
How work has gotten better - Futurebot
http://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/work-jobs-careers
======
chillwaves
This article seems to describe a certain breed of worker. I am sure a Walmart
employee working their second job might disagree. It's true we have a lot more
material wealth and luxury, but when basic necessities are denied such as
adequate access to housing, health care and education, the people will suffer.

~~~
saiya-jin
this is a complex topic. adequate housing is a relative term, and it's
unreasonable to expect that everybody's wish to live as they want will ever be
fulfilled, nor should be. that wallmart employee working in central new york
should have a right to big condo near central park because... why? he has 3
kids?

if somebody is a wallmart worker, I dare to say they are not trying hard
enough. almost everybody can do better, definitely in western society. if they
don't, it's more a matter of personal choices (what to study and do with your
free time, willingness to relocate for better work, etc.) rather than anything
else. it doesn't cover 100% of the cases, but most of them (also from personal
experience).

~~~
FussyZeus
Right, because either that Walmart employee is living in a crate by the docks
OR a condo next to central park, there are NO OTHER OPTIONS like maybe a
modestly sized apartment in an affordable complex designed for people with
children and responsibilities.

I'm a capitalist sir, but I believe if you put in your effort you ought to get
at least a living out of it. A lot of Walmart employees do not, and as far as
I know we're going to need Walmart employees in the future so we need to do
better than "try harder" for them.

~~~
saiya-jin
well if you are a capitalist, sir, you believe in market forces, no? if
somebody's conditions are bad in one location due to unreasonable rent, but
better in other why shouldn't they move to this better location but rather
expect that market bends itself to support them? I do believe that all people
should earn enough to afford adequately good place for their life, but this
cannot be simply any location anywhere, because whatever. that's not how free
market works.

btw this market bending is happening all the time, it's called social
programs, progressive taxes etc.

~~~
Bartweiss
There's a bizarre assumption here.

It's that the very poor can _afford_ to move. That generally costs a few
thousand dollars if you're going any significant distance (UHaul, rental down
payment, travel time spent unemployed, etc). If they're hiring in Raleigh, do
you really think the people in Detroit can put together the capital to go
there? We don't subsidize moving (we should), only ongoing poverty in one
location.

Similarly: night classes, seeking better jobs without a car, working longer
hours. These things all have overhead costs (like tuition, travel, or daycare
prices), and the assumption that they're accessible to people with no assets
is deeply weird.

------
grecy
> _Ensure we 'll be able to retire._

Unfortunately virtually every developed country has raised the age of
retirement to 69 or higher, and it's generally accepted that in 30 years when
I retire, there will be nothing in the communal pot, so I better save my own,
as well as paying into the pot so the people before me can spend it.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
>in 30 years when I retire, there will be nothing in the communal pot.

I assume you mean Social Security. Over the last 30 years upper-to-high
incomes have skyrocketed while the legal SSA-taxable income cap remains at
$118,500.[1]

Reports of Social Security's imminent death are greatly exaggerated, and more
often than not a part of a classic Neoliberal (1940s+ Neoliberalism, not the
Clintonian/New Democrat brand) "starve-the-beast" plan to convince young
people that the program is unsustainable and should be gutted so people can
save a measly few percentage points of take-home income. It is a generations-
long propaganda tactic that makes sense if you don't think too hard but the
simple fact is that raising the cap modestly will keep Social Security solvent
for a very long time.

[1]
[https://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.html](https://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.html)

~~~
specialist
I'm ashamed I didn't know the origin, definition of neoliberalism. Ignorant me
thought it was something like "new-liberalism" even though it was used in
contexts where maybe something like "libertarian fruitopian Freedom Markets
(tm) Murica!" seemed more appropriate.

TIL neoliberalism means laissez faire economic liberalization a la Reagonomics
and Thatcherism.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)

------
eli_gottlieb
To be frank, I completely disagree, and I get the feeling that so do most
people, actually. We don't call it "work" because it's pleasant and fun. I see
this as someone who finds his job genuinely engaging and almost, though not
quite, a benefit to society, and whose alternate career paths would
potentially involve more benefit to society and even more engagement in my
work. My job would actually be fun _if not_ for the unpleasant necessities
involved in treating it as _business_ that _actually has to ship a product
some day_ , which is of course exactly what makes it at all useful to society
and not just a shared team hobby.

Of course, the alternate career path would also involve significantly longer
hours for significantly lower pay (ie: going back into academia), which brings
us right back around to the point that it's called work because you don't like
doing so damn much of it.

Also, it really would have helped to segment out the statistics by income and
education levels. Remember, the arithmetic average of a power-law distribution
_does not make sense_.

~~~
Qantourisc
FOSS still ships, why wouldn't your team ?

~~~
AstralStorm
One in how many projects ships? And of those, how many are actually useful and
useable?

Scratching the itch goes only so far.

~~~
marcosdumay
Easy there or we might discover that FOSS numbers are better than enterprise
ones.

There's a very low bar to pass, and FOSS is going back into the UNIX's small
software philosophy[1]. Scratching an itch may likely go far enough.

[1] Yes, sometimes _too_ small. Maybe we need new kinds of consolidation
projects.

------
mathattack
A couple things I've seen on work improving:

\- Much less reliance of physical papers and filing. Email, as much as people
complain, is a much better record and easier to search than paper memos.

\- No more suits and ties. Dress for comfort. (For most of us, at least)

\- Much more flexibility on hours.

\- No more smoking in the office. (Yes, that was a thing)

These don't apply to 100% of the world, but to some extent or another they
impact most of us.

~~~
Chris2048
Nice clothes are better than when you can do it right. Which means on the odd
occasion.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Another advantage of a more relaxed dress code is that it costs less. Five
t-shirts and two pairs of jeans is a lot more affordable than a couple of
suits, three dress shirts and enough ties to rotate through. (And that's
before the cleaning costs.)

~~~
Chris2048
I also note nice shirts don't last so long, before looking a bit worn.
Worn/faded t-shirts can actually be better looking.

------
housel
Interesting how little effect the introduction of OSHA seemed to have on the
slope of the workplace fatalities trend graph. I would not have predicted
that.

~~~
Consultant32452
I wonder how much OSHA has cost us in terms of both direct government spending
as well as regulatory compliance in corporations (which is surely orders of
magnitude greater) for such pitiful results.

~~~
irremediable
You'd need to look at death/injury by sector to see its effect. FWIW, I don't
have a horse in this race, but I'm inclined to believe OSHA is a good thing.
AFAIK most economics/manufacturing research has suggested the health and
safety precautions in developed countries are cost-effective. Moreover, it's
probably telling that most (all?) other developed countries have similar
health and safety agencies.

~~~
Consultant32452
If health and safety precautions are cost effective, which I believe they are,
then OSHA is redundant because businesses will strive to be economically
efficient regardless of the regulations.

~~~
irremediable
I think this would be true in an ideal world, but in practice I fear
businesses can avoid dealing with the externality of employee injury. Many
people working in building, manufacturing, manual labour, etc are low-paid,
low-educated, and in the US may well be illegal residents. All of these things
make it difficult for an injured worker to sue.

------
RobertoG
I don't understand how you can discuss work, the essay of Keynes, how works
give meaning to life and... just don't say a word about how the results of
that work are distributed.

------
capnrefsmmat
If you find this interesting, you might enjoy _The Rise and Fall of American
Growth_ , which spends much of its time discussing the dramatic changes in
American working and living conditions since the 1870s. It will certainly
erase and illusions you have about the good old days.

The conclusion (that the tech industry will not generate nearly as much growth
as the previous revolution after 1870) is HN bait, and probably deserves a
separate discussion.

