Open Thread June 6 - June 12, 2016

Elo

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Does anyone have any good studies on the benefit of jobs, net of pay? I have a vague memory of some, but am not finding them when I look.

Edit: Might help to clarify purpose. I'm inclined to believe the answer is "not much," and that employment is generally a bad thing, apart from the not dying of want bit. I want to see the strongest arguments that I'm wrong, and y'all steelman better than pretty much anyone I know.

I'm a pretty well off person. Recently I went jobless for a while. I missed, above all, the structure. Like, this may sound cliche, but because I didn't have to get up I didn't regulate when I went to bed. So I started to go to bed later and later, and thus, get up later and later.

It isn't that my sleep schedule got off sync with the world's (although, of course, it did that), its that it got off sync with itself. Week by week I'd stay up a little later, get up a little later. It became hard for me to commit to things ahead of time, because I might w... (read more)

8Viliam10y

Just some anecdotal evidence: For some people, jobs provide a scaffolding of their daily time. It's what makes them wake up in the morning. Take the job away from these people and here is what happens: wake up at 10AM, slowly make a breakfast, eat it, watch the TV a bit, make a lunch and eat it, now it's 3PM, feels like too late to do anything meaningful, so just watch the TV, make a dinner and eat it, watch some more TV, go to sleep, repeat over and over again. It seems like people without jobs should logically have more free time, but some of them actually manage to achieve less while unemployed. For some old people, jobs provide social opportunity that is hard to replace when they retire. Suddenly, instead of spending their day interacting with a dozen people they know, they spend their day alone at home, complaining that their children don't visit them more often. Without routine, some people's lives "fall apart". Humans are not automatically strategic. In theory, a life without job (with basic income, or retirement money, or just savings that allow you to take a really long vacation) should be better, but in practice sometimes it isn't. Think about all the superstimuli around us: for some people, their job may be the only thing that gets them offline most of the days. (Disclaimer: This all said, I would still prefer to have a basic income and get extra 8 hours of freedom every day. There is a risk my life would become less amazing than I imagine it, but I would gladly take the risk.) There is a possible counter-argument that the effects of losing the job might be only temporary. Like, if people have been conditioned for years to organize their lives around their job (and school), of course it gets them out of balance when the job suddenly disappears, because they never had the opportunity to learn how to organize their lives for themselves. But given enough time, they might develop the skill.

1Lumifer10y

Compared to what?