Just wanna bang on the drum all day

So I listen to the Down in Front Podcast. now called What are you doing movie with these super liberal Hollywood douche types. They were reviewing Elysium a couple weeks back and start blathering on about the MinCome and how work as we know shouldn't really exist, if we equitably distributed money to poor people, they would use that money and improve their living conditions.

So who SHOULD work? I always here about how we have to take care of the poor. Fine. Give 'em welfare and disability and social security. Do we have to accept the fact that we have a class of people that for generations has sucked off the teet of America just aren't going to work?



Why SHOULD I work? I spend 50-60 hours in a 3 walled workspace entering data and processing medical information for the same Medicaid patients I'm bitching about. Why shouldn't I just give up, go home, file for welfare, eat for free, get a free cell phone, Medicaid and government housing?

derp

It's a reasonable question that's been answered in the past. Before you ban why don't you either dig up your previous answer or answer it a new.

My answer, I hate being bored so that's why I work. I also like all the things money can buy.

You work so you don't ever have to use public transportation.

Hah! You already admitted that you sometimes use transportation...in public! :lawyered:

On a "feeding the troll" note, these are all different things.

^^Steady employment does more than "justify our right to exist," though. Not having to work for a living tends to be.... detrimental. To people, and to communities.

Didn't we just have this discussion? Will there come a time when there just isn't enough useful work for everyone, and we can choose to not work (or not work as much)?

Frankly, I think a LOT of salaried people would, if companies offered it, take a pay cut in exchange for working half time. Then you can hire more people to work salaried half time jobs.

This was suggested back in the 70s and 80s, particularly by working mothers who wanted to spend more time with their kids. There were even schemes worked out where two women would not only share the same job, but would take turns with childcare, so that while one was at work, the other would look after her kids as well as her own. In addition, there were attempts to provide onsite childcare facilities on the same scale as in Europe.

Employees were overwhelmingly in favor. (Oh, some griping among the single men, but they're always griping about something.) Management did everything possible to obstruct it. Enter "downsizing," salaried employees putting in 60-hour weeks, and other fun corporate games, i.e., the situation we have today.

Jesus, not this awful quote again.

Go be a lazy fucking asshole on your own dime.

No.

Well i suppose at least you're honest about your lack of drive, laziness and entitlement and that you'd rather be a total failure in life instead of working hard for something.

It's a fascinating quote. In Star Trek we see a future where there's no need for anybody to "work" at some menial 9-5 job. There's no need to earn money (which doesn't exist, at least not on earth), and money isn't necessary to procure what's necessary to live (free shelter, food produced by replicators).

You can already make the decision not to work so much. You might have to live with a lower standard of living, but you can do it.

But would a lot of people take a full 50% (including benefits) paycut?

And this doesn't take into account that the employer would have to train and provide a workspace etc for twice as many people. You'd be looking at more than 50% cut in pay if such a deal were to be equitable between employee-employer.

And for a lot of us salaried folks, it's not just a matter of hours on the job but what our particular expertise is - we're not just pumping out widgets on a predetermined schedule. Working fewer hours would only mean that projects would take that much longer to complete and that much harder to collaborate with more frequently-absent colleagues.

As for the la-la land quote, not thanks - I wouldn't want to be kept like some mistress and I don't think I'd be very happy about having to deal with all the stress of employment while other people got to play around at my expense all day. Progress would screech to a halt.

Funny I share a classroom and kids with another teacher. We almost never see each other because I'm there ten days a month and she is there the other ten. I get paid more than other teachers because I have to find my own insurance and retirement. It works out so far. We will see how this summer goes with me not getting paid, but Hell I'm getting a lot more time with my kids and to do things outside of teaching.

This.

It requires unlocking the 9-to-5 mindset, which too many people seem unable to do.

It's not about a 9-5 mindset, it is the realities of the nature of a lot of professional endeavors.

Well, let's break it down. If two people share one job on different shifts, why would they need two work spaces?

It would depend on the nature of the work as to what can be shared and what can't. I know there are plenty of creative people who don't want others potentially messing with their stuff while they're not around.

Plus I threw that "etc" in there for a reason - there are all kinds of additional expenses an employer might take on per employee. All depending on the specific nature of the work. All in all, cutting hours in half and doubling the workforce is just not going to be feasible by simply cutting a salary in half - if there would even be a significant number of people willing and able to bring home half as much.

Hey -- show some respect for the dead.

Seamus Mo Chroi was buried today.

Having two people do the EXACT same job is probably impractical in any position where the job involves creativity or self-direction. But most jobs consist of numerous different responsibilities that can be split up different ways.

The big hurdle is that, in order for it to work, the people in the jobs have to get over the "I go to work, I punch a clock, and when I go home, work is not allowed to come with me" attitude. A lot of the problems with people working two- or three-day weeks come from others needing access to information they have, and that's easily avoided if the employees aren't the kind of people who fly into a snit if they have to answer an email or take a 15-minute work phone call at home.

Well, tafkats said it better than I could. And while initial outlay might be extra, the ROI would be in greater productivity. Why does a job have to be 9-to-5, anyway? There are all sorts of flex-time options. Why can't people just do their work in the time they allot to it and then go home? The guy who's efficient and can be just as productive in four hours as the guy fucking around online all day can in eight gets to go home early.

I don't know what kind of work you do, but look around someday and see how many of your coworkers are actually working and how many are just killing time.

Mainly because the world needs a common juncture in time where the majority of business can get done, so the economy is able to have a stable platform from which to succeed.

Really? Jesus Garamet.

Of course, there are lots of situations in which a reasonable person might feel annoyed if they had to suspend everything because Steve from Marketing couldn't find the toner for the copier.

And then, as an extreme example, you have what they pulled on my dad in the early '90s. He was already putting in overtime helping to install a new computing system for a certain intrinsically stressful department for a certain massive employer, and they regularly called him up at midnight or thereabouts to get his input whenever the people currently working on it hit a snag. For weeks at least, but it felt like months to me.

Except "the world" doesn't run on your local 9-to-5 workday; it works 24/7. So if you have people in your little local office working different shifts and having the option to work by remote, you actually extend the workday. You as the manager arrange for overlap, so that the last two hours of Charlie's shift mesh with the first two hours of Carole's, and Carl's working from home at the same time and they're all coordinating on Skype.

I've got one client in Hong Kong. Their 9 a.m. is my 6 p.m. Do you imagine I have to stay up all night to work with them? They've got contractors all over the world, and the work gets done 24/7.

Wonderful thing, that Internet.