Re: Why is America so violent
On May 13, 2007, at 10:10 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
The numbers offered on this are artifacts which tell us nothing either way about how actual people live. The number 8.63 hours of sleep gives us no information whatever of how many employed people between the
ages of 19 and 55 sleep less or more than 8 hours. This topic can’t be studied in terms of averages or other indexes.
The numbers don’t tell you what you want to hear, so better to head
for Deep Truth instead.
DIdn’t Hochschild find, among other things, that people like work
better than home sometimes?
Also, the only proper comparison is with the best 3 to 5 years in
the experience of u.s. workers. Probably the ’60s — at a time when the
plan was for everyone to have a 3 day weekend every month. Everything
looked so bright in the mid ’60s. That is the time to measure by.
If you’re going to go maximialist, why not compare what is with what
could be? With the level of and growth in productivity, we could work
less and still live pretty well in material terms. But instead, the
productivity payoff is mainly in the form of higher profits and upper-
bracket incomes.
Doug