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Episode 438: Do We Need an 8 Hour Work Day? · Words & Numbers

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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is words and numbers
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brought to you by the good people at Poly Hymnia Ant it's a
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new and exciting in your world this week.
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I have some e-mail from listener Joseph Clay, he says.
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Yesterday I heard someone talk about the Social Security
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Barbell, which essentially was that a very large chunk of baby
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boomers will be dying in the next decade and there's not much
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population behind them that will be retiring.
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So the program isn't in nearly as bad shape as some say.
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And he's curious of our thoughts on the matter, specifically this
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question, will the declining population have a large impact
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on Social Security's viability? The answer here is probably not.
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Population changes do have short term effects.
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So we're expected to get this deficit with Social Security
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over the next 10 years plus or minus, and then the deficit
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declines a bit. And I think that might be the
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barbell that Joseph is referring to before it gets larger again.
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So over the short term, yeah, population changes will give you
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this, but long term viability comes down not to the size of
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the population, but to the ratio of workers to retirees.
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And here it starts to look bleak.
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In 1960, we had five workers for everyone retiree.
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In 2010, we dropped below the three to one ratio that keeps
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Social Security solvent. So today we're below 3 to 1 and
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we're projected to stabilize at 2 1/2 workers to everyone
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retiree. And it gets even worse still
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because that 5 to 1 or 2.5 to 1 or whatever you're talking about
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was based on historical longevity rates.
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What's happening now is people are living longer and we aren't
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pushing up the retirement age. And I have some numbers.
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In 1940, the retirement age was 65, and the average male who
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retired at 65 was expected to live 12 more years.
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Today, retirement age is bumped up a bit.
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It's 67, but the average male who retires at 65 is projected
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to live 17 more years. So we've advanced the retirement
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age by two years, but longevity has advanced by five years.
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Oh, and it gets worse because females have an even longer life
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expectancy. They're expected to live for 19
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years after age 65. And back in the 1940s, not many
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females were in the workforce. As time goes by, you get more
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and more of them. So that makes the problem even
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worse and worse. You know, this flies in the face
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Ant of two things. I'll start with the more
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humorous of the two, I guess. I keep reading on my Facebook
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and Twitter feeds how those of us who got vaccinated against
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COVID, we're all going to start dying wholesale sometime very,
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very soon. Undoubtedly you've heard this
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too. Right.
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I keep waiting to keel over, but nothing happens.
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I keep waiting for you to keel over too.
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But on the less amusing side of this particular St., life
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expectancy in the US is declining.
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Is it really first? Time in a very long time.
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All right. Now here's the thing.
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I don't know the numbers, but anyone who's interested, be
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careful because you have to ask where are they measuring it
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from? Because you get very different
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answers if you measure life expectancy from birth versus
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life expectancy from one year old versus age 65 or what have
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you. My understanding and don't hold
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me to this exactly, but my understanding is that we're down
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a couple of years regardless. Oh really?
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Regardless of how you measure it.
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And, you know, a lot of people point to various drug problems
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that we've had things like this, right, that cut people down when
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they're young, which is generally where declines of this
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sort come from. Anyway, as interesting as all
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that is, I want to ask you, Aunt, to start thinking about
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what you're going to do. Well, I guess the date is just,
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yes, June 24th. What are you doing on June 20?
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4th June, 24th of this year. Nothing that I know about.
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Was standard Tuesday for you, but it's a big deal for those of
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us who like to engage in boycotts, OK?
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And you and I covered boycotts not too terribly long ago and
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how they generally don't amount to much of anything.
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And I don't suspect this one's going to either.
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But there is a called for boycott against McDonald's on
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June 24th. What have they done?
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Well, their prices have gotten a touch out of hand.
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OK. Give you an idea of what those
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prices look like. The average cost of a Big Mac
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right now in the US tends to be between 467 and 672.
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OK. That's kind of expensive.
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The 672 sounds that way. 467, not so much.
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Well, the most expensive Big Mac.
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I'll give you 2 guesses. 1 How expensive is the most expensive
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Big Mac and two where? Oh, I'd say $10 and I would say
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somewhere in Connecticut or New York City perhaps.
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Well, how about you? It's Darien, CT.
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Oh, all right, so kind of New York and Connecticut, right?
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All wrapped up into one. It's on the Gold Coast of
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Connecticut, my home state, where I grew up.
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Obviously, I did not grow up in Darien.
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If I did, I would already have retired.
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But the price in Darien is $18.00.
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Oh. My God, 18 dollars.
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Sweet Lord in heaven, who pays $18.00 for a big.
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Well, see, and this is the thing, James did not tip me off.
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I said Connecticut because I used to live in upstate New York
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and of course everything in New York City is expensive and by
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extension into Connecticut. But it seemed to me the rich
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people moved out to Connecticut, so you got the double whammy of
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things being more expensive and people being able to afford it.
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Yeah, there's all kinds of economic problems in Connecticut
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that are brought about by exactly this issue, proximity to
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New York City, right? Yeah, but $18. 18 dollars, My
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God, I don't know that I'd pay $18.00 for a good hamburger.
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Right. Yeah, yeah.
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So OK, we're going to have a boycott to try to make a point
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about prices. I guess it's the same group that
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boycotted Walmart Once Upon a time.
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And what's the other one? Target.
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So I don't suspect this is going to work all that much.
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Let me point out that people who think that $4.00 or $6 or
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$18.00, whatever it is, people who think that's too expensive
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or already boycotting, they aren't buying these things.
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That's right. That's not going to help them at
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all. And we've gotten to the point
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now where, you know, I drift into a fast food place from time
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to time when I'm traveling typically.
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And boy, it's gotten really out of hand.
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The prices, I mean, they're really crazy.
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Most of them aren't $18.00 Big Mac crazy, but you're not
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getting screaming hot deals at any fast food places anymore.
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No, but you know where I am starting to find the good deals
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and the great food is in food trucks at truck stops.
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But that's a little too specific.
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I like the idea of food trucks. I don't like the idea of you
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drifting from truck stop to truck stop to find something to
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eat. Yeah, on my on my travels now in
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Virginia, I frequent Interstate AD, which of course has lots of
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trucks and lots of truck stops. And what you find is that
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there's a huge population of Indians who have come to this
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country who drive trucks. And so what's happening?
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They want food and they like Indian food, of course.
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And so there's a demand for that.
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So all of a sudden now there's a bunch of Indian food trucks at
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truck stops. You get some really good stuff.
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I'm surprised the truck stops let that happen.
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Truck stops always have restaurants inside.
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Yeah, I don't know how this works.
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The one we stopped at recently, the food truck was across the
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street on what was clearly some other piece of property.
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Yeah, Smart. We actually have, not
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surprisingly, a lot of food trucks here in Tucson and
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Indian, some Mexican. More often than not, whatever
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the local market wants, it's cheaper to buy a food truck than
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to open a restaurant. Right.
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Yeah. I'm happy to work my way through
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the food trucks here one at a time.
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The food isn't uniformly outstanding, but damn near so.
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We'll see how the boycott goes. I predict it's going to do
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exactly nothing. I predict the same.
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So the interesting thing will be, can McDonald's hang on or
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have they priced themselves out of their own market?
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And I think they might have. I don't know.
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I would imagine McDonald's has at its fingertips a wealth of
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coast to coast data. If anybody's going to get
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pricing right, it's going to be those guys.
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I mean, if anything, this boycott may have the opposite
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effect because all of this talk, I haven't had a Big Mac in
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years, but I kind of want to go buy one now.
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I would also like a Big Mac. Yeah.
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Look, they're not the best burger in the world, but they're
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interesting, they're pretty good, and they're almost always
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exactly. Exactly the same, right?
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It tastes not just the same McDonald's to McDonald's, but in
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my memory the Big Mac I had when I was 11 is the same as this
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one. I don't want to burst your
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bubble here, but the Big Mac you had when you were 11 had a lot
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more beef on it than it has now. Maybe so, I was just had smaller
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hands than James. I don't know, your hands are
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kind of tiny and delicate even now, even though this of course
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brings us to the. Foolishness.
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Oh my God, we haven't even gotten to the foolishness yet.
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We. Haven't even gotten there yet.
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And I'm going to point to Louisiana, but I'm also going to
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point to 11 other states that I will not name, but you can go
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look up in the show notes if you want, and I'm going to name
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Robert F Kennedy Junior. Do you have any idea what all
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this might add up to? Nope, not a clue. 12 states
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across the fruited plain Ant have legislation either passed
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or in the works making illegal chemtrails.
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I would imagine they're already illegal, right?
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Well, they don't have to be illegal.
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They don't exist. I can sense the hate mail coming
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in already, but they don't. They just don't.
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And we're wasting a lot of time trying to figure out how to
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address this legislatively if they.
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Did the EPA would have a lot to say about that?
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Environmental groups would have a lot to say about that.
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You would think, but of course they're all either in on the
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conspiracy like you. You're on the take.
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That's am I 'cause I I would like to be just go ahead.
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Who would be mailing a check in this respect?
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Who's responsible for the chemtrails?
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They, they always them. For One Stop shopping for all
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things James and Aunt, visit our website wordsandnumbers.org.
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to patreon.com/words and Numbers.
12:58
Aunt I teased a little bit last week, which not to peel away the
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curtain too much last week was recorded about 8 minutes ago.
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I said, oh, we'll get back to this idea of what was it
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exactly, how many hours people work and this sort of thing,
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right? Isn't it interesting?
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Because you and I have talked about this for years, and it's
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long been my belief that most people in office settings work
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about 3-4 hours a day at the most.
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Yeah. You think that's about right
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still. Take out the coffee time in the
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useless meetings and yeah, yeah, but I'd say 4 to 5 maybe.
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You're being very generous. You and your people must work
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hard where you live. Well, I can tell you this, when
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I've got some serious deadlines and I absolutely, positively
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have to get work done, I stay home and do it.
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Interesting I can get. Way more done remotely than I
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can in person. But yeah, I mean, there are
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negatives to that as well. Oh, there's positives and
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negatives to everything, right? Life is about trade-offs.
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But Microsoft put out a report not too terribly long ago
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asserting that American workers are stuck in what they call an
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infinite work day because from the minute you wake up until the
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minute you go to bed, you're pinged 100 different ways.
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Really. And as much as I think people
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work 3 hours a day more or less, I also know that people do get,
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and not everybody, but many people get hundreds of emails
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and messages a day. And that does start to reek of
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an infinite work day, doesn't it?
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Because if you're never off the clock, right?
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If there's never not a screen in front of you or in your hand,
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then you are, by definition, always working.
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Yeah, right. To 1° or another.
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So what do we make of that? Yeah, So how many hours are
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people working? Well I don't know, but there's
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2080 in a full time work year and I don't think people are
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working anywhere near as many hours as 2080.
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Having said that, I get 300 emails a day.
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Isn't there some country, I want to say one of the Scandinavian
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countries, that recently tried? Maybe it was Iceland that tried
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a four day work week and determined it actually worked
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better. Of course it works better.
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People are more productive, yeah.
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And they're happier and happy. People tend to be more
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productive long. Term right?
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Right. Right.
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And who the hell doesn't want a three day weekend every weekend?
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Or two days on a weekend and one day during the week?
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Maybe that makes more sense. But man, an infinite work day.
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I could recall. I can sense that.
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I can sense that there's something right about this.
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Weirdly, when I was in academia, it was that I was constantly
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working, and in part it was the nature of the job.
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If I wasn't teaching and answering students, I was
16:19
writing articles or I was dealing with you or we're
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traveling somewhere. So it was constant work.
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Since I've transitioned to my current position, I have to say
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my employers are really good about not invading personal
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space. I get no emails out of work
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hours. Nobody bothers me on holidays,
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which I kind of feel. If anything, I feel the opposite
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because I'll want to work on something and I feel badly.
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You know, I shouldn't e-mail people because it's the weekend
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and they don't e-mail me. Well, the interesting thing here
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and there were a number of interesting things in this
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report, but one of them that really caught me.
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I never really thought about it, but you and I know this to be
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true. Meetings.
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Meetings are almost always a waste of everybody's time.
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But now nearly a third of all business meetings take place
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across multiple time zones. Yeah.
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And meetings that take place after 8:00 PM have increased 16%
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year over year. Wow, wow.
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Right. Yeah, because if you've got
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multiple time zones, by definition you're going to be
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impinging on somebody's free time.
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Somebody's not going to do all that well with this nonsense.
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But here's the thing. If you're only working 3 hours a
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day, I think I can be right. And this can be right too.
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It's just pushing the hours around in strange and wondrous
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ways. But.
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The real question. Becomes.
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What should the expectation be? Right, Yes, we've inherited this
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8 hours going back maybe 100 years.
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Well, it's. 1/3 of the day, right?
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1/3 of the day to work, 1/3 of the day to sleep, and a third of
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the day to family. This is very typically how
18:13
people as a matter of fact, I've just given you one of the chief
18:17
lessons of Freemasonry. Can't tell you anymore, of
18:22
course, but you take the point. But if we're just shifting time
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around, you know, maybe that has to be, maybe we're all on call
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24 hours a day but not working that much.
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I see, right? Maybe that's the better way of
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looking at this. Well, yeah.
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And that kind of matches with the office experience that if
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you're in the office for 8 hours, but you're really only
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doing, let's say, 5 hours of productive work, basically
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you're on call for the other 3. Yeah.
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And look, there's something to be said about building corporate
18:58
culture that only happens if you're together, right?
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So, you know, in some respect, even if you're not working,
19:06
you're still doing something that the company wants and needs
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you to do. Yeah, I've come to really
19:14
appreciate that, but also to realize that it doesn't happen
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nearly as much as what you might think given the proponents.
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Yeah, Oh, I think that goes without saying.
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Look, you and I have done our work together in our own homes
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for a decade. Right.
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Yeah. Maybe close to two at this
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point. Hasn't been that long.
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Oh my God, it has. You can do this if you want to.
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Now, whether your employer wants to let you is an open question.
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I don't know, but I wonder right when.
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Here, let me read to you a little bit.
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According to Microsoft's data, employees are interrupted every
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two minutes by meetings, emails or messages and receive an
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average of 117 emails and 153 Teams messages each work day.
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The. E-mail number sound high, but
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the interruptions do not. Yeah, I think that's right,
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although I'm up into the two and three hundreds in emails from
20:18
time to time. Yeah, from time to time, yeah.
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I think Microsoft saying 153 teams messages every day, it's a
20:27
little self-serving. I have never in my life had a
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Teams message. Now I thought you were going to
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go with this whole conversation in a different direction.
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I want to throw it out here before it leaves my head.
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And that is we live in a weird space, a space unlike humans
20:48
have ever lived in before that here in the United States.
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And I don't know what the numbers are, but it's got to be
20:55
in the 1,000,000 millions of people who don't work, and I
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don't mean stay at home parents. I mean the household has no
21:06
means of income other than welfare, government support,
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that kind of thing. We have become so incredibly
21:17
rich, incredibly productive that we as a country can support
21:21
millions of people who don't work.
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Now, prior to maybe 150 years ago, those millions of people
21:30
would die because if you didn't work, you didn't eat.
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That's just the way life was. But we've become so productive,
21:37
we can do that. So here's my question.
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Is it possible we're on the verge of becoming so productive
21:45
that almost nobody needs to work?
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Or we need to work a couple of hours a day and that's it.
21:52
Maybe. And, you know, we started
21:55
thinking about universal basic income a long time ago.
22:00
It's a pretty safe assertion that neither of us was all that
22:03
thrilled with it. Yeah, theoretically right.
22:06
I thought it was better than the current welfare system, but
22:10
yeah, I wasn't thrilled. Right.
22:12
And we talked about if you could throw out every single kind of
22:16
welfare and replace it with this, we'd all be better off.
22:19
And only for efficiency sake, right?
22:22
It's just more efficient to do this than to do what we do.
22:26
And we would put out legions of bean counters out of work,
22:31
right? And then they'd end up on the
22:32
universal basic income too. And what you would end up with,
22:36
I think is A2 tier society, right?
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People who looked at the Ubi and said good enough for me, and
22:44
other people who looked at it and said I'd really rather still
22:48
be wealthy. What do I have to do to
22:50
accomplish that? Right?
22:52
Because the Ubi isn't going to make people wealthy by present
22:55
day standards. They're going to make people
22:57
wealthy by the standards of 100 years ago.
23:01
Right. Yeah, yeah.
23:04
But not by present day standards.
23:06
So the question becomes, what do you think about this now?
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Has your mind changed on it in any way?
23:13
I can't say that I like it so much as saying that I think it's
23:17
inevitable. I think you're particularly with
23:20
where I see AI going and if we get similar technological
23:24
advances like that, I could see maybe not in our lifetimes, but
23:29
in our kids lifetimes, maybe people not having to work that
23:33
you could have a middle class existence simply off of the
23:37
productivity of the machines and the computers.
23:40
Yeah, maybe so. Maybe So.
23:43
Would you still work if you could get a Ubi?
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Yeah, I think so for a couple of reasons. 1, you know, I like
23:49
doing what I do. Maybe I do some things
23:52
differently, but two, there's always, you know, I mean, we're
23:54
both entrepreneurial. I'd look at my 24 hours of free
23:58
time and say, look, I'd happily give up two of them in exchange
24:02
for some more money, right? And then two becomes 3.
24:06
What kind of cool stuff can I do now that I don't have to worry
24:09
about all this other stuff? Right, right, right.
24:11
And look that that's interesting to me.
24:14
And if I'm right in my assertion that most people in the offices,
24:20
and I don't think this applies to people in factories, right?
24:23
I think you just need people there to do certain things.
24:26
But in offices, you could be damn near anywhere you want to
24:29
be and you can probably get away with just a few hours a day.
24:36
So maybe it's the case people in factory should start making a
24:39
lot more than people who work in offices.
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I think that's coming. I think it's coming, James.
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I think it's coming as well and I think that's just fine,
24:50
especially when I think about people who want to get into the
24:53
trades instead of getting into, you know, kind of white collar
24:57
work. I think they should get more,
25:01
they work harder. And now it means the same thing,
25:08
I think, to say I work harder and I'm more valuable, whereas
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it wasn't always the same thing. Working harder didn't always
25:22
make you more valuable, and it certainly never will always make
25:27
you more valuable, right? There's always going to be
25:29
somebody who can accomplish in an hour what it takes you a
25:33
week. And that guy is going to be very
25:36
well paid. But man, all of a sudden
25:42
plumbers make more. Why shouldn't it be that way?
25:48
Yeah, we all need plumbers more than we need office workers
25:53
part. Of that is what's been happening
25:55
for the past 40-50 years who've been shoving people into college
26:00
and now we've got too many, I should say too many.
26:02
We have more college educated people than we need versus
26:07
people who are educated in the trades.
26:09
You know, good case in point, I've got 6 kids.
26:12
Five of them went to college and Graduate School.
26:16
One of them went to study aircraft maintenance and that
26:20
one guy makes more than all the rest of them.
26:25
That seems right, but aircraft maintenance is way more
26:29
important. And I want to be clear, I'm
26:32
drifting outside of what your children have done, so this is
26:37
not a criticism of them. Although if you want to
26:39
criticize your own children, we could do that later if an
26:42
aircraft mechanic is more valuable than somebody with a
26:52
degree in Elizabethan poetry. Yeah, right.
27:00
Let me give you some different words here, because the
27:02
Elizabethan poetry people are just blue gaskets.
27:06
They're not listening it. Some of them might be.
27:10
Here's a good example. So the aircraft maintenance guy
27:12
versus someone who takes care of your children at the daycare
27:15
center, right? What could be more important
27:18
than your children? And how can you say the aircraft
27:20
maintenance is more valuable? Here's the thing, right?
27:23
Those aren't the words I'd use. I would say we have so many
27:29
people willing and able to take care of children and so few
27:33
people willing and able to fix aircraft engines that having one
27:38
more of the aircraft engine guy is more valuable than having one
27:43
more of the person who watches the children.
27:47
Yeah, no, look, watching children is a big deal,
27:52
incredibly important. It's there's just no shortage of
27:54
people who are qualified to do it.
27:57
Right. And that's what determines the
27:59
market. Wage, or any market price for
28:01
that matter, is how valuable is one more of the thing.
28:06
What does it take to get one more of these?
28:08
It's not a reflection of the inherent value of the thing.
28:14
Yeah, this is the marginal revolution.
28:16
Right. Yeah, once we got our heads
28:18
around that, we start to understand economics a whole lot
28:20
better. I think that's right.
28:23
And yet, I don't know where I stand right now on these sorts
28:28
of things, right, Because it seems that people do very little
28:33
work in terms of hours. It also seems like we're all
28:38
expected to be on the clock 18 to 24 hours a day.
28:43
Well, those two things can in fact both be true.
28:47
It's just a strange set of circumstances that yields that
28:51
outcome. Yeah.
28:51
And I think it's going to change with this younger generation.
28:55
What is the name of it? Is it millennials?
28:57
No, it's not millennials, it's Gen.
28:58
Z. Been right for a long time.
29:02
I don't even think that's right anymore.
29:04
Yeah, well, Gen. Z are the ones who are coming up
29:06
the ranks now. They're the first ones that had
29:09
kind of like flip the bird to the whole, you know, 40 hours a
29:12
week thing. When they get into senior
29:14
management positions, I think the working world will start to
29:18
look a lot different. I don't know.
29:21
I mean, I really don't know. And what you're looking for is
29:23
actually Generation Alpha. Well, alpha is the next one
29:27
after, yeah. That's what comes after Z
29:30
disappears. I don't know, because the kind
29:34
of people who become executives are the kind of people who work
29:38
lots and lots and lots. Of yeah, that's a good point.
29:40
There's a self selection. Yeah, yeah.
29:42
I don't know where it it all comes out in the wash, but it's
29:46
really going to be fascinating. And that's all the time we've
29:50
got this week on words and numbers.
29:52
Until next time. Send us e-mail
29:54
wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com. Try to be nice to one person who
29:58
doesn't deserve it till next week.
30:00
Can't take it easy. See you next week, James.