Recession means Working Harder

mewbie_2

PasturesNew wrote: »

Pop into the Welcome New Comers thread (don't tell mewbs he spelt that wrong, bless him)

Oh no. Buries head in hands. Newcomers of course. Shall I edit it, or d'ya think it's more with it and Money savers like that?

PasturesNew

mewbie wrote: »

Oh no. Buries head in hands. Newcomers of course. Shall I edit it, or d'ya think it's more with it and Money savers like that?

Editing it might cause your PC to use extra power, causing the power companies to make more profit ... and adding to inflation!

Leave it.

mewbie_2

PasturesNew wrote: »

Editing it might cause your PC to use extra power, causing the power companies to make more profit ... and adding to inflation!

Leave it.

It may help to attract more illiterates.

lostinrates

I like all comers how ever they are spelled/miss spelled.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

I like all comers how ever they are spelled/miss spelled.

So the writing on the toilet wall said ... :P

MMLS

PasturesNew wrote: »

Perhaps we could give away a free BOGOF pizza voucher with every new subscriber who contributes at least 10 postings/day, thanks you and me, posts witty things and stays for more than 3 months.

I'm doing really well with thanking you and mewbie and I've stayed for longer than 3 months

Must try harder with my 10 postings a day target, particularly those of a witty nature.

The free BOGOF pizza voucher might not be accepted in any Bahraini outlets, so could I work towards something of equal value please?

PasturesNew

MMLS wrote: »

I'm doing really well with thanking you and mewbie and I've stayed for longer than 3 months

Must try harder with my 10 postings a day target, particularly those of a witty nature.

The free BOGOF pizza voucher might not be accepted in any Bahraini outlets, so could I work towards something of equal value please?

PM your address to mewbie and he'll send you something interesting.... it might get stopped in customs though. How do they feel about pornographic photos through the post there?

MMLS

!!!!!!-by-post is ever so slightly unacceptable. I would appreciate something that falls between !!!!!! and pizza vouchers if that's possible.

ETA A couple of :j:T (is that enough?) incase you thought I was being ungrateful.

Generali

MMLS wrote: »

!!!!!!-by-post is ever so slightly unacceptable. I would appreciate something that falls between !!!!!! and pizza vouchers if that's possible.

ETA A couple of :j:T (is that enough?) incase you thought I was being ungrateful.

What falls between !!!!!! and pizza vouchers? A topless hamburger?

i8change

Originally Posted by PasturesNew
Personally, I think now's the time to bin Tax Credits and share the work out. Let all jobs become 3-4 days/week and let's all have a right royal few days off each week.

Much better for everybody.

I like the 1932 essay by the great columnist Bertrand Russell. Bit dated now but still interesting.

http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/praiseidleness.htm

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons. Oddly enough, while they wish their sons to work so hard as to have no time to be civilized, they do not mind their wives and daughters having no work at all. the snobbish admiration of uselessness, which, in an aristocratic society, extends to both sexes, is, under a plutocracy, confined to women; this, however, does not make it any more in agreement with common sense.

The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.
This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.