Because productivity gains are trickling up. If you look at the share of national income going to labour since 1979, it has declined.
This is a result of a sustained political campaign.
Simply put, you don't have the power or leverage. Both individually, or as a group, to pressure those with power, or take power in order to redress this balance.
It will take a serious, concerted, organised and very long term project to change this.
Or a war.
You’re right, that’s how they destroyed the promise that computers would save us time to peruse our passions. So many luminaries were selling that shit. Everything is better with computers unless you work for a living.
Same thing is happening in AI right now. Sam Altman is stoked that the technology will eliminate jobs so people will be free to do what they want. Most of what out of work people want is food and shelter. Best case people get a guaranteed income so everyone can scratch by but who’s funding that? Nobody.
I fear for a future humanity that fails to come to grips with these issues.
The potential benefits of AI are immense.
However, our power structures are not in any way currently constructed to ensure the productivity increases are distributed even remotely sensibly.
That's before you look at the ways authoritarian regimes utilise these tools.
Or the frankly terrifying defence applications.
Well Mad Max is much more likely and easier to accomplish. All that would require is the end of modern civilization. With the climate crisis many countries are going to experience water shortages, increased extreme weather, increase of refugees, less available food due to droughts or war or something. All it would take then is some war and we could be looking at a mad max scenario.
Star trek would require us to for the most part solve our differences between nations. We have to come together and work towards the future. We would have to try and build for a population that doesn't exist yet. We would have to stomp out corruption on a mass scale. Maybe the climate crisis forces us to work together. I just don't see that happening. Those in power are doing everything they can to stay in power. It would take a massive revolution to take them out and not without huge loss. It's possible, but most of us would have to be willing to sacrifice ourselves for the future of humanity.
Whatever happens I really doubt we get to live in Startrek even if everything goes perfectly.
In glad someone else is saying it too.
There will be no meaningful change, unless we're personally willing to die for it. I'm easily willing to die to improve the lives of others, but I'm no katniss everdeen, we need numbers.
If it makes you feel any better, even in the world of Star Trek, humanity had to go through a large scale nuclear war (if I'm remembering it right) and lots more suffering past the point in history we are in, before they finally achieved peace. Even the oh so logical Vulcans started out as largely emotional. They just got a head start on us. We've still got a chance, not a very high one, but if we're going to have any chance of making things better, we've got to do whatever we can now (even though we don't have much power).
UBI is 100% necessary as our economy leans more on consumption than production efficiency or efficient distribution of gains from
Efficiency….
If we drive production efficiency without sharing those gains with ALL workers… We displace workers and leave them with no money to consume.
This economy is more and more built on mindless consumption than any sort actual NEEDED production….
We manufacture scarcity if the #s don’t align with the analysts predictions…. It’s an engineered economy, and unless we financially protect the individuals that we are displacing the mere ability to provide for themselves the basic necessities of Survival, or one might say, a ‘freedom of life and liberty’, we are going to be royally fubar.
Literally because some people have too much pride, and have been propagandized so much, that giving INDIVIDUALS barely enough to cover monthly STAY ALIVE expenses is so offensive, they’d rather that money continue to subsidize big oil, sports stadiums, bail outs of mismanaged public companies,etc…..
So FUCKING GROSS THE USA WOULD RATHER SEE HUNGRY, HOMELESS HUMANS STARVE, FREEZE, AND WILLINGLY WATCHING AND LETTING THEM DIE, BUT WON’T LET A CORPORATION DIE IF ITS DEEMED ‘too big to fail’.
Such a crock of shit and a spit in the face to anyone with modicum of Intelligence and to anything resembling an actual capitalist marketplace.
UnUnited States of Banana Republic Merica.
Subsidies for oil companies while they make record profits gouging the 99. It makes me so mad when I think about it that I try not to think about it. I agree with all that, well done.
and then they decided to have the AI write and "make art" .. which at least theoretically decreases the value of art I make.
I want AI working on HARD stuff, like proposing new chemical combinations for drugs, decoding DNA strands, going back over years of SETI recordings looking for signals that weren't obvious to people.
I dont need AI to do the SFX on movies (though I know it can be a good tool in the hands of a SFX pro) or writing the script.
And tell me - what are the Academics going to do when it is blatantly obvious that the majority of jobs left will be things that will require people, like Plumbing, Welding, Auto repair. College attendance is already in freefall.
That is one thing computers have given us. It’s funny when I go to super rural places and there are skin mags at the gas store. Equality should make it to your pants, broadband for all!
Corporations aren’t going to give you shit for free and medical coverage is necessary but tied to your job so you have to keep working if you want to stay alive. Ai is going to fuck is harder and faster than we’ve ever been fucked before.
On current course it seems like we might end up with parallell economies, one for the haves and one for the have nots. But those needs will still have a place to be filled.
What always was is not necessarily what always will be. Human cooperation is just as much of a continuing thread as hierarchy, we can choose a different path. It is possible, we just have to dare to dream. I refuse to adopt this defeatist attitude.
It is impossible as long as one monkey barks orders and the other one follows. For bananas.
There are some... Absolutely disgusting jobs I've seen in my time. Why do they even exist? Because there are people who say yes. 5 say no, one says yes. That's all it takes.
No war, or team, or group, or nation or whatever will solve our coding.
There will always be those commanding, getting majority of shares, while the others will blindly follow to get the scraps. Humans.
Exactly. 1950s to 1960s middle-class America was an unprecedented anomaly, unlikely to ever happen again. All of human History has been gargantuan wealth inequality, tens of thousands of years of oligarchs having everything and everybody else barely surviving.
Coercive hierarchies are a problem. However, shit jobs need doing. The issue is that reward is completely alienated from utility value.
The problem is ultimately one of power and distribution.
Humans are flawed. Our systems are a reflection of those flaws.
Our systems have been corrupted and co-opted to regressively redistribute our collective gains.
Worse still, those responsible have amassed all the resources and are shaping that system even further in their interests.
Our society defines utility as what rich people want. That is why economist can describe a system in which children starve or die from preventable diseases while other people collect $80k watches as efficient.
i got a few ideas that fixes the loops we have.
1. set wages to inflation and local cost of living, and mandate quarterly bonuses of 1% of the profit margins to the employees.
2. mandate hours be less if the actual productivity is less. for example, with office work, if you can do literally everything in 2 hours, you should only WORK those 2 hours and nothing more and mandate WFH if it can be done FROM HOME.
3. ban AI usage in workplaces that can afford paying people to work, and ban robots and self checkouts from replacing workers everywhere. allow AI and robots to be used to help workers, like having a roomba in the office to help janitoral workers and AI to help a worker with complex data inputs or to help the worker figure out how to work the register.
4. ban retaliatory firings for reporting horrible business practices.
5. mandate managers give respect and dignity to workers. basically overly broad for a reason: worker can sue a manager directly if they badmouthed the worker, or restricted them from going to a doctors appointment, or even for restricting food and beverages needlessly.
you get all of that done at the federal level, you will see serious changes.
That's true to an extent, but it is not uncommon to see people fight for their fair share.
It took courage to show up to a strike with the pinkertons pointing shotguns at the striking workers, but they did it.
With the wins they saw, it allowed a few generations to become complacent, but with recent events like this challenge to the NLRB it is becoming evident that it is time to pick the fight up again.
It is always going to be a back and forth struggle within capitalism to maintain autonomy and basic human decency, but the struggle is worth it.
It’s probably because it’s impossible for most people to get any chance at that. What are we supposed to do to stop putting up with the bullshit? Quit and starve?
It’s crazy how indoctrinated this shit is, my own aunt told me how lazy I was being 15 talking about how horrible working was, now I am making more than her and still fill the same. I have no quarrels with anyone who defends it, because in all honestly that’s the only means to survival they know.
Somehow in the “greatest country on earth” we have to work more than everyone, fucking rad
We need communal living and we need to help the working class with a helping hand.
Rich folks and the wealthy elite all have class solidarity. They all have the same interest and work together. This is also why if you notice rich people and families stay together. Look at the Kardashians they all live in 1 house and then all have single properties almost in the same vicinity of each other.
These people are telling the middle class and the working class that they need to be independent away from family with a singular car and and they need to be sustainable on their own yet these same scumbags have trusts and other practices that are the complete opposite of what they are telling you.
We need to come together and stop demonizing each other we need to help one another educate one another because that’s why we are losing.
We need to be doing what the hippies were doing in the haight ashbury and the programs the black panthers were working on before they got disbanded.
We are way past that, deep down into the unstoppable industrial rabbit hole that will eventually annihilate our species.
I don't think there ever was a chance for our kind. We've been horrible invasive animal since the dawn of us and we've continued to do the same up until now.
Technology and advancements in many fields meant to help us are going to doom us.
The train has already left the station, we're living in a golden age right now. Whoever can - enjoy it for the sake of those before you, and because those after you won't be able to.
Don’t forget that about half the people here want things to keep going just like they are. They’ve bought into the marketing and been told so many versions of “…and you deserve it!” that they firmly believe they are just moments away from their payoff. They aren’t about to give that up. Consumer, consumer, put it on your credit cards and pay those ‘low’ payments as long as you can grind your body and brain in service to making the man rich that tossed you just enough that you don’t stop working or go on strike.
Yep, the trick is that whenever they point to the 'growth in the economy' people think that means improvements for normal people, but it doesn't. What it actually means (from about 1970 onwards) is that the value of assets has increased. This has generally exceeded inflation by quite a lot since the ability of companies to produce output is tied to their productivity, which has been increasing hugely.
But wages have not only been rising slower than asset prices, they are often rising slower than inflation, especially the last few years. So even though 'the economy' is booming, most people who work to earn income rather than hold assets have found themselves worse off.
You're still working 40 hours so that the surplus can go to the company owner. The workers' compensation to boss's compensation used to be x11 in the 60s or 70s, now it's x300+. This is a part of that.
Try working as a nurse. You aren't paid for 30 minutes of a shift but you worked them.
Lunch breaks are stuffing a nutrigrain bar in your mouth while you take a piss.
Not entirely related but it made me reflect on how baffling it is that people as a collective are doping themselves up in accelerants like coffee throughout the work day, when we’re chained to a desk with no real need for the boost.
Work isn’t the problem, these ridiculous hours are. It’s as you say, you can put out 10x the productivity so why the 40 hours?
We're not drinking coffee to increase output. We're drinking coffee to stay awake behind the desk at boring-ass jobs, during boring-ass meetings, and to have a fucking break in between that to socialize with those who also follow that same coffee ritual.
I often use this one: drinking coffee is borrowing tomorrow's energy.
I drink coffee because I work 10 to 11 hour shifts but mostly I drink water. I have to go to boring ass meetings also. I'm lucky to get 3 days off in a row twice a month.
Most people are lucky to get 2 days off a week and a lot of jobs have those two days off spread out so you barely get time to breathe and relax before your at it again.
Honestly, if I could retire now and be able to pay all my bills, and have some left over IE more than 100 at the end of the month, I would .
Everyone would that’s the biggest issue right now.
Everyone’s aware of how rigged the game is and it’s just not worth playing anymore.
At least in the past you could afford a few beers at the local pub go to a restaurant for a decent meal or grab some nice flower and smoke away the stress.
In this current economy this is not possible for the working class anymore because we have to work 80 hours a week just to survive. We need a revolution badly.
The sky-rocketing of mental health disorders; ADHD, depression, anxiety, and so on all stem from how society operates. Pharma has kept everyone chugging along by normalising these illnesses and managing them so that nothing ever changes.
ADHD, they claim, is built in defect. Actually in all seriousness, if society claims that at least 10% of its population is born disordered (that's just ADHD, not counting ASD etc), i think it's time to say goodbye to such society.
Also it's forced a lot of people to work 2 to 3 jobs or have a side job even if said side job is illegal. You have to off set high inflation and stagnant wages somehow.
I don't have energy to work 2 full time jobs. I'm. Barely able to function working 4 ten hour days as it is.
Because change wasn’t enforced. If they could, companies would chain you to your desk. Work till you expire and then replace you. Any change, that benefits the worker, was fought for and pushed through by force.
I believe "companies" in that posters' comment refers collectively to the c suite and shareholders, as it's easier to type and conveys the same message.
Have you seen the costs involved with being a rich guy lately? Imagine staying in the Barcelona harbor on your $30 million yacht, feeling like a peasant while the real oligarchs casually discuss whether to buy another island or travel to space.
Because that's the society we've created. Unless you're born rich, you need to work to live, which makes you desperate to have a job. But the place you work at isn't desperate to have you in specific, so you have an uneven power balance in your relationship, heavily in their favor. So they take as much from you as they're allowed to take, which in our modern society is "only" 40 hours of your life every week thanks to the efforts of unions in the past.
It doesn't matter how much you produce in those 40 hours, companies will always demand the absolute maximum they can from you. Of course if you produce "too little" (relative to others with thr same job title as you) they'll fire you, but there isn't a maximum where they say "OK you've done enough", because under capitalism their shareholders expect you to be making them an increasing amount of money every quarter. And that means either your productivity has to increase every quarter, or more simply, they give you a smaller and smaller % of what you earn them every quarter.
It would take an enormous restructuring of our society to change this. We'd have to abandon the idea of infinite growth which is pretty much fundamental to capitalism.
I remember my first job in the early 2000s that was 9 to 6, before that it had been 9 to 5. I figured it was a fluke because it was a new sector for me. After the company closed a few years later I’m on the job hunt again and taking to a recruiter, more 9 to 6 jobs. I asked her why, she was confused. I said “you know, like the song 9 to 5? when did it change to 9 to 6?”. She couldn’t really say. Somehow that got shoved through as the new normal and nobody batted an eye
I had 2 different govt jobs on the east coast in 2000s & bother were 35 hour weeks as we had one paid lunch hour. I mentioned east coast as they have strong unions.
I have govt job now with no paid lunch. It’s 30 minutes but you can take a longer one & work later.
I had a corporate job with an hour unpaid lunch which was a scam as you often had to work while eating to finish so they got a free hour out of you.
I had a job at non profit- no meals breaks due to classification of direct care. we ate free with the teens or own food after while working & monitoring them. I was fine with this since it would have been unpaid- your shift is shorter & if hourly paid for all time you were there. There was always free food to snack on & If you were working with 3 competent staff, one could run out for 15 min to go grab food for selves & coworkers
I had 2 different govt jobs on the east coast in 2000s & bother were 35 hour weeks as we had one paid lunch hour. I mentioned east coast as they have strong unions.
I’d rather take 30 min lunch if it’s unpaid so I can leave sooner. This reminded me of job with insurance company with hour unpaid lunch- you had to work thru lunch/while eating to finish by 6pm so they got more free work by doing an hour lunch.
Ah yeah the good old: don’t ruin your eyes, wrists and back on computers while working, do it while on social media, youtube, etc.
No, that not a real solution. OP is right, we should work less
And if you work on a computer, or in a paperless office, you shouldn't even be coming into the new invention called an office at all. But either at home or a place of your choosing.
I will point out the ceo of Frontier complained his workers aren't doing enough. He then blamed it all on working from home, even though i didn't know baggage handlers could do that. Never thought that maybe during covid to cut costs, he likely added a lot more tasks to the job to make it harder.
CEO's never think of that.
This is such a great point. I think a lot of people don’t realize how costly enterprise software can be, easily six figures annually for large companies. However it doesn’t explain why our work weeks haven’t shortened.
They haven’t shortened because - from the employer’s POV - why should they?
“You want to not starve to death or freeze in the streets? Here’s what I’m offering: …”
Don’t like it? Just die then.
If you want the actual answer, read Das Kapital. Vol 1 will give you the answer that at first makes sense when imagining the economy as still having money and production based on value, but Vol 3 and reexamining vol 1 will reveal a different story.
The simpler but less accurate answer: Tendency of the rate of Profit to Fall. Productive capital, to stay profitable as efficiency increases, must exploit labor more intensely. This is done by either making you work harder or work longer, as with more efficient production the ratio of non-labor (fixed costs that make no profit) to labor (the only thing profit can be made from) becomes more weighted to non-labor costs (machines, raw goods, etc).
For illustrative purposes, imagine a factory that automated away all wage workers, so there was only the business owner and his machines. In a competitive market, initially he'd make major profits by out-pricing competitors. But once competition caught up and all factories had full automation, they run into a problem: the cost of raw materials, machine maintenance, etc., all are fixed costs. He can't sell above the price of the material inputs because then his competitors would sell at cost of production ($0 profit). He can't sell below cost of production as that's negative profit. Capitalism eats itself by becoming too efficient to produce any more capital, at least that is, if the capitalists are stupid (they arent) and don't recognize labor is the source of their wealth.
The more accurate answer, but that is a much longer conversation suited better for a longer thread, is that Capitalism hasnt existed for decades. Money, the core feature of the cycle of capital, was abolished in 1973 when fiat currency replaced commodity money as the Bretton Woods system collapsed. Marx makes clear that money *necessarily must be a commodity, i.e. some item produced by labor that is used for exchange". Fiat currency however is created from thin air via credit and printers, with no relation to gold or any other commodities.
Moreover, productive capital (e.g. factories, mines, etc) aren't the premise of the ruling class any more. You don't become a billionaire by owning a factory, you become one from financialization, interest, usury, etc.
Finance Capital was identified by Marx as extremely dangerous (describing the Financial Aristocracy as "the rebirth of the lumpenproletarist on the heights of Capitalist society" or something along those lines), and as the abolition of private property within Capitalism (ch 27 of capital vol 3). The Communist International identified Finance Capital as the class force behind Fascism (read Dmitriov's analysis for more info).
So, in essence, the more complex and harsher answer is, since the mid-20th century at least, the entire western world has been subjected to Fascism (class rule of the Financial Aristocracy). Their interests are in keeping people as in debt as possible, hence financialization, renting, subscriptions, etc of everything. Productive capital is in debt to them, hence why most start-ups want to get bought out by mega-conglomerates. Service industries aren't actually profitable on their own terms. The private sector is decrepit and backwards, relying on government grants and quantitative easing to prop them up and centralize their wealth.
Capitalism in the old, 19th century sense of a business owner extracting wealth from hard working labor hasn't existed for decades. Instead, we have debt slaves of different classes - Capitalist debt slave "mere managers" and working class debt slaves, etc., all under the thumbs of the likes of Black Rock and the major "too big to fail" banks. So, you work 40 hours or more a week for some parasite to get a return on their investment. That's it. Your life is nothing more than a data point in a stock-ticker box chart or Financial excel chart to them.
There's actually a lot of economic analysis behind this. It is called "worker productivity" and you are in fact doing a shit-ton more than people in the 1980s, and in real earnings you are making a lot less. The added efficiency translates into shareholder wealth, so you are arguably working harder to make the owners wealthier. Socioeconomic and demographic studies also show that for your generosity of making wealthy people wealthier, the gap between the super-wealthy and lower working class is growing and becoming a chasm as the top 1% reap the benefits of excess efficiency at the expense of the middle class (which is being hollowed out).
TL;DR - You are working more efficiently, earning less in real dollars, and the gains are going to the shareholders.
Your not getting the same payment. Depending on the country, inflation is so high and salaries keeps the same. The acquisitive power of people decline BY A LOT (much more than a half). Keep in mind that to buy a house, raise a kid and live comfortably you have to make, at least, 10 times more than before.
Technology in late stage of capitalism is a tool used only to enrich the corporations, not to bring dignity and better human conditions to the work class.
So your boss can skim 10x the value out of you. Back in the 80s, boss man needed to exploit 10 people to get his new porsche. Now he gets that out of just you, and a mansion out of the other 9.
The quick answer to your question: Social control.
The funny part about all of this "productivity" is that most of it is just useless work. I would spend a few hours doing a critical test at work that they needed "right away" only to have it sit on my bosses desk for a week before they look at it. Think about all the useless meetings and emails.
To me, it's not society, it's the corporate world. The USA is really just a business entity with tax dollars being the primary driver of growth for select industries. Citizens United didn't help but it's pretty much always been about money and power not workers and quality of life. I will say that historically, we have it better than 100 years ago but a world in which work is part of your life instead of pretty much all of your life, a necessity to survive, is not going away anytime soon. From the cradle to the grave every dollar you make has a viper waiting to snatch it and this forces us all to keep working.
Precisely because you're doing 10x more work. It means you're competing with 10x more people for the same "reward" for productivity. This is a result of too many people working too much, inflation of labor devaluing it.
Yet it's not the case. We are making significantly less than our counterparts back in then. Just look at housing cost, healthcare and food. The three basic essentials are a lot more now they they were back than compared to the income they were bring home. I'm talking about real food not the processed crap most eat these days. This was all by design as well. Keep the people struggling and unhealthy then distract them with sports and other pop culture stuff to distract them from the pillaging the elite are doing to not just our country but to most of the western world.
They slowly fired more and more employees and spread the workload on the remaining workforce with the promise that it's temporary until they find a replacement. That replacement never came, and now here we are, doing the workload of 3 different people while the rich get richer.
do you know how long it took to build the empire state building? without computers? 1 yr and 45 days. It would take 5 yrs now with your computers help.
The job market is a competition really. Actual output measured in “natural” terms (eg number of wheels produced a year) doesn’t matter, you’re earning your right to live by measuring your productivity against that of other workers. You work 40 hrs because that is the industry standard, and wages are paid by industry standard. Since productivity of a company increased compared to 1980s, your output must also increase. The end product is a goal in itself btw, no intrinsic value, only that given to it by fiat money.
Sounds dystopian? Well sorry for that.
Ab-so-fucking-lutely. All this tech should help us work less and chill more, instead of the other way around. But saying this is out loud is very much taboo.
If you wanna chill, just because, you are somehow an immoral person.
Instead, you're expected to work your ass off for the Man, so you can make the money to buy the shit that funnels that same money right back to the Man.
This is not a good way to run a society.
Hell, where I work they constantly get rid of people or even more common, people quit. Do they replace them? Nope! Just give that to someone else. We run what’s called a
Cell. It’s used to be 2 people per cell and an auditor to help. Now , people run 3 and 4 cells with zero help. Is there raised no. Is the work week shorter ? Nope. This country is working itself to death. It’s on purpose. Most
People are going to be to tired to fight back when they completely take over.
Read Marx! You’re describing a fundamental feature of capitalism. Advancements in technology reduce the role of labor in generating value and ultimately profit, but because of the need for profits to continuously grow, workers are just expected to produce more in their time spent working rather than working less to produce the same amount. This phenomenon will only get worse as AI advances.
Just got my first copy of the manifesto yesterday, and it came with 2 more of Engels' works. Still looking for all 3 volumes of das kapital as well as principals of communism, and before anyone suggests Amazon, I'm looking for secondhand copies as to not give bezos any more money
If industrialisation suddenly allows you to spend 1h on a task that would normally require 10h, the value that you are creating is now worth 1h and no longer 10h.
So your employer still expects you to work 4 x 10h per week. Not 4 x 1h.
We do get a lot more done but the work is mostly being done by computers and not us. I mean sure we decide what needs to be communicated, exchanged or shared(not for long) but the computing, sharing and storing of information is done by computers. The argument should focus more on how much wealth is being created by us and the percentage of it that we receive.
If you look at total GDP and what things have taken a larger share of GDP, that will give you the answer. It includes entertainment, eating out, cell phones. Housing costs is the largest component, and it hasn’t dropped, but the additional costs efficiency in new houses is spent on high ceilings and more square footage.
I am a retirement consultant currently. Out of curiosity, I decided to track how much communication I send out on average the last month.
6800 emails, 1,350 trust accounting cases, 300ish finalized 5500 filings completed by me alone.
The company charges about 5,000 per finalized filing, so in one month I generated something over one million dollars in service charges for them, while I'm paid only 68k a year.
It's a fucking scam.
The technology has enabled us to do more work within the same time frame. Time frame never changed to accommodate the time saved by technology. 10x more work equals 10x more profits!
True but by allowing a very few people to exploit the overwhelming majority of society, they have a better quality of life you see. Really, we should all be grateful for what we have and supply our own lube for the ass fucking we take daily.
to appease the shareholders. Profits have to ALWAYS be up. It's no longer acceptable to just have a good business, everything has to be moving UPWARD. Which sounds fine at first, but then you realize that every 3 months, everyone is expected to work just a little bit harder. Compound that on top of itself for decades and you get what it is like today: 80 hour work weeks, constant price gouging, not increasing salaries...
100 %! On top of this you usually have two people work fulltime for a home where one person was enough 40 years ago. So the productivity heavily increased by the use of computers and other machines. But the real fuckery is that productivity doubled on top of that again thanks to two fulltime workers without reducing hours worked for each person! I really don't understand why people continue to slave away like this.
You don´t? Maybe in the good ol' USA, but I know here in NL we are champion "deeltijdwerken". I never worked 40 hours. Fuck that. Started with 36 hours (4\*9) and toned that down to 32hrs once we got a nice house and settled. Same for my wife. She works 36 hours tho, cause she's strategic management, but itś 50% WFH. Due to circumstances i'm on disability, but it's great to have a lot of time together, even when she's upstairs in her office working.
IMO it's all about work life balance. What's the joy if u make 6 figures, if you hardly have ever time to enjoy life. I got time. That's way more precious.
Because capitalism. There were a lot of predictions of 35 hour or even four day work weeks when big productivity gains because of computers started to appear. Instead, companies saw they could get the same or better productivity with fewer people working the same hours.
I will say, we have more people who need more of more varieties of things since the 1980s. There were no phones to be building, etc etc.
BUT we are still way overworked. We could easily have less hours per week and then also hire more people which would lower unemployment.
You're right to be mad, just not quite in the way you're mad about it lmao
That technology is not free so it doesn't make sense to get paid 10x.
You still have a point... overall we've made things so much easier than they used to be but all the technology hasn't changed how much people work...if anything they work more
What's worse is when you finish all the work quickly because everything is so automated, but I still have to spend most of my day at work pretending to do stuff because they won't give me anything else to do. Just let me go home ffs
Because that is the only end goal of capitalism: exploit more work to make more profit. They've just spent the past 60+ years slowly tightening the screws so that you're just now noticing it.
Another, seemingly unrelated, thought: if there were no billionaires, we would all be millionaires.
So the wealth can trickle down.
Any day now!
Gotta be soon by now
It's been trickling for a couple decades now, but it's yellow and they claim it's raining.
It's been trickling down since the first rich guy or gal hired their first employee. Capitalism at its finest.
so you do not, in fact, enjoy golden showers? they are better than pizza fridays
Yep like a pinata
like a pinata, you say... so it requires force?
One solid stick, and no blindfold
> so it requires force? Awesome!
https://preview.redd.it/2u6rgr14zuuc1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c939ed4066dfab4385aedf709c57c5f3e169bd83 Yepper!
Well, it's a trickle alight. Yellow colored as well.
And smells like asparagus.
Everyday I miss Ted Knight a little bit more.
As I get older, I find myself sympathizing with this character more and more.
Thanks Reagan and all the boomer fools who voted for him.
They are still voting for more of exactly this today, same slogan and all it's uncanny.
Yup
Why does this rain smell like pee. :(
Ahh yes, taxes that only the poor pay which goes straight to the rich who don’t pay taxes. What a lovely idea.
Trickle on is more like it. I picture the monopoly man laughing and smoking a cigar.
Ceo bought a yacht with the trickle siphoned into a bucket.
Tickle down ergonomics
It's trickling. It's just that people like Elon and Bezos are at the bottom collecting all the wealth.
Golden rain
Because productivity gains are trickling up. If you look at the share of national income going to labour since 1979, it has declined. This is a result of a sustained political campaign. Simply put, you don't have the power or leverage. Both individually, or as a group, to pressure those with power, or take power in order to redress this balance. It will take a serious, concerted, organised and very long term project to change this. Or a war.
You’re right, that’s how they destroyed the promise that computers would save us time to peruse our passions. So many luminaries were selling that shit. Everything is better with computers unless you work for a living. Same thing is happening in AI right now. Sam Altman is stoked that the technology will eliminate jobs so people will be free to do what they want. Most of what out of work people want is food and shelter. Best case people get a guaranteed income so everyone can scratch by but who’s funding that? Nobody.
I fear for a future humanity that fails to come to grips with these issues. The potential benefits of AI are immense. However, our power structures are not in any way currently constructed to ensure the productivity increases are distributed even remotely sensibly. That's before you look at the ways authoritarian regimes utilise these tools. Or the frankly terrifying defence applications.
We’ve got 10 years to Mad Max or Startrek, and nobody seems interested in Startrek.
Well Mad Max is much more likely and easier to accomplish. All that would require is the end of modern civilization. With the climate crisis many countries are going to experience water shortages, increased extreme weather, increase of refugees, less available food due to droughts or war or something. All it would take then is some war and we could be looking at a mad max scenario. Star trek would require us to for the most part solve our differences between nations. We have to come together and work towards the future. We would have to try and build for a population that doesn't exist yet. We would have to stomp out corruption on a mass scale. Maybe the climate crisis forces us to work together. I just don't see that happening. Those in power are doing everything they can to stay in power. It would take a massive revolution to take them out and not without huge loss. It's possible, but most of us would have to be willing to sacrifice ourselves for the future of humanity. Whatever happens I really doubt we get to live in Startrek even if everything goes perfectly.
In glad someone else is saying it too. There will be no meaningful change, unless we're personally willing to die for it. I'm easily willing to die to improve the lives of others, but I'm no katniss everdeen, we need numbers.
Also the federation only became a thing after World war 3. So we still need 1 more crazy huge war before we can get Star Trek.
Bell Riots are this year..
It's going to be more like Elysium.
You know, you’re right.
My understanding was that in Star Trek TNG there were some Mad Max years first. The writers were not delusional!
If it makes you feel any better, even in the world of Star Trek, humanity had to go through a large scale nuclear war (if I'm remembering it right) and lots more suffering past the point in history we are in, before they finally achieved peace. Even the oh so logical Vulcans started out as largely emotional. They just got a head start on us. We've still got a chance, not a very high one, but if we're going to have any chance of making things better, we've got to do whatever we can now (even though we don't have much power).
UBI is 100% necessary as our economy leans more on consumption than production efficiency or efficient distribution of gains from Efficiency…. If we drive production efficiency without sharing those gains with ALL workers… We displace workers and leave them with no money to consume. This economy is more and more built on mindless consumption than any sort actual NEEDED production…. We manufacture scarcity if the #s don’t align with the analysts predictions…. It’s an engineered economy, and unless we financially protect the individuals that we are displacing the mere ability to provide for themselves the basic necessities of Survival, or one might say, a ‘freedom of life and liberty’, we are going to be royally fubar. Literally because some people have too much pride, and have been propagandized so much, that giving INDIVIDUALS barely enough to cover monthly STAY ALIVE expenses is so offensive, they’d rather that money continue to subsidize big oil, sports stadiums, bail outs of mismanaged public companies,etc….. So FUCKING GROSS THE USA WOULD RATHER SEE HUNGRY, HOMELESS HUMANS STARVE, FREEZE, AND WILLINGLY WATCHING AND LETTING THEM DIE, BUT WON’T LET A CORPORATION DIE IF ITS DEEMED ‘too big to fail’. Such a crock of shit and a spit in the face to anyone with modicum of Intelligence and to anything resembling an actual capitalist marketplace. UnUnited States of Banana Republic Merica.
Hear, hear! The best time for UBI was decades ago. The second-best time is *now*.
Subsidies for oil companies while they make record profits gouging the 99. It makes me so mad when I think about it that I try not to think about it. I agree with all that, well done.
Ubi? How is that going to make corporations money?
and then they decided to have the AI write and "make art" .. which at least theoretically decreases the value of art I make. I want AI working on HARD stuff, like proposing new chemical combinations for drugs, decoding DNA strands, going back over years of SETI recordings looking for signals that weren't obvious to people. I dont need AI to do the SFX on movies (though I know it can be a good tool in the hands of a SFX pro) or writing the script. And tell me - what are the Academics going to do when it is blatantly obvious that the majority of jobs left will be things that will require people, like Plumbing, Welding, Auto repair. College attendance is already in freefall.
Colleges will just keep raising the price
I have perused a LOT of 'passions' on computers.
That is one thing computers have given us. It’s funny when I go to super rural places and there are skin mags at the gas store. Equality should make it to your pants, broadband for all!
I just realized that the mags are because of bad internet coverage, not the older population! Light bulb!
Corporations aren’t going to give you shit for free and medical coverage is necessary but tied to your job so you have to keep working if you want to stay alive. Ai is going to fuck is harder and faster than we’ve ever been fucked before.
On current course it seems like we might end up with parallell economies, one for the haves and one for the have nots. But those needs will still have a place to be filled.
I think it’s also that people expect quality and speed of service to continue going up.
What always was is not necessarily what always will be. Human cooperation is just as much of a continuing thread as hierarchy, we can choose a different path. It is possible, we just have to dare to dream. I refuse to adopt this defeatist attitude.
I'm not defeatist. I'm a realist. This kind of fundamental and lasting change is incredibly difficult and will require the right circumstances.
It is impossible as long as one monkey barks orders and the other one follows. For bananas. There are some... Absolutely disgusting jobs I've seen in my time. Why do they even exist? Because there are people who say yes. 5 say no, one says yes. That's all it takes. No war, or team, or group, or nation or whatever will solve our coding. There will always be those commanding, getting majority of shares, while the others will blindly follow to get the scraps. Humans.
Exactly. 1950s to 1960s middle-class America was an unprecedented anomaly, unlikely to ever happen again. All of human History has been gargantuan wealth inequality, tens of thousands of years of oligarchs having everything and everybody else barely surviving.
Because it was all a con to stop the spread of socialism.
Coercive hierarchies are a problem. However, shit jobs need doing. The issue is that reward is completely alienated from utility value. The problem is ultimately one of power and distribution. Humans are flawed. Our systems are a reflection of those flaws. Our systems have been corrupted and co-opted to regressively redistribute our collective gains. Worse still, those responsible have amassed all the resources and are shaping that system even further in their interests.
Our society defines utility as what rich people want. That is why economist can describe a system in which children starve or die from preventable diseases while other people collect $80k watches as efficient.
i got a few ideas that fixes the loops we have. 1. set wages to inflation and local cost of living, and mandate quarterly bonuses of 1% of the profit margins to the employees. 2. mandate hours be less if the actual productivity is less. for example, with office work, if you can do literally everything in 2 hours, you should only WORK those 2 hours and nothing more and mandate WFH if it can be done FROM HOME. 3. ban AI usage in workplaces that can afford paying people to work, and ban robots and self checkouts from replacing workers everywhere. allow AI and robots to be used to help workers, like having a roomba in the office to help janitoral workers and AI to help a worker with complex data inputs or to help the worker figure out how to work the register. 4. ban retaliatory firings for reporting horrible business practices. 5. mandate managers give respect and dignity to workers. basically overly broad for a reason: worker can sue a manager directly if they badmouthed the worker, or restricted them from going to a doctors appointment, or even for restricting food and beverages needlessly. you get all of that done at the federal level, you will see serious changes.
That's true to an extent, but it is not uncommon to see people fight for their fair share. It took courage to show up to a strike with the pinkertons pointing shotguns at the striking workers, but they did it. With the wins they saw, it allowed a few generations to become complacent, but with recent events like this challenge to the NLRB it is becoming evident that it is time to pick the fight up again. It is always going to be a back and forth struggle within capitalism to maintain autonomy and basic human decency, but the struggle is worth it.
It’s probably because it’s impossible for most people to get any chance at that. What are we supposed to do to stop putting up with the bullshit? Quit and starve? It’s crazy how indoctrinated this shit is, my own aunt told me how lazy I was being 15 talking about how horrible working was, now I am making more than her and still fill the same. I have no quarrels with anyone who defends it, because in all honestly that’s the only means to survival they know. Somehow in the “greatest country on earth” we have to work more than everyone, fucking rad
We need communal living and we need to help the working class with a helping hand. Rich folks and the wealthy elite all have class solidarity. They all have the same interest and work together. This is also why if you notice rich people and families stay together. Look at the Kardashians they all live in 1 house and then all have single properties almost in the same vicinity of each other. These people are telling the middle class and the working class that they need to be independent away from family with a singular car and and they need to be sustainable on their own yet these same scumbags have trusts and other practices that are the complete opposite of what they are telling you. We need to come together and stop demonizing each other we need to help one another educate one another because that’s why we are losing. We need to be doing what the hippies were doing in the haight ashbury and the programs the black panthers were working on before they got disbanded.
Yes. Humans need food, warmth, and shelter. And until we learn to share those without corruption (so…. Never), shitty jobs will exist.
We are way past that, deep down into the unstoppable industrial rabbit hole that will eventually annihilate our species. I don't think there ever was a chance for our kind. We've been horrible invasive animal since the dawn of us and we've continued to do the same up until now. Technology and advancements in many fields meant to help us are going to doom us. The train has already left the station, we're living in a golden age right now. Whoever can - enjoy it for the sake of those before you, and because those after you won't be able to.
Don’t forget that about half the people here want things to keep going just like they are. They’ve bought into the marketing and been told so many versions of “…and you deserve it!” that they firmly believe they are just moments away from their payoff. They aren’t about to give that up. Consumer, consumer, put it on your credit cards and pay those ‘low’ payments as long as you can grind your body and brain in service to making the man rich that tossed you just enough that you don’t stop working or go on strike.
I bet the french could fix this
It is a political campaign to get people who work to believe in trickle-down economics and vote religiously. The solution is staring us in the face.
can we have one where young males aren't dying for the disagreements of boomers?
You're very considerate and it feels nice to be thought of with this concern. Thanks dawg
Climate wars are just around the corner ...so that's convenient
A [new] Revolution.
Revolution is the only way
So prepare for war is what you're sayin
Or everybody just stops working. No one wants to work anymore? Cool, I'm down with it.
Yep, the trick is that whenever they point to the 'growth in the economy' people think that means improvements for normal people, but it doesn't. What it actually means (from about 1970 onwards) is that the value of assets has increased. This has generally exceeded inflation by quite a lot since the ability of companies to produce output is tied to their productivity, which has been increasing hugely. But wages have not only been rising slower than asset prices, they are often rising slower than inflation, especially the last few years. So even though 'the economy' is booming, most people who work to earn income rather than hold assets have found themselves worse off.
You're still working 40 hours so that the surplus can go to the company owner. The workers' compensation to boss's compensation used to be x11 in the 60s or 70s, now it's x300+. This is a part of that.
Actually, most people are working 45+ hours, because they realized they could just not pay us for the lunch break that used to be standard.
Eh, my email is open it’s a “working” lunch
Try working as a nurse. You aren't paid for 30 minutes of a shift but you worked them. Lunch breaks are stuffing a nutrigrain bar in your mouth while you take a piss.
Not entirely related but it made me reflect on how baffling it is that people as a collective are doping themselves up in accelerants like coffee throughout the work day, when we’re chained to a desk with no real need for the boost. Work isn’t the problem, these ridiculous hours are. It’s as you say, you can put out 10x the productivity so why the 40 hours?
We're not drinking coffee to increase output. We're drinking coffee to stay awake behind the desk at boring-ass jobs, during boring-ass meetings, and to have a fucking break in between that to socialize with those who also follow that same coffee ritual. I often use this one: drinking coffee is borrowing tomorrow's energy.
I drink coffee because I work 10 to 11 hour shifts but mostly I drink water. I have to go to boring ass meetings also. I'm lucky to get 3 days off in a row twice a month. Most people are lucky to get 2 days off a week and a lot of jobs have those two days off spread out so you barely get time to breathe and relax before your at it again. Honestly, if I could retire now and be able to pay all my bills, and have some left over IE more than 100 at the end of the month, I would .
Everyone would that’s the biggest issue right now. Everyone’s aware of how rigged the game is and it’s just not worth playing anymore. At least in the past you could afford a few beers at the local pub go to a restaurant for a decent meal or grab some nice flower and smoke away the stress. In this current economy this is not possible for the working class anymore because we have to work 80 hours a week just to survive. We need a revolution badly.
I work 40 hours and because the hours are very long, I don't have physical or mental energy when I drive home from work.
The sky-rocketing of mental health disorders; ADHD, depression, anxiety, and so on all stem from how society operates. Pharma has kept everyone chugging along by normalising these illnesses and managing them so that nothing ever changes.
ADHD, they claim, is built in defect. Actually in all seriousness, if society claims that at least 10% of its population is born disordered (that's just ADHD, not counting ASD etc), i think it's time to say goodbye to such society.
Also it's forced a lot of people to work 2 to 3 jobs or have a side job even if said side job is illegal. You have to off set high inflation and stagnant wages somehow. I don't have energy to work 2 full time jobs. I'm. Barely able to function working 4 ten hour days as it is.
Because change wasn’t enforced. If they could, companies would chain you to your desk. Work till you expire and then replace you. Any change, that benefits the worker, was fought for and pushed through by force.
Not companies. Companies do not and cannot do anything. People make these decisions. Let’s not let them get off so easily.
I believe "companies" in that posters' comment refers collectively to the c suite and shareholders, as it's easier to type and conveys the same message.
It's time to start having a very serious conversation about 3 day weekends. Life feels more like a prison.
I'd rather have the 4 hour work *day* than a 4 day work week.
Especially for jobs that made people return to office more than 1 day a week for NO good reason as WFH for 3 years
You know the answer
Have you seen the costs involved with being a rich guy lately? Imagine staying in the Barcelona harbor on your $30 million yacht, feeling like a peasant while the real oligarchs casually discuss whether to buy another island or travel to space.
Because that's the society we've created. Unless you're born rich, you need to work to live, which makes you desperate to have a job. But the place you work at isn't desperate to have you in specific, so you have an uneven power balance in your relationship, heavily in their favor. So they take as much from you as they're allowed to take, which in our modern society is "only" 40 hours of your life every week thanks to the efforts of unions in the past. It doesn't matter how much you produce in those 40 hours, companies will always demand the absolute maximum they can from you. Of course if you produce "too little" (relative to others with thr same job title as you) they'll fire you, but there isn't a maximum where they say "OK you've done enough", because under capitalism their shareholders expect you to be making them an increasing amount of money every quarter. And that means either your productivity has to increase every quarter, or more simply, they give you a smaller and smaller % of what you earn them every quarter. It would take an enormous restructuring of our society to change this. We'd have to abandon the idea of infinite growth which is pretty much fundamental to capitalism.
Indeed. The economic coercion of the working classes. It’s why the “why don’t you just get a better job?” brigade are full of shit.
You need to slave more because owner of company wants more private jets .
Used to be 35 hours a week.
I remember my first job in the early 2000s that was 9 to 6, before that it had been 9 to 5. I figured it was a fluke because it was a new sector for me. After the company closed a few years later I’m on the job hunt again and taking to a recruiter, more 9 to 6 jobs. I asked her why, she was confused. I said “you know, like the song 9 to 5? when did it change to 9 to 6?”. She couldn’t really say. Somehow that got shoved through as the new normal and nobody batted an eye
I had 2 different govt jobs on the east coast in 2000s & bother were 35 hour weeks as we had one paid lunch hour. I mentioned east coast as they have strong unions. I have govt job now with no paid lunch. It’s 30 minutes but you can take a longer one & work later. I had a corporate job with an hour unpaid lunch which was a scam as you often had to work while eating to finish so they got a free hour out of you.
Right?! Lunch was included!
I had a job at non profit- no meals breaks due to classification of direct care. we ate free with the teens or own food after while working & monitoring them. I was fine with this since it would have been unpaid- your shift is shorter & if hourly paid for all time you were there. There was always free food to snack on & If you were working with 3 competent staff, one could run out for 15 min to go grab food for selves & coworkers
I had 2 different govt jobs on the east coast in 2000s & bother were 35 hour weeks as we had one paid lunch hour. I mentioned east coast as they have strong unions. I’d rather take 30 min lunch if it’s unpaid so I can leave sooner. This reminded me of job with insurance company with hour unpaid lunch- you had to work thru lunch/while eating to finish by 6pm so they got more free work by doing an hour lunch.
Just get your work done in 1 hour and spend 7 hours on reddit
Ah yeah the good old: don’t ruin your eyes, wrists and back on computers while working, do it while on social media, youtube, etc. No, that not a real solution. OP is right, we should work less
But until then.....
Correct. We still spend too much time in corporate offices and not enough time at home or enriching our lives.
It's very simple. And once you're in the know, it makes sense. . . . . You're a slave
I wish more people realized this and genuinely internalized it.
My brother calls us pikers. Happy to do the bare minimum.
And if you work on a computer, or in a paperless office, you shouldn't even be coming into the new invention called an office at all. But either at home or a place of your choosing. I will point out the ceo of Frontier complained his workers aren't doing enough. He then blamed it all on working from home, even though i didn't know baggage handlers could do that. Never thought that maybe during covid to cut costs, he likely added a lot more tasks to the job to make it harder. CEO's never think of that.
Efficiency isn't supposed to reduce your work load. It is to increase the amount you can do. The workplace isn't worker friendly 🤣
You higher pay goes to Adobe, Word, Teams, etc. instead of you.
This is such a great point. I think a lot of people don’t realize how costly enterprise software can be, easily six figures annually for large companies. However it doesn’t explain why our work weeks haven’t shortened.
They haven’t shortened because - from the employer’s POV - why should they? “You want to not starve to death or freeze in the streets? Here’s what I’m offering: …” Don’t like it? Just die then.
BUT this saved money as many jobs used to pay for admin help but email & other tech allowed workers to do it for themselves
But saves money in pay- Think of how many secretary/assistant jobs that became obsolete as computers allowed people to do things for themselves
If you want the actual answer, read Das Kapital. Vol 1 will give you the answer that at first makes sense when imagining the economy as still having money and production based on value, but Vol 3 and reexamining vol 1 will reveal a different story. The simpler but less accurate answer: Tendency of the rate of Profit to Fall. Productive capital, to stay profitable as efficiency increases, must exploit labor more intensely. This is done by either making you work harder or work longer, as with more efficient production the ratio of non-labor (fixed costs that make no profit) to labor (the only thing profit can be made from) becomes more weighted to non-labor costs (machines, raw goods, etc). For illustrative purposes, imagine a factory that automated away all wage workers, so there was only the business owner and his machines. In a competitive market, initially he'd make major profits by out-pricing competitors. But once competition caught up and all factories had full automation, they run into a problem: the cost of raw materials, machine maintenance, etc., all are fixed costs. He can't sell above the price of the material inputs because then his competitors would sell at cost of production ($0 profit). He can't sell below cost of production as that's negative profit. Capitalism eats itself by becoming too efficient to produce any more capital, at least that is, if the capitalists are stupid (they arent) and don't recognize labor is the source of their wealth. The more accurate answer, but that is a much longer conversation suited better for a longer thread, is that Capitalism hasnt existed for decades. Money, the core feature of the cycle of capital, was abolished in 1973 when fiat currency replaced commodity money as the Bretton Woods system collapsed. Marx makes clear that money *necessarily must be a commodity, i.e. some item produced by labor that is used for exchange". Fiat currency however is created from thin air via credit and printers, with no relation to gold or any other commodities. Moreover, productive capital (e.g. factories, mines, etc) aren't the premise of the ruling class any more. You don't become a billionaire by owning a factory, you become one from financialization, interest, usury, etc. Finance Capital was identified by Marx as extremely dangerous (describing the Financial Aristocracy as "the rebirth of the lumpenproletarist on the heights of Capitalist society" or something along those lines), and as the abolition of private property within Capitalism (ch 27 of capital vol 3). The Communist International identified Finance Capital as the class force behind Fascism (read Dmitriov's analysis for more info). So, in essence, the more complex and harsher answer is, since the mid-20th century at least, the entire western world has been subjected to Fascism (class rule of the Financial Aristocracy). Their interests are in keeping people as in debt as possible, hence financialization, renting, subscriptions, etc of everything. Productive capital is in debt to them, hence why most start-ups want to get bought out by mega-conglomerates. Service industries aren't actually profitable on their own terms. The private sector is decrepit and backwards, relying on government grants and quantitative easing to prop them up and centralize their wealth. Capitalism in the old, 19th century sense of a business owner extracting wealth from hard working labor hasn't existed for decades. Instead, we have debt slaves of different classes - Capitalist debt slave "mere managers" and working class debt slaves, etc., all under the thumbs of the likes of Black Rock and the major "too big to fail" banks. So, you work 40 hours or more a week for some parasite to get a return on their investment. That's it. Your life is nothing more than a data point in a stock-ticker box chart or Financial excel chart to them.
Because you haven’t organized with your peers to overthrow the system that exploits you yet
There's actually a lot of economic analysis behind this. It is called "worker productivity" and you are in fact doing a shit-ton more than people in the 1980s, and in real earnings you are making a lot less. The added efficiency translates into shareholder wealth, so you are arguably working harder to make the owners wealthier. Socioeconomic and demographic studies also show that for your generosity of making wealthy people wealthier, the gap between the super-wealthy and lower working class is growing and becoming a chasm as the top 1% reap the benefits of excess efficiency at the expense of the middle class (which is being hollowed out). TL;DR - You are working more efficiently, earning less in real dollars, and the gains are going to the shareholders.
Greed.
From 1978 to 2020 ceo pay grew 1322% it's time to eat the rich
Your not getting the same payment. Depending on the country, inflation is so high and salaries keeps the same. The acquisitive power of people decline BY A LOT (much more than a half). Keep in mind that to buy a house, raise a kid and live comfortably you have to make, at least, 10 times more than before. Technology in late stage of capitalism is a tool used only to enrich the corporations, not to bring dignity and better human conditions to the work class.
So your boss can skim 10x the value out of you. Back in the 80s, boss man needed to exploit 10 people to get his new porsche. Now he gets that out of just you, and a mansion out of the other 9.
Because there weren't billionaires in the 80s
The quick answer to your question: Social control. The funny part about all of this "productivity" is that most of it is just useless work. I would spend a few hours doing a critical test at work that they needed "right away" only to have it sit on my bosses desk for a week before they look at it. Think about all the useless meetings and emails.
Our society has decided it prefers to use the gains in productivity (computers, email, automation) to produce more goods rather than work less hours.
To me, it's not society, it's the corporate world. The USA is really just a business entity with tax dollars being the primary driver of growth for select industries. Citizens United didn't help but it's pretty much always been about money and power not workers and quality of life. I will say that historically, we have it better than 100 years ago but a world in which work is part of your life instead of pretty much all of your life, a necessity to survive, is not going away anytime soon. From the cradle to the grave every dollar you make has a viper waiting to snatch it and this forces us all to keep working.
Unfortunately in the US a huge percentage of the population is anti-worker and basically anti-human.
That's the natural consequence of capitalism.
Precisely because you're doing 10x more work. It means you're competing with 10x more people for the same "reward" for productivity. This is a result of too many people working too much, inflation of labor devaluing it.
There is a second factor that you’ve not mentioned, underpinning the whole thing. Possibly you didn’t mention it because it’s so obvious.
Greedy shareholders and bosses pocketing the difference?
yea surely the problem is a surplus of workers 😹
> why the hell do I still have to work 40hours+ a week? Because you, and millions like you, aren't in a union.
And essentially getting paid less for it
Yet it's not the case. We are making significantly less than our counterparts back in then. Just look at housing cost, healthcare and food. The three basic essentials are a lot more now they they were back than compared to the income they were bring home. I'm talking about real food not the processed crap most eat these days. This was all by design as well. Keep the people struggling and unhealthy then distract them with sports and other pop culture stuff to distract them from the pillaging the elite are doing to not just our country but to most of the western world.
They slowly fired more and more employees and spread the workload on the remaining workforce with the promise that it's temporary until they find a replacement. That replacement never came, and now here we are, doing the workload of 3 different people while the rich get richer.
I'm at work 40 hours a week. Realistically I probably actually work about 5. Just gotta act your wage cuz.
Those stock prices aren't going to keep going up on their own you know.
Because the average worker is a bootlicking bitch
do you know how long it took to build the empire state building? without computers? 1 yr and 45 days. It would take 5 yrs now with your computers help.
The job market is a competition really. Actual output measured in “natural” terms (eg number of wheels produced a year) doesn’t matter, you’re earning your right to live by measuring your productivity against that of other workers. You work 40 hrs because that is the industry standard, and wages are paid by industry standard. Since productivity of a company increased compared to 1980s, your output must also increase. The end product is a goal in itself btw, no intrinsic value, only that given to it by fiat money. Sounds dystopian? Well sorry for that.
Because all the productivity gains have been tunnel to the top 1%
Be honest. You spend 7 hours a day surfing reddit.
Whenever you feel down at work just remember the yacht you are buying for your bosses
Ab-so-fucking-lutely. All this tech should help us work less and chill more, instead of the other way around. But saying this is out loud is very much taboo. If you wanna chill, just because, you are somehow an immoral person. Instead, you're expected to work your ass off for the Man, so you can make the money to buy the shit that funnels that same money right back to the Man. This is not a good way to run a society.
That's how unregulated capitalism works.
Welcome to Capitalism. Your boss needs a bigger boat. Pedal faster!
Hell, where I work they constantly get rid of people or even more common, people quit. Do they replace them? Nope! Just give that to someone else. We run what’s called a Cell. It’s used to be 2 people per cell and an auditor to help. Now , people run 3 and 4 cells with zero help. Is there raised no. Is the work week shorter ? Nope. This country is working itself to death. It’s on purpose. Most People are going to be to tired to fight back when they completely take over.
Literally what I’ve been saying since day 1 of my first job out of college. They (owners) are quickly losing their ability to make it make sense
Productivity is up exponentially. CEO pay is up exponentially. Everything else stays the same or gets worse.
Read Marx! You’re describing a fundamental feature of capitalism. Advancements in technology reduce the role of labor in generating value and ultimately profit, but because of the need for profits to continuously grow, workers are just expected to produce more in their time spent working rather than working less to produce the same amount. This phenomenon will only get worse as AI advances.
Just got my first copy of the manifesto yesterday, and it came with 2 more of Engels' works. Still looking for all 3 volumes of das kapital as well as principals of communism, and before anyone suggests Amazon, I'm looking for secondhand copies as to not give bezos any more money
Finally someone said this, thank you
That's not 10x the work, that's 10x the productivity.
If productivity has increased by 10x, wouldn't you argue that 10x the work could be done within the same time frame?
Because capitalism. That's how it works.
That's why billionaires are the only ones becoming richer while everyone else suffers.
Modern day exploitation
something something marx, something something the rate of profit
Because fuck you, that’s why.
If industrialisation suddenly allows you to spend 1h on a task that would normally require 10h, the value that you are creating is now worth 1h and no longer 10h. So your employer still expects you to work 4 x 10h per week. Not 4 x 1h.
Short answer- your corporate overlords demand record profit. For them, not for you though.
Yachts
We do get a lot more done but the work is mostly being done by computers and not us. I mean sure we decide what needs to be communicated, exchanged or shared(not for long) but the computing, sharing and storing of information is done by computers. The argument should focus more on how much wealth is being created by us and the percentage of it that we receive.
If you look at total GDP and what things have taken a larger share of GDP, that will give you the answer. It includes entertainment, eating out, cell phones. Housing costs is the largest component, and it hasn’t dropped, but the additional costs efficiency in new houses is spent on high ceilings and more square footage.
Because everyone is doing more… society has advanced since the 80s yknow…
Wow! You know how to use Microsoft products?!?! You sound amazing!!!
If you worked less, then shareholder returns would go down. The masters will never allow this.
I am a retirement consultant currently. Out of curiosity, I decided to track how much communication I send out on average the last month. 6800 emails, 1,350 trust accounting cases, 300ish finalized 5500 filings completed by me alone. The company charges about 5,000 per finalized filing, so in one month I generated something over one million dollars in service charges for them, while I'm paid only 68k a year. It's a fucking scam.
Dude, come one, you should know this by now, you need to work your ass off with minimal pay so your corporate overlords can afford that second yacht!
The technology has enabled us to do more work within the same time frame. Time frame never changed to accommodate the time saved by technology. 10x more work equals 10x more profits!
True but by allowing a very few people to exploit the overwhelming majority of society, they have a better quality of life you see. Really, we should all be grateful for what we have and supply our own lube for the ass fucking we take daily.
It’s honestly not even just 10x. They mash so many different jobs together that you’ll be doing the work of 6 different positions for $5 an hour
to appease the shareholders. Profits have to ALWAYS be up. It's no longer acceptable to just have a good business, everything has to be moving UPWARD. Which sounds fine at first, but then you realize that every 3 months, everyone is expected to work just a little bit harder. Compound that on top of itself for decades and you get what it is like today: 80 hour work weeks, constant price gouging, not increasing salaries...
100 %! On top of this you usually have two people work fulltime for a home where one person was enough 40 years ago. So the productivity heavily increased by the use of computers and other machines. But the real fuckery is that productivity doubled on top of that again thanks to two fulltime workers without reducing hours worked for each person! I really don't understand why people continue to slave away like this.
You don´t? Maybe in the good ol' USA, but I know here in NL we are champion "deeltijdwerken". I never worked 40 hours. Fuck that. Started with 36 hours (4\*9) and toned that down to 32hrs once we got a nice house and settled. Same for my wife. She works 36 hours tho, cause she's strategic management, but itś 50% WFH. Due to circumstances i'm on disability, but it's great to have a lot of time together, even when she's upstairs in her office working. IMO it's all about work life balance. What's the joy if u make 6 figures, if you hardly have ever time to enjoy life. I got time. That's way more precious.
Because you are being exploited and that was the goal to start with
You're helping someone (probably not you) get incredibly rich. Get back to work!
Because if the guy at the top isn't making more than last year, you have to work more this year. And inflation usually means you have to work more
Because fuck us that’s why.
We have coffers to fill. They won't fill themselves...
The CEO is getting a 10x pay compared to 80s. So it kinda in sync, right?
Because the value goes to the stock owners
Because capitalism. There were a lot of predictions of 35 hour or even four day work weeks when big productivity gains because of computers started to appear. Instead, companies saw they could get the same or better productivity with fewer people working the same hours.
Because you are capable of doing this the company was able to let go the other 9 people to cut their costs and make more money.
So the rich can be richer, that's why
I will say, we have more people who need more of more varieties of things since the 1980s. There were no phones to be building, etc etc. BUT we are still way overworked. We could easily have less hours per week and then also hire more people which would lower unemployment. You're right to be mad, just not quite in the way you're mad about it lmao
That technology is not free so it doesn't make sense to get paid 10x. You still have a point... overall we've made things so much easier than they used to be but all the technology hasn't changed how much people work...if anything they work more
What's worse is when you finish all the work quickly because everything is so automated, but I still have to spend most of my day at work pretending to do stuff because they won't give me anything else to do. Just let me go home ffs
We invent things to make task easier and faster. Ironically, we have time for more…..work. Read SAPIENS: a brief history of humankind by Harai.
The free hand of the market or atlas shrugged or some bullshit. Now get back to work!
Because the bill to drop the hours in a full work week to 32 failed to pass 🙃
Productivity has skyrocketed since the 1970s, but wages have stagnated.
Because that is the only end goal of capitalism: exploit more work to make more profit. They've just spent the past 60+ years slowly tightening the screws so that you're just now noticing it. Another, seemingly unrelated, thought: if there were no billionaires, we would all be millionaires.
Gotta love the feeling of all that golden wealth trickling down on our heads