Welcome to the future of work: a world where everything moves faster, the hours are longer and steady jobs are harder to find. more-- http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/is-your-job-killing-you/255719/
Is your job killing you? Try comparing health problems in areas with high unemployment and high employment? There is analysis into how the good times hurt us (i.e. analysis into how we're more likely to eat out and eat more, increasing problems such as health disease), but that doesn't take into account the consequences of economics crisis
So, and the problem is what exactly ? You mean when people have more money, they spend it ? Forgive me, but I thought thats what made the economic wheels turn. So they may eat like crap, so what. Is it not their right to do so ? Someone wants to shorten their lifespan by terrible eating habits, who am I to say they are wrong. It's their life, do with it what you will.
How many hours a day did people work 1000 or more years ago? We evolved under those "working" conditions. I'm puzzled, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year is 2080 hours, minus 2 weeks of vacation (80 hours) and 10 holidays (80 hours) is 1920 hours - 1778 hours is 37 hours a week. As an engineer, I have rarely worked a 40 hour work week in the 40 years I have been working. My hours have actually gone down in the last 5 years. As far as Japan working less hours than the US - has this author ever been to Japan? They put in long days to show how important they are to the company.
Yes it is sad about Japanese workers that they need to work such long hours. The French got it right, Americans are too uptight and hardly take any vacations. The French know how to live and savor life. You only live once!
There isn't one, except a lack of jobs! Average hours measures aren't much cop (and offer little info, except in aiding very basic labour demand analysis). Its quality of work that matters, with non-pecuniary benefits then crucial
Marxism and such like would refer to the successes in capitalism. We'd perhaps have to refer to green economics, with a focus on big business and how that uses alienation to destroy employment as a 'good'
Only lack of jobs? Lower wages to $1.00 per hour, and you would have plenty of jobs, and all the working hours you could handle. Eliminate minimum wage, and many of the inexperienced youth could gain experience.
And little else. Eliminate minimum wage and you might as well eliminate the American way of life. Without minimum wage, other than the handful of skilled workers needed to program the robots, we would become China or Mexico. Massive unskilled labor paid a pittance, which would collapse our burgeoning retail and service economy and cause even more unemployment. Plus, you'd have massive "lay-offs" as businesses got rid of higher paid workers in favor of bottom of the barrel workers.
This is nonsense for two reasons. First, the evidence suggests either insignificant (or actually positive) employment effects. Second, eliminating minimum wages has been shown to increase problems with skills provision (with a skewing of resources towards a low skilled equilibrium. See Britain's elimination of its wages council system and the further shift towards production of goods with a low income elasticity of demand
