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A comment on Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009). Parent comment

Re:Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) by Dylan16807 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:35AM (#20764971)
...what? Almost all of that 30x is because of better technology, not the number of hours. We could switch to something like 32 hour weeks, 40 work weeks per year, and still have a truly enormous GDP.
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Re:Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) by BurningFrog on Thursday August 22, 2019 @11:13AM (#20768984)
Sure.

My point was more that if you choose to work an extra hour, you're vastly more rewarded for it now.

And I guess that's one reason people do it.

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Re:Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) by Dylan16807 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:17PM (#20770320)
The value of extra income drops the more you have. All else equal, more money per hour should decrease the number of hours worked. The biggest exception is when you're taking advantage of a great deal to save up now and retire or half-retire early, but even that is still reducing your lifetime average work hours per year.
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Re:Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) by BurningFrog on Thursday August 22, 2019 @02:21PM (#20770938)
> All else equal, more money per hour should decrease the number of hours worked

I would have shared that guess, but clearly that's not how we humans operate.

Maybe we just like to work!

Or maybe we really like to be richer than others. We're primates after all, and primates really care about their place in hierarchies...

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Re:Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) by Dylan16807 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @03:02PM (#20771332)
> I would have shared that guess, but clearly that's not how we humans operate.

What are you basing that on? I mean, the article is about as far as you can possibly get from "all else equal".

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Re:Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) by BurningFrog on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:16PM (#20773588)
I just base it on living in the 21th century.

Humanity is stupendously rich, by the standards of all previous generations, and yet most of us work like crazy, certainly including many of the richest ones.

Or maybe we're talking about slightly different things?

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