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OT - the future of work?

What ever happened to the idea of a 4 day, 32 hour work week?
As we became more efficient the idea was that there would more free time to enjoy life.
We started with 7 10 or 12s, Then 6 days (some said working on Sunday not allowed). Then 5 8s and overtime past 40.
Now the gig economy which for some is back to 7 10s and 12s. For many others 50 hour weeks are the break even point.
Progress?
Anyone work what is called the alternate work schedule in a union shop?
Bob

I've long said that we've been had by rosy sounding predictions by futurists. I still remember we were going to have the 4 day/ 32 hour work week, extensive vacation time, and even flying cars.

Instead we have people working 50 plus hours for 40 hour wages, and even the "off time" of many is invaded by bosses reaching out via modern communications.

IMO what happened was that we took the bait and allowed changes at all levels that we would have otherwise fought without the enticing visions of the future constantly paraded before us. If you think back most of us accepted things as "temporary" sacrifices that would to the wonderful new age.
 
I've long said that we've been had by rosy sounding predictions by futurists. I still remember we were going to have the 4 day/ 32 hour work week, extensive vacation time, and even flying cars.

Instead we have people working 50 plus hours for 40 hour wages, and even the "off time" of many is invaded by bosses reaching out via modern communications.

IMO what happened was that we took the bait and allowed changes at all levels that we would have otherwise fought without the enticing visions of the future constantly paraded before us. If you think back most of us accepted things as "temporary" sacrifices that would to the wonderful new age.

Well said. A few jobs ago I was answering emails/calls/texts anywhere form 5am to 8pm. After a while I was thinking screw this, I didn't sigh up for a salary job so I could 20 hours of overtime unpaid So I started shutting my phone off at 5pm and not turning it back on until 8am.
 
I've long said that we've been had by rosy sounding predictions by futurists. I still remember we were going to have the 4 day/ 32 hour work week, extensive vacation time, and even flying cars.

Instead we have people working 50 plus hours for 40 hour wages, and even the "off time" of many is invaded by bosses reaching out via modern communications.

IMO what happened was that we took the bait and allowed changes at all levels that we would have otherwise fought without the enticing visions of the future constantly paraded before us. If you think back most of us accepted things as "temporary" sacrifices that would to the wonderful new age.

Yes, absolutely correct

changes like allowing the destruction of unions

allowing the erosion of the minimum wage

allowing junk bond kings to buy corporations for their pensions and steal them

voting republican



yup, lots of changes
 
Yet "people's republic" is usually a shot at problematic places run by democrats...

The line I heard yesterday "two wings of the same dead bird".... Probably applies to most political systems actually, for reasons related to human nature and evolution....
 
I've long said that we've been had by rosy sounding predictions by futurists. I still remember we were going to have the 4 day/ 32 hour work week, extensive vacation time, and even flying cars.

There is an ugly transition between full labor and full (or almost full) automation. In most cases it's more efficient to train in and manage one person full time than two people half time, so if there's enough work for everyone 20 hours a week, that means half of the people work full time and the other half go unemployed. Labor force participation is the lowest it's been since the 70's. That means more people "free from work", but also free from getting paid. The law of supply and demand applies to labor, which means that increased automation results in lower pay for those laborers who still have a job.
 
Lots of papers about this, and in the before time (pre covid) there were odd bits - women's labor force participation was very high (but kind of topped out), while large groups of men our political-economy and society has failed to develop and integrate are just "hanging out".

The automation effect is usually an hour-glass split - you have automation *skills*? Likely jobs moving forward for a very long time. You have manual skills of highly reptitive nature - automation took that job away. You have special one-off skills at things automation cannot do or at least cannot be set up for yet? You have a job too, at least for a while.

The net effect is some number of perfectly respectable people are disemployed, often through no fault of their own. In *time* the growing economy generally finds work or other decent life roles for such people. But in the short term, things can be grim.
 
The ugly transition comes when the unemployed/underemployed/gig economy /single parent cant work exceed the numbers of those who have significant assets/means/income........and they demand a "living wage",not the dole they can barely get by on,but enough money to enjoy themselves.....In the US ,I have just seen a very clever short circuit on this circumstance by making the "trailer trash" think they have some critical part to play in the "fight for freedom" and keeping their cherished gun rights.Turning one group against another.Very old principle.Proven to work.
 
There is an ugly transition between full labor and full (or almost full) automation. In most cases it's more efficient to train in and manage one person full time than two people half time, so if there's enough work for everyone 20 hours a week, that means half of the people work full time and the other half go unemployed. Labor force participation is the lowest it's been since the 70's. That means more people "free from work", but also free from getting paid. The law of supply and demand applies to labor, which means that increased automation results in lower pay for those laborers who still have a job.

Please don't slap me for saying so but somehow a country like Denmark seems to be able to produce products efficiently and still have an economy that seems to serve most of it's citizens.

There are several Danish products to be found at our humble urban homestead and they were all high quality yet reasonably priced. IMO the major issue is greed, with CEOs and other top executives of U.S. corporations making obscene salaries while in many cases their workers struggle on wages that don't keep pace with the cost of living.
 
What ever happened to the idea of a 4 day, 32 hour work week?
As we became more efficient the idea was that there would more free time to enjoy life.

The places I know that did that only did it instead of laying off 20%+ of the workforce.
 
Please don't slap me for saying so but somehow a country like Denmark seems to be able to produce products efficiently and still have an economy that seems to serve most of it's citizens.

There are several Danish products to be found at our humble urban homestead and they were all high quality yet reasonably priced. IMO the major issue is greed, with CEOs and other top executives of U.S. corporations making obscene salaries while in many cases their workers struggle on wages that don't keep pace with the cost of living.

You answered your own question. Last Mega corp I worked for the ceo had a salary of 1million + AND stock options totaling around 11 million. This was probably back in 2015 or so too. Now I get sotcks aren't the same as cash, but still, that a whole lotta compensation, and surely add in bonuses, free worldwide travel and meals, etc...
 
Hunter-gatherers apparently worked maybe 15-20 hours a week hunting and gathering -- especially if located in a favorable environment. Fairly egalitarian, but with leaders selected for skill. They apparently spent the rest of the week making love, playing with the kids -- moving to better pickings as needed?

The beginnings of large scale agriculture -- with huge tracts of land and elaborate water works (think Euphrates, Nile, rice paddies, Incas, Aztecs, etc. -- was the beginning of the end for that according to historians like Wittfogel. Thousands were needed to work the land and maintain ditches, paddies, etc. So we had autocratic rulers, relying upon some combination of despotic terror and claims of divinity to keep people in line. Much longer work weeks, far less freedom, as that story goes.

Feudal societies had a hierarchy, with agricultural workers near the bottom - but some protections.

The invention of capitalism meant that you didn't have to be a King, Queen, or Pope to fund some monumental work or voyage of plunder and discovery. The merely rich could pool their resources - as for example the East India Company in the run up to 1776.

By and large, being able to pool capital and take on larger projects helped lift lots of the world out of poverty - the US especially up to maybe 1970 or so. Seems (to me) that's about when financial interests started carving an ever-larger part of our economy out for themselves.

The explosive GDP growth of the last couple centuries has also been fueled with fossil fuels. There are at least three reasons to think this won't continue for another hundred years: finite resources; rising costs (and wars) to secure them; and climate/environmental effects. Seems to me we have a choice of either a somewhat smooth or a very rough transition to alternative energy sources - with a full range of options from partial collapse to more or less incremental progress.

The point in all this is that it seems that the technology now exists to go back to a sort of high tech hunter-gatherer economy in some industries -- where smaller firms compete on equal footing with larger ones. Many of the overheads (billing, accounting,etc.) could be automated, leaving the core work and innovation to clusters of smaller firms. Germany's world-leading mid-sized tech companies are part way there.

The running joke at PM seems to be that someone thinking of opening up a small shop might do better with a hot dog stand. The latter is an example of a sort of distributed hunter-gatherer business model that might do reasonably well. These days, an owner might even have an app for customers to call ahead.

The fly in the ointment seems to be that the tech is currently doing more to support aggregators rather than producers.

Instead of people having their own websites for friends/family/customers to visit - we have Facebook. It's the Ubers, Lyfts, AirBnB's, Amazons etc. that allow one man bands to thrive - but also take much of the profits for themselves.

Manufacturing seems sort of stuck. Jobs in old line manufacturing (say, autos, consumer electronics) are being squeezed out or shipped out to lowest cost producers. There's still room for small shops serving the fringes; but not so many of them. The Manufacturing.coms trying to be aggregators haven't really caught on.

Not sure where all this leads . . . Greater opportunities for relatively small and nimble manufacturing companies? High tech aggregators replacing financial firms as those skimming money off the top? A turn backs towards quality / repairable products -- with more jobs for local businesses? Continued production of throw-away products -- with those being made at the lowest automated cost?
 
LMAO-ROFL!

No, I haven't been mind controlled by "that guy" either.

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Schweige Schwein Hund! Oder ich werde das Bild der rosa Panzies, die Sie in Ihrem Wintergarten anbauen, in sehr großem Format veröffentlichen !!!
 
You answered your own question. Last Mega corp I worked for the ceo had a salary of 1million + AND stock options totaling around 11 million. This was probably back in 2015 or so too. Now I get sotcks aren't the same as cash, but still, that a whole lotta compensation, and surely add in bonuses, free worldwide travel and meals, etc...

And right below the CEO there are plenty of other execs drawing huge compensation. The worst I ever saw was a small startup funded by venture capital that had four VPs. I think the whole place only had a dozen people including contractors.
 
If someone invents tabletop fusion, is Henry Ford, AG Bell, fine, whatever you want.

But once you are hired to do a job, you are not due some kind of enormous compensation

Certainly there is a skill set among good CEOs that is rarer then broom pushers or engineers, but they are not that much more important.


My personal opinion is that it is fairly simple. When you have no skin in the game[like any stock ownership under 10 years] after a certain point the corporation cannot write off your salary.

Eventually it becomes increasingly difficult to justify that tax bill
 
It seems we are not the only ones thinking about The Future of Work.

The World Economic Forum has published a paper called "Resetting the Future of Work Agenda – in a Post-Covid World".

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_NES_Resetting_FOW_Agenda_2020.pdf

Among the highlights:

An accelerated transition to digital/virtual work.

Increasing automation of tasks.

An accelerated restructuring of organizations.

A temporary workforce reduction of almost 30%.

A permanent workforce reduction of over 10%.​

The time frame is ten years and this is expected to be completed by 2030.

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.o...30 Agenda for Sustainable Development web.pdf
 
It seems we are not the only ones thinking about The Future of Work.

The World Economic Forum has published a paper called "Resetting the Future of Work Agenda – in a Post-Covid World".

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_NES_Resetting_FOW_Agenda_2020.pdf

Among the highlights:

An accelerated transition to digital/virtual work.

Increasing automation of tasks.

An accelerated restructuring of organizations.

A temporary workforce reduction of almost 30%.

A permanent workforce reduction of over 10%.​

The time frame is ten years and this is expected to be completed by 2030.

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.o...30 Agenda for Sustainable Development web.pdf

Does this include euthanasia for every one "over 75"....?

Now where have I heard that recently ?
 
It seems we are not the only ones thinking about The Future of Work.

The World Economic Forum has published a paper called "Resetting the Future of Work Agenda – in a Post-Covid World".

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_NES_Resetting_FOW_Agenda_2020.pdf

Among the highlights:

An accelerated transition to digital/virtual work.

Increasing automation of tasks.

An accelerated restructuring of organizations.

A temporary workforce reduction of almost 30%.

A permanent workforce reduction of over 10%.​

The time frame is ten years and this is expected to be completed by 2030.

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.o... Agenda for Sustainable Developmen t web.pdf
The Klaus Schwab Is a piece of work, straight out of a bond movie. Zer Great Reset!

 








 
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