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The Economist - Why is everyone so busy?
The predictions sounded like promises: in the future, working hours would be short and vacations long. “Our grandchildren”, reckoned John Maynard Keynes in 1930, would work around “three hours a day”—and probably only by choice. Economic progress and technological advances had already shrunk working hours considerably by his day, and there was no reason to believe this trend would not continue. Whizzy cars and ever more time-saving tools and appliances guaranteed more speed and less drudgery in all parts of life. Social psychologists began to fret: whatever would people do with all their free time?
This has not turned out to be one of the world’s more pressing problems. Everybody, everywhere seems to be busy. In the corporate world, a “perennial time-scarcity problem” afflicts executives all over the globe, and the matter has only grown more acute in recent years, say analysts at McKinsey, a consultancy firm. These feelings are especially profound among working parents. As for all those time-saving gizmos, many people grumble that these bits of wizardry chew up far too much of their days, whether they are mouldering in traffic, navigating robotic voice-messaging systems or scything away at e-mail—sometimes all at once.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday December 26 2014, @05:58PM
This is one thing I've been saying. We in the US could do fine on much less, if we really tried.
But, it's not so easy for an individual. We have suburban sprawl and "McMansions". You really must have a car in the US, and that of course is a huge expense. To add to the fun, various organizations try to take advantage of this need to squeeze even more money out of car owners, with things like red light cameras, annual license fees, and "safety" inspections that are really more about revenue and drumming up repair and replacement business than actual safety. For instance, Virginia uses safety as the excuse why your windshield basically cannot have any cracks at all. Our cities, especially the newer ones in the south, were designed for transportation by car, and, intentionally or not, are quite hostile to other forms of transportation. There are some places where you can do without a car, but they are few. Then, for housing, there are lots of wastefully large and inefficient McMansions, and not so much in the way of low cost housing. There's a great deal of prejudice against affordable housing. "Trailer park trash" and "the projects". There was a New Urbanism movement some years ago, an effort to build neighborhoods that were actually pedestrian friendly and had low cost housing. In typical American fashion, developers twisted this into the latest fad, worth paying millions for, and the low cost part was quickly dropped. Seaside Florida is a perfect example of this.
As for the CEOs, yes, we and they know they are massively overpaid. "Thief Executive Officer" is one name I've heard them called. They've rigged the system so that it's impossible to work within it to address this issue. Small stockholders have no say in the matter, not enough votes to do anything. Employees can do nothing either, in part because they're kept too busy trying to hang on to their own jobs, made to just feel grateful that they have a job. Customers also have enough to worry about without adding CEO pay to the list of reasons not to buy from a particular company. Regulators have been bought off or suppressed.
America isn't about what you need, it's about having more than your neighbors. Keeping up with the Joneses.