Post ASYIWoWbPRmfF0Yhnc by pluralistic@mamot.fr
(DIR) More posts by pluralistic@mamot.fr
(DIR) Post #ASYIWoWbPRmfF0Yhnc by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:12:37Z
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Doubtless you've heard that "we all get the same 24 hours in the day." Of course it's not true: rich people and poor people experience very different demands on their time. The richer you are, the more your time is your own - not only are many systems arranged with your convenience in mind, but you also command the social power to do something about systems that abuse your time.1/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWp4HOEiqvSJbI8 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:12:54Z
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/10/my-time/#like-water-down-the-drain2/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWpZ7XZOOT6kEMa by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:13:10Z
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For example: if you live in most American cities, public transit is slow, infrequent and overcrowded. Without a car, you lose hours every day to a commute spent standing on a lurching bus. And while a private car can substantially shorted that commute, people who can afford taxis or Ubers get even more time every day.3/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWqKcgxOEqQyAPA by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:13:42Z
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There's a thick anthropological literature on the ways that cash-poverty translates into #TimePoverty. In #DavidGraeber's must-read essay "The Utopia of Rules," he nails the way that capitalist societies generate Soviet-style bureaucracies, especially for poor people. 4/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWqqsl1C6SU3vge by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:13:52Z
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Means-testing for benefits means that poor people spend endless hours filling in forms, waiting on hold, and lining up to see caseworkers to prove that they are among the "deserving poor" - not "mooches" who are defrauding the system:https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/The social privilege gradient is also a time gradient: if you can afford a plane ticket, you can travel quickly across the country rather than losing days to the Greyhound or a road-trip. 5/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWrVIKlWKToyCg4 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:14:09Z
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But if you're even richer, you can pay for #TSAPrecheck and cut your airport security time from an hour to minutes. Go further up the privilege gradient and you'll acquire airline status, shaving another hour off the check-in process.6/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWsDxehFWiLrsIa by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:14:21Z
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This qualitative account of time poverty is well-developed, but it's lacked a good, detailed *quantitative* counterpart, and our society often discounts qualitative work as mere anecdote and insists on having every story converted to numbers before it is taken seriously.7/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWsvv1GPYugQyoa by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:14:44Z
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In "Examining inequality in the time cost of waiting," published this month in *Nature Human Behavior,* public affairs researchers @SteveBHolt (#SUNY) and Katie Vinopal (#OhioState) analyze data from the #AmericanTimeUseSurvey (#AUTS) to produce a detailed, vibrant quantitative backstop to the qualitative narrative about time poverty:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01524-w(The paper is paywalled, but the authors made a mostly final preprint available)https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/jbk3x/download8/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWtUew6CUeQgixs by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:15:01Z
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The AUTS "collects retrospective time diary data from a nationally representative subsample drawn from respondents to the #Census Bureau’s #CommunityPopulationSurvey (#CPS) each year." These time-diary entries are sliced up in 15-minute chunks. Here's what they found: first, there are categories of basic services where high-income people avoid waiting altogether, and where low-income people experience substantial waits. 9/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWuCyHLe6rrQ728 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:15:12Z
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A person from a low-income household "an hour more waiting for the same set of services than people from high-income household." That's 73 hours/year.Some of that gap (5%) is attributable to proximity. Richer people don't have to go as far to access the same services as poorer people. Travel itself accounts for 2% more - poorer people wait longer for buses and have otherwise worse travel options.10/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWv21DYTlQBIsbI by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:15:24Z
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A larger determinant of the gap (25%) is working flexibility. Poor people work jobs where they have less freedom to take time off to receive services, so they are forced to take appointments during peak hours.Specific categories show more stark difference. If a poor person and a wealthy person go to the doctor's on the same day, the poor person waits 46.28m to receive care, while the wealthy person waits 28.75m. 11/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWvSxbO1uljuOau by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:15:39Z
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The underlying dynamic here isn't hard to understand. Medical practices that serve rich people have more staff.The same dynamic plays out in grocery stores: poor people wait an average of 24m waiting every time they go shopping. For rich people, it's 15m. 12/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWwPS5uolh9H6lU by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:15:57Z
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Poor people don't just wait in longer lines - they also have to wait for understaffed stores to unlock the cases that basic necessities are locked behind (poor people also travel longer to get to the grocery store - and they travel by slower means).A member of a poor household with a chronic condition that requires two clinic visits per month loses an additional five hours/year to waiting rooms when compared to a wealthy person. 13/
(DIR) Post #ASYIWxSKCii4wLcusi by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:16:07Z
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As the authors point out, this also translates to delayed care, missed appointments, and exacerbated health conditions. Time poverty leads to health poverty.All of this is worse for people of color: "Low-income White and Black Americans are both more likely to wait when seeking services than their wealthier same-race peer" but "wealthier White people face an average wait time of 28 minutes while wealthier 14/
(DIR) Post #ASYIX04KUOIZ2nQIOe by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:16:31Z
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Black people face a 54 minute average wait time...wealthier Black people don't receive the same time-saving attention from service providers that wealthier non-Black people receive" (there's a smaller gap for Latino people, and no observed gap for Asian Americans.)The gender gap is more complicated: "Low-income women are 3 percentage points more likely than low-income men and high-income women are 6 percentage points more likely than high-income men to use common services." 15/
(DIR) Post #ASYIX0lZtatRCvepo8 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:16:40Z
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It gets even worse for low-income mothers, who take on the time-burdens associated with their kids' need to access services.Surprisingly, men actually end up waiting longer than women to access services: "low-income men spend about 6 more minutes than low-income women waiting for service...high-income men spend about 12 more minutes waiting for services than high-income women."16/
(DIR) Post #ASYIX1FM6siEhHacDo by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:16:57Z
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Given the important role that scheduling flexibility plays in the time gap, the authors propose that interventions like subsidized day-care and afterschool programming could help parents access services at off-peak hours. They also echo Graeber's call for reduced paperwork burdens for receiving benefits and accessing public services.17/
(DIR) Post #ASYIX1imLUFSAXM75E by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:17:07Z
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They recommend changes to labor law to protect the right of low-waged workers to receive services during off-peak hours, in the manner of their high-earning peers (they reference research that shows that this also improves worker productivity and is thus a benefit to employers as well as workers).18/
(DIR) Post #ASYIX29MkdW1UznLWa by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2023-02-10T23:17:13Z
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Finally, they come to the obvious point: making people less cash-poor will alleviate their time-poverty. Higher minimum wages, larger earned income tax credits, investments in low-income neighborhoods and better public transit will all give poor people more time and more money with which to command better services.eof/
(DIR) Post #ASYIX2hkgn1NDdso7c by webuiltthiscity@sutrofan.com
2023-02-10T23:20:10Z
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@pluralistic In addition, this doesn't even address the time lost on accessing public benefits, which rich people never need. It's mind-boggling how much time must be spent filling out forms, waiting in lines or offices for hours, etc. to become eligible for each individual benefit.
(DIR) Post #ASYcFOm3tXBRXMlMZc by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-02-11T03:30:21Z
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@pluralistic The wealthy can also afford to exploit time-of-use power pricing plans, while the poorer folks (those who can afford dishwashers and laundry machines) have to do their dishes and laundry when they have the time.
(DIR) Post #ASZjrtIfk3Zu3MHHeK by Br3nda@cloudisland.nz
2023-02-11T05:47:02Z
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@publius @pluralistic can you unpack that a little more? Why can't the poorer owners of dishwashers use the delay button? It's been on every model for decades
(DIR) Post #ASZjrtnrs4X1c6sCH2 by jamesholden@mas.to
2023-02-11T08:02:02Z
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@Br3nda @publius @pluralistic Hmm, mine doesn’t have one. It’s an older model, but a decent brand (Bosch). I’m not sure the one in the office has it either.
(DIR) Post #ASZjruTLNrhzgkHJvE by phenidone@mstdn.social
2023-02-11T10:30:30Z
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@jamesholden @Br3nda @publius @pluralistic so buy a $10 electrical socket timer.
(DIR) Post #ASZjrv7Oyvkdgz1JMO by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-02-11T16:30:24Z
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@phenidone @jamesholden @Br3nda @pluralistic Firstly, getting the affordably low rate isn't necessarily as simple as timing it. Several years ago, the head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance gave a talk in which he said that integrating high levels of wind and solar to the grid would require per-appliance metering, with each appliance having a "price threshold" set below which it would operate, and gave some frankly dystopian examples ("your dialysis machine runs even when the price is $3/kWh").
(DIR) Post #ASZkkWYO0xdzQug9sO by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-02-11T16:40:19Z
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@phenidone @jamesholden @Br3nda @pluralistic But also, when you can run the dishwasher depends on when you can load it and unload it, which in turn depends on your work schedule, your eating and sleeping schedule, the schedules of your kids maybe, how many dishes of what kind you have…And that's not even addressing questions like "who can afford a Powerwall, to buy energy at off-peak rates and use or even sell it again at higher rates?"