After a moment of pause I’ve decided not to continue the story of my conversation with the “simple living” lady, but instead summarize my conversation with Arlie Hochschild from last week and the one I had with John De Graaf today. (John De Graaf is the author of the bestselling book Affluenza and national coordinator for the movement to “Fight Overwork and Time Poverty in America”.
It isn’t often you get to talk to such “important” people. They don’t exactly list their numbers in the phone book. But a well written letter, some persistence, luck, and a healthy dose of pity/curiosity on the part of the author can sometimes get you an audience.
Arlie is an expert on the failure of family against the backdrop of overworked parents. I came upon her research quite by accident, but remained interested because she studies the effects of what happened in my family: Father goes to work before child gets up for school, comes home in time to fall asleep on the sofa watching the news, and wakes up in time to see that the kids are grown and off to college to repeat the same mistakes they just made. I won’t report the conversation with Arlie as it went much the same as the one with Mr. De Graaf.
John De Graaf is an expert on time poverty and consumerism. I asked him (and Arlie) a question that is often asked of me when I make various points about the practice of pursuing activities that undermine the very aim they seek to achieve in the pursuit.
To translate:
If one gets a job to provide for a family but the act of job itself causes the breakdown of the family…what purpose is the job serving?
If you buy a cell phone, can’t live without your PDA, eat out instead of cook at home, use 6 minute abs, read magazines with bullet point summaries and have assistants pick up your dry cleaning all in an effort to save time, yet still find yourself stressed and overscheduled….perhaps it is the lifestyle itself and not your inability to schedule it. The more time saving schemes you pursue, the less time you will have.
If money lets you do cool things then more money should let you do more cool things. But what happens when you work so much to get the money that you don’t have the time or energy to do the cool things you set out to get the money for in the beginning?
Anyway, I often point out how work has a tendency to beget more work and harms the very life you began your work to provide for in the first place.
Here is the response I often get: “I agree it seems a little odd how work and stuff run our lives, but in the end this is a free country. People are choosing to work this much, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.”
My common response: “People aren’t choosing it, because not all options are available.” People’s expecations of what should be available is clouded by the status quo and powerful folks with a self-interest in perpetuating it. The economy is like a democracy with votes allocated on the basis of wealth instead of one vote per person.
A recent study by economist Edward Wolff of NYU finds 40% of the nation’s wealth is held by the top 1% of the population. The top 1 percent of households now have more wealth than the entire bottom 95 percent. They can have any system they like, including one where we all work ourselves to death. Our outlet is government, where we have a voice, not the free market, where our voice is largely drowned out by those with the most votes (money). We are not speaking with one voice. I do not believe it is a conspiracy by the rich. It is simply that the wealthy are organized, Labor is not.
In a recent survey by Fleet Bank, 64 percent of U.S. workers said they would rather have more time than more money. Why isn’t that happening?
That was my question to John De Graaf and he gave the answer that I often give: The free market is failing, just as it failed at the turn of the century during the Industrial Revolution when we passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which saved us all from sweat shop conditions, embarrassing pay, and 90 hour work weeks.
If the American worker is becoming ever more productive, why are we working more? If we make more in less time than we used to, shouldn’t we take some of those productivity gains in extra time, instead of more money?
If we had frozen real wages at their 1969 levels and taken all productivity gains as a reduction in work hours (instead of more money), we would be working only a little more than 20 hours a week. I wasn’t alive in 1969, but I imagine life wasn’t unbearable….and how much more bearable it would be if we only worked 20 hours a week??
I would like to ask the question to your guys, my readers: Most people would agree money doesn’t buy happiness. Most people report they would trade less pay for more time. Why then are we working more than ever? Are we really choosing it?
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Why is it that when we stay up all night without expecting to we end up hating ourselves the next day. Why is it that when we do it by choice we don’t care? The power of choice then clearly becomes evident. Just like I choose what I write and what flows out of my pen onto paper. Going even further…I am choosing who my audience will be.
Choices render results, results that can be positive or negative. If the result is negative our choice turns into a “mistake”…and I believe that without mistakes our values, principles, and convictions could never be defined.
We have no choice over the beginning of our lives. But our parents did. Perhaps we don’t even have a choice when we die…but everything in between is without a doubt choice after choice. How we live our life between birth and death is certainly full of choices.
Do we choose to work this much? Hell yea we do. Look at me, I left that horrific job at the hotel where I was underpaid and overworked…I had the choice, so I left. THIS BEING SAID, I think Elliott that the question is not are we choosing to work more than ever…but can we afford to choose? Are the people who appear to be choosing to work more than ever in a situation where they feel they don’t have the choice? Not everyone can be picky.
Let me know.
C
Mr. Dykes:
Thought about you since our brief conversation last week and I thought I’d check out your site. It’s been a while, and yes, I see you have been doing your homework in the realm of economics. You know me, I don’t know jack shit about much, but I have found what you’ve written rather interesting. As for your question about choice, I do believe that it is all a choice. Do I really believe you don’t have a job right now because it isn’t by choice?! You’re too smart for that. You and I have known each other too long for me to think any differently.
Choices: My two cents.
As for work, am I working harder now than 7 years ago when I left college? NO. Am I making twice as much money, YES. Why is that? Why is it the higher you get up the ladder, the less bullshit you really have to put up with. Yes, there is still pressure and stress, but it seems to be of a different nature. Why is it when one high priced CEO robs his/her own company blind, there are a list of big companies just waiting to put them on their payroll for a nice 300K salary plus stock options despite the bad press. Despite all the people’s lives that were ruined by their greed and lack of business morality!
For the two Fortune 500 companies I’ve had the pleasure to work for, I’ve seen too many upper management people with little competence or regard for their position, let go only to find a nice two to three year home destroying some other business. And the cycle repeats.
The point I”m trying to make is one of perception.I’ve just realized that even in my own life, I could work a normal 40 hr per week job, not even do well, and have my competitors calling me offering me a job paying more money than I am making now. That baffles me. But I know that if I were lower down the level, that wouldn’t be the case. I would be micromanaged by some tyrant on a little personal mission, working twice as hard for half the money. Shit makes no sense.
As for money and time, I had a boss one day tell me the difference between a job and a career is 10 extra hours a week. Maybe this is true for corporate life.
Hell, I think I’ve almost made a career out of trying to work less. I always get amazed when I deal with people who brag about how much they work. It’s usually people who work hourly in some type of profession. And to me that makes sense. For me, anything over 40 hours is free labor. And I don’t make a habit of giving away anything for free. What you pay me for is what I work.
My answer to your question lies in the way we as a culture live today. We compromise our time through the use of money. We want everything now. We can’t get things fast enough: Computers, food, pictures, gas, conversations, destinations,you name it, we want it quick. And to get it quick we are willing to pay for it. To pay for it, we need to have money and plenty of it.
It’s like that damn poster I had in our dorm room on the third floor. I don’t know if you remember it, but it made sense.
” Once all the animals have been killed, all the fish caught, all the trees cut down, only then will we realize we can’t eat money.”
Maybe that’s not it for word, but you get my point. We place too much value on money and yet none at all.
I don’t squabble over nickel and dimes. Hell, it has to be at least a 3 digit bill for me to even waste my time. It didn’t use to be like that. I remember in college taking $5 bucks and buying 2 hots dogs, I pack of basic ultra lights, and 3 King Cobras and damn that was a promising Friday night. Now, that doesn’t even cover a tip. And you know what. I could almost take that same $5 bucks and do it now if I had to.
People become a slave to imported beer, fancy cars and big houses only to quickly forget what it was like when none of that was around. I haven’t. That’s why I still live the way I do. Yeah I have unnecessary crap, but all paid for unnecessary crap.
Again, back to your question, would you trade money for time, most people wouldn’t. Most people can’t stand to look as though they don’t have money, but yet proud that they have no time. Oh now, I’ve got to travel here, fly there, I’m really very important you know. Oh, not have cable? How would I live. Oh, drive an old car, what would the neighborhood association members think. I hear people all the time now that my wife is pregrant talk about how their wives had to go back to work because they couldn’t live without the money. It’s all a joke. Every one of them lives in a house they can’t afford, drives cars they can’t afford, belongs to some type of club for this, has to pay for their kids to do some kind of crap they don’t want to even do, and they say they can’t live without their spouse’s secondary income. I know these people and it’s a sham. They can’t live without the thought of not having all that crap. Little Johnny has to have more than I did growing. Priorities run amuck my friend.
Point is, I have one car payment, I live in a house way smaller than I can afford, I have no debt, and I find every way I can to offer my wife the opportunity to stay at home with our child if she so chooses. I made that choice. Those were my priorities I choose to put first.
If I never buy a new Bemer, or take an exotic vacation, or buy that damn submarnier I always wanted, so be it, those were my choices. No one else’s.
Do I feel more deprived now than 10 years ago when I didn’t have a pot to piss in. NO.
Damn, I’ve rambled, sorry for doing so. As always, I didn’t really answer shit, but the real point is I was thinking about you and wishing you well in your plight.
JHO