The present population of workers the article is referring to with "work culture" are white collar workers. Comparing like to like, these wouldn't be people working in factories or mining. The equivalent jobs in previous eras would be those of priests, monks, and scribes; of surveyors, navigators, and architects; of military officers; and of nobles tinkering around in the sciences.

Compare the working conditions of those jobs to those of current white-collar work.

I wouldn't be surprised if priests or monks had quite long work hours; imagine the RSI one might get from copying out whole books by hand.

You could reframe as underemployment a lot of the extent to which jobs in the past were less stressful (if they actually were). Trading stress for fantastic material wealth is a highly popular option afforded by technology.

But how many of those white collar jobs were around in the past, compared to toiling on farms and stuff?

As other commenter says, it's not "this or that", but having said that, quality of life for the middle class was definitely better only a few decades ago. An average job would get you a house, a car and a pension, working eight hours a day, five days a week. And "middle class" meant a much greater range of jobs. Factory work could get you a house, a car and a pension. Time with kids, no worries about the future, or how you are going to eat when you retire, if you get to retire. Good times.

> Time with kids, no worries about the future, or how you are going to eat when you retire, if you get to retire. Good times.

The numbers say you're wrong: http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/summer04/w10466.html

I say "the middle class was better off only a few decades ago".

You show me a graph that ends two decades ago. About poverty.

You say "no worries about the future, or how you are going to eat when you retire, if you get to retire," and I pointed out that the number of the elderly in poverty has fallen off a cliff since your mythical golden age.

The current poverty rate for seniors is now below that of when the above graph cuts off, naturally [pdf warning]: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

The graph on page 9 shows that the number of people in poverty since your first graph ended (in 2000) has increased by 15 million.

Is this the right link? This article is about poverty and not about how far you could go on a middle class income

It's about elderly people living in poverty. It's very relevant to whether retirements and pensions are falling off a cliff and whether people won't be able to eat when they're retired, as alleged.

Ah.. but what about being able to afford a house on a job that requires minimal education like working in a factory? That was actually the main point from my interpretation.

Agreed this is the biggest change... Those days are over.

This has nothing to do with work in the past being more healthy. It is not a this or that situation.

The way it is written suggests "the workplace" used to be better: "But I would say that with all the evidence I’ve encountered — and it’s not perfect evidence — I’ve seen nothing inconsistent with the statement that the workplace has generally gotten worse" - "I see a workplace that has become shockingly inhumane."

Of course it is still valid to ask how a healthier workplace could be created. Just the notion that things were better in the past seems very unlikely to me.

We might not be crushed in machinery as children or poisoned by the products we produce at the same rate as in the industrial era, but that was seen in the same way as humans living today to be an acceptable cost of making a living. The question is of the acceptance of compulsory discomfort leading to potential harm later being an unquestioned norm.

I interpreted "the workplace" as him referring narrowly to white collar work (either in an office doing clerical/technical work or in a mobile setting like a salesperson).

I can't really say for certain, but the idea of a boring, average American life in the 90s/early 2000s was having a 9-5 job and watching TV after you finished work. I haven't seen a posting for a 9-5 job in years. But I see 8-5, 9-6, and increasingly 8-6 and beyond. You get a "lunch break", but don't stroll off too far just in case we need you (wink wink). Then once work's "over", many people are called in for extra hours or expected to answer messages no matter what time of day. And good luck getting paid any sort of overtime.

America seems to be trending towards the Asian model of work.

The bad part to me about jobs like that was how you were just spending massive hours doing stupid things. A lot of people would enjoy working 10 hours a day in a highly engaging, challenging environment. Instead everyone is so shot from overworking, stress, poor interpersonal relationships, etc. that it sometimes feels like you're working all day on a project nobody needs that doesn't work led by a manager who doesn't know what he's doing and doesn't care to. Basically like you're getting paid to get punched in the face rather than to do a job.

I honestly had managers at the Kmart retail store I worked at who struck me as smarter (and certainly more humble) than at least one software manager I've had

>It makes it sound as if work was more healthy in the past. Was it? When?

20 years ago, before the lax in regulations made the whole world a competitive nightmare for most workers.