> From the construction industry to the tourism sector...
those are the jobs which robots cannot currently take. And even for jobs which robots can do (manufacturing), they won't be used if the salaries are so low that humans are cheaper.
People not working at all, or working significantly less, is not acceptable by any political system of the western countries. The proof here, is the exponential rate in which debt goes up. That debt is directly funding the anti-automation each political system imposes. In other words, automation has to be stopped, and it's gonna take as much money as it needs.
This anti-automation process, created the biggest bubbles in history, equity bubble, real estate bubble, government bond bubble, pharma bubble, cryptocurrency bubble, currency bubble in short TEB(The Everything Bubble).
That's gonna end of course, and soon. It has just started yesterday actually with some triple A derivatives blowing up again like in 2007. By the end of the summer, the first bubbles will start popping off. It's gonna be fun.
[EDIT] There are more bubbles, I just put some in there.
[EDIT] The triple A blowing up is not correct.
Automation's in its infancy. What makes you assume you can draw any conclusions about its effects in its maturity from the current economic situation in Greece?
Right. So they can optionally work weekends and get compensated with penalty rates. Can't really see an issue here? We have the same system in Australia for lower paid workers.
I'm confused because economically it doesn't add up.
Shortages of labor should lead to higher wages. Supply and demand.
So it would make sense to relax laws prohibiting working more than 40hrs in order to unleash additional economic output i.e. increase the amount of money made.
The article claims that for some reason that defies logic, it will just make employers demand more work for same amount of money.
I see two possibilities for that.
A country-wide collusion between employers to fix wages. That doesn't seem possible. If employer A has profit to spare and could make even more profit if he had more employees, what logic would lead him to NOT raise wages and steal workers from employer B? The wages should raise because workers would migrate to the highest paying jobs.
Or there just isn't profit to pay more in which case there's noting the government can do either way.
Greek workers have the option to work in any of the 27 EU countries, and a few non-EU countries like Switzerland and Norway.
Given that there is a shortage of skilled workers prompting this policy, it makes little sense to allow employers to demand more unpaid overtime of workers. That just means more Greeks working outside of Greece.
Greek workers already work more hours than any other EU country while making basically no money, so making Greeks work even more hours should probably not be a government priority.
Removing needless regulation and speeding up government permits would be a better idea.
> A country-wide collusion between employers to fix wages. That doesn't seem possible.
Why? I would rather guess that this is very common. Obviously, they cannot fix wages directly, but they might outsource the job of estimating wages to some agencies providing the market wages for relevant positions. If every employer asks the same agencies, they all arrive at the same wages, with minor variations.
You must have never worked a fast food job. Companies will do anything but raise wages, even if it allows them to have way more revenue and higher reliability.
In Belgium, the "loonnormwet" or "wage norm law" controls how much workers are paid to ensure the country stays competitive. Jobs are also classified into pay scales based on their type and the qualifications needed.
This means that even if technical jobs are in high demand, if you have a lower educational degree — which is often the case — you might not earn much more because of it. As a result, these jobs may not attract many job seekers.
This situation creates a cycle where lower wages make these jobs less desirable, which can lead to difficulties in finding enough qualified workers. Now, business lobby groups like VOKA are considering bringing in immigrants from Mexico and India to fill these lower-paying positions.
The country is basically a huge cartel. The business owners have colluded to fix prices, wages, supply. In every industry or business sector. It's just effed up. Whoever has normal goals, like having a family that they can support and give them a quality of live and not just make meets end, is trying to find job in another country.
or maybe economics is the study of spherical cows trading fungible goods and services in an efficient market with perfect information, and the real world is none of those things.
> If employer A has profit to spare and could make even more profit if he had more employees, what logic would lead him to NOT raise wages and steal workers from employer B?
The government service that does work inspections was soft-abolished. There is tons of immigrants that work in slavery conditions. Undocumented workers are everywhere because the taxes are too high for both workers and businesses. There was write-off of old debts for millionairs. The link below shows how government documents get stored in my home town. There are also images of people from a tax office "moving documents for storage" by throwing them out of the window to the back of a truck. We are a third world country.
That's only true because expectations rise. It's the old economics problem definition of finite supply and infinite demand, which may be true for a lot of people but not all.
It is easier to provide for "basic", however that is defined, needs such as food and clothing than ever before, and there are a lot of NEETs who live minimal lives without working because of this.
There are two sectors which have an inelasticity problem, healthcare and housing. Healthcare demand is inelastic, and housing supply is inelastic. (Housing demand is inelastic to a point where everyone is housed, and healthcare supply is inelastic because of the lag of training newer professionals, but these have less of an effect than the converse.) These are two of the sectors seeing the most price increases even as consumer staples fall in price. Housing is already correcting itself through reduced birthrates. Healthcare is the tougher problem to solve.
Theoretically the amount of work to be done is infinite, but practically people can trade work for free time, and accept the lower earnings, and still survive. Many people already do this to varying degrees.
"to be done" is doing a great deal of work in "The amount of work to be done..."
There's no fixed definition of how much work needs to be done. Different people may have different interests and standards that lead them to prefer that more, less and/or different work is carried out. The amount of work to be done can certainly be bounded for some people in some situations.
Greece should have left the EU when the price of membership was revealed to be a generation of ruthless recession and exploitation. Somehow the german bankers convinced them it was worth it even though grexit would've been much more expensive to them then loan forgiveness. I don't see what Greece got out of EU membership other than a brain drain as their ambitious youth is forced to leave their country.
Isn't Greece's unemployment rate the highest in the E.U.? Yes, they may be "low-quality" workers applying for jobs, but if a company can't find "high-quality," they must make do.
Funny how not that long ago everyone used to predict that with the increases of productivity worldwide we'll keep reducing our workload to a point where we'll work just few hours a week and remain just as productive. And it seems that this has happened for a select few but everyone else is working more and more just to afford rent and basic necessities.
In Chile in the 1950s they had a 48-hour work (and school) week: Monday through Saturday. However, it was common for people to just not show up for work on Mondays, jocularly referred to as "celebrating Saint Monday's Day", even though they forfeited one day's pay. In 1959 the government implemented a new program: if you worked the full 6 days you were paid for 7 days. If you worked less than 6 days, you were only paid for the days you actually worked; that meant that taking Monday off now cost you two days pay. The "Saint Monday's Day" practice quickly died away.
Productivity has increased substantially over the past few generations. Longer working time just captures more of that productivity for the benefit of the employer. This is a continuation of another trend over the past generations, to have increased productivity over a much larger segment of the population (more women joined the workforce) and yet the benefits of this were mostly captured by the employers, at least in the countries where this was more thoroughly documented and didn’t suffer any upheaval or regime changes to influence the numbers (e.g. the US).
Maybe it's just a Greece thing. I notice that other EU countries are doing a lot better than them economically; not sure why Greece in particular seems to be struggling.
AGI and General Purpose robots are both so far off in the future they should be considered science fiction at this point. The "Woz Standard" - a robot is dropped in front of a random house and proceeds without any assistance to brew a cup of coffee - is hard to imagine being met before 2040, if not even later.
Try 2400. Our current breed of capitalism is always only aiming to pick the lowest-hanging fruit and milk it to death and then beyond. Our current economics do not reward long-running projects with a huge payout in some 10-50 years in the future so I am pretty sure we'll never see general AI in this current phase of the civilization.
The situation in Europe is worsening rapidly, and it's not just in Greece—it's a trend across several countries. The rise of nationalist parties has increased the influence of corporate lobbies as well.
Migrants frequently bear the brunt of blame in this environment. Additionally, there's a troubling misuse of subsidies and tax breaks, with funds often channelled to companies who exploit them solely to boost their profits, rather than fulfilling their intended benefits.
Certainly, in Belgium, this issue is significant. We allocate billions in tax breaks for research and innovation, yet politicians sometimes appear at technology fairs showcasing outdated VR technology as if it were still groundbreaking in 2014. Now, they are using lag in the development of AI as a way to justify new tax breaks, all the while proposing cuts to social benefits.
Fascinating thing about america 50 years ago was it seemed to work 24/7. In Finlandia it was illegal to work after 16:00. Then we got a nazi government who decided that small shops and kiosks can extend their hours upto 18:00.
Worst thing was that there was no bank services outside 8:00-16:00. This was a blessing sort of, because Finland was the only country you could get bank services with a modem in 1970's. In 1983 you could do exactly all banking with your own Teletype. This included realtime stock exchange and that modern scheiße.
At least HN's downvoting team works 24/7.
Excellent.
"Seemed" meaning through the media you watched while living in Finland? And you think that gives a good representative view of what the US was like in the 1970s? The news and shows you watched from the US were mostly made in large cities in California and New York.
Parts of the US in the 1970s certainly had blue laws similar to what you mention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws_in_the_United_States mentions that "Maine was the last New England state to repeal laws that prohibited department stores from opening on Sundays. The laws against the department stores opening on Sundays were ended by referendum in 1990." and that in North Dakota it wasn't until 1991 that most business were allowed to be open on Sunday, and 1988 for Virginia.
For that matter, TV stations would stop broadcasting during the late night, with about 6 hours of dead air, not the 24/7 of modern stations. Fall asleep watching Carson and you might be woken up by the national anthem played just before shutdown.
No doubt your exaggerations cause the downvotes. It was not illegal to work after 16:00, even in Finland. Who ran the restaurants? The buses? The power company? The phones? The hospitals? The hotels?
This 1979 travel guide for US tourists, at https://archive.org/details/fieldingseurope10000fiel/page/28... , says shopping hours in Finland (or at least Helsinki) at that time were "Weekdays, 8:30 A.M. to 5 P.M., plus 8 P.M. on Monday and Friday; Saturday 8:30 A.M. to 4 P.M. in winter, with 3 P.M. closings in summer."
"While the 40-hour work week is still officially in place, employers are permitted to require staff to work up to two unpaid hours per day for a limited period in return for more free time."
This is kind of a wild quote from the article. WTF? two hours unpaid work per day?
"A supplement of 40% of the daily wage will be paid for the sixth day of labor."
It's unclear to me if this means they're receiving 100% + 40% for their sixth day, or if the sixth day is 4/10th the normal wage?
What the article probably means is "they get those two hours back in lieu" and "140% pay on the sixth day".
What already has been happening in reality is that workers work ten/twelve-hour days for no overtime, and the sixth day is unpaid. We've been working six-day workweeks ever since I can remember (so at least forty years), and probably much longer than that.
The first paragraph ends with “in return for more free time” which makes zero sense if they are working 2 more hours for each day. I was expecting something later like it’s banked and you work a 4 day week or something. But nothing on that.
And then yeah one place it says unpaid and another place (to me) said 140% pay rate for that time.
This is a classic sign of a ruling class derailed. They have pushed a series of education reform to create "better useful idiots" https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-usef... and then they collect as a result a large slice of people unable to do anything, rulers included, so as long as those who know retire there is no way to go ahead.
I think it's too late to recover, there will be a social collapse, a war as usual to cover and control the people and a slow recover. I only hope that respect of the past this time those who have caused the collapse for their personal interest will not make it again.
[+] [-] krasin|1 year ago|reply
1. people say that robots are taking all the jobs
2. countries raise retirement age & adopt 6 day work week, because there's too much work to be done
I am not entirely sure, but maybe robots are not that bad, assuming appropriate taxation to fund pensions & 5-day work weeks?
[+] [-] klysm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|1 year ago|reply
What a bizarre situation.
[+] [-] theamk|1 year ago|reply
> From the construction industry to the tourism sector...
those are the jobs which robots cannot currently take. And even for jobs which robots can do (manufacturing), they won't be used if the salaries are so low that humans are cheaper.
[+] [-] okasaki|1 year ago|reply
As that fear recedes, elites feel more comfortable squeezing us.
[+] [-] emporas|1 year ago|reply
This anti-automation process, created the biggest bubbles in history, equity bubble, real estate bubble, government bond bubble, pharma bubble, cryptocurrency bubble, currency bubble in short TEB(The Everything Bubble).
That's gonna end of course, and soon. It has just started yesterday actually with some triple A derivatives blowing up again like in 2007. By the end of the summer, the first bubbles will start popping off. It's gonna be fun.
[EDIT] There are more bubbles, I just put some in there. [EDIT] The triple A blowing up is not correct.
[+] [-] boring-alterego|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] navane|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] squidbeak|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aussieguy1234|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kjksf|1 year ago|reply
Shortages of labor should lead to higher wages. Supply and demand.
So it would make sense to relax laws prohibiting working more than 40hrs in order to unleash additional economic output i.e. increase the amount of money made.
The article claims that for some reason that defies logic, it will just make employers demand more work for same amount of money.
I see two possibilities for that.
A country-wide collusion between employers to fix wages. That doesn't seem possible. If employer A has profit to spare and could make even more profit if he had more employees, what logic would lead him to NOT raise wages and steal workers from employer B? The wages should raise because workers would migrate to the highest paying jobs.
Or there just isn't profit to pay more in which case there's noting the government can do either way.
[+] [-] dotinvoke|1 year ago|reply
Given that there is a shortage of skilled workers prompting this policy, it makes little sense to allow employers to demand more unpaid overtime of workers. That just means more Greeks working outside of Greece.
Greek workers already work more hours than any other EU country while making basically no money, so making Greeks work even more hours should probably not be a government priority.
Removing needless regulation and speeding up government permits would be a better idea.
[+] [-] generic92034|1 year ago|reply
Why? I would rather guess that this is very common. Obviously, they cannot fix wages directly, but they might outsource the job of estimating wages to some agencies providing the market wages for relevant positions. If every employer asks the same agencies, they all arrive at the same wages, with minor variations.
[+] [-] erikaww|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] glenndebacker|1 year ago|reply
This means that even if technical jobs are in high demand, if you have a lower educational degree — which is often the case — you might not earn much more because of it. As a result, these jobs may not attract many job seekers.
This situation creates a cycle where lower wages make these jobs less desirable, which can lead to difficulties in finding enough qualified workers. Now, business lobby groups like VOKA are considering bringing in immigrants from Mexico and India to fill these lower-paying positions.
[+] [-] deninho|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] saulpw|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pdimitar|1 year ago|reply
Don't assume the market is rational. History shows otherwise.
[+] [-] bjourne|1 year ago|reply
Cause employer B is his buddy and they regularly play together at the golf course? Collusion among the elite classes is extremely common. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23...
[+] [-] kostakostas|1 year ago|reply
https://www.lamiareport.gr/index.php/topika/item/282557-lami...
[+] [-] rafamvc|1 year ago|reply
Paradoxically, efficiency generates more available work, not less.
The amount of work to be done is not finite.
[+] [-] jackcosgrove|1 year ago|reply
That's only true because expectations rise. It's the old economics problem definition of finite supply and infinite demand, which may be true for a lot of people but not all.
It is easier to provide for "basic", however that is defined, needs such as food and clothing than ever before, and there are a lot of NEETs who live minimal lives without working because of this.
There are two sectors which have an inelasticity problem, healthcare and housing. Healthcare demand is inelastic, and housing supply is inelastic. (Housing demand is inelastic to a point where everyone is housed, and healthcare supply is inelastic because of the lag of training newer professionals, but these have less of an effect than the converse.) These are two of the sectors seeing the most price increases even as consumer staples fall in price. Housing is already correcting itself through reduced birthrates. Healthcare is the tougher problem to solve.
Theoretically the amount of work to be done is infinite, but practically people can trade work for free time, and accept the lower earnings, and still survive. Many people already do this to varying degrees.
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|1 year ago|reply
There's no fixed definition of how much work needs to be done. Different people may have different interests and standards that lead them to prefer that more, less and/or different work is carried out. The amount of work to be done can certainly be bounded for some people in some situations.
[+] [-] whatever1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dyauspitr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] downWidOutaFite|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Zarathustra30|1 year ago|reply
How did we lose the art of training new hires?
[+] [-] giantg2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gambiting|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] litoE|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] close04|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unfunco|1 year ago|reply
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/21/ftse-100-ret...
[+] [-] pjscott|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] EasyMark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ossobuco|1 year ago|reply
The luddites don't sound so crazy anymore these days.
[+] [-] EncomLab|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] squidbeak|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ses1984|1 year ago|reply
Cleaning my bathroom seems like a better benchmark.
[+] [-] pnut|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pdimitar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] clarada|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] glenndebacker|1 year ago|reply
Migrants frequently bear the brunt of blame in this environment. Additionally, there's a troubling misuse of subsidies and tax breaks, with funds often channelled to companies who exploit them solely to boost their profits, rather than fulfilling their intended benefits.
Certainly, in Belgium, this issue is significant. We allocate billions in tax breaks for research and innovation, yet politicians sometimes appear at technology fairs showcasing outdated VR technology as if it were still groundbreaking in 2014. Now, they are using lag in the development of AI as a way to justify new tax breaks, all the while proposing cuts to social benefits.
[+] [-] timonoko|1 year ago|reply
Worst thing was that there was no bank services outside 8:00-16:00. This was a blessing sort of, because Finland was the only country you could get bank services with a modem in 1970's. In 1983 you could do exactly all banking with your own Teletype. This included realtime stock exchange and that modern scheiße.
[+] [-] eesmith|1 year ago|reply
Parts of the US in the 1970s certainly had blue laws similar to what you mention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws_in_the_United_States mentions that "Maine was the last New England state to repeal laws that prohibited department stores from opening on Sundays. The laws against the department stores opening on Sundays were ended by referendum in 1990." and that in North Dakota it wasn't until 1991 that most business were allowed to be open on Sunday, and 1988 for Virginia.
For that matter, TV stations would stop broadcasting during the late night, with about 6 hours of dead air, not the 24/7 of modern stations. Fall asleep watching Carson and you might be woken up by the national anthem played just before shutdown.
No doubt your exaggerations cause the downvotes. It was not illegal to work after 16:00, even in Finland. Who ran the restaurants? The buses? The power company? The phones? The hospitals? The hotels?
This 1979 travel guide for US tourists, at https://archive.org/details/fieldingseurope10000fiel/page/28... , says shopping hours in Finland (or at least Helsinki) at that time were "Weekdays, 8:30 A.M. to 5 P.M., plus 8 P.M. on Monday and Friday; Saturday 8:30 A.M. to 4 P.M. in winter, with 3 P.M. closings in summer."
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SeanAnderson|1 year ago|reply
This is kind of a wild quote from the article. WTF? two hours unpaid work per day?
"A supplement of 40% of the daily wage will be paid for the sixth day of labor."
It's unclear to me if this means they're receiving 100% + 40% for their sixth day, or if the sixth day is 4/10th the normal wage?
[+] [-] stavros|1 year ago|reply
What already has been happening in reality is that workers work ten/twelve-hour days for no overtime, and the sixth day is unpaid. We've been working six-day workweeks ever since I can remember (so at least forty years), and probably much longer than that.
[+] [-] nerdjon|1 year ago|reply
The first paragraph ends with “in return for more free time” which makes zero sense if they are working 2 more hours for each day. I was expecting something later like it’s banked and you work a 4 day week or something. But nothing on that.
And then yeah one place it says unpaid and another place (to me) said 140% pay rate for that time.
Screams AI written or bad translation.
[+] [-] kkfx|1 year ago|reply
I think it's too late to recover, there will be a social collapse, a war as usual to cover and control the people and a slow recover. I only hope that respect of the past this time those who have caused the collapse for their personal interest will not make it again.