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[SalmonGod]

We aren't working 15 hours a week because Keynes expected a lower level of consumption then happened.  There were bullshit jobs when Keynes wrote his predictions.  That the average household would own 2 cars, a 2600 square foot house is something that maybe Keynes would have expected.  That a more productive society would be one that chooses to direct labor towards waitstaff, landscapers, maids and the like is not really in line with Keynes' predictions.  The word "service" never appears.  The word "education" never appears but quite a bit of labor these days goes to that.  The words "doctor" "medicine" and "health" dont and that is a substantial form of "consumption" that takes up a lot of labor.

What do these professions you're bringing up that are not bullshit jobs have to do with the existence of bullshit jobs?

[RedKing]

Agreed. Service jobs aren't bullshit jobs, and I think it says something of the mentality of someone who would classify them as such.

Now "social media expert"...THAT'S a bullshit job.
Pet beautician...that's a bullshit job.
Eyebrow threader...that's a bullshit job.

Guy/girl who brings me my food with a smile and makes my day 5% less shitty thereof? That's a job with considerable utility to society. Might as well toss bartender on the heap if you're going to denigrate waitservice, and frankly our veneer of civilization is only held together thanks to bartenders.

[mainiac]

What do these professions you're bringing up that are not bullshit jobs have to do with the existence of bullshit jobs?

Because they are professions that are much more prevalent then in the 30s and are the industries that grew to supply the consumption that Keynes didn't predict.

Graeber posits the existence of bullshit jobs to explain for the discrepancy in what Keynes said.  According to Graeber, Keynes said we needed 15 hours of work for the level of consumption we enjoy.  We dont.  Therefore "bullshit" accounts for the other two thirds.  But Keynes didn't say that.  Keynes said we needed 15 hours of day for a level of consumption higher then the level in the 1930s.

[RedKing]

Or you can easily make the argument that if wealth were more equitably distributed, we WOULDN'T need more than 15 hours. Especially when CEOs make more in 15 hours than I make in 4 YEARS. And more than smoe of their employees would make in 8 years.

[mainiac]

Or you can easily make the argument that if wealth were more equitably distributed, we WOULDN'T need more than 15 hours. Especially when CEOs make more in 15 hours than I make in 4 YEARS. And more than smoe of their employees would make in 8 years.

One could easily make the argument.  One would be wrong.

Let me just back track for a moment and note that Graeber has abso-fucking-lutely no credentials in this field.  The things your cranky relatives angrily post on facebook have just as much credibility.  As such, if you want to investigate information about wealth and such (reading Picketty is a great starting point for this) you would be able to arrive at a much more rigorous result then Graeber.

[RedKing]

Or you can easily make the argument that if wealth were more equitably distributed, we WOULDN'T need more than 15 hours. Especially when CEOs make more in 15 hours than I make in 4 YEARS. And more than smoe of their employees would make in 8 years.

One could easily make the argument.  One would be wrong.

Well, can't argue with that. By which I mean, I literally can't argue with that, because there's not enough "that" to argue with.
You're an economist, and your response is "No, because I said so"? Pretty weaksauce, bro.

[mainiac]

Or you can easily make the argument that if wealth were more equitably distributed, we WOULDN'T need more than 15 hours. Especially when CEOs make more in 15 hours than I make in 4 YEARS. And more than smoe of their employees would make in 8 years.

One could easily make the argument.  One would be wrong.

Well, can't argue with that. By which I mean, I literally can't argue with that, because there's not enough "that" to argue with.
You're an economist, and your response is "No, because I said so"? Pretty weaksauce, bro.

Take net personal income of 9 trillion dollars.  Divide it by three because apparently soaking the rich will pay for us working one third as much.  We now have 3 trillion dollars net personal income.  Divide that by 320 million Americans.  That's less then 10,000 dollars per capita.  Multiply that by average household size of 2.58 perople and you are left with household income of about 25,000 dollars.  So assuming we flawlessly redirect all efforts towards perfect equality and there are no diseconomies of scale to this 15 hour work week our perfectly egalitarian society still has to get by on half as many resources per household.  However a great number of costs are not very elastic.  Having more free time wont really reduce the amount of healthcare you need.  So healthcare is now a massively bigger chunk of household spending, and it wasn't a small chunk to begin with...

[Baffler]

I have a feeling that a drastic restructuring of pricing would accompany such a drastic restructuring of wealth. And healthcare costs are known to be massively inflated anyway.

[SalmonGod]

The stuff that I see as bullshit jobs is the ever growing mountains of paperwork and expansion of middle management around absolutely everything we do.

My own job is a perfect example.  I move objects from Point A to Point B.  But there are a million obstacles in the way, and every single one of them is a product of people inserting bullshit to the equation.  Fighting over scraps of numbers that are literally worth less than the cost of the labor going into that fight.  We have to fight with the airline terminals over details in paperwork to get cargo picked up, and most of it is details that they invent for no discernible reason other than to create the potential for delays so they can charge us more for holding onto the cargo while we figure it out.  We have to fight with customs about details in paperwork, which is also constantly expanding in requirements, because every failed requirement is another potential for them to make money from a fine.  We have to fight with the customer over making their paperwork compatible with everyone else's so we can actually perform the service they're paying us for, while keeping things also in line with their own internal paperwork requirements that are sometimes in direct contradiction with everyone else's.  We have to document every step of every fight that we engage in to cover our own asses from every angle - literally making sure to take down name and time stamp of every person that we talk to for almost any reason while on the job.  As these difficulties expand, the longer the chain of management grows to invent and monitor all the processes necessary to navigate this minefield and distance the company royalty from the frustration and resentment of their workers.  And as the chain of management grows, so does the amount of labor that goes into developing reports that all those managers use to make sense of everything that's going on beneath them.

Mountains and mountains of bullshit that as far as I can tell arises because people who are supposed to be working together to make a product/service happen are actually putting 90% of their effort into creating opportunities to heckle and steal from each other..... because it's mandated from Mt Olympus that profit margins must grow year after year after year forever while at the same time providing lower costs to customers, and if those profits aren't coming from cuts to employee pay or operational budgets, then they're coming from extortionary mountains of bullshit.

Having more free time wont really reduce the amount of healthcare you need.

Really?  I'm sure you know better than this.  Having more free time is the #1 thing that many, many people need to be healthier.  Not that this is core content of your post, but I can't let that one go...

[mainiac]

And healthcare costs are known to be massively inflated anyway.

This is a rather complicated subject.  If your way to make egalitarianism work is to square the circle of healthcare, then it's actually a healthcare reform proposal, not the fault of the rich.

[BFEL]

In non-election news, it's about goddamn time this happened.

that's a nice headline though. don't mention the guns in the headline, mention the flags.
i'm not saying that because i don't think the confederate flag is literally the most racist thing since hitler, i'm saying that because...
that headline implies these people were indicted by waving a confederate flag at a birthday party.
not convoying past, brandishing guns and making death threats.
great job cnn. you did it again.

So I'm the only one willing to suspend my judgements of what went down until these people are actually, y'know, judged for what went down?
While the fact they're being indicted certainly implies that they were the perpetrators here, there are two sides to the story, and its perfectly possible they were literally arrested for waving flags and then having rocks thrown at them.  Not necessarily LIKELY, but possible.

All this article tells us is "people were arrested" and "those people had confederate flags" those are the full amounts of facts in that article.

[Baffler]

And healthcare costs are known to be massively inflated anyway.

This is a rather complicated subject.  If your way to make egalitarianism work is to square the circle of healthcare, then it's actually a healthcare reform proposal, not the fault of the rich.

See SalmonGod's post though. The underlying cause of healthcare's circular nature is exactly the same as the underlying cause of the expansion of middle management and artificial busywork. The people who are already up high benefit from setting the system up like that and keeping it like that when it's already there, to the detriment of literally everyone else. It even manifests in similar forms, with acres of forests pulped into paperwork that insurance companies can use to deny people's claims because Mostly Meaningless Form No. 6492081 was slightly misfiled.

Not to imply that that's even remotely the whole extent of healthcare's borkedness, that's just the example that stands out.

[mainiac]

I'm rather aware of the problems of the system, having worked in it...

[BFEL]

with acres of forests pulped into paperwork that insurance companies can use to deny people's claims because Mostly Meaningless Form No. 6492081 was slightly misfiled.

Would you deny the trees their revenge?

[Baffler]

I'm rather aware of the problems of the system, having worked in it...

Then from one insider to another, you really seem to be missing the forest for the trees here.

with acres of forests pulped into paperwork that insurance companies can use to deny people's claims because Mostly Meaningless Form No. 6492081 was slightly misfiled.

Would you deny the trees their revenge?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWHEcIbhDiw