859: That's one way to wrap up a comic

[Horizon]

Allow me to rephrase as you've missed my point:
"Change is the only constant" does not mean "things have always been changing and we should be used to that." It means "you cannot stop change from happening, it has always happened and will continue to happen until the heat death of the universe."

It's the problem of The Catcher In The Rye- you can't hold back time. You can't prevent things from changing. Would it be nice if we could stop everything from changing? That's debatable. Can we actually do that? Fuck the hell no, that's kind of impossible.

[JustinReilly]

I'm not saying we should stop change. You're right, that's nonsensical. I'm saying we shouldn't be making it a societal goal to maximize change as we have been. We've been feeding a loop of Increase Productivity --> Use Extra Capacity to Fuel New Development --> New Tech Increases Productivity, and it's been fun and all, but maybe we don't need to shovel all of our productivity gains back into fueling ever more rapid growth and change. Maybe we could decrease work hours. Maybe we could focus on spreading our existing gains to the rest of the world. Until we do so, we're never going to have a really healthy functional society. We're not well suited to having the world turn upside-down every couple of decades. Why do you think we've been breeding violent reactionaries like mayflies lately? A lot of people don't react well to having the rug pulled out from under their society over and over. And it's not like the current rate of growth is going to last forever, anyway. Like any Ponzi scheme, it's going to collapse. But it's possible for us to land instead of crash.

[Razmoudah]

There's a different problem with your 'shorter hours' than just slowing down the rate of change, people not being able to afford to pay their bills, which causes them to stop being a helpful and productive member of society and causes them to be a drain on society. And no, your having society rest won't fix that problem.

@Horizon: A society can rest, it just involves not chasing after technological progression and advancement for about half a century or so. And yes, culturally our society today could really use that to help it get through some of the current growing pains, the problem is the degree of pollution we're putting out today. If our polluting is contributing to Global Warming then the environment doesn't have that half century to wait, and even if it isn't contributing to Global Warming we won't actually have the data to know with a reasonable degree of certainty until it's to late to change if it is.

[JustinReilly]

There's a different problem with your 'shorter hours' than just slowing down the rate of change, people not being able to afford to pay their bills, which causes them to stop being a helpful and productive member of society and causes them to be a drain on society. And no, your having society rest won't fix that problem.

@Horizon: A society can rest, it just involves not chasing after technological progression and advancement for about half a century or so. And yes, culturally our society today could really use that to help it get through some of the current growing pains, the problem is the degree of pollution we're putting out today. If our polluting is contributing to Global Warming then the environment doesn't have that half century to wait, and even if it isn't contributing to Global Warming we won't actually have the data to know with a reasonable degree of certainty until it's to late to change if it is.

Sorry, I suppose I wasn't clear. Shorter hours maintaining the same base salaries, passing more of the profits to the employees while maintaining employment.

[Razmoudah]

So, a small business, which has the owner and just one or two employees, and is barely able to meet customer demand, is supposed to cut back on the hours of operation, which reduces the amount of money the company is bringing in, while still paying out the same overhead? I have a question, is the owner allowed to have a place to live? Food to eat? Maybe contribute to raising a family? Before your 'shorter hours' suggestion in this theoretical business the owner's actual income, after covering business expenses, is typically less than what it is costing the business for just one employee after paying all of the government enforced benefits, and in the United States the Affordable Care Act (commonly called Obama Care) has made this discrepancy worse, not better. In fact, for a lot of both manufacturers and retailers what you are asking is for them to do the same amount of business with fewer man-hours, when they are struggling to do as much business as they currently are with the man-hours currently being put in. Either that or they'll have to hire more people, which means increased over-head without increased sales.

Also, before you try saying that large companies such as Wal-Mart can afford to do this you should really take a closer look at the figures they work with. First, how many Wal-Mart stores are there in the U.S.? I know there are at least twice as many Wal-Marts as there are Gamestops, and if I'm remembering correctly there are between 25,000 and 30,000 Gamestops, so lets say there are 60,000 Wal-Marts (I'm fairly certain this figure is horribly low, but lets run with it all the same). What is the company's average annual profits from just the U.S. stores? $60,000,000 or $600,000,000? First, lets look at it from the basis of the $60,000,000 figure. That makes an average profit per store of $1,000 per year. That might cover the salary for two months of one extra part-time employee, or one month of two extra part-time employees. Second, lets look at it from the basis of the $600,000,000 figure. That makes an average profit per store of $10,000 per year. If the part-timer in question only gets $500 per month the actual cost to the store of having that employee, after the empoyers matching 7.5% FICA tax, unemployment insurance, and other government required benefits, is between $1000 and $1300 per month. Over 12 months that comes to $12,000 to $15,600 per year. Nope, even at an average store profit of $10,000 per year that still isn't enough money to have one extra part-timer for a full year. This means that to have just one extra part-timer around for a full year in each of 60,000 stores would require the company to have an average annual profit in the neighborhood of $936,000,000, and that leaves them with almost no margin for a bad year to prevent them from going bankrupt. So what your 'shorter hours but same pay' really does is destroy every company out there by either drastically reducing their income (remember, we haven't increased the cost of the products/services in this example to account for decreased sales, which once the cost increase cycles back to them means they have to do so again, and again and again and again and again.......) or drastically increasing their overhead, if not both.

As such, without being able to lower the cost of living, and by a sizable margin at that, so that people don't have to put in such long and grueling hours at their thankless jobs to be able to get by there just isn't a means to decrease the number of hours people work. Also, even if you could lower the cost of living you'd still have to have people tolerate taking a pay cut to get the shorter hours, just so that the jobs can still be there for them.

[Steve the Pocket]

All I know is that in Europe, there's a hard limit on the number of hours people are allowed to work per week, and it's considerably less than the typical US workweek, and they get along better than OK.

[Razmoudah]

And what's the difference in the cost of living as well as the difference in the average person's debt, especially for transportation to and from work as well as education? I may not have hard figures, but the average middle-class U.S. citizen income is more in the neighborhood of upper-class income in most of Europe, but that that U.S. citizen will have mountains of debt to deal with that would be more equivalent to four or five average middle-classers in Europe who have acquired the same debts, and that's a low estimation for the debt, but the upper-classers in Europe can get those things without needing to acquire any debt in the process. Also, how often in Europe do you hear of someone winning a lawsuit for $10,000,000, or $20,000,000, or $50,000,000 even when it cost someone their life? Those super-massive lawsuits that get awarded in the States require super-massive liability rates to cover the cost of them, to the point that it is choking the life out of the economy, but since 'the people' want something horribly tragic to happen to a dear loved one, or maybe not even that tragic to themselves, so that they can sue someone else for enough money to live the easy life for the rest of their days, and maybe even let their children do so, 'the people' aren't interested in laws to limit those super-massive lawsuits (which if done right would effectively halve the cost of living in the States, and then people could work fewer hours and still have a 'nice' lifestyle like they want, although I'm not sure if it would cut hours for certain professions that much).

[Steve the Pocket]

Also, how often in Europe do you hear of someone winning a lawsuit for $10,000,000, or $20,000,000, or $50,000,000 even when it cost someone their life? Those super-massive lawsuits that get awarded in the States require super-massive liability rates to cover the cost of them, to the point that it is choking the life out of the economy, but since 'the people' want something horribly tragic to happen to a dear loved one, or maybe not even that tragic to themselves, so that they can sue someone else for enough money to live the easy life for the rest of their days, and maybe even let their children do so, 'the people' aren't interested in laws to limit those super-massive lawsuits (which if done right would effectively halve the cost of living in the States, and then people could work fewer hours and still have a 'nice' lifestyle like they want, although I'm not sure if it would cut hours for certain professions that much).

I'd like to see some sources on this. From what I've seen, the idea that frivolous lawsuits filed by people against other people (as opposed to people against corporations, or corporations against people, or patent trolls against everyone) is a legitimate epidemic in this country is largely a myth — or at least, the idea that they have any chance of winning them is. Also, maybe the reason personal injury suits are such a big business is because so many people are unable to meet their basic medical expenses, and also get laid off from work for daring to take time off from work to, you know, recover from their injuries.

[Razmoudah]

For anyone who owns a significant amount of land, such as farmers (like my parents) can be the targets of such lawsuits, or anyone else who is perceived as being 'rich'. Although person on person lawsuits of extreme values like that are still fairly rare the ones against companies drive up the liability insurance rates of companies, which forces them to charge more for products and/or services. If a person could only sue for the cost of the medical bills and lost wages from the time spent recovering (plus 10-15% for the nebulous 'pain and suffering') you could drive those liability insurance rates down a very long ways, which gives those companies the opening needed to lower what they charge, increase wages for employees, and/or hire more employees to reduce hours for the current staff. Yes, there is the possibility of companies trying to just pocket the profits, so you'd need to have clauses in the law to make that a very, very bad idea, but when people can go and buy more the company can sell more and thus have a greater long-term profit.

As for the people who get laid off for daring to take time off to recover from injuries...........employers in the states really need to be very careful as to just how they word it when the person gets laid off, as that is an illegal practice and leaves them wide open for a lawsuit, and in this case I'd say the minimum should be one year's equivalent income for the person who was wrongfully terminated, in addition to the lost wages from the time they could return to work until the case is settled. Yes, the employer needs someone who can do the job while that person is recovering, but that's what temp-hires are for.