I love how in every topic about WFH there’s some dudebro going on about the economy suffering due to supposed lessened productivity and I’m like… Why should I care?
I love the abstract “productivity”.
Like yo, cancer is incredibly productive.
Demolishing subsistence farms and replacing them with cash crop slave plantations is mad profitable.
I could make thousands of dollars in a day if I just sold everything I own.
Our metrics of economic growth revolve around basically doing all of the above, to varying degrees of figurative vs. literal-ness.
This reminded me of an old joke:
Two economists are walking down the street with their friend when they come across a fresh, streaming pile of dog shit. The first economist jokingly tells the other “I’ll give you a million dollars if you eat that pile of dog shit”. To his surprise, the second economist grabs it off the ground and eats it without hesitation. A deal is a deal so the first economist hands over a million dollars.
A few minutes later they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist, wanting to give his peer a taste of his own medicine, says he’ll give the first economist a million dollars if he eats it. The first economist agrees and does so, winning him a million dollars.
Their friend, rather confused, asks what the point of all this was, the first economist gave the second economist a million dollars, and then the second economist gave it right back. All they’ve accomplished is to eat two piles of shit.
The two economists look rather taken aback. “Well sure,” they say, “but we’ve grown the economy by two million dollars!”
The story is interesting but not very lifelike. The first economist would be much richer than the first, if they were OK with spending that much money on humiliating someone else. The likelihood that the second economist would accept the same deal is impossible in my mind. That amount of money is just humiliation money to them, not really worth it.
That’s not how productivity works. It’s basically looking at how much a person can produce with a given amount of labor.
Take that small scale subsistence farmer. Individually, they will live a precarious life. Their country will not have the surplus food needed for other pursuits like building cities, engaging in R&D, developing science, and so on. A smaller and smaller number of people need to be able to feed more and more using less land per person.
Manually copied manuscripts are another example. They were painstakingly copied over by hand in an incredibly low productivity manner. The introduction of the printing press essentially eliminated an art form, but gave rise to practical mass media.
In the present day, computers have been the main form of productivity booster. While arguably social media is a drag on productivity, overall computers open up a broad range of possibilities.
Like yo, cancer is incredibly productive.
Cancer is incredibly costly to society. Think about it, a single person getting cancer could mean many hours of them being in the hospital. Net zero on productivity
Demolishing subsistence farms and replacing them with cash crop slave plantations is mad profitable.
As I detailed above, transitioning from unproductive farms to highly productive farms is necessary. Don’t believe me, ask Mao.
I could make thousands of dollars in a day if I just sold everything I own.
That would not be a productive activity since there would be no value added. Arguably there would be less value, since that stuff is likely worth more to you than it is to another person.
The problem in the US is that increasing productivity among individuals is not scaling evenly with increasing benefits for individuals. So despite the success of large scale agriculture or the efficiency offered by computers, it feels like “productivity for productivity’s sake” at best or “productivity for the wealthiest individuals’ sake” at worst. It is not productive for me to work harder at my job because it does not translate to any tangible benefit for me, my family, or my community. To me, this is what makes “productivity” feel like an abstract concept.
Like yo, cancer is incredibly productive.
Cancer is incredibly costly to society. Think about it, a single person getting cancer could mean many hours of them being in the hospital. Net zero on productivity
Bro, how could you misunderstand so badly. Cancer is literally uncontrolled cell production in the body. Cancer is highly productive (in the body) but obviously not a good thing to have in your body.
People have been told their entire lives that the GDP of their nation matters without ever considering what it actually represents, or how it actually went up.
Great, number go up, but why and who actually benefitted.
Excuse the week-old reply but
People have been told their entire lives that the GDP of their nation matters without ever considering what it actually represents, or how it actually went up.
You got a poor, poor education if you were never taught why the GDP matters, or what it represents.
You should care because that profit should be going to the workers who create the value. It doesn’t go to the workers, so you should continue not caring about productivity. Damn the man.
Workers aren’t the only factor the creates value. Capital and land also add value. Why would people use them otherwise?
That being said, the workers are jointly responsible for their actions in production while capital is merely an instrument of their will and cannot be responsible for anything. Workers are denied the positive and negative results of their actions, so we should not care
Oh no! We got so wrapped up thinking about general human well-being, we forgot about productivity!
But for real, if the economy isn’t for people then wtf is it for?
I prefer co-op games like the James Webb telescope. Thanks ESA for a perfect launch.
I’m a simple man, I see actual accomplishments of mankind being mentioned and I upvote.
Line go up is for smooth brained animals.
Rocket go up is for true gentlemen.
There’s no Americans bragging about that. Corporations and the government, sure. The rest of us are to busy living in pain
Some years ago I were in US on vacation and a Cadillac commercial said you shouldn’t buy cars made by lazy people wo have 4 weeks vacation every year, instead you should buy an American car.
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Most Americans have no clue what the rest of the world is like.
Most Americans don’t even understand the progressive income tax system we have, they will go so far as to decline raises because it’ll put them in a higher bracket and they think that will mean less take home pay. It doesn’t! You should always take a raise!
I believe I’ll someday move to a country that has good policies for everything from healthcare, to work life balance, and social safety nets, and I’ll never have to deal with the American nightmare again.
There’s actually a tricky spot for folks who get certain social services which are tied to income. A small raise can bump you out of eligibility for things like medicaid and food stamps, and thus can in fact result in higher expenses, less money in your pocket, and a lower quality of life.
To be fair, the rest of the world isn’t easily accessible for most Americans
Education is broken because on purpose
I thought the same things as you, and I actually did it for about a year. I moved to Sweden, got a job, lived with relatives, and experience life as a normal resident there… And all the rose colored glasses I had faded away. Turns out, that place is nothing more than a meme. It is hyped up by people who never been there or by people who have never been to the US. The US has its problems, but so does Sweden, and in my case Sweden had to many problems for me to stick around for longer so I moved back. That experience really put things in perspective for me, and I would recommend you try it if you get the opportunity.
Actually the media in Germany is starting to push that narrative, maybe to get us to focus more on work and less on enjoying our lifes
God please let me move to Europe I don’t even care what language I have to learn I just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
God I miss that comment chain on r/ich_iel! Made my day for real, even though I don’t speak an inch of German.
If you work in academia, you don’t need to learn a new language. English is the working language. Also the 5 weeks of holiday is nice, but what really helps is the working day.
I started as a bioinformatician a month ago. I come in to the office at 0830 have coffee from 09:00 til 09:45 with my boss and colleagues, work a bit, have lunch from 12:00 untill 13:15, work a bit, go home at 15:30. That’s my day.
Work in IT.
Start at 9:00
Lunch 13:00-14:00
Go home at 18:00
Commute (if construction does not tear up the main crossing) is around 30min 1-way with bus or a 15-20min bicycle ride.
Experience: About 5 years without college/uni.
I think IT might not be as easy as you think. Academia is a bit more open.
IT isn’t quite high skilled enough to get in. They’d almost certainly need an employer to say they couldn’t find a European to do the job, which is exceedingly unlikely.
Work in IT. Start at 9:00 Lunch 13:00-14:00 Go home at 18:00
IT Job I left:
- start at 8
- coffee 10-1030-ish (sometimes like 11)
- lunch at 12-13
- second coffee 15-1530
- leave at 1647, home by 1720 by train – tools down, muthafuckas
- voluntary standby for 1/4 time and immediate double-time for callouts, sanctity of personal time otherwise.
- union, 9x9 work term, no abrupt firings.
- EXACTLY on the median base salary for my job+region, which includes dot-coms.
- in north america, no less.
Experience: About 5 years without college/uni.
Experience: my soul.
Maybe you don’t need the language for work. But you will need te learn the language eventually for other day to day interactions.
Seven hour day with an hour and fifteen minute lunch. What kind of magic is this? What’s the catch?
Those are summer hours. In the rest of the year I’ll be expected to work an additional 45 minutes. Officially we only get 30 minutes for lunch, but no-one cares. When our contact in admin is in we keep it to 45 minutes.
just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
If you avoid the flatlander areas, Canada may be for you. We also speak English; just, without the accent. :-P
(unless you live on the island that’s an hour’s ferry from France)
Speaking a language without an accent is like wearing clothes without a material
Idk I’m from the central US and I had a German foreign exchange student tell me we didn’t have a mimicable accent. I know it’s not true but it was interesting to hear that from someone who’s familiar with everyone around her speaking in a completely different way, even when using English.
Europe, or at least Sweden, unironically sucks ass. You won’t believe me so you have to go see it to believe it, but that place is beyond overhyped. After having been there for a good amount of time, I’m starting to understand that life is actually better in the US. Sweden is only better in very niche situations.
Sweden has an extremely shitty healthcare. I mean yeah it is free, but the quality is just not good. My relatives and I have had a lot of issues where the doctors would just straight up refuse to run tests or provide treatment no matter how much in pain you are… And that’s if they even see you. For example my grandfather was urinating blood and was in severe pain, but the doctors literally told him he was fine and sent him home… Only for him to be rushed back to the hospital the same day… Before being sent back again… Before being sent back again and finally having one of the doctors decide to actually diagnose what the issue was. My uncles have similar stories that they keep telling me. America has a very flawed healthcare system, but it’s not that bad.
The salaries are very, very low and the taxes are insanely high. I work in tech. A senior developer with 10+ years of experience there would make around $60,000 to $70,000 before taxes and that’s considered really good. After taxes, they get to keep about half of that (I’m not making this up, it’s literally half). I’m currently a junior dev here in the US and have only worked for 1 year and I already make more money than that. Not only do I make more money but I pay less taxes and deductions too. So even when we take into account health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, 401k contributions, and other shit like this, I still pay less than what Sweden takes in taxes. Basically professionals in Sweden get fucked over and their lives are not that different than minimum wage workers (Sweden doesn’t really have a minimum wage but you get the idea).
The weather is pretty shitty. It’s freezing cold most of the year and in the 4 months where the country isn’t a freezer, it keeps raining nonstop. But what’s more annoying than the weather is the location of the country, it’s too far up north. In the summer the sun doesn’t set and so it’s completely bright in the middle of the night. You go outside at 2 am and it’s like going out at 6 pm here in most of the US. It really fucks with your sleep cycle. In the winter, it’s the opposite problem where it’s dark all day every day for about 3-4 months. It’s perpetual night basically. You still have to go to work, buy groceries, and do everything you need to do while it’s freezing and dark. I found it too depressing to bear.
The immigration there is horrendous. Immigrants are everywhere and the vast majority of them aren’t assimilated. Not only are they not, but they refuse to. The immigrants don’t want to embrace Swedish culture, language, and values and are instead actively against them… Which is wild to me because I’m a first gen immigrant and I consider myself American. So do most immigrants here. Most immigrants in the US want to work, speak English, and try their shot at the American dream. The US really sells the ideas of cultural hegamony and the melting pot well. You can still keep in touch with your roots, but you’re American first. Not there. In Sweden the immigrants live in bubbles that are in line with their home countries. For example, if you go to Södertälje, it’s like going to Syria. Women are afraid to wear revealing clothes, crime is really high, they’re extremely racist towards native Swedes and other ethnicities they don’t like at home, you can’t criticize islam in public or else your safety is at risk, and they’re against Swedish values of tolerance, freedom, and equality. Also a huge chunk of immigrants don’t work and don’t want to work, they just leech off of government benefits and they want to keep it that way. I had people tell me of the different schemes and loopholes they use to extract as much money from the government as possible, it’s just sad. The thing is that virtually all the ethnic communities I interacted with were like this and it doesn’t matter if they’re old or young or whether or not they’re first/second/third generation immigrants. There’s clear tension, segregation, resentment, and hate between Swedes, immigrants, and the different immigrant communities. Things are getting worse, but everybody is too scared of talking about it because they don’t want to be branded as racist, and so nothing ever happens. Everybody pretends things are just dandy when they’re not.
Swedes in general, immigrant or not, are very ignorant yet very proud. We tend to think Americans are arrogant and ignorant, but it’s true there too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who are genuinely shocked that I didn’t have any college debt but still ended up with a degree. They unironically think they live in a borderline utopia and that America is basically the same as Afghanistan. They don’t comprehend that the US is a first world country and they’re not open to learning from other countries. They’re close minded outside of their immediate geographic neighborhood.
The markets there are bad, and the products they have are even worse. Common things that you wouldn’t even have on your mind aren’t there. Accent chairs? Nope. Memory foam mattresses? Nope. Upright vacuums? Nope. Bidets? Nope. The thing is that for the things they do have, they’re complete and utter trash. Their clothes are like towels, their beds are like tables, their appliances are like toys, and so on. The products have the same price tags as here, but when you buy it there’s nothing there. Oh, and everything is either domestic or regional. Want to buy an American vacuum and ship it there? Ha, good luck. They have import taxes that are as high as the price of the items and you also have to pay shipping which is also as high as the price of item. So if the vacuum costs $100 here, you would have to pay $300 to import it there. Fucking Walmart has greater variety and better quality than any of the stores there.
Houses there a joke. They’re extremely small and overpriced. Like 70% of the housing there comes in the form of condo complexes (kind of like the projects but nicer) or very small and crowded cookie cutter suburban styled house complexes… The other 30% are standard single family homes, and those are considered the peak of housing there but they’re mostly in rural areas. The thing is that even if you’re a masochist who enjoys living in a box, there are still things that are very annoying like for example, you don’t get to control when your heating comes on, the condo complex does. There’s no dryer, you have to book an appointment to use the complex’s driers. The toilets and sinks in the bathrooms are uncomfortably low. They don’t really have bathtubs there. It’s just not great.
The cities also aren’t that great. The centers of cities are dirty, most of the cities outside the centers are just swaths of strip malls with big parking lots that are segregated from swaths of condo complexes, you have to pay to use the public bathrooms, the drivers don’t give a fuck about pedestrians crossing the streets and will keep going at full speed, and there are sooooooo many smokers.
I know I’m making it seem like it’s all doom and gloom, but Sweden is a nice country. The healthcare is free (not good, but free), it is safe (becoming less and less true, but still safer than the US), guaranteed vacation time, guaranteed maternity/paternity leave, better worker protections, wayyyy better walkability, better public transport overall, Stockholm is fun to visit, the nature is pretty, a lot museums are free, and so on. But I was honestly disappointed. I went there with the idea that Sweden was basically the US but more competent, functional, and human orientated. While that’s true in some aspects, it’s not true in many others. For educated working professionals like myself, the US is much, much better than Sweden. Sweden is only really better if you’re a minimum wage worker or something along those lines, but that’s really about it. Sweden is a good country, but it is beyond overhyped and overrated. Some people have completely delusional views on the country, including myself and many Swedes themselves, and I only started putting things in perspective when I actually went there and experienced life there first hand. I hope this helps.
Nah, man. Stay where you are, we don’t want any 'muricans (assuming you are). Fix what you have instead.
We’d love to fix what we’ve got if that were a reasonable option. For most people, it’s not.
See, politics are so broken here that it’s really just a dick measuring contest to see who can wax the best poetic. And then even when we do get a decent president—because let’s be clear, Biden isn’t a good president—they often cater to corporations long before they even think about making things better for the working people.
At this point, fixing our political system would require either:
- A voting miracle, voting not on party lines but on the actual merits of the candidates, or at least voting for the actual best candidate in the primary of the “least” evil party.
- A revolution, either through ratification of a new constitution or actual war.
Most people in America are too uninformed for number one to be realistic within less than an entire generation. Sure, newer generations are far more informed and are actually changing the voting landscape in some ways, but it’s not going to be enough to change everything while we’ve still got boomers voting for politicians who don’t have their best interests in mind. It will take years, if not decades, to get that far.
Meanwhile, most people don’t want to be involved in a revolution. Even if everything is peaceful (which it likely wouldn’t be), and we’re able to ratify the new constitution without many issues (which there would be a ton of), that still leaves us with a tumultuous period of transition. Not many people would really want to live through that. I admit that most people probably would because there’s not much of a better choice during that transition, but I guarantee there would be a huge spike in emigration from the United States.
Moving to Europe or Canada is just the best option for a lot of Americans who feel they can’t deal anymore with our broken politics, substandard workers’ rights, and/or dwindling human rights for LGBTQ people. My family has tossed the idea around of moving to Canada, since it’s close, or even Germany despite the fact that my husband and partner make decent money. We just can’t keep up sometimes, and as a polyamorous household of three AMAB people, two of whom are married, we’re worried for our rights, too.
For most people, moving to a different country is a fresh start, and the majority of them will do their utmost to make sure they respect the country they come into. There will always be some that don’t, especially when they’re coming from a country like America, but for the most part, all we want is basic rights that other people have and not having to worry about putting food on the table some days.
Edit: commas and grammar
Too bad European countries are following the US footsteps. Finland just ousted their popular prime minister lady with a government of actual ultra right wing nazis, Germany’s AfD is gaining lots of traction and getting crazier with their conspiracy theories about great replacement, Italy is going far right too with their new government. UK and their Brexit night… At least Spain is still not having a far right party in the government, if they can form one.
My family has tossed the idea around of moving to Canada
Come to Canada! It’s 70% awesome and the rest is prairies and Republicans! Lend your income to our tax system and help out my neighbours and my family and also get some healthcare (still recovering from covid, but it’ll mend). Yay!
lower unemployment
Doesn’t matter, I can only have two, maybe three jobs at once so any more than that is irrelevant to me
higher growth
I get the same $8/hr whether the GDP goes up, stays the same or goes down. You can’t leave workers out of the distribution of wealth and then pretend that more wealth is good for workers
But your billionaires get richer more quickly than ours! Isn’t that something to be proud of?
one day I’m gonna be one of those billionaires
I sense people actually believe they’re an easy powerball away from just that.
I don’t understand how the hell people even work jobs that don’t make minimum of $30/hour at least in California and even parts of the East Coast. Like your rent is $1600-$2200. At 0.8*3200 for $ 20/hour with taxes your take home is $2560 for a 40 hour work week. So what are you just not eating that month?
How about healthcare transportation medical 401K literally anything? Pruning of benefits didn’t happen because of corporate greed it happened because people just accepted what they were offered. In the Midwest where apartments might be closer to $700-$900 a month some of this works but on the coasts rent is usually twice that. And a car to get most places is $400 a month with insurance supposing you have the credit.
I work in IT and programming, and Id love to do physical labor and talk to real humans rather than salamanders in silicon valley. But the jobs I see don’t even break $30 an hour. Yet it costed me $27 for ham and cheese and altoids, not even including bread where I live in the bay area. It is fucking expensive.
I feel like America is doing so many things ass backwards greed first. But it’s not like I have the experience of living overseas or in Canada or otherwise so I don’t have much to compare it to, so it’s safer by default to live with the devil you know than the one you don’t.
27$ for ham? How much are we talking about? 500g or 1kg? (about 1 or 2 pounds)? Deli or conveniece?
What people do is pile into apartments. Yeah, to live alone may cost let’s say $2000/month rent. But you can pile 4+ people into a four bedroom apartment that costs $5000, split it four (or more) ways, and they’re paying $1250/month. Some of them have significant others, so then you wind up with two people in one room each paying $625/month. (Just random numbers, but that’s the general idea of it.)
The people I know who do it hate it, but it’s what they can afford while staying in the area they like (and/or were born in, have a community in, etc.).
Do you have a plan to earn more money? Do you plan to learn a trade? Do plan to go college and pick up a degree? Do you have any plans to move up the corporate ladder? How about applying to new jobs that pays better at other places? Have you thought about saving up for an investment? Do you plan on having a side hussle? Do you plans to open your own business in the future?
The point I’m trying to make is that if you have zero ambition, no drive, no plans, and no goals and only intend on working minimum wage then don’t be surprised to live a minimal life. The point of minimum is get give you just enough to scrape by. If you want more you have to do more.
