the projected ability to repay them instead of handed out like candy to anyone who wants them.
On a related not, education is not a degree. If someone just wants an education, there are all sorts of ways to gain that which are much cheaper than going to college. I am a huge supporter of our library system, where people can get resources to be educated on all sorts of topics. Everyone should regularly be getting a liberal education.
The easiest way to fix many of the problems you listed and change my position on the free college education issue is to have a test or qualification minimum for people to have kids. However, that will never happen nor am I advocating it should. It would just be nice if there was such a thing because then we wouldn't have to worry near as much about kids being allowed to not care about education or have to worry near as much about he safety of the streets around them.
Granted, it would also be nice if I had a unicorn to ride to work...
Edit: typo that I caught. No doubt there are some I missed.
hunter
(38,309 posts)Kids went off and then they came back, with grandkids.
provis99
(13,062 posts)glowing
(12,233 posts)My parents do not have affordable access to high-speed internet or a cell phone signal. When the floods came thru with that hurricane last year, so many in VT were stuck without access to the outside world. AND its due mainly to private companies unwilling to spend money because the costs of bringing in towers and cable lines is more expensive to install and maintain, than the company's would make in their quarterly profit columns. This is where privatization doesn't work well enough.
The Post Office is a govt entity and will deliver anywhere even if it costs them money to do so... and yet the private companies and Republicans have done their best to try and destroy this public entity that actually works (most know about the insane amount of money they must pony up for retirement bennies for current and all future employees like no other company or govt agency has to do) so that the private market can take over and receive more profit... What do people think the cost of mail will be if they do drive the post office out of business? No govt competition to keep their rates lower, will allow them to monopolize and increase the costs. AND the rates will depend on where one lives and where the letter has to go... 44 cents to mail to any state? I don't hardly think so. Sending a letter across the country or from the states to Alaska or hawaii would end up costing much more money than the govt charges.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)The stores and restaurants in the Houston metropolitan area are hurting. Even though a number of people can still go out to eat--and buy frivolous things, like an iPhone 4S--a great many of us are hurting.
It bears mentioning that economic behavior continues even in times of recession or depression. It bears acknowledging that some people can get wealthy or increase their wealth during periods of economic austerity.
Continued economic activity--even the purchase of "more than 4 million iPhone 4S devices in the first three days after it was introduced"--does not negate the fact that our global economy is undergoing catastrophic reordering.
TBF
(32,040 posts)I'm south of the city. In my particular area folks work in the med center and downtown. Some are still spending but I can't help but notice the empty strip malls as more fancy boutique type places are built for those who still have money. We've warned about the gap between rich and poor growing wider since Reagan took over, and now we are starting to see that physical fall-out in our neighborhoods. And frankly with the oil money Houston still has it better than many areas of the country - which gives us an idea of how many are hurting.
And sadly I think this is going to get far worse before it gets better, iPhones for a few nonwithstanding.
I keep telling my friends and fellow activists that the Dark Market investment strategies have not yet 'hit the fan' and that things will definitely get worse before we'll see a significant recovery.
On a personal note, I have been un- or under-employed for the past three and a half years. I no longer have enough income to maintain a separate household, and must move in with a friend who lives almost a thousand miles north. I am almost finished selling or freecycling most of my belongings.
I teach math (most recently, college algebra), but I cannot get an administrator to interview me. I have a master's and I am 56, so I would 'cost' too much to hire.
My students routinely tell me that I make learning math fun and easy, so I will continue to find subversive ways to teach. Our children deserve to have a solid foundation in math, so that they can use their critical thinking skills to help redirect our species AWAY from the abyss of self-immolation.
A girl can dream...
Hugabear
(10,340 posts)Because as we all know, if you have a cel phone and color TV, you can't be doing too bad, right?
Kellerfeller
(397 posts)Do they make that in clover as well?
Rushing out and getting the latest iPhone the week it comes out is not the same as having a cell phone. It also doesn't address the difference in attitudes toward "stuff" that Americans have compared to most Europeans.
Fool Count
(1,230 posts)TBF
(32,040 posts)
Tuesday_Morning
(1,704 posts)sometimes up to 100 hours! We recently had a Japanese team visit us and they commented they we work much more than they do.
gulliver
(13,180 posts)Also, the kinds of work you do matter. Right now we work way too much, and on things that aren't good for us.
One of the main reasons I am a Dem is because of the value you are talking about. Dems know that you can't let overgrown power bubbles simply crush the human species. The economy is something that humans do. It is software. We shouldn't be slaves to it. The pain caused by the economy is simply us causing pain to ourselves. Overwork and work starvation are simply catastrophic to the general welfare. People need to be around each other. They need to be surrounded by all different ages and types of other people. Right now, we are getting to be a lot more like chickens on egg farms than we might care to notice.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)for our country where 1 out of 3 adults is obese. But plenty of people do work miserably hard.
Maybe it's a symptom of being caught up in a machine that has trained us since day 0 to be cannonfodder or a source of interest payments and fees for the the military/industrial/investment bank complex.
Hard work is not the problem, it is who the work is done for and their interests. We would not be the country we are if it wasn't for the investment of hard work and human life, but over the past 40 years or so the beneficiary has changed from the country and a large number in the population to a more select greedy few, the greedy few who have learned to spend their days manipulating business to their advantage.
I really don't have any faith that we can change them, but it is certainly possible to minimize or stop playing their game, if we can get enough of our neighbors to cooperate with us in creating another life, in gaining our own assets. Because those who own the assets direct the work, and we could very well structure the life mentioned at the end of the OP.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Our time becomes their riches. They aren't going to stop taking it until we stop them.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)maybe you chose the wrong king of work. You don't mention any pleasure or benefit you get from your job.
Working hard is a relative thing. Compared to prior generations, we don't work that hard. I come from a long line of farmers. They worked from before dawn til dusk and beyond. It was back breaking work, with no benefits. If you were injured, you had a real problem on your hands. If you had hands left after your injury.
One of my grandmas was a blue collar worker, after being widowed at a young age. She had three boys to raise. She waited tables, was a maid at low income motels, things like that. She didn't drive and couldn't afford a car, anyway, so she had to walk everywhere or bum a ride. There was no public transportation. As hard as my life is sometimes, it's easier than hers was.
Vacation? I can't think of any of my ancestors who ever spoke of ever going on a vacation. I don't go on vacations, either. I take time off and stay home to rest, chill, get healthy, and do home repairs and projects.
Women often work 40 hours or more a week, plus commute time, then have all the regular family and house duties to do after hours AND on holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas aren't respites for many women; those are heavy duty work days.
If you're young enough, maybe you can change jobs to find something you look forward to going to, or doing. If you enjoy it and feel you're appreciated, work can be a source of contentment and self-esteem. I believe it's a great thing to find something to do for a living that you do really well and get paid decently for.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)including numerous imaginary Indians, as well as the two seated near by. " Men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams."
"But your young men have to work hard during the fishing season to get food for winter."
"This work only lasts for a few weeks. Besides, it is natural work and does them no harm. But the work of the white man hardens soul and body : nor is it right to tear up and mutilate the earth as white men do."
---
"We simply take the gifts that are freely offered. We no more harm the earth than would an infant's fingers harm its mother's breast. But the white man tears up large tracts of land, runs deep ditches, cuts down forests, and changes the whole face of the earth. You know very well this is not right. Every honest man,'" said he, looking at me searchingly, "knows in his heart that this is all wrong. But the white men are so greedy they do not consider these things."
http://www.nevadaobserver.com/Reading%20Room%20Documents/smohalla_1891.htm
I guess the value of work is a matter of culture and perspective.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Those fisherman, I expect, enjoy their fishing, and are excellent at doing it. That is their work. That is their life.
If the OP wants to live that life, he certainly can. But that life won't pay for a computer, a DSL connection, a TV, and other things. To live the lifestyle that internet bloggers want to live, we have to work, if we're in the 99%.
If the OP owned his own business, he'd work at least twice the number of hours he's working now. Yet, many people own their own businesses because they want the "freedom" to work for themselves. So to them, the hours being worked don't mean they don't have freedom.
If the OP is young, he has an opportunity to work toward what he wants to do with his life. Ah, youth. I am in my late 50's. I don't have those options any longer, really. Well, I have SOME options...but not for getting paid by someone else in a new career.
Working at something you're good at, that you basically enjoy, that is appreciated, is a pleasure in life, to me. I guess it depends on your point of view. Glass is half full, or half empty.
glowing
(12,233 posts)as a blessing to have a job.. and the last thing one is allowed to do is complain or be seen as unappreciative of the job (with less pay and more demands).
I would love to be able to creatively enjoy making quilts and knitting sweaters and crocheting afghans.. and I really enjoy gardening and creating good foods from the garden with the herbs and such.. I love doing this type of thing... but it doesn't begin to cover the bills or allow for health care necessities to be addressed when one has a family to worry after.
Its not about "working".. Its about this meme that one should have to work hard to "make it". Its about quality of life. Its about what are we doing to make the world a better place or at the very least leave intact for the next generation.
Its not about work, its about the rat race, time, and quality... We have one life to live. The child in a 3rd world country should not have to be a slave because corporations want more profit and people in developed countries have grabbed something off of a store shelf on their way home from a 12 hr day...
And why should people not "vacation"? We have a large beautiful world that we should be able to explore and enjoy and meet other people from around it. Why not? Why can't we all have the time to enjoy life and be productive and the productive have meaning behind it? Banker's and Wall St types pushing papers around and creating mathematical computer manipulations to "create wealth" isn't exactly what most would call meaningful to the context of the world.
Skittles
(153,138 posts)sifting through 800 emails just to START my job is fucking mentally taxing 
jeff47
(26,549 posts)I write software. It's been a life-long hobby. I wrote my first program when I was 8. So getting paid to do that was fantastic. At first. But there's two problems.
First, as you get older, your tastes change. What used to be fun is no longer fun.
Second, when you get paid for something you love to do, it quickly becomes a job and no longer something you love to do. Because you have to keep doing it even when you feel like doing something else. To illustrate this point, ask any chef what their favorite meal is. Their answer will be "Something cooked by someone else".
Lastly, you're a touch behind the time with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Work on those days went equal-opportunity quite a while ago for many families.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Both genders wouldn't have it otherwise.
I am older, too. I was lucky in that I fell into an occupation decades ago that I happen to have a knack for and be suited for. Also, it turned out in the long run that I got paid more than I ever dreamed. Mind you, as a college dropout female from the deep south, I didn't have high hopes for wages.
I like it some days. Some days I'd like to walk out and tell them where to put their job. I am a trial paralegal at a large law firm in a large city. I'm worked like a horse sometimes. Sometimes I'm required to stay all night and work at a fast pace, doing the impossible, without sleep or food. I am single so my pets are at home not being fed or let out for bathroom. It is trying at times.
But I do happen to have a strong work ethic. This comes, I think, from being very poor when I was a young adult. Having hit rock bottom, I found a way to turn things around. So for me, not working meant going back to those bleak days.
The surprising thing I found was that it was such a good thing to find something that I was really good at. REALLY good at. I don't say I'm good at many things, but the thing I do for a living...I happen to be excellent at doing it. I found that it has been throughout my life a source of enjoyment, pleasure, self-esteem, and of course money. It has given me a retirement fund (something in my younger days I never dreamed I'd have).
To live a life and never find something you are really good at doing, that other people appreciate, and that YOU enjoy doing, seems sad to me. It is one of the reasons for living, IMO. A person's work isn't the only thing that's important, but it's one of them.
My point was...the young man (if he's a young man) - it'd be nice if he could find something to do that he enjoys. There will always be things about a job that a person doesn't like. But a lot of people don't dislike going to work, believe it or not. You go somewhere and do something that's relatively interesting, that you enjoy on most (but not all) days, and someone pays you thousands of dollars a year, plus insurance, to do it. What a deal.
Maybe it depends on whether you've not had that in the past, that you appreciate it in the present?
Snarkoleptic
(5,997 posts)Point-
Counterpoint-
2ndAmForComputers
(3,527 posts)
Beartracks
(12,806 posts)Republican math states that hard work = money, and money = success; therefore, if you don't have money, you are neither successful nor hard-working. So quit complaining, whiners, and get out there and work for a change, you pansy-assed liberal sissies. Occupy a job!!
<< in case it's needed
======================
Quantess
(27,630 posts)You know, an honest hard day's work, 5 days a week. That's what made the rich guys rich, right?
Edit to clarify, you must have worked hard at making a product, something productive or useful to society, right?
Beartracks
(12,806 posts)Shipping jobs overseas, funneling money to the Caymans... Does that count? 
=========================
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)Sometimes more.
You know, it's not really the work that bothers me. It's coming up in the red at the end of the week. I have no need or desire to be rich, drive a mercedes or live in a huge house. I just want my bills to get paid, have decent health care and a little savings to maybe take a vacation every couple of years.
But no, I work hard, come up short, and then come home to listen to some blowhard leech, who is sucking off "donations" made by people who can't afford it, talk about how we need to do away with minimum wage, and how we need to teach children about the "rewards" for working hard. 
glowing
(12,233 posts)allows for me to stay in my small little abode and take a vacation every so often and let's me put away a little savings for those "unexpected" life moments. Not all Americans are like me for sure... but many Americans have been sold a bill of goods about what they should have for toys and size of homes and what a "happy" life with their selves in debt up to the ears for those "happy have to have toys"... I think the recession has made more than a few people look within and look at their lives and re-evalutate what the important things really are for them....
I think its telling that we are actually exporting more oil (or maybe gas?) than we are consuming...
gkhouston
(21,642 posts)glowing
(12,233 posts)are called upon during the "town hall" events.
pitchforksandtorches
(338 posts)
Festivito
(13,452 posts)We should be down to a 10-20 hour work week that should cover food, shelter, health, and safety net. There should be double, triple, quadruple, ... pay for overtime.
Instead we have a 1% forcing hardship with their inherited power.
druidity33
(6,446 posts)They address the very issues you are raising.
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)Look at all the "labor saving" devices for homemakers over the last century. Did they create less work doing laundry, baking, etc? Yes, but that time saved was then filled by other expectations of what you were supposed to accomplish with that time, including eventually working a 10 hour day outside the home.
Cel phones & emails became the tools by which employers could reach you at all hours.
We have created a culture that defines us by productivity for our employers, and our paycheck (which are not neccessarily related to each other) - a work ethic that needs reviewing.
That has to come from the culture. We need a revolution.
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)Which is exactly what the evil bastards DO NOT WANT!
They have created the country that benefits them the most.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)If Americans had the time to stop, think, ponder, gather with friends, enjoy their families, be able to travel around the country or the world.... we might actually be able to Unite and create the type of country we know we could have.
The uber wealthy Corporate Megalomaniacs are well aware of two important factors:
1) An overworked, exhausted Hoi Polloi--saddled with so much debt, we cannot afford to lose even a day's work--is less likely to rise up and protest the corporatists' economic protocols.
2) The wealth carrot meme (the corporatists' schtick that 'you, too, can be a millionaire') has been and continues to work really well for a significant percentage of the Hoi Polloi (which, in itself, is ironic).
People need to do the math to understand how unlikely it is that someone born in poverty can escape that station in life and become a member of the nouveau riche. Oh, wait...the corporatists have subverted our system of public education, so that most of us have little more than rudimentary math skills.
Sigh...
stuntcat
(12,022 posts)Too much thought on what our way of living means for the future will stir up trouble.
Best to focus on the little kid's needs, on our tv programs, on our conspicuous consumption.
The disgrace that today's babies will be living through in 2080 doesn't matter a bit, just keep your head down!
Courtesy Flush
(4,558 posts)Melville lived among natives on a tropical island after being shipwrecked. His description of their lives was inspirational. They hardly had to toil, and they were free from the complications of modern life.
I considered living in a commune at some point in the future, but on researching it, I saw that they frequently are no more than work farms that require residents to put in over 40 hours of work per week.
People weren't meant to live this way.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)
shcrane71
(1,721 posts)This morning I was wondering an economy can be structured to get more and more productivity out of workers without providing upward mobility? How to get more work out of a worker while giving a lower living standard than his father had? I think the answer is to forget the worker -- get his wife and daughter to do the work. Women make less money, and they're earning more of the degrees in the US, while not holding as many management positions.
In a beehive, the females are the workers, and the queen has all the babies. That provides a pesky problem for inefficient humans who use almost all females to reproduce the population. What if one could build a society that provided almost no maternity leave, and legislated NO time off for sickness or leisure? This is a hostile environment for working females wanting to raise a family. Instead, maybe super females could be used -- these women would have as many children as possible, sometimes up to or more than 20 offspring within a lifetime. To encourage these super females, maybe there could be a cable television program to encourage such behavior -- the working females won't have time to watch television as they're too busy working two or more underpaid jobs.
But what of those idle males in society who aren't graduating at the rate that the productive females are? Well, there's always war to keep the males busy and kill off the excess population.
I always heard when I was growing up that bees would take over the world in case of a nuclear holocaust -- because they're so efficient. Seems those soothsayers were incorrect as bees are disappearing at an alarming rate. I wonder where those old "experts" got the idea that bees were so much more efficient than humans?
redqueen
(115,103 posts)Don't know if you saw it, but there was an article posted recently in which an Apple executive was talking about how breathtakingly awesome it was to have people work in those conditions.
Sick sick sick sick sick.
jorno67
(1,986 posts)
guitar man
(15,996 posts)As long as I get paid a decent wage to do it. I'm getting on in the years now but in my teens through my 30s I could work circles around most.
Now the right wing loves to bandy about the term "work ethic." I'm sure they have a different definition than I do. Pay me well and I'll work my ass off.... Wanna pay me shit? Fuck you!
That's my "work ethic", deal with it...
kctim
(3,575 posts)We only have to work as hard as the type of "living" we choose requires.
HangOnKids
(4,291 posts)I have nothing more to say to your reply.
kctim
(3,575 posts)Heaven forbid you try and back up a brilliant statement such as "hooey" with facts.
Nikia
(11,411 posts)In that it was physically demanding and required one to busy all the time. As far as less physically demanding jobs, that is a lot of variability from work place to work place. Some jobs requiring less effort pay more and others requiring more effort pay less. At some companies, higher paying jobs do require more effort but at others they require less. Getting a high paying less effort job often has a lot to do with who you know, not your skills and the amount of hard work that you have put in so far.
kctim
(3,575 posts)if the 'living' you have choosen requires it. If you don't want to work "hard," then get a job that does not require you work hard AND adjust your standard of living to match that.
Using ones opinions of what others make or do, or some evil business intentionally working us "to death" is ridiculous.
Nikia
(11,411 posts)Where I used to work, required production people to heave 50 lbs bags constantly and paid them $10.50/hour to do it. For most people that is "hard work".
Other people that "know someone" could get a job that paid as much or more without as much "hard work". This is even assuming that both have only a high school diploma and little work experience.
I say "knowing someone" has more to know with whether or not you have to work hard than anything else for the majority of people.
kctim
(3,575 posts)the OP seemed to be speaking more of 'hours worked,' so I was stuck in that frame of mind. My bad.
I have done that kind of work and my son currently does it, and I agree that it is hard work. I did not leave that job because of "knowing someone" and neither will my son, so while I agree that it can help, I do not agree advancing out of such hard work is base mostly on who you know.
My point is that if you don't like hard work for say $10.50 an hour, find an easier one for the same pay or adjust your standard of living to a lower pay so you don't have to do hard work.
Hugabear
(10,340 posts)You try living on $10.00/hr or less.
Right-wingers seem to think that it's just an easy matter of finding a job that pays enough to fit the type of "living" one desires. If someone is scrubbing toilets all day long, it's their fault - all they have to do is go get themselves a job that pays more money if they want more money, right?
You have no friggin' idea how the real world works
snooper2
(30,151 posts)
David Jeffrey Spetch
(9 posts)because to them your just some dumb grunt and as long as you keep your head down and work until you die thus not ruffle any feathers, they will keep right on supressing you
love
david jeffrey Spetch
Ps. Be good, be strong!
Nikia
(11,411 posts)Was that it was growing rapidly in the business being taken on and in profits, but very few employees were being added or getting raises. The whole time, we were being told that we all had to "step it up" for the growth to continue and for the company to gain a greater market share. Owned by a dictator like family, no one had the courage to ask what was in it for them. I thought that quite often though.
Tom_Foolery
(4,691 posts)
Evoman
(8,040 posts)Basically, the article was a complaint by business leaders about how much lost productivity they had from the game Angry Birds. 1.5 Billiion or some bogus number like that. And I remember how angry that article made me.
It doesn't matter that with each technology upgrade we end up gaining more productivity, we end up doing more work with less people, and we end up constantly attached to our work. Smart phones and cell phones have increased productivity a shit load, as we are always tethered to our work. But no....the focus is on how much work we aren't doing with facebook and smart phone games.
God forbid we should take a couple of minutes of work time to fucking enjoy our lives for a pathetic little bit. No, every cent of work has to be drained from our fucking bodies, and we are made to feel MORALLY inferior for slacking off a bit.
Fuck that. Since I have gotten cancer, my priorities and the way I look at work and life has changed drastically. Fuck my corporate overlords, fuck "hard work", and fuck you for making me feel bad for not sweating blood and tears so you can afford another vacation. Fuck you very kindly up your corporate asshole.
Evoman.
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)and who had spent several years working for a major bank in Tokyo. She was changing careers due to major burnout.
I had once stayed in a hotel near a branch of her bank, which had floor-to-ceiling windows, and I noted that I had seen people at work there at 10PM.
She said that was the reason why she had quit, the long hours and the feeling that the long hours were actually unnecessary. Management set impossibly short deadlines that could be met only with unpaid overtime from the salaried workers, even though most of the "emergencies" were reports that had to be filed every year. So they'd give them a week to do this report, even though they had to have had all the documents required for it three weeks before that.
She felt that this was management's way of lording it over the employees.
BrendaBrick
(1,296 posts)Now, first off (as a bit of a disclaimer) - this is by no means and *end all, be all* by any stretch of the imagination, rather this thread and some of the ensuing posts remind me of a series from PBS back in Nov & Dec 2009 in which Ray Suarez aired five segments entitled: "Patchwork Nation":
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2009/12/a-closer-look-at-our-patchwork-nation.html
Closer Look at Our Patchwork Nation
By: Ray Suarez
An old Bob Marley song includes the lyric, "Remember that when the rain falls, it don't fall on one man's house." The worst recession since the Great Depression has hit millions of Americans in expected and unexpected ways. The pain is widespread, but not evenly spread.
The PBS NewsHour's Patchwork Nation project took a look at American communities and tried to understand what attributes places have in common and what separates them, and we found different places were hit by the recession in very different ways.
Over the past month I traveled with the Patchwork Nation team to five counties across the country to see what the recession has meant to them. It was a fascinating set of trips that took me from the foot of East Coast skyscrapers to the tops of Iowa grain elevators, from the ovens of a popular bakery in Michigan to a glassblower's furnace just steps from the breaking waves of the Pacific in Oregon.
<60 second video>
The five counties reinforced the idea that America really is a patchwork. Aggregated statistics of whole states, whole regions, or the nation as a whole can't catch the subtleties of what happened to individual Americans at recession's ground zero. The speculators and flippers of Eagle, CO wouldn't have found banks to play along in conservative Sioux Center, Iowa, where excess debt is discouraged. Ann Arbor, MI is spinning new businesses from its concentration of highly educated workers in a small city that can't be matched in Philadelphia... though Philly is chock-full of colleges, the city is so large the university presence can't lift a city of a million and a half all on its own.
I urge you to visit the extensive video, audio, and written features accompanying the Patchwork Nation project by the project director Dante Chinni, the NewsHour's Anna Shoup and Joanne Elgart Jennings online and reports by me on the broadcast. Happy hunting.
Tune in next week, starting on Dec. 7, to see these five communities come to life as the PBS NewsHour takes a new approach to the serious journalism you've trusted on air and online.
_________________
Sorry, I couldn't find one link which showed the entire project, but I was able to run across these individually:
Philadelphia: (about 9 minutes) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec09/patchwork_12-07.html
Ann Arbor, MI (about 8 minutes) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec09/patchwork_12-08.html
Sioux Center, Iowa (about 8 minutes) http://www.newslook.com/videos/172896-in-iowa-farmers-squeezed-by-belt-tightening?autoplay=true
Lincoln City, OR (about 11 minutes) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec09/patchwork_12-11.html
Eagle, CO (about 8 minutes) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec09/patchwork_12-10.html
_____________
FYI: The link for http://www.patchworknation.org/content/about-patchwork-nation
_____________
Circumstances might in fact have changed since this was first aired late 2009 (and actually, may not be a bad idea for a follow-up from Suarez over 2 years later just to see what has transpired since then.) I thought the project was interesting enough to illustrate and post here, that while the US is a vast country via square miles (compared with other countries) it is also important to note the unique differences via particular and specific regions and/or subsets and that it does tend to get a bit more complicated when someone responds based on their local economy as opposed to the entire nation at large. Which is not to say or discount the many common variables and a factual, decidedly lower *standard of living* all of us seem to be facing across the board - I thought it informative to point out this particular project as a mere reference point(s) for consideration.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)
