[HN Gopher] Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 3...
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Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
Author : nomagicbullet
Score : 147 points
Date : 2022-04-09 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fisherphillips.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fisherphillips.com)
| exabrial wrote:
| I really hope this passes, just so we can see how stupid defining
| these things in legislature. This should be decided by employers,
| not politicians. If employers have too much power then you have a
| monopoly problem and you should do something about it, not rake
| small businesses over the coals.
|
| I would love a 4 day work week, but only if it meant my job is
| secure. This is the worst way to go about it.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Practically speaking, large employers would be required to
| compensate employees the same amount of pay for fewer hours
| worked.
|
| Not sure that's true, unless the bill also mandates that
| employers continue paying the same amount to salaried employees.
| I assume what'll happen instead is that salaries go down to
| compensate, and wage employees get fewer hours. Personally, I'd
| be okay with that, but many people wouldn't want to take that
| hit.
|
| Worth noting that this article is written by Fisher Phillips, a
| law firm that, according to Wikipedia, represents management
| exclusively, so they are not an unbiased source.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I doubt this though. Over the long term it's about being
| competitive. The marginal value of a salaried employee hour is
| small. It's the base availability that provides the most value.
| tlogan wrote:
| This bill affects only hourly workers, which means that Walmarts
| and other companies will just cut their work week and pay
| employees less. They are not going to pay them overtime if they
| work more. And poor people will need to find an extra job to keep
| up with bills.
|
| The only poeple who might benefit are hourly gov employees - but
| that depends on budget constrains.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| if walmart employees unionize it could go a long way to prevent
| that
| tlogan wrote:
| Exactly!!
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| This is poor reasoning. It assumes there will be enough extra
| jobs, but there is a friction to that. Wallmart trying to staff
| up with more people will also not be trivial for them, and come
| with more fixed costs.
|
| Obviously it would be better with a magic way to get rid of
| second jobs for poor workers (and stuff like UBI and JG nicely
| avoid these issues without magic) but it still would be win for
| labor.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| kleiba wrote:
| There's no English equivalent, so please excuse the use of Google
| translate:
|
| https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Auseinanderse...
|
| This is the German wikipedia entry on the conflicts that trade
| unions and employers' associations in Germany have fought over
| the reduction of weekly working hours since the late 1970s.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I really feel like work would be quite tolerable at 4 days a
| week. 5 days plus commute has always felt suffocating to me.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Consider that people used to work every day. Farming, hunting,
| subsisting. When organized religion and cities started to
| spread, you had one day a week as the day of rest. The
| industrial age and unionization brought us 5 days, which is now
| "suffocating." So if 4 days is the norm, that would start to
| feel suffocating also. Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work
| is the thing you spend the minority of your time on, you start
| to ask yourself "why am I doing this at all?"
| InCityDreams wrote:
| "Then, when work is the thing you spend the minority of your
| time on, you start to ask yourself "why am I doing this at
| all?""
|
| Crap! And i thought i was anonymous here.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| > Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work is the thing you
| spend the minority of your time on, you start to ask yourself
| "why am I doing this at all?"
|
| I think you hit the nail right on the head there my guy.
|
| Also once the agricultural revolution happened peasants
| likely had much more unallocated than the typical office
| worker in the united states, probably by at least an order of
| magnitude. I'm not claiming it was a better life but there
| was a greater amount of self determination which is
| absolutely something we should strive toward.
| alar44 wrote:
| They may have worked every day, but not all day, and not
| through every season. Yes farming is hard work, but you don't
| work from 6-6 every day.
|
| Also your slippery slope argument is silly.
| q3k wrote:
| ... you do realize farming isn't a whole year thing at most
| latitudes, right?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Consider that people used to work every day. Farming,
| hunting, subsisting.
|
| I would be surprised if individuals in a hunter/gatherer
| tribe used to work more than 8 hours every single day.
|
| Most people also used to be in survival mode for their entire
| lives. That shouldn't be what we are aiming for today.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| This is a bs narrative, ahistorical. Try Graeber/Wengrow's
| recent research/book
| ausbah wrote:
| I mean yes? trying to get society to the point where no one
| has to work to survive (food, clothing, etc) sounds really
| awesome. less stress and more time to spend on what really
| matters to someone personally
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Maybe that becomes possible at some point? A long time ago we
| needed 7 days a week to farm or hunt enough food to survive.
| With technological advancements we may be at a point where we
| need near 0 work days to feed everyone and create a
| comfortable life.
|
| Then doing work isn't needed to survive anymore but instead
| only because you want to achieve something. That could be
| many different things for many people.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > With technological advancements we may be at a point
| where we need near 0 work days to feed everyone and create
| a comfortable life.
|
| Who builds the houses? Who handles the power generation?
| Who maintains the roads?
|
| Who builds, and who flies, the airplanes in case people
| would like to travel?
|
| And that's just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of work goes
| into a functioning society.
| Animats wrote:
| What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A
| 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time
| shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a
| minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).
| marricks wrote:
| We need a slew of things to change but not much will with the
| current power imbalances. Courts still won't/aren't going to
| hold companies accountable when million dollar lawyers and well
| priced bribes can save their assess.
|
| Arguing about which band aid is best feels a bit like a
| distraction.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Real enforcement with teeth would help a lot with several
| issues. One of the biggest is that construction projects in
| California drag on and on because an inspector will show up at
| a non-union job site to stop work and survey the labor to make
| sure they are getting paid and have fair working conditions. By
| "frequently" I mean weekly or more. This has massive
| productivity impacts, but they have to keep doing it because
| wage theft is endemic. If wage theft convictions came with
| decades-long prison sentences, this would stop. Unfortunately
| the public does not have an appetite for punishing white-collar
| crime, they only want long prison sentences for homeless guys
| who steal shampoo.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| What I'd like to see is less government power, which means they
| stay out of my life, which means more freedom and less
| coercion, which means I can negotiate my life as I see fit like
| a grown up who is responsible for himself.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Exactly how much are you willing to be coerced to put food on
| the table? Because that's what we are really looking at here:
| Employers having power to coerce you into lifestyles and
| coerce you into things just so that you can put food on the
| table. Laws protecting employees (most of us!) are there
| because employers didn't simply treat people well, and people
| had little choice if they wanted to eat.
|
| And I'll point out that you might be a grown up, but you live
| in a society. Simply taking care of yourself isn't enough,
| not only because other people are obviously doing things that
| benefit you greatly. You know, like treat patients in
| emergency rooms and uphold wiring standards so your air
| conditioner doesn't burn your house down, and even if it does
| the fire department puts the fire out _without even forcing
| you to sell it for cheap or show proof of fire insurance._
|
| You couldn't help where you were born, nor did you have a
| choice in your own primary education, nor whether or not your
| parents were rich or poor. You might be responsible for
| yourself now, but you don't fully take care of yourself, your
| starting level got chosen by others, and you are at the mercy
| of the actions of others, which can greatly affect your day
| to day life.
| standardUser wrote:
| "which means I can negotiate my life as I see fit"
|
| You seem to have absolutely no clue what life is like for
| most working people, combined with a frightening lack of
| historical context. Can you describe in precise detail how
| you expect an unskilled laborer to successfully negotiate an
| agreement in their favor when the employer can wield their
| vastly greater power without any government hindrance?
| aaomidi wrote:
| You know you can do that right?
| hinkley wrote:
| And you'll create a power vacuum that business will gleefully
| dive into and give you less freedom, more coercion, and less
| ability to negotiate your life as you see fit.
|
| If you don't remember why unions and OSHA exist then you are
| doomed to repeat it. Captains industry have no problems
| oiling their machines with human blood.
| risho wrote:
| not everyone has the constitution to advocate aggressively
| for themselves. just because you can doesn't mean we can
| leave people who don't or won't to get exploited and taken
| advantage of. also not everyone is in a position to advocate
| for themselves even if they wanted to. there are a lot of
| people whose life would fall apart if they lost their job and
| the the business has all of the leverage. for those people,
| these regulations you hate are the only things preventing
| them from being sold into indentured survitude. your
| libertarian utopia is just like every other utopia. it's
| naive and nonsensical
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Yes, I mean we should also have a 32 hour work week but the
| laws surrounding it need teeth for sure. We should hold
| executives/managers criminally liable with the potential for
| jail time for repeat offenses. It's absolutely fucking absurd
| that shoplifting, especially when performed by disadvantaged
| folks carries harsher penalties than systematic wage theft.
| It's upside down clown world out there, abusing your position
| of power is FAR worse than stealing to eat or even fund a drug
| habit.
| syshum wrote:
| I did not think shoplifting was punished at all in
| California.
| pc86 wrote:
| Are you saying the punishment for shoplifting should be less
| if you're disadvantaged compared to if you're not?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| In the current regime it seems like crimes are punished
| less if you are advantaged. The current system seems like a
| worse arrangement to me because it adds disadvantage to
| disadvantage.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Actually, yes.
|
| Punishment doesn't fix the need to shoplift.
|
| Maybe if we stop trying to solve everything with cops we'd
| actually make some social progress?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| No, I'm saying the reality is that the punishment often
| _IS_ harsher if you 're from a disadvantaged group. I think
| the punishments should be harsher for wage theft than
| shoplifting because the former is abusing a position of
| power, which I believe to be more corrosive to the fabric
| of society.
|
| Though I also believe punishments should be proportional to
| your means, see for example speeding tickets in Finland.
| You shouldn't be able to afford to ignore the rules.
| lores wrote:
| Not to mention that stealing $100 from 100 workers is
| objectively a worse crime than stealing $100 from a shop
| owner, and yet the former is not even punished. Talk
| about regulatory capture, eh?
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| For what it's worth, that was the legal situation in
| Germany until 1975 [1]. A shame in my opinion that even
| small-scale theft under extraordinary circumstances got
| handled as a full blown crime since then.
|
| [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundraub
| jslaby wrote:
| Yes
| Animats wrote:
| An interesting thing about white collar crime - jail time is
| a real deterrent. It doesn't take that much jail time.[1]
| Routinely sending managers to jail for 30 days for time-
| shaving would stop that practice rapidly.
|
| [1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/how-stop-white-
| collar-...
| farseer wrote:
| This! 40 hours workweek with mandatory overtime pay (usually
| double per hour) with a minimum duration. Reducing the workweek
| below that would be considered unnecessary government
| intervention and is liable to be bad for business and workers.
| No one wants a pay cut that goes with it.
| standardUser wrote:
| The government saying 40 hours in the work week is OK, but
| any other number of hours to you is "unnecessary government
| intervention"? What makes the number 40 sacred?
| farseer wrote:
| Because the government didn't set that minimmum, its what
| society determined over a course of 150 years as to what is
| "fair". Once the majority of the businesses by choice start
| reducing that, and the 32 hour week becomes the norm then
| sure legislate that for everyone. But it can't be imposed
| until then.
|
| [1]https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/40-hour-work-week
| t0mas88 wrote:
| The proposal isn't a paycut right? As written employees keep
| the same pay but work 32 hours instead of 40.
| pc86 wrote:
| One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on margins
| well under 20%. Some percentage of these would absolutely
| go out of business if you somehow mandated 80% of the
| current hours for 100% of the current pay. Now you can
| argue they should go out of business anyway, and maybe
| you're right, but it's still the government passing a law
| to intentionally put a lot of people out of business and
| make a lot of people lose their jobs.
|
| Two, FTA "the proposed bill would require these employers
| to compensate employees who work in excess of 32 hours per
| week at 1 1/2 times the employee's regular rate of pay" -
| it's unclear to me how this impacts exempt vs. non-exempt
| workers. If you're salaried in California and you work 50
| hours a week it's not like you get paid any more. Those are
| 10 hours of unpaid overtime. This doesn't seem to change
| that concept. If they're only talking about hourly workers,
| then it's a pay cut no matter what. In the "Disadvantages"
| section of the article it further implies that these
| changes would mostly impact hourly/non-exempt workers.
|
| Three, why the differentiation between <=500 and >500
| workers? If I'm an hourly worker someplace with ~490ish
| employees who works 40h/wk I'm going to have to worry about
| my hours being cut because of hiring I have nothing to do
| with. If I'm consistently getting overtime for a larger
| employer at ~40 hours a week, I'm going to receive a pay
| cut if they downsize and that work is no longer considered
| overtime.
|
| Four, and perhaps most importantly, this is never getting
| signed into law. It's a publicity/donor stunt by some
| politicians and nothing more.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on
| margins well under 20%. > > Three, why the
| differentiation between <=500 and >500 workers?
|
| I suspect that the third point is an attempt to address
| the first. A company with five hundred employees is (in
| theory) better able to absorb this cost than a mom-and-
| pop with ten people on staff. The exact number of five
| hundred is probably arbitrary, though.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| It favors megacorporations, who can afford to eat any
| short term losses as new unfavorable conditions drive
| smaller businesses under, eliminating competition, and
| then prices adjust upwards when the local market has been
| sufficiently captured. This is how Wal-Mart and Starbucks
| and their ilk take over. It's impossible to compete
| against multi-billion dollar companies regardless of
| service, quality, or loyalty because small businesses
| deal with local margins and megacorps have global
| reserves.
|
| Walmart doesn't need to compete with mom and pop, it
| simply needs to destroy them.
|
| In that context, if we see local economies as something
| to be preserved, better regulations are needed. There
| might not be a legitimate case for that, since megacorps
| being massive efficiencies to bear. Deliberately reducing
| efficiency to placate small business owners might feel
| justified, but to the consumer, things are pretty good
| these days aside from shortages and inflation.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You are assuming that wages represent 100% of costs when
| its more apt to be 30%. You are assuming that all
| employees are full time when in fact the minority often
| are. Lastly you are assuming that people will be paid 20%
| more for working 20% less. They would be making 25% more
| 5/4 not 4/5. For example 100 for working 5 hours is 20
| 100 for working 4 hours is 25. Those errors corrected
| lets blow through a hypothetical.
|
| A shop that employs 40% of its folks full time will have
| to hire a ~10% (25% not 20%) bigger workforce in order to
| provide an identical number of labor hours. However labor
| costs while they are substantial aren't 100% of costs. It
| would be more normal for employee labor to be closer to
| 30%.
|
| This means costs ought to increase more like 3% not 20%.
|
| Businesses can take the additional profits from rising
| prices in fact only partially attributable to rising
| prices of inputs and probably come out even.
|
| It ought to be noted that its also possible that many
| firms can't all hire 10% more labor making paying the
| overtime rate for some of its people the only feasible
| alternative to serving business. Paying 8 hours of
| overtime for a given employee is like paying for an extra
| 4 hours of pay or once again 10% of effected employees
| minus the additional cost of acquisition and management.
| This may end up being the desirable option.
| pc86 wrote:
| By focusing on the numbers specifically you're missing my
| entire point, which is that there are always businesses
| on the edge. This _will_ put some businesses out, causing
| those employees to lose jobs and those owners to either
| try to open another business (expensive) or find work
| elsewhere (and most of the time if you own a business and
| it goes under you 're not eligible for unemployment).
| Whether that's okay, or even good, is a separate
| discussion, but I don't see anyone arguing that not a
| single business will go under by having their payroll
| costs go up to cover the same number of hours every week.
|
| > Businesses can take the additional profits from rising
| prices
|
| If a business is increasing its prices, it's much more
| likely that it's doing so because its own COGS and other
| expenses are increasingly similarly.
| ac29 wrote:
| That doesnt follow - if you get paid by the hour, a
| mandatory reduction in hours is a mandatory reduction in
| pay.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. Cost of labor is driven
| by what management is willing to offer and what employees
| can afford to accept. If a 32 hour effective cap leads to
| employees demanding 20 and employers offering 15 they can
| keep on offering until their firm goes out of business if
| they like.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I would take that pay cut in a heartbeat. And yes, I realize
| the cut won't be proportional, I just want to work fewer
| hours and still have healthcare and reasonable pay for the
| time worked.
| kleiba wrote:
| If I subtract the time I spend checking my social media while
| pretending to work, I'm probably already doing a 32 hour work
| week...
| dizzant wrote:
| This grinds my gears. I'm a part time at my office (govt
| contractor), and do more work in 20 hours than some others on
| my team do in 40. Restrictions on firing underperformers put us
| in the position of "needing" 40 hours in the workweek.
| jcpst wrote:
| Let's give them the benefit and say they get all their
| expected tasks done in that 32 hours.
|
| What's disappointing is wasting that time on social media,
| when those extra 8 hours could be to improve a process, do
| some self-learning, mentoring, research... at least, that's
| what I do if what I need to get done doesn't fill the week.
| linedash wrote:
| Or you know; you could have a healthier work life balance
| whilst getting that same level of work done in the 32
| hours.
| qiskit wrote:
| Instead of all these regulations, why not institute basic income.
| If every adult was given $2000 ( or whatever figure we come up
| with ) you wouldn't have to create so many laws. Minimum wage,
| work hours, retirement, diversity, etc laws would be unnecessary
| because it would be difficult to exploit people whose needs are
| met. Why pass hundreds of laws when you can pass 1 that solves
| all the problem?
| notahacker wrote:
| Because you have to _fund_ basic income.
|
| And if your goal is a population that pays its way and has
| relatively generous working conditions and less unequal income
| distributions, the hyper regulated Europe looks a whole lot
| better than, say, Saudi Arabia where citizens can live
| comfortable, unproductive lives topped up by monthly payments,
| discrimination is rife and an underclass of non-citizens do
| most of the work for very little money, often in truly awful
| conditions.
| risho wrote:
| basic income definitely doesn't mean they can deregulate
| everything else. it greatly lessens the leverage these
| businesses have over workers but the leverage doesn't go away
| entirely. also basic income doesn't solve every problem.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| $2000 barely covers rent ( 1 br LA/SF). We'd also need rent
| control legislation to prevent rents from rising to absorb the
| UBI.
|
| Apart from that I agree - UBI is the simplest, cheapest way to
| lift the population out of poverty.
|
| The outcomes are fantastic - I recommend Rutger Bregman's book
| on it.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| You can definitely get a studio in the LA area for like 1400.
| Close to public transit too.
| qiskit wrote:
| > $2000 barely covers rent ( 1 br LA/SF).
|
| The market will develop housing for basic income people or
| you could always move to lower cost areas.
|
| > We'd also need rent control legislation to prevent rents
| from rising to absorb the UBI.
|
| Nope. If people are given basic income, the market will
| develop housing/services to cater to them.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The market hasn't developed housing for people on the
| current minimum wage, so I have my doubts that it would be
| any different with UBI
| User23 wrote:
| Rents will simply rise by whatever the amount of the basic
| income is.
| ac29 wrote:
| "The market" has shown itself to be woefully inadequate at
| developing housing for those on the lower part of the
| income scale. I'm not sure why that would change under a
| basic income scenario.
| hemreldop wrote:
| California is a huge state, you don't have to live in the
| heart of LA or San Fran
| redisman wrote:
| Also even in my wildest communist fantasies it's completely
| infeasible for UBI to cover a 1br market rent in a big city
| without that immediately causing completely ridiculous
| inflation. Fiddling with monetary policy doesn't magically
| 3x the housing supply.
| 0x500x79 wrote:
| Wrong comment? The comment is saying move out of big
| cities. I agree.
| abeppu wrote:
| As with the bill that Rep Takano introduced in Congress, I feel
| like the media are not discussing this in at all a reasonable
| way. It is _not_ a bill to shorten the workweek. It's a bill to
| change the line at which employers pay overtime ... to workers
| who would get overtime.
|
| In California, for employers of the size mentioned here, workers
| become exempt at around ~$62k/yr. The BLS has stats for
| California which annoyingly give the median hourly wage, and the
| average annual comp (~$65.5k), but not the median annual comp.
| But certainly large fraction of workers are above the 'exempt'
| line, possibly more than half.
|
| Add to that a lot of workers are:
|
| - working for employers smaller than 500 staff in CA
|
| - some form of contractor
|
| - working multiple jobs (perhaps less now than a few years ago)
|
| What's the proportion of workers who would be impacted by this?
|
| And how many workers are not yet exempt, but are close enough to
| the exempt line that employers will be better off giving them a
| raise to an exempt salary and then demanding more hours per week?
|
| https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/wage-and-hour/salary-laws...
| https://www.bls.gov/oes/2020/may/oes_ca.htm#00-0000
| dmode wrote:
| All this discussion is moot, since this bill not pass.
| mbgerring wrote:
| You can already have this as a salaried worker if you negotiate
| well when you get a new job, and I _highly_ recommend it. Most
| people barely work on Friday anyway.
| chollida1 wrote:
| What would happen to people's salaries in this case. Right now
| i'd bet most employment contracts for salary states 40 hours a
| week as a work week.
|
| Would everyone take a 20% pay cut? Would people try to keep the
| same pay for fewer hours.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| People would keep the same pay for fewer hours and companies
| would be lucky if that's all it is.
|
| Keep in mind that wages and salaries have been largely stagnant
| for decades. Companies and corporations owe their workers a
| hell of a lot more than "same pay at fewer hours" by now.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| My regular workweek is 35h (unionizing helps) and if it would be
| possible to have working IT processes and reduce some managment
| overhead, i could be productive the level in 30h (and actually i
| am).
|
| Shorter workweeks makes people focus.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| I've seen several cases here where going from 40 to 32 hours to
| have time for kids (very very common in NL) has kept the same
| or better productivity.
|
| Of course those were all desk jobs, where it's not about
| exactly how many hours you're typing code or writing ideas but
| about the output. I expect it to be less applicable for
| assembly line kind of work.
| hollasch wrote:
| Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in
| seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are
| occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their
| preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is
| there any way we can turn back?
|
| Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business
| practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly
| anyone is questioning whether this is a good or legitimate role
| for those in government to decree and mandate. More and more, I
| see governments mandating changes that already appear to be
| underway, but in a way that accrues the praise and rewards to
| themselves. Most Americans seem to be complicit in this
| transformation, continually voting greater and greater control
| and authority away from the people and toward government powers.
| carapace wrote:
| > hardly anyone is questioning whether this is a good or
| legitimate role for those in government to decree and mandate.
|
| That's because it's been discussed and the current status quo
| is the result. Check out the history of the labor movement.
|
| > The nature and power of organized labor is the outcome of
| historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving
| workplace rights, wages, working hours, political expression,
| labor laws, and other working conditions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St...
|
| > More and more, I see governments mandating changes that
| already appear to be underway, but in a way that accrues the
| praise and rewards to themselves.
|
| That's pretty much the definition of "politician", eh?
|
| > Most Americans seem to be complicit in this transformation,
|
| What transformation?
|
| > continually voting greater and greater control and authority
| away from the people and toward government powers.
|
| Without concrete examples it's difficult to say anything
| useful.
| koof wrote:
| I need more free time from my work responsibilities so I can
| think about this very scary question with the gravitas it
| deserves. Can you give me a day off?
| pandemicsoul wrote:
| Because there's really no reason to question whether government
| should reasonably limit standard business practices - we've
| seen, in spades, how business practices are driven entirely and
| only by concerns of profit while the labor market has very
| little flexibility that would allow workers to "vote with their
| feet" and move to "better" employers without outside influence.
|
| Put another way: Of course it's a good thing to force
| businesses to make work more humane and sustainable for the
| humans who have to do it.
| superfunny wrote:
| >> while the labor market has very little flexibility that
| would allow workers to "vote with their feet" and move to
| "better" employers without outside influence
|
| Have you heard of the Great Resignation?
| bb88 wrote:
| Most companies treat employees as necessary liabilities to
| make profit and not assets. Flexibility only went one way,
| and people felt that life is too short to be treated like
| shit, so they left. Usually the bosses/managers/execs had
| tons of flexibility, but the employees didn't.
|
| I'm not saying your wrong, it's just that it took a
| pandemic for people to realize that working in a shitty job
| for 20 years may not be the best use of their lives.
| tanaros wrote:
| >> Have you heard of the Great Resignation?
|
| Isn't the Great Resignation driven at least in part by the
| government's influence? COVID lockdowns and regulations
| heavily incentivized employers to offer more flexibility
| around remote work, and COVID economic relief policies
| helped provide folks with the financial stability needed to
| look for better employment. I'm not sure this would have
| occurred organically without any government intervention.
| [deleted]
| syshum wrote:
| That would only explain remtoe workers, However non-
| remote jobs are having the same problems. Hell the MCD's
| in my area now has signs wanting people at up to $16/hr
| (min starting is $13 now)
|
| Government policies are never the correct way to solve
| societal problems, even taking the premise the the "evil
| profit motive" is the actual reason we have seen abuse in
| the past (which I disagree with), the resolution to that
| is NEVER government as any honestly look at government
| policies requires one to conclused that at best the
| government policy just takes credit for something that
| was happening anyway, but more often the government
| policy slows or stopps the trend to improving lives
|
| Just look at the "War on Poverty", at the start of that
| poverty was dropping FAST, then the government steps in
| to "solve" the problem of poverty that the evil free
| market could not (even though it was), and poverty rates
| flatlined.
|
| Trillions and trillions of dollars spent later, and the
| government still has not solved that problem, where the
| free market likely would have if allowed to continue...
| medvezhenok wrote:
| If someone thinks the Government doesn't solve problems,
| they can just look at the 1929-1934 and how problems got
| "solved" under free market capitalism (before the massive
| government interventions starting in 1934).
|
| (we now consider that period to be a giant mistake
| specifically because the government did not do enough and
| left free markets to their own accord)
| syshum wrote:
| No "we" do not, some people do, some people do not
|
| There is LOTS of scholarly economics works that shows
| government intervention in the markets not only lets to
| the crash, completely extended the length the crash.
|
| Specifically the fed actions in 1929 lead to prolonged
| pain not seen in other nations that recovered faster
| because their central bank did not try to "solvable the
| problem"
|
| To state that is a forgone conclusion that everyone
| agrees that "free market capitalism" was the cause of the
| great depression is highly ignorant
| dwaltrip wrote:
| How do negative externalities fit into your picture?
| Vladimof wrote:
| > Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating
| business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but
| hardly anyone is questioning whether this is a good or
| legitimate role for those in government to decree and mandate.
|
| Isn't the Government already limiting the workweek to 40h?
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >but hardly anyone is questioning whether this is a good or
| legitimate role for those in government to decree and mandate.
|
| That's because you are in the wrong forum. I would think that
| there are forums out there where unpopular or less common
| opinions are the norm. Your original point is still true, far
| less people care less about their freedom, welcome to life.
| vmception wrote:
| > and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering
| and assigning that power to their preferred political party
|
| No, most of us are independent and lie to our friends for
| employment and sex
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| I agree - a related issue is that _if_ indeed government should
| be using it 's power, then it should be exercised at theost
| local level possible ie at the city or county level. That way
| you could see what happens when people have more of a choice
| about whether to live under those rules or not, before applying
| it in a way that is harder to avoid. Meaning it is easy to move
| cities or counties (in the US), harder to move state, almost
| impossible to change countries for most people's.
|
| If it really is good for companies, then more will move there.
| If not, they will move out - better to do the experiment on a
| small scale first!
|
| But the aim of a lot of federal or state level proposed
| legislation is _so that_ people can 't escape nirvana...
| monocasa wrote:
| The definition of the length of the work week and who it
| applies to is already a concept defined by government.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Unfortunately. People should be able to negotiate between
| themselves without interference from the government.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| >without interference from the government.
|
| I don't see the corps giving up all the advantages they
| have such as mandatory arbitration and the like. It
| wouldn't be an equal negotiating table for the vast
| majority of people.
| camdat wrote:
| As should children! Why should the pesky government step in
| the way of my child working in a factory.
| bombcar wrote:
| Child labor should be reserved for the Girl Scouts as God
| intended!
| User23 wrote:
| It doesn't if your family business is farming.
| Retric wrote:
| Acting allows actual children to work very limited hours.
| By comparison it's illegal for 11 year olds to do farm
| work where infants can be actors.
| lores wrote:
| With all respect, that is an astoundingly naive viewpoint
| in light of the fact that there is nowhere near power
| equality between employer and worker.
| drdaeman wrote:
| I suppose many folks here are in those blessed industries
| and positions where employers and employees are in much
| more balanced relationships than mostwhere.
|
| Which is how it _should_ be; I don 't think anyone would
| doubt that GP is correct in this regard. But - very sadly
| - not how it works in most of the reality.
| alan-hn wrote:
| I agree. I constantly see arguments in HN comments that
| come from the perspective of a highly paid tech worker
| and they either ignore anyone making minimum wage or
| pretend they don't exist in this dynamic or they are
| written off as unimportant because they should have
| "worked harder to change their position in life"
|
| Its pretty sad that this ideology exists, we need people
| to do jobs and we shouldn't shit on them for it. We
| should support people in what every job they're doing
| because we're all part of the same societal machine
| robotresearcher wrote:
| The government is one of the mechanisms we created to
| negotiate things.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Stated this way it makes it sound as if the government,
| unbidden by anything external, just decided to make this a
| requirement one day. Of course, this was not the case.
|
| In reality workers, unions and even industry leaders
| themselves were already pushing for this decades before the
| government codified it in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
| plankers wrote:
| People literally died fighting for the 40-hour workweek:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
| notahacker wrote:
| The reason various entities wanted it codified in law was
| because regardless of what labour with actual negotiating
| power and businesses with the ethics and margins to not
| demand absurdly high workweeks wanted, millions of workers
| didn't have much choice.
|
| When child labour was legal, lots of children worked.
| luckydata wrote:
| {insert strawman here}
|
| The US government doesn't do nearly enough to ensure the
| welfare of workers. If not being treated like shit by your
| employer bothers you have plenty of options.
| nostromo95 wrote:
| Eh whether government _should_ have the right to do this takes
| a backseat to the fact that the government is the only way we
| _can_ do this.
|
| The government is the only coordinating mechanism we have to
| enforce something like this, otherwise everyone is playing the
| prisoner's dilemma.
| pc86 wrote:
| Respectfully, this seems like a completely backward take.
|
| If you don't care about whether or not government should be
| able to do things, and are only concerned with whether or not
| it does things you like, you end up with a government that
| can do whatever it wants. Eventually, that power will be
| wielded by someone you find detestable, or even worse,
| someone who finds _you_ detestable.
| nostromo95 wrote:
| Seems like we're mixing up couple things here--(a) the
| level to which a government represents the people and (b)
| the powers that a government should have.
|
| It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the government is
| --in its ideal essence--just a way for a population to
| collectively enforce compliance with / contribution to a
| social good.
|
| I don't think it's controversial to say that if 100% of
| people wanted a 32 hour work week, the government should
| probably pass a law mandating that. Separately we can argue
| about the tendency for the aims of government to diverge
| from the aims of the citizenry or there being a slippery
| slope, but the "legitimate role" of government is
| representing the people.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| It's probably more nuanced than that. If 100% of people
| wanted a 32-hour work week, a law wouldn't be necessary -
| we would just have a 32-hour work week. The fact that the
| number is less than 100% is the reason we need a law,
| because the incentives aren't aligned between those who
| want it and those who don't.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The prisoner's dilemma is a toy example where everyone
| wants the same thing, but they can't achieve it without
| some external mechanism. Many regulations in the real
| world fall into this category, ensuring your competitors
| can't do things you don't want to do and thereby force
| you to do it to compete (and they in turn don't want to
| do it, but if their competitors do it...).
| propernoun wrote:
| Because 100% of people don't want something is hardly
| "reason" to create a law and just because a majority
| wants something doesn't make it right. There are plenty
| of examples of that in history.
|
| Is the role of government to maximize social good or
| individual liberty? I'd rather the latter because the
| examples of the former are abundant and dreadful. Anyone
| who thinks this isn't a race to the bottom where
| lawmakers trade "happiness" for votes at the cost of
| liberty is lying to themselves. Let's not kid ourselves,
| a 40 hour work week is not the same as child labor in the
| coal mines; such laws exist only to win votes. When will
| it be 20 hours a week? 16? At what point do we descend
| into the madness that embraced Rome where the role of
| government became appeasement of the populace to keep
| them from revolting?
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| By prisoners dilemma, do you mean that people are free to
| negotiate amongst themselves as they see fit? Oh the
| horror...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| We already saw what happens when people are free to
| negotiate for themselves with people who possess most of
| the money and resources. People including children were
| working 60 hours a week in horrendously unsafe conditions
| for barely enough to live.
|
| The government isn't an interloper inserting itself. The
| government is US. We are negotiating with employers in a
| fashion where we actually possess enough influence to make
| a difference.
| nostromo95 wrote:
| Yes I do mean exactly that. It's entirely possible for both
| these things to be true:
|
| - Everyone believes that if they and everyone else had a 32
| hour work week, they'd be happier
|
| - Everyone stays at 40 hours per week when given the choice
| of independently moving to a 32 hour work week due to
| social / economic pressures
|
| In this case a government law helps everyone coordinate to
| get out of a local maximum.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| The primary alternative to achieving this is through
| formation of unions. But, I'd wager there is an overlap
| between people who are against enforcement via legislation
| and people who are anti-union.
| [deleted]
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| We've also seen significant anti-union legislation in
| recent decades; at the very least this would need to be
| undone in order to give workers a fair shot.
| josephcsible wrote:
| By "people who are anti-union", do you mean "people who
| believe unions shouldn't be allowed to exist", or "people
| who believe unions shouldn't be allowed to force workers to
| join as a condition of having the job"?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Hey, if they don't like it, they can get a job somewhere
| else, no need for authoritarian governments preventing
| people freely entering contracts with groups with much
| more power than they do individually.... wait, this
| reminds me of something?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Unions having the power to force employees to join is
| what's authoritarian. If I want to work for a company,
| and the company wants to hire me, we should be free to
| enter into a contract. A third party shouldn't have the
| power to say "you can't unless you pay us dues".
|
| And before you say "well not if the company and union
| entered into a contract that said the company would only
| hire union workers", that's not how it works today. The
| laws we have today give unions the power to unilaterally
| say that without the company agreeing, and this is what's
| bad and needs to go away.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Didn't California stop companies from preventing their
| ex-employees from working for competitors?
|
| Sounds like they're doing exactly what you want.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
| compete_clause#California
| josephcsible wrote:
| What does that have to do with unions?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > If I want to work for a company, and the company wants
| to hire me, we should be free to enter into a contract. A
| third party shouldn't have the power to say "you can't
| unless you pay us dues".
|
| Seems like you only want to prevent unions from doing
| this, but not employers. You also want to prevent them
| entering into contracts with employers. It's not really a
| consistent argument is it?
| josephcsible wrote:
| I'm okay if a union gets someone else to voluntarily
| agree to a contract that requires employee membership.
| I'm not okay with a union unilaterally forcing this
| without agreement.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Isn't it the authoratarian government that's enforcing
| these laws? Why are you blaming the poor unions, they're
| only doing what they legally have to do to maximise the
| returns for their shareholders.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I'm not blaming the unions for doing that. I am blaming
| the government for giving the unions the power to do
| that.
| pc86 wrote:
| This entire thread seems to be you willfully
| misinterpreting their comments, or taking the most
| negative possible interpretation, and then responding to
| that. In addition to violating the site guidelines, it's
| boring, stifles discussion, and is the stuff of
| emotional, uneducated partisan hackery.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Government power isn't the only power. Workers cheer government
| regulation as one of their only leverages against employer
| power (or the power of capital).
| qeternity wrote:
| I agree with your comment, but it has nothing to do with
| Americans.
|
| Your comments sounds very much like an American with limited
| experience outside of the US. The scary part is that especially
| post pandemic, this is a very global phenomenon.
|
| Source: American expat
| proc0 wrote:
| Are you saying these laws are common elsewhere? I don't
| recall any other country passing a 4 day work week law.
| Either way, these type of laws being uncommon in America is
| not a bad thing.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Note this seems to apply only to hourly workers. All of us
| salaried techies need to keep waiting for free market to open
| this up
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Unionize, refuse to be on call, refuse to answer slack messages
| outside of work hours. If working in tech, and at startups
| specifically has taught me one thing it's that urgency is
| ALWAYS fake, you can put the fire out tomorrow morning. If
| there aren't consequences for bad planning then the bad
| planning continues. See also: financial bailouts of pretty much
| any kind, the cost of mistakes needs to be adequately large.
| alar44 wrote:
| It's a great thought, but I'd be fired pretty quickly if I
| tried that. You will also not find a new job with those
| demands.
|
| You know what I do to offset the after hours stuff? I slack
| the fuck off all day. It's not like anyone knows what I do
| anyway. "Hey Alar, what you up to today? -Oh y'know, just
| getting these switches up to date, gotta keep the packets
| flowing! Also have some phone stuff to do and getting the
| servers ready for patching this weekend! -Wow great job!"
|
| Wake up at 8, "check email" until 9. Head to the office to
| show some face and actually check emails and do communication
| til 10. From 10-12 follow up with requests and put out any
| actual fires. 12-130 lunch. 130-330 knock out a meeting or
| two and then head home to "get my notes together and plan the
| next day" aka crack open a 6 pack.
|
| I know this isn't always possible, but as long as you deliver
| SOMETHING every day, no one questions the infra "wizard".
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Sure this is a valid strategy, one I've also employed, but
| I would prefer a world where we can be open about the fact
| that we don't actually work nearly as hard as we pretend to
| rather than the current situation. Dishonesty shouldn't be
| rewarded.
|
| > It's a great thought, but I'd be fired pretty quickly if
| I tried that.
|
| Hence the call for unionization.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I'd rather have my life than theirs though.
| gdubs wrote:
| I've said this many times before but keep in mind that people
| were strongly opposed to the 40hr workweek and it ultimately led
| to higher productivity. Less illness and injury, primarily.
|
| Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth.
| rafale wrote:
| Not sure there is causation there. A lot of factors contributed
| to the decrease in illness and injury, including the jobs
| themselves, a lot of the dangerous ones either got outsourced
| or died out.
| mrichman wrote:
| Why 32 and not 31 or 7? Hell, why work at all? Let everyone else
| pay my bills. Did I do that right, Commiefornia?
| dehrmann wrote:
| You're probably getting downvoted because you're coming at this
| from a bad place, but asking what's the ideal time per week
| spent working (depending on the job and what you're optimizing
| for) and what's the minimum where you're still effective is
| fair to ask.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| When it's about work you don't do for pleasure or passion,
| the rule is simple: the least worked the better.
| alar44 wrote:
| Someone's jelly! You can keep working as much as you like,
| surely you'll be more successful right?
| acwan93 wrote:
| Serious question, and maybe this is just based on the people I've
| met: I've been hearing lots of business owners complaining about
| California's labor laws getting increasingly hostile which leads
| companies to relocate or move as many resources they can outside
| of CA, much like Tesla did. Does anyone else share that
| sentiment?
|
| I personally think that this is well-intentioned but has
| consequences that need to be thought out before it becomes law.
| 88913527 wrote:
| I don't necessarily share the sentiment, but I am curious to
| hear the case for the consequences. California is basically its
| own economy: the state can make its own rules, so from my
| perspective, the state has more power to set the rules. Other
| states, at best, can market themselves as "not California"--
| something to run from, but not necessarily something to run to.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Indeed, California is the fifth largest economy in the world,
| ahead of the UK and India (based on GDP).
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| BlueTankEngine wrote:
| I think there most certainly is something to run to. Lower
| taxes, less regulations to comply with, state-level offices
| willing to get on the phone and make things happen to bring
| innovative businesses to the state, lower cost of living,
| better weather.
|
| Whether or not you think all these things are good things for
| a state to have, or whether you think Texas represents your
| values, it most definitely offers something to run to, even
| in a world without California.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I've been hearing lots of business owners complaining about
| California's labor laws getting increasingly hostile which
| leads companies to relocate or move as many resources they can
| outside of CA
|
| I'm almost 50, and I've been hearing and reading lots of this
| my whole life.
|
| But somehow California's economy keeps doing well, even without
| being one of the places that are winning the battle to attract
| the firms that are optimizing for maximally emoployee-hostile
| labor laws.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> somehow California's economy keeps doing well
|
| California has the nation's highest poverty rate when cost of
| living is taken in to account.
|
| If the worst poverty rate is "doing well", what would doing
| poorly look like, in your opinion?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Mississippi?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Mississippi is one of the states that has a lower poverty
| rate than California when cost of living is taken into
| account.
|
| There are 48 others, can list them for you if needed.
| enriquec wrote:
| economy doing well? are you telling me that cities that are
| completely unaffordable and overrun with crime, homelessness,
| and drug abuse - along with mass exodus - are signs of a
| healthy economy?
|
| I live here. I'm fighting the good fight - and it isn't
| working. It's getting worse every day.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > are you telling me that cities that are completely
| unaffordable and overrun with crime, homelessness, and drug
| abuse - along with mass exodus - are signs of a healthy
| economy?
|
| The parts of that that are real long term issues,
| particular unaffordability problems (of which homelessness
| is an effect) absolutely are an effect of a strong
| aggregate economy that the pro-labor and redistributive
| policies haven't been enough to keep with; so is the "mass
| exodus" (that is, the domestic out-migration mostly in
| lower-income segments that has for a long time been
| slightly above domestic in-migration that has had
| substantially higher average income, that only became net
| overall outmigration with recent federal policy and COVID-
| related curbs on international immigration.)
|
| Unaffordability is a result of the enormous wealth of
| capitalists and elite labor that aggregate economic
| strength has produced driving up costs.
|
| > I live here.
|
| So do I.
|
| > I'm fighting the good fight
|
| In what way?
| iso1210 wrote:
| So demand massivley outstrips supply. If people aren't
| living in such horrible circumstances (crime, homelessness,
| drug abuse), why is demand so high that houses are
| unaffordable?
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| I don't know if you've been in California recently, but
| in the East Bay at least a large number of small
| businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places
| now look like homeless encampments. I used to feel
| comfortable taking out my phone even after dark on BART,
| now I don't. The economy might still be chugging along
| but it's not chugging along on the back of the big cities
| with ultra liberal takes on crime/homelessness/drugs,
| it's mostly chugging along due to the suburbs like
| Newport Beach, Pleasanton, etc. Those places have
| substantially more conservative views on
| crime/homelessness/drugs (Newport Beach is actually a
| Republican district) and don't really tolerate the sort
| of behavior we see in SF.
|
| Seriously, just check out downtown SF if you don't
| believe me. It feels dead. There are more beggars than
| tourists. I recently went to a nice restaurant near the
| MacArthur BART station and not only was it dead, the area
| around it felt like I was visiting the hood near USC.
|
| > why is demand so high that houses are unaffordable
|
| It is not that demand is so high but that supply is so
| low. When you have SFH zoning with massive set back
| requirements you can't fit many people into the available
| space.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Seriously, just check out downtown SF if you don 't
| believe me. It feels dead._
|
| Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? This
| thread is talking about a hypothetical poor economy due
| to businesses leaving because of employee-friendly labor
| laws. In early 2020 downtown was pretty vibrant.
|
| > _There are more beggars than tourists._
|
| I get that you're exaggerating for effect, but c'mon. I
| saw plenty of tourists/shoppers in the Powell/Market area
| in the middle of a weekday last week, out and about,
| doing their thing.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| > Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though?
|
| It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other
| cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and
| the East Bay are. Nor are they as sketchy - I'd feel
| comfortable walking around Millennium Park at night and
| be pretty confident I wouldn't get robbed. Can you say
| the same about the Embarcadero?
|
| > hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving
| because of employee-friendly labor laws
|
| Tons of small businesses are dying out and you think the
| poor economy is hypothetical? Just because Chipotle and
| McD's can afford to pay every surcharge CA/SF imposes
| through labor laws doesn't mean small businesses can
| afford to. It's ironic, because despite all those
| surcharges the suburbs are still more affordable for a
| low skill worker than SF is, primarily because the supply
| of housing is so much better.
|
| 2 coffee shops in my local area have closed down recently
| for good. Starbucks is still going strong, but that
| doesn't mean the local economy is vibrant.
|
| > I saw plenty of tourists/shoppers in the Powell/Market
| area in the middle of a weekday last week, out and about,
| doing their thing
|
| Hmm, I went last week on a weekday and I'd put it at
| 50/50 homeless/beggar vs tourist. Powell St. BART/Union
| Square area. In any case, it was certainly a lot worse
| than a few years ago when it would be more like 95%
| tourists. I saw multiple homeless sleeping in Union
| Square which would have been unimaginable 3 years ago.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in
| other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like
| SF and the East Bay are.
|
| The Bay Area experienced a massive internal-to-California
| (largely to the Sacramento area) outmigration during the
| pandemic, which removed a lot of support for businesses
| from locals, and tourism hasn't recovered from the
| pandemic and related restrictions.
|
| This has been (on paper) great for me as a Sac area
| homeowner, but more to the point here it makes judging
| _California_ economic health by looking at _Bay Area_
| brick-and-mortar business district vitality potentially
| very misleading.
|
| > In any case, it was certainly a lot worse than a few
| years ago when it would be more like 95% tourists.
|
| Federal COVID-related domestic air travel restrictions
| (other than masking, which continues) only just ended,
| and federal international air travel restrictions still
| exist. This impacts tourism, obviously.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF
| and the East Bay are
|
| I haven't been to SF, but I have been to New York. I was
| shocked how dead the area around the WTC was on a Monday
| morning (I'd just arrived and walked arround for an hour
| or so absorbing the city and trying to find a hardware
| store to get a UK-US plug as it had been so long since I
| travelled internationally). My local town in rural UK was
| busier than 8AM Monday morning downtown New York. That
| can't be healthy. This was about 7 weeks ago.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't know if you've been in California recently, but
| in the East Bay at least a large number of small
| businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places
| now look like homeless encampments.
|
| Despite the positive things I said upthread about the
| long-term trends, there is a very acute short term issue
| caused by the interaction of the inadequate response to
| the aggregate and distributional impacts of the pandemic
| with the preexisting housing affordability issue that is
| going to become a major long term problem if it isn't
| addressed.
| jrockway wrote:
| Downtowns are always kind of dull and empty outside of
| work hours. They exist to house a temporary population of
| millions for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; after those 8
| hours, they are totally abandoned ghost towns because
| it's not like you can use office buildings for some other
| purpose at night.
|
| Some cities are better at mixing commercial and
| residential real estate so you feel this effect less.
| Downtown Chicago always felt eerie to me on nights and
| weekends. Everything is just closed and there are very
| few people around. Manhattan is less like this. (There
| was a time when I would leave work between 11pm and 2am.
| The bike ride down 2nd Ave was always chaos. The city
| never sleeps.) I haven't spent a ton of time in San
| Francisco, but it strikes be as being closer to Chicago
| than Manhattan. After work, everyone is out in the
| neighborhoods.
|
| In my non-expert opinion, people in California go to bed
| earlier than in New York. I feel like everyone thinks
| they need to be up for work at 5am to "beat the traffic"
| and be in the office for calls at 9am New York time. This
| means they are in bed 9pm. Meanwhile, you can stay out
| until midnight in New York and be sentient again for the
| same 9am call.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I ate dinner at Co Nam on the corner nearest MacArthur
| BART last night and it was absolutely jumping with a huge
| wait. On my way there I rode down Telegraph through
| Temescal and there were ridiculous crowds of people on
| every block. On my way home after East Bay Bike Party
| (1000+ people easily) there was still a big line of
| people waiting to get into Marufuku Rame even at 10PM.
| And there was the typical crowd at Kingfish Pub.
|
| The idea that the East Bay somehow died in the last two
| years is ridiculous.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| I think from a politics standpoint yeah I'm kind of a
| doomer. I identify as liberal but the people running on
| liberal platform are really dumb and their opponents are
| insane/dumb in other ways. There's no good options to vote
| for. Idk how we will manage to wade through that.
| hollasch wrote:
| Hah! I identify as [Republican] but the people running on
| [Republican] platform are really dumb and their opponents
| are insane/dumb in other ways. There's no good options to
| vote for.
| lwhalen wrote:
| The Libertarian party welcomes you both.
| dllthomas wrote:
| I kinda think part of the problem is the pervasive
| expectation that there _should_ be someone to vote for
| with a Platform They Believe In And You Should Too. That
| 's fundamentally at odds with the mechanics of our
| system, where you need to build coalitions of people who
| can at least agree that this set of compromises is better
| than the set pitched by the other candidates.
|
| And actually, I think finding compromises is
| fundamentally what this tech is for, right? "How do we
| make decisions with neighbors we disagree with, mostly
| without shooting?"
|
| But because platforms are compromises, the demand for
| leaders that Truly Believe in their platform gives us
| people pretending to be crazy and stupid. With maybe some
| genuinely crazy and/or stupid mixed in (but I'm not
| confident that I can actually distinguish) and lots of
| layers of "it's complicated" on top.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I kinda think part of the problem is the pervasive
| expectation that there should be someone to vote for with
| a Platform They Believe In And You Should Too. That's
| fundamentally at odds with the mechanics of our system
|
| Yeah, our systemic duopoly and the associated requirement
| for backroom coalition building (and the associated
| papering over of differences for marketing purposes) to
| build viable parties is a significant defect in our
| structure of government compared to many other modern
| democracies.
| voxl wrote:
| Why are they signs of an unhealthy economy? Gentrification
| and bad zoning laws alone could explain many of your
| examples.
| enriquec wrote:
| Weird comment. Could you define gentrification? For
| decades, "Gentrification" has the go-to for the people
| that applaud tesla leaving and Amazon being rejected by
| New York. Ironically, those same people are strong
| proponents of zoning and centralized planning of the
| whole state. Pretty fed up with their outsized control
| and demonization of anyone that tries to make things
| better.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| Death tax vs estate tax. Immigration vs international
| talent acquisition. UBI vs Freedom Dividend.
| Gentrification vs Multi-family zoning.
|
| The (twitter centric) left would make much more progress
| in America if they worked on better messaging instead of
| just relying on moral arguments.
| chaostheory wrote:
| California had just had its net population change going
| negative for the first time recently. There is a threshold
| where more businesses leave that it's starting to reach. The
| cost of living doesn't help along with crime. Climate change
| will also make the situation worse in the coming years, where
| we eventually lose temperate weather in exchange for forest
| fires. We're already experiencing failing infrastructure like
| regular blackouts and issues with the bridges.
|
| The state's main saving grace for business is that non-
| competes are not legal in the state. It's lucky that no other
| state is smart enough to do the same thing yet. If Oregon or
| Washington did it, it would be game over.
| amf12 wrote:
| > California had just had its net population change going
| negative for the first time recently
|
| How much was it because of the pandemic causing work from
| home, which led to new employees joining remotely and not
| relocating to California, young people who lived here to
| move somewhere cheaper. The net growth might possibly
| increase in the coming years.
| eigen wrote:
| > California had just had its net population change going
| negative for the first time recently.
|
| based on 2020 census, California is still growing.
|
| 2020: 39,538,223
|
| 2010: 37,253,956
|
| 6.1% increase
|
| https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-
| series/dec/popchange...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The decrease was in estimated 2021 vs 2020 population,
| not census 2020 vs 2010.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| I feel like these trends are waves and we are currently in the
| down trend. I think we'll see a bigger uptrend once the economy
| stabilizes again. We are in a multi prong proxy battle between
| energy sources and work/life shift. Once people figure out this
| change I'm sure things will get better as they did for other
| cities like nyc. Things were really awful back in the day and
| got better, then got worse, then got better again.
|
| Also, companies might move their headquarters to Texas or
| whatever but people deep down (workers and probably also the
| company owners) prefer the lifestyle and experiences that
| California offers. California coast cities are amazingly
| beautiful and offer diverse range of activities outdoors and
| venue wise, and no massive McMansion in 100 degree Texas heat
| where you have AC blasting and Have to drive eight lane
| highways everywhere will ever replace the fact you can just hop
| on your bicycle and ride five min to the beach. I'm just going
| off anecdote from friends here.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > you can just hop on your bicycle and ride five min to the
| beach
|
| I can assure you that the percentage of Californians that
| enjoy this lifestyle is vanishingly small. I've lived in all
| three coastal metros in California, was an avid user of the
| beach and hate driving; this lifestyle is not realistically
| achievable for most people that live there, even the average
| person in tech.
|
| Most engineers aren't trading a house in Santa Monica for a
| house in Texas. They are trading a house in South San Jose.
| That lifestyle is much less different.
| thurn wrote:
| Tesla's 'move' was a PR thing -- the great majority of the
| engineering team is staying in CA.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| It was also Musk searching for even more subsidies from the
| Texas state government.
| peyton wrote:
| We took our business elsewhere. It's becoming crazytown back
| there.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| I have an extremely close friend, who is at the C-Level, that
| just shocked me with news of moving to Boulder, Colorado due to
| the hostile California laws. I haven't gone in detail with him
| about what laws/ordinances are specifically having him move
| there, but yeah...
| rhexs wrote:
| Boulder is California-light. Colorado doesn't yet have the
| endemic corruption you get with uniparty states like
| California, but with all the Californians moving there and
| doing the same thing, it's coming.
|
| The rise in homelessness in Boulder in just the past few
| years is amazing.
| chiefofgxbxl wrote:
| I lived in Highlands Ranch, CO for roughly half a year, and
| man the suburban sprawl in anything outside of Boulder is
| on steroids. My impression of Colorado is that it's a "hot"
| place to be right now (very much hyped as _the_ place to
| escape to), but that will in time be expended as housing
| costs skyrocket and no new housing can be built because
| everything is interconnected by a 6-8 lane highway.
|
| Reference: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Highlands+Ranc
| h,+CO/@39.55...
| enduroman wrote:
| Company I'm at moved headquarters from CA to TX. A bunch of
| execs left CA too with the relocation. Only people staying
| are the ones who love SF.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Oh, nice. California, here I come!
| jayski wrote:
| I've worked for 6 different employers in my life, Ive also
| employed people.
|
| 100% of my experience is that its rare for someone to ping me out
| of work hours, and if they do, I completely understand that its
| an emergency. Since I also care about the company's well being,
| (that's where I get my paycheck from), Im happy to help.
|
| In 20 years as an employee or employer this has happened maybe 5
| times.
|
| I don't know where people are working that this is even an issue,
| but if at all possible consider switching jobs because youre
| working with sociopaths.
|
| 32 is too low, employers are going to leave California even more
| if this is approved.
| holoduke wrote:
| I guess you work in IT like 90% of the people here. For those
| (and me) fixed working hours are non existent. But if you work
| in a factory , shop etc like 90% of the other people then a 32
| hour work week would very much help getting a happier life.
| Maybe this won't work in the US. But in Europe I think it
| certainly does.
| jayski wrote:
| I do work in IT. You make good points, my job involves a lot
| of sitting down and honestly slacking.
|
| If I worked standing up at a factory Im sure I would want 32
| hours
| readams wrote:
| What prevents an hourly employee from working 32 hours now?
| It seems like many hourly employees have the opposite
| problem: they want more hours but they can't get them
| scheduled.
| swarnie wrote:
| Not sure what the current work week is (assuming 40?).
|
| Does anyone actually "work" close to that amount? I've got mine
| down to about 8 hours with an additional 8 of meetings where i
| sit on mute and contribute nothing.
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