Yes, there were many groups like that. Its said in the cold weather or anscestors would basically not move as the farms were lying fallow and there wasn't exactly importation of food from other areas to feed you. So it wasn't exactly fulfilling liesure . but you did have down time when there wasn't the ability to grow food.

But my background is the warm rice farming regions where generally people farmed year round. Its said a Chinese farmer worked from sunrise to sunset with three breaks, breakfast, and lunch (so probably an average of 9 hour days in the field) basically year round in the southern regions.

My only point is 40 hours isn't some magical number, and there are large stretches of the world that can comfortably function on consistently higher hours. I'm not saying everyone should have to. I'm waiting for the day we go star trek and people do what they want with all their time, but we aren't ready for that type of society yet. I like my job and find/found it very rewarding during those long hours and I don't regret them. I feel sorry for people who don't like their job (I've been there as well) as every hour is misery. But I don't care to hear this BS that there is some magical physical limit at 40.

Do some basic research. The minimum wage during Clinton, varied but was never more than 7.45/ year inflation adjusted. It didn't go further. The statutory minimum wage back then was around 5 bucks, you pretty obviously weren't working at this time and didn't know anyone who was. The minimum wage was raised aggressively by Bush to keep it in line with the Clinton years.

And as I said, the percent of folks at the minimum is lower now. If there are two minimum wage earners in the house working full time, you do have enough for the basics of life. I can comfortably support my family of 3 with 25k(is no budgeting required) in one of the most expensive cities in the world and that household would earn 29k. It is well above the federal poverty guidelines.

So your desires are absolutely met with the current minimum wage (though I agree it should be somewhat higher and inflation indexed).

And this permanent labor surplus I have no idea what you mean. In general, unemployment rates are lower now than they have been in any recessionary period in the past, and even at its worst didnt quite stack up again the highs in the 80s. And at the rate the US is expanding we will probably be staring at a 5 handle and back within historic norms.

You honestly sound like your total grasp on economic history started around 2004.

do any studies control for training to be used to the hours?

Non-work point: before I started hiking a lot, 2 or 3 hours of hard hiking crushed me. After several months of regularly doing it, 10 hours a day didn't begin to bother me (i.e. 25 mile-30 mile hikes). My experience is there is no point in suddenly increasing my hours. Usually I don't get more out. But ease into it, and train up for it, and it's easy to do.

no, I"m in the industry. During intern training, I expect my interns to be there for at least 14 hours a day (every hour I am there working while they are there) and save their studying and learning of key skills for the weekend. We pay them a huge sum of money when they have no experience or skills in our industry, and so I expect them to at least be there for my hours (the first 12) and spend a few more getting up to speed/learning. My current trainee put in a solid 95 a week for the first 5 months, and as he came up to speed, he said he was finding it "easy" to handle the 80 hour weeks.

On the other hand, I tell him if he doesn't take every one of his vacation days (22 I think he has) I'll have it negatively reflected in his bonus at year end. And if I see him sitting around in the evening to put in facetime I tell him to get the hell out of work if he doesn't have anything to do. I need people who can stomach weeks on end of endless hours if the markets demand it (when Greece was first blowing up, it wasn't uncommon for hours to stretch towards 17-18), but I don't want people who are burned out because they didn't take vacation or rest when they could. My current role is in a market that is open for 11 hours, and when you add in pre-open meetings and end of day admin work, 12 hours is trivial to reach.

then you haven't put your head up and looked at other industries. 60 hours is not a long week for a lot of professionals. At year 8, I'm finally "down" to about 60 hours a week. I don't mind, I chose the job and career knowing the hours. But all this crap out there that you can't work 60 hour weeks without fatigue setting in is BS (or there are just a lot of soft people out there I guess). Like all things, once you train your body to handle the work load, it's easy to handle. But if you work 40 hours a week every week, and then suddenly have to do 80, I can imagine the shock to your system would make you think it's not sustainable. On the other hand if every month you add 2 hours, at the end of the year you are up to 65 hours a week and probably are no worse for wear.

Hell, I don't know how he does it, but my cousin has gone years working no less than 80 hours a week. He has never burned out or needed a break, and he is in an industry where that is standard (law, and a type where billing 3000 hours is considered a standard workload, and you don't bill 100% of your time in the office).

Now if you want to keep up with all your hobbies and free time, then you probably can't work those kinds of hours. But that is a tradeoff you have to make (if you want to).

any particular reason you put so much value on making something? My biggest pieces of consumption are not for things, they are for services. Why shouldn't the economic distribution have some relation to how people spend their money? If I wanted, I could put all my money into goods, but I'm not a hoarder and don't find value in that.

The pilot who fly's my aircraft, the bar tender who serves me beer, orbitz helping me find a flight, all these things are services. And this is where my money goes. Add in rent, and the vast majority of mine (and everyone else's) spending is not for goods. And you are wrong, all developed countries are heavily based on services. Only in the 3rd world is it even close to true. Even that bastion of industry, Germany, is about 72 percent services.

no, that is really unreasonable, and if you think about what it functionally means, you would realize it quickly.

The idea that the same job you were qualified for at 16, without a high school education (in a country where some amount of continued education after high school is the norm) is not reasonable. There are people at the age of 16 who either want to or need to work and there should be jobs that suit their skill set.

Should I be able to support my wife and kids, and send my children to college, and have a modern home, as a caddie? simply because the job of carrying golf clubs for someone else exists that job should support all these things? My friends, in high school (to save for) and in college (to pay for it) needed these kinds of low skilled jobs. They were never meant or though of as careers. If you have spent 20 years rotating between different ultra-lowskill jobs that are meant as transitions I've got nothing for you. And if you are dedicated to walmart and stay there and put up with the crap conditions for 10 years, you can support a family (and since you can start at 16, this means you can afford to be married and looking at having kids in your mid-20s). But if you mean you should be able to afford to get married and support a family well while rotating around across work places in ultra-lowskill jobs, never building any useful skills or firm knowledge?

There need to be jobs that give people with no skills a chance to do something. Yes, we did have a recession and compared to pre recession levels, the percent of people at or below the minimum wage higher than it was under Bush, but it is lower than any time under Clinton's tenure except the absolute peak of 2000 (http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012tbls.htm). It's not exactly the end days in the US labor market.

especially if a company owns an important resource like a mine, well, or factory, workers willing to leave at the drop of a pin are a real liability. You seem to have never worked at any of these kinds of jobs, they are highly skilled. This is why unions are so effective at these kinds of jobs and ineffective at unskilled jobs.

When my company was picketed because we fired a janitor who was doing something wrong, the company(and employees) didn't care. Because frankly the janitors didn't offer anything we couldn't replace within a week. No one cared and everyone moved on. On the other hand, that won't be the case at any large factory.

And why people seem to think 40 hours a week is some holy grail is baffling to me. It's not. It is, historically speaking, ridiculously short vs what people have done for humanity's existence. Hell, 8 years in, I'm down to about 65 hours a week, and I'm not even close to "overworked". Granted, I'm compensated well for my time, else I would never do it. And why people would do such a job if the money wasn't there confounds me. But then, I've never had much faith in the decision-making of the masses.

so you want food stamps and welfare to no longer be family size tested?

you can more than reasonably live off 40 hours a week at minimum wage in many places (that is 14k a year, and net no taxes before any government transfers), but that is living alone. In Florida you don't even qualify for food stamps at that level of income because they know it is sufficient. It'll be hard if you want every employer to assume you were dumb enough to have 3 dependents and then decide minimum wage was how you were going to support your family but the HR dept has probably come to the conclusion that you are that inept at organizing your life. Hence the "hey, our statistics show that most of our employees for some reason think this job is meant to support a family of 6. So you probably qualify for all these government benefits".

can we mod best comment in the discussion? would be a nice addition.....

Its as poor an argument as the claim that we should put people out of work consuming similar amounts of pollution causing goods from outside the country (the democrat argument in truth). They don't say the hard truth, that people have to consume less of a lot of stuff we are used to consuming, and so are equally dishonest. They make the specious claim by reducing our carbon emissions there will be a significant change in global carbon output to change the climate course. But none of that is honest either. Be pissed at stupid people being allowed to vote who can't listen to and then judge a nuanced argument.

And yes, while there are the 6000 year old republicans, there are also the democrats who subscribe to foolish anti-gmo hogwash without cause or information. Both parties are filled with idiots, but as those idiots don't set the party platform that could be described as the central party goals, they are non-core.

I agree, but the maximization of tax revenue is what you are referring to, not optimal tax or fairness policies or optimal role of government in the long term or any of the actual debates we have when we argue about optimal taxation levels.

Btw I don't care for a he said she said on something meaningless like medal count. Suffice at giving out trophies to all kids or just the top scorers in peewee football is pretty damn meaningless to competitiveness and its way more complex.

But yes the USSR has the wins count, and in lifetime medals its norway . the odd similarity is both countries have sports academies to nurture the best athletes and both traditionally put a lot of emphasis on playing outside even at the coldest in winter. I think that matters a lot more

Great using number of times first, total medal count Norway wins. And you did subtract out the medals from eastern block countries not russia right? Or you just left them in for ease? But yes they had a dull period where due to no or little state support they failed to take first. That changed around 1984 and about 20 years later they come first again.

And they win the lifetime medal count even with the soviet bloc to stand against.

Its funny when people think because you can think critically about the evolution of religious thought and can argue comparative religious principals you are an atheist. Its sad being learned about the world is no longer acceptable in your belief system. That your belief system and the myths you were taught show a forgiving god is fine, but just so you know that wasn't there in the beginning.

I used Hinduism as its the myth system I was raised in and whether there is a skyfairy or not, I feel there are lots of great things to learn from its older stories. But I'm not blind to the evolution of the religion through the ages.