I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.
The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your “career” and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.
This is evident with how most people develop “hobbies” outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating “hobbies” and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.
Here’s how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:
- more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
- learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
- more gardening
- participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
- become a tour guide for my city
- cook and bake for my neighbors
- academic research
- open source software (and non-software) contributions
- pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
- pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
- participate in more than one “professions”. I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?
Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It’s unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.
People are entitled to their preferences. They should also be entitled to overtime after some amount of hours per week that’s lower than forty, I think whatever it takes to bring the rate of unemployment to practically zero.
Typically when unemployment is around 4 percent, that is everyone working that wants to work. The 4 percent is people between jobs and people that are kind of looking for work but not in a rush to work. It difficult to be under that number.
In other words we are often at a point where unemployment is at zero. 4 percent being zero.
I understand and kind of agree with the idea that there is some small amount of unemployment that is practically unavoidable, however, I’m not sure that 4% is it. Per the latest US employment report, we’re at 3.8%. So, it seems like we should set the limbo bar lower than 4%.
That report also breaks down the unemployment rate by demographic and it seems to vary significantly between groups. To say that we are at full employment when blacks and hispanics have about 2% greater unemployment than whites and asians seems incorrect. The minimum practical unemployment rate for all of these groups should be the same. So, if we’re going to adjust OT in order to help achieve full employment, we should be looking at the unemployment rate for the most unemployed race/gender group.
There are also of course problems with how unemployment is measured and calculated, but I suppose that’s a little besides the point.
Regionally there will always be variances. Take Chicago and the loss of the auto industry. It took 25 (???) years for that to clean out. There was nothing to replace it rapidly so either people needed to move or they waited it out till new business evolved. Areas like that will skew the average higher. Maybe you could get an extra percentage nationally but I would say it is pretty close to zero at the moment.