Making money is not the same as keeping it there is a reason why investments aren't well taught in schools, the examples you gave are well stationed, the market crisis gave me my first millions, people shy away from hard times, I embrace them.. well at least my advisor does lol.
Investors should be cautious about their exposure and be wary of new buys, especially during inflation. Such high yields in this recession is only possible under the supervision of a professional or trusted advisor.
This is superb! Information, as a noob it gets quite difficult to handle all of this and staying informed is a major cause, how do you go about this are you a pro investor?
Another lie: working for others is bad and you should only aspire to own your own business, some people just dont care about that and work to sustain their non profitable hobbies, and they are happy like that, they are not less ambitious or anything is just that happiness looks different for everyone, some people will dream of being their own boss and thats good, but other people not wanting the same isnt bad
I agree with this because I have ADD so working for a company where I have clear set expectations to meet helps me focus and feel productive and the thought of having to make every single decision without set expectations causes me to want to mentally spiral which would cause me to become indecisive and unproductive to the point that I don’t accomplish anything.
True. I feel like we're being pressured to be entrepreneurs, as if that is the only measure for success. Some people are not cut out for that, and it's ok. Others could maybe make it, but are just not interested. I just want some money in for my needs, for some savings, and fun money. I don't need to be Miss Business Owner, too much work.
As an European this "anti union rhetoric" is just crazy to me. I get why employers don't want them and speak out against them, I also get why being watched and pressured when there's a poll about unionizing prevent workers from voting. But there seem to be so many people really believing that unions are bad? How? Why? This is just...weird.
I used to just think people were dumb but then I learned that people are only as smart as the info you give them. We as a society have been groomed by our predators.
@@mitchh3092 I found it enlightening to realize that people aren't stupid, they're naive. Like, most people don't know much about any particular subject (myself included), and are overly trusting of things that people in their community seem to believe (again, myself included). Unfortunately, these things make people easy to manipulate under the right circumstances.
Could TFD do a video on the inflation that we are seeing? I’m hearing a mix of information about rising costs. I would love to hear trusted TFD’s opinion
Lul I'll plug Corporate Greed as being the reason and climate crisis being the catalyst for us seeing even more rapid, destructive, business out to turn a quick profit than anyone has in our lifetime before. Also wanna plug 'the Problem, w/ Jon Stewart' because it atleast calms me hearing people who don't have corporate bias/capitalistic economy indoctrination gather around and talk | ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SgjPl-YW6Hc.html
Yep. I’ve read a lot about the typical sources blaming stimulus going to the poors and greedy workers wanting higher wages… yet corporate profit margins are growing and they’re bragging about it. Seems like they’re full of it and the true cause is a bit larger than Jerry down the street no longer accepting only $7/hr.
@@dmonee6196 Inflation and corporate profit are pretty much wholly unrelated. Inflation and deflation are a direct consequence of the money supply not matching the value of goods and services in the economy. Consider this admittedly dramatically simplified scenario: You and four friends decide to use shells to pay each other for favors to make sure that no one is getting more favors than they are giving. You help Friend 1 move and they give you 10 shells. Friend 2 helps you clean your house and you give them 5 shells. This is essentially the purpose of money: an abstract yet shared representation of value. You start off this scheme by all going to the beach and finding 100 identical shells, each person getting 20. This arrangement works for a while until one of your friends falls on hard times and spends all their shells on favors from the others. To get around their lack of shells, they go to the beach and find 100 more identical shells and start using those for favors to get through the rough patch. The total number and complexity of favors hasn't changed, though, because there are still five of you. You now have 200 shells (double) representing the same value of favors. What would happen to the shell cost of each service? It'd go up, no? That move now costs 20 shells. That cleaning costs 10 shells. This is the consequence of stimulus checks where the money comes off the printing press like what happened with the covid checks. There is more of the abstract unit injected into the economy, but it's representing the same or less actual value, so the purchasing power of each dollar goes down. This results in higher numbers at the gas station and grocery store. So, is it the fault of "the poors and greedy workers"? No. But it is a direct and predicted consequence of the massive stimulus checks that went out. The blame for this lies in the Fed and the federal government. The Fed has been keeping interest rates artificially low for years now to try to stimulate the economy in an effort to keep the line going up. They're trying desperately to avoid another major market correction, but are really just postponing the inevitable and making the problem worse. They could be removing this extra money from the economy to even out inflation by raising interest rates, as they are supposed to, but they are too cowardly to do it. To put that back into the shell analogy, it'd be like everyone deciding to destroy 10% of shells on every transaction until you're back down to 100.
@@mjs3188 I'd go so far as to say that you're half right. Tye current inflation definitely has to do with low interest rates but probably nothing to do with the stimulus checks. Those were simply not enough money per Capita to drive up the costs of goods and services. I would say that the most compelling reason for inflation is that the government has been propping up asset values through a number of monetary policies. This does nothing but increase the income inequality that's already becoming problematic. The point being that the people who have the money can afford to spend more of it and the people selling goods or services have to charge more to accommodate the shrinking pool of potential buyers.
They're increasing prices because they can, despite record profits. A journalist looked at transcripts of sales calls and they say openly that that's what they're doing.
In California a two bedroom apartment rent costs about the same as mortgage payments for a house. Rents are increased every year, mortgage payments are not, assuming you got a fixed rate. However, good luck saving a down payment, good luck getting approved for a mortgage, good luck finding a house that is affordable and won't be sold to a cash offer, often to investors. The only solution the politicians are doing is banning homeless people from sleeping.
Hate to break it to you but that’s not really the fault of capitalism, though you could blame indirectly, since the main cause is house owners wanting to see the value of their property go up, and so they prevent new builds, and have also capped taxes, so they don’t have to pay for their new wealth. Laizze-faire capitalism, or pure capitalism, wouldn’t allow for either of those
@@patrickmcclanahan2856 Yes but nobody below gen x has known anything other than this Laizze-Faire version right? It does frustrate me that people say "that's capitalism for ya" for policies that contribute more to cities etc. but that's why everyone is leaning further left who's young. We haven't benefited in many ways from the system other than technology becoming more affordable.
@@duncanbug I would disagree. Compared to my what was available to my parents in their mid-20s, the quality of my apartment is far better, the variety and quality of food that I can buy in the grocery store is orders of magnitude greater, my ability to go on vacation to Europe, Mexico, etc on cheap flights wasn’t even within reach of them, the quality of my 07 Civic relative to their early 80s car, my ability to easily invest in the market was something only the rich had access to back then, how easy it is for me to learn new information with the internet, have a relationship with my fiancée when she’s on the opposite side of the world…idk…we really really do have it so much better, even just in this one generation, let alone going back 2, 3, 10, or 50 generations
Timestamps Myth #1 - Good job requires +40hrs 2:12 Myth #2 - Poor people are lazy 5:21 Myth #3 - US can't afford universal healthcare 8:24 Myth #4 - Executives have always outearned their employees 10:41 Myth #5 - Unions are bad for productivity 14:14 Myth #6 - Owning a big house signals wealth 15:48
"Non-Compete Clauses" should be totally freaking illegal. It totally ruins your ability to job hop and force companies to pay you what your time is worth.
Job hopping is bad anyway. The most successful people I know stayed with their company their entire careers and retired with pensions (as did I) and $30,000,000+ in company stock. None of the job hoppers I know are anywhere close to that. All I hear from them is complaints about how little money they make. And it makes sense. I would rather promote someone to an executive position if they’ve been with the company their entire career because they know the company better than outsiders and newcomers and I likely won’t have to worry about them leaving and having to replace them, which is very expensive. Conservative estimates say it can cost double the previous employee’s total compensation to replace them.
The entire notion of non-competes is so harmful that it’s unbelievable governments allow them. Never mind voluntary job hopping, but when they are enforced during layoffs it is doubly heartbreaking and inhumane.
@@johnmartin4641 there arent company pensions any more...Today, job hopping is the only way to get a substantial raise. Youre operating off of old world data
1. 2:12 You need to work more than 40hr/wk to succeed 2. 5:20 If you're poor, it's because you're lazy 3. 8:23 The U.S. can't afford universal healthcare 4. 10:41 Executives have always earned much more than employees 5. 14:14 Unions are bad for productivity 6. 15:49 Owning a big house is a sign of wealth
I would love to see a video about predatory practices perpetuated by the traditional financial industry that we've been taught to think are normal. For example in my country offering university students credit and credit cards without any financial education on how to responsibly use those lines of credit, even though most students are dependent on financial aid and come from poor backgrounds, has become normalized. It facilitates a debt trap most people arent able to get out of for most of their lives because at no point are we taught there is a responsible way to manage money and credit.
Or how here in the USA how everyone has come to accept that in order to retire you have to have a good job all your life, stock options, 401ks, rental properties, and all kinds of investments. Being a hardworking individual is no longer enough because we have to boost the “investments” which are tied to CEO pay
Chelsea actually talks abt this topic a lot on the earlier tfd content. She apparently bombed her credit score on a hello iitty credit card in her young adult life.
Yep. Chelsea and I share an origin story. Same CapitolOne card at the tender age of 17, which I promptly maxed and then ignored for YEARS. Now I'm 32, almost 33 (Chelsea and I are the same age and likely tanked our credit at the same time, right around 2006/2007 before the recession) and I'm just now fixing the mistakes of my uneducated youth, and passing good habits that I was never taught on to my own young children.
Id love to see this too- i know this channel is mostly USA focused but id be interested in the way UK institutions (particarly department of work and pensions) have moved to offer loans than grants. Especially the DWP, who offer high interest loans to people who should be recieving benefits but arent (normally bc of dwp's own fuck ups). Me and my partner nearly fell for that in the past- my partner should have been recieving benefits from being in work previously, and looking for a job- but we were excluded bc my pay (too low to sustain us) came in a week earlier than expected. At this point we were worrying how we were going to pay for food and travel to interviews after bills- so the DWP offered us a high interest £1000 loan to 'tide us over'. Tbf the woman offering it to us looked visibly uncomfortable as she offered it, and reassured us that we'd made the right descision when we turned it down. But it chills me to the bone to think how many desperate and more vulnerable people than us might take that loan and wind up in debt forever.....
I think the 4 day work week trend is misleading, it should be called "condensed work week". It usually doesn't mean working 32 hours per week for the same salary, it means working 40 hours per week in 4 days = 10 hours per day. I don't see how that will be very helpful for our mental and physical health. Personally speaking, working every day from 9 am to 7 pm will kill me.
@@Tabbylover55 I work 40 hours in 4 days. It sucks, but for me personally I love having a perpetual 3 day weekend. However, I really hope someday it can just be a 32 hour work week as I'd have more energy after work to do anything besides sit.
@@Lydia-hi6mx And what will you do with the rest of your time? Netflix...you are aware when people worked much less pre industrial revolution, they didn't have tv, electrric or even indoor plumbing...Those shorter work weeks were for extra time for household upkeep that you wouldn't even consider today......no really what will you do with that extra 8 hours? Will you contribute to society or will you melt your brain in front of the TV....because you deserve to sit around so much more than your fore fathers worked for...this is what's wrong with society....suddenly we wanna cash in.....we should be trying to innovate and improve societal relations etc....but damn Netflix is so worth an extra 8 hours off of work! But no one is lazy here......
The really messed up part is that the 40 hour work week wasn't even instituted to be fair _to workers._ It was actually instituted to stop _employers_ from screwing themselves over. You see, 40 hours is the edge of positive productivity. Further work beyond that is net neutral on productivity, or even negative due to exhaustion and overwork. And that's for _mindless_ tasks like factory work! Anything requiring more brainpower than working on a factory line is likely to peak in productivity before 40 hours. This common standard of 60 or 80 hours and employers demanding that their employees be available to call in at any time is complete nonsense, and in many sectors actively harmful to the corporations! Employers would be better off paying their employees more to work fewer hours.
The problem is that often, people fail to grasp the concept of extrapolation. They just see a linear relationship between hours spent working and some metric of productivity such as number of products produced or sold and assume that it just climbs indefinitely so that if they just keep getting workers to work more hours, they will produce and/or sell more product. They fail to factor in things like workers are not robots or machines and that they have their own needs and need time for other things like rest, spending time with friends and family in social interactions, time to themselves for self-care, time spent exercising creativity with hobbies, recreation, or personal projects, etc.
@@johnwalker1058 I suppose when you're so far gone that the part of the curve the 40 hour work week is concerned with isn't visible at all, it looks like a linear relationship. That is, if the 40 hour mark is the edge of productivity gain on the first peak of the graph, by the time you're at 50 hours you've plummeted all the way back to zero and are slowly climbing back up on a very pathetically small upward trend. If your data points don't go lower than 50 hours, you won't even be able to see the drop. And this gets worse for tasks that require a measure of mental clarity and creativity, at which point you might have plummeted all the way back down to the baseline by 40 hours in the first place! In that case, when your data points are from 40 hours to 80 hours you're only seeing a pathetically small upwards trend, completely missing the incredible productivity boom you already missed by starting this far along the graph.
You touch the deep issue: Different jobs require different time schedules. Some jobs, perhaps, need 5 hours a week of an extremely focused person to find a great solution. But there is a lot of culture related to it. And also: would be fair to a worker see a partner work less than himself? Productivity, specially in services, is hard to measure while time, in the other hand, its stable clear and easy to measure. Usually countries with low amount of working hours per week are service-oriented and import labor intensive products without any guilt from those that work exhausting hours.
But frankly, I don’t really give a damn what kind of productivity any work schedule gets for employers. Working too much is poisonous to the soul. Reducing work hours is a matter of human happiness, which is an end in and of itself
Have you done any brainless factory work, do you have any idea what physical exhaustion, pain does to your mental state, you wouldn't last a month in such environment and just end up running back to where you came from.
I stopped after the whole drama sparked with the "cult" accusations, guns, and vaccines came out. But I took his advice too literally and got in a bad place, basically.
You cannot physically 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It was a joke that became a mystical ability to rise above the floor for the time it takes to pull on boots. I also suspect many people who say this have never had a pair of real cowboy boots.
I don't really like the implication that the "house poor" problem is primarily because of people buying bigger, nicer homes than they need. As a 28 year old, I want to buy a house (even though it will be the majority of my expenses) because it's WAY preferable to paying nearly as much (more if I didn't have roommates) for rent that is then money totally lost. Moreover, landlords often refuse to do the maintenance their leases require them to do, leaving me to live in squalor since I'm unlikely to have the time or resources to sue them. Home ownership isn't just a social prize, it's one of the only ways to start getting out of poverty. If you own your home, you have more wealth, your biggest expense is now an investment (at least partially) instead of just money gone. There's been a weird trend over the last few years of people telling millenials and zoomers "Oh, you don't really need to buy a house. It's not a good financial move for everyone. Maybe just keep renting for the rest of your life". Some of these people are well-intentioned I think, but at the same time this narrative has popped up, investors are buying more and more of the available property out there and rent is sky-rocketing. They certainly seem to think that ownership is better than renting. I'm inclined to agree. Renting sucks.
I mostly agree with you here. Renting has a time and place for specific circumstances but if you are going to be living in your current area for any prolonged period of time, at least a couple years, it's in your best interest to buy a home. In my area, it's actually cheaper to buy a home and have a mortgage than it is for rent, and you'd be getting much more house/space. Granted, you have to factor in taxes, maintenance and interest. Real estate taxes in some areas of the country are insane and almost a mortgage itself. Also, a lot of people simply do not have the cash saved up to purchase a home, I remember seeing an article from a couple years ago saying that around a third of people didn't have enough in savings to buy new tires for their car. If you can afford the mortgage payment and it's around the same as rent in your area it's a no brainer. Not only are you building up equity but in the longer term it's also very likely to appreciate in value, whereas with renting this money is essentially gone.
The reason we bought is so our monthly payments don’t go up. We bought a decent home that kept our budget low. Sadly this isn’t possible for many people especially in the US were ok homes can be very very expensive.
This is why I lost my job because it wasn’t physically possible. They lied to me about the job. The gave 15 communities to manage and 1,700 units and all of them were more than an hour away and were not near each other. I watched a video about a toxic work. Every single thing is exactly what they did they did on the video. Their Google rates are 1.8. That is bad and I felt like I was ruining my reputation
I once worked 80-hour weeks for a few months in a row, voulentarily - I was just starting out in coding (I'm a technical writer by trade), and at the time it was SO much more interesting than what I was supposed to be working on.(To be fair, our team had a rule that if we were working on a scut project, you could totally try to script it if you wanted to). I stopped working these extra hours when I realized that I wasn't getting much done after 8 hours. Instead, on a nightly basis, I'd hit a wall around hour 8, and then spend hours trying to debug something, fail, only to figure out the answer on the drive home, or else the next morning in the shower. In talking about this with the devs I worked near, their comments were that after 8 hours, the only thing they really did was sit around and watch builds run on machines, and maybe answer some e-mails: definitely they didn't try to code for that long, as they also had the exact same experiences I had.
I left the workforce in 2015 to take care of my parents. I have no income and I live in a portable building that I made livable by adding a bathroom, bedroom (putting a mattress on the bathroom ceiling), kitchen and living room. I raise sheep and chickens. I grow a garden every year. I keep busy. I'm happy.
Thanks for this video! As a retiree, I am hardly your target audience for financial advice, but I always find you thoughtful and reasonable and I love that you can both give good advice about how to use the system to gain financial stability while recognizing the deep and inequitable flaws in that system. I especially liked the Le Guin quote.
After long periods of discussion on work quality, the Belgian government approved this week their new bill on work, which included the long-requested 4-day work week. But the moment people outside the government looked at the content of the new bill, everybody collectively facepalmed. Why? Because the government still held on stubbornly to the 40h work week, and thus turned the 4-day workweek into 4 days of 10h instead. It's PrOgReSs PeOpLe 🤦♂️
Regarding Medicare for all, people often overlook how expensive inaction can be. Allowing vast numbers of people to be uninsured and under insured is an enormous expense. As for what would happen to big pharma and private insurance companies, let them eat cake.
CEO earnings grew 1322 % while worker compensations grew by 18 %. That's just bonkers! What the actual..! I can't even wrap my mind around that. They could sustain so. Many. People. With that kind of money o.O
I believe it. I am a nurse and at the end of 2020 we got an email from our CFO that we had to band together as a family to get through this pandemic. So there would be no raises or matching contributions to our 403B. All the staff breaking our backs working extra shifts, no PPE no raises or retirement for us. What I DIDN'T see in the email was how all administration was going to take a 20% pay cut to help the family. They sat up in their offices making $2.4M plus bonuses.
Also worker comp includes healthcare and most of those 18% went to cover rising healthcare cost, so workers didnt really benefit from that rise. In reality wages have stagnated and for a lot of jobs (low income) they have dropped.
CEOs are also compensated with stocks and that almost always means that they will always have income growth every year. It's also important to separate founding CEOs than hired in ones because founding CEOs deserve to reap the rewards of their risk and labor. Hired in CEOs not so much.
As a Brit I find in fact that Americans work 40 hours a week and have little annual leave astonishing. I work a 35 hour week and by the time Friday afternoon roles round I have switched off, some companies in the UK and Europe are trialing 4 day working weeks and they've found that employees are more productive. The US has some serious issues when it comes it's work force.
Why I love wfh so much. My old company tried to do a hybrid situation my last few weeks there and I was miserable sitting in a beige office with so much extra time after getting my work done, not being able to do anything else productive unlike when I was home. There’s a reason I just left and so many others are doing the same! Also I never understood how claiming you work 60-80 hours a week is a flex. That just tells me you suck at time management lol.
Man, I've not yet been "house poor" but i've definitely been "car poor". Having a job far enough away from my house and a car just in bad enough condition that a lot of my paycheck got dumped into gas, insurance, and maintenance
If the Congressional health care perquisite was limited to the average level of health care nationwide, perhaps health care would be taken more seriously.
My husband and I (no kids) live in a 3 bedroom 1950’s ranch and it is honestly too much house for just the two of us. We bought it for the sizable yard (to grow our own food) and the fact that it’s just barely outside the city boundaries so we pay township taxes. I can’t imagine having an even larger house or more than one full bathroom to clean.
My husband and I are in similar circumstances, we bought our house in large part due to the size of the yard for the price and the area. I like our home, but I would be more content in a smaller apartment. If it wasn't for my husband who likes large homes, and my dogs who need more outdoor space, I would happily downsize.
Same here, although our home is technically 3 bedroom, it's more like 2+ bonus. It's just under 1000 sq. feet, but on a third of an acre lot. We got it for the location, the back yard, and the fact that we don't ever plan on moving, so we wanted something that would be easy to manage when we're older. More space just means more to clean and maintain, higher utilities and the ability to just buy more stuff to fill it. We love our little crackerbox house. :)
I got a small 2 bedroom home for much the same reason - I want to grow my own food (cos the flavor is better plus I can grow things you can't get easily in stores), and its both too big and not enough in different ways. I'm turning the second bedroom into a cat foster room/hangout room/guest bedroom, so that's fine, but on the downside I have no good indoor space to start my seedlings so I'll eventually have to get some kind of outdoor greenhouse set up somewhere. But there are worse problems I could have (like in a bigger house there's more maintenance and higher utility bills - no thanks). When I was hunting, I actually had a hard time finding a house small enough because all the investors (both local and not) were cash buying all the houses under 1200 sq ft to turn them into rentals. I eventually got one that was further out, in a hilly area, and that has no access to public transportation. That was the only way I could get one that came close to meeting what I wanted without fighting with people who could just drop $100k cash with ease.
@@fourcatsandagarden We were super lucky we were able to get our house for the same reason - people were/are buying up the smaller houses and as soon as they sell, we see for rent signs on the lawn. There's a contractor down the street we had come over for suggestions on installing a dishwasher, and he commented that he almost bought our house. He owns a rental one street over, too. I think the fact that we wrote a letter to the seller telling them our intent to actually live in the house was why our offer was accepted.
@@bethd.6670 We have the same issue where we live. Sometimes houses are sold before they're even officially on the market. And it's not just smaller homes that are getting snapped up like that either. That's the unfortunately reality of living in a university town - there's no end to landlords. We live in an older neighborhood that was built about 100 years ago - about half of the houses in the neighborhood were converted into multiple units between the 50s and 80s (including our place - it was turned into a duplex in the 70s). I think a city ordinance was passed in the 90s preventing such conversions, which is why landlords don't seem to do it anymore.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Universal Basic Income. As mentioned in this video, a lot of people have the same issue with UBI as they do with welfare -- that it incentivizes laziness. I don't believe that's true. Or, at least, I believe that the number of moochers (there are always a few) wouldn't really change.
Honestly nobody really knows…only way to get good info is to test it on a somewhat large scale for a significant period of time, which hasn’t been done yet. And even how people in Florida vs ppl in Massachusetts react isn’t likely to be the same
The home part is so frustrating personally. I cannot compete locally in the re-sell market, so I had to buy new construction. I was only able to afford a home 45 min away from where I want to be that is - newsflash - twice the size I need. There are 3 bedrooms. I’m a SINK. The Master alone is as big as my current bedroom and bathroom combined, plus I’ll have an even larger closet and bathroom to boot. I don’t need this space. I don’t want this space. My goal is to stay there a couple years, build up equity, watch a local tiny home community to see how it develops, then sell and pay cash for a small home. No one is building starter homes anymore - it’s so frustrating.
Just leaving it here that I enjoy your videos. They are always so well researched. They question problematic things in the society we live in but don't deny what's the situation.
Anthropologist here with a small correction. The "less than 40 hour work week" relates to hunter gatherers, who work as few as 16 hours a week. Once agriculture comes into play, work weeks closer to 40 hours on average become more common (though not universal).
@@ironpalmmonk1199 In more modern times maybe. But irrigation, pest control, weed management, and other tasks typically added to work. And once you add animal husbandry in, 40 hours is a short week prior to industry making better tools.
@@historiansrevolt4333 all that work was done very festively and with mindfulness to joy in work. A lot of the time it was different than the tool of modern day farming and especially most modern jobs
Well in the winter they were mostly repairing things and feeding cattle, and that's it. In the summer they worked the whole day. So in those cases calculating averages across all year are meaningless
@@KateeAngel Yeah, this was my understanding and what I've read/heard in regards to work hours as well. OP stated he was an anthropologist so perhaps maybe he has more insight but I've definitely seen arguments stating low work hours pre-industrial times were low all around and not specifically tied to just hunter-gatherers. When work was needed, hours involved were naturally high. There was plenty of downtime involved i.e. a farmer was not always working.
I'm so glad you called out that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" nonsense. We feel bad enough that we don't have money so we don't need the add on of it's our fault that we don't. A lot of us work very hard but still have a difficult time keeping up paying our bills. Jobs today just don't pay enough for the cost of living.
Can you talk about this in terms of academia? For a lot of researchers, they're often pushed to work more than 40 hours per week in order to succeed in academia and even have a shot at getting a position as a professor. It's hard for me to balance taking care of myself but also working hard to make sure I have a shot at a future of being an academic professor which is my goal.
THIS! I'm currently a grad student and I won't be seeking a job in academia because there seems to be no work/life balance. I would love to see Chelsea interview some people with PhDs and talk about the toxic expectations of the work culture in academia and how to manage it.
Yeah… my partner is constantly stressed & exhausted with his career in academia. There are no work/life boundaries, everything has to be done “now”, everyone wants to know “what have you published lately? What’s your research now?” while he’s busy trying to actually be a good instructor & ends up hand-making most of his course materials. When my professors ask if I’m planning to get a PhD and go into research, I just laugh. I’m already familiar with academic hell, and that’s not even getting into grant writing aka begging for money.
I live in an area of SoCal with a lot of McMansions and it’s really interesting. A lot of the front columns and design of the houses are made with styrofoam and then sprayed with stucco over it. My mom’s neighborhood is a new development of McMansions and their community fb page is everyone complaining how poorly built they are. One person was nearly scalded to death when she was making a pot of spaghetti and the entire range hood above her stove randomly fell off splashing her spaghetti pot everywhere. It’s all an act. A movie set with house fronts and nothing behind them.. the psychology behind it all is really fascinating.
I started life living in a tent. When I graduated HS, my mom made $550 a month and dad was dead in another state after being in and out of jail. I now have a two bedroom, a newer car, savings, and food in the pantry. I sometimes forget that "success" for me really is not being in poverty.
Anyone looking for fun but thoughtful readings, Le Guin is easily one of the greatest authors ever! I think Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed should be required readings in school.
That generational poverty is real. I'm pregnant and working 48 hours a week. I qualify for WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid because despite working more hours than average and making more money than minimum wage, I still can't afford to exist. Capitalism is ruining this country and the only people that don't see that are rich.
You are spot on. A nation that makes parenthood a luxury is cannibalizing itself. There is hope if people like you can avoid “the college experience” and face life as thinking humans.
When we bought our first home, the bank approved us for a giant mortgage. We used about half of what was initially offered. It felt like the bank was encouraging us to overspend on a house we couldn’t comfortably afford.
🙏 👏👏👏 Ciao from Florence, Italy!!! We’re quite lucky as in Italy there’s a good public health care system and living confortably in a 76 square meter (818 square feet) is quite normal for us. Thank you for sharing this video anyway as a toxic “ 10h a day work” culture is spreading all over the world and I strongly believe that it’s not the solution to increase productivity or wealth!
@elisabetta Dori I'm from the US, and I just visited Florence for the first time this past Christmas. It took my breath away! I walked around in awe while thinking to myself "this is not a movie set, this is a real place and these are real people". Incredible.
@@sirgalahad1470 Unfortunately, I think part of the reason for this is that countries like the US have decided that they want homes on large land plots and a reliance on cars. Meaning horrible city centres full of highway sized roads and massive parking lots and boring suburbs not dense enough to create community and culture
A house is a house....not a home. You can make a house a home....but in order to enjoy your house as a home, make sure it isn't stressing you out. I have an 1100 square foot house....and to tell you the truth it is big enough. I am enough....and I can afford it. That says it all.
That urge to buy the biggest house possible… does it also happen with cars/pick up trucks? I have a feeling it must happen as well. It would certainly explain these new Ford Raptors, Ram TRX and Hummer EVs…
I whole heatedly agree. O/T is okay on an exception/crisis basis. After some fairly sort period the productivity drops. I'm speaking as an ITer. Focu and accuracy are limited. I've worked O/T for a crisis or an installation session, but once the adrenaline rush ends so does the quality. I agree with you analysis on the whole list. I got very lucky. I found a job that suited me and excelled at it. I had that other wonderful IT element of being on call. That is tough long term and it is often used to avoid actually fixing real embedded problems. Dilbert was handed to humankind from God. Too muych truth for a mere cartoon
100%. I’ve been a software engineer my entire career and I’ve got a good 4 hours of valuable work in me a day, 6 on a really great day. After that, I start making simple mistakes that end up losing me more hours to fix than I gain by continuing to work.
@@sassyazz69 Much of what I did/do is crisis. The 18 hour sprint is doable, but not often. I've also seen people logging the O/T and actually doing nothing. There is also a frustration when the ovedrtime is the fault of someone who didn't listen to the functional reality. I'm not rich b/c I don't lie in design meeting nor in testing.
@@NS-cs3wp I can kick into maniac mode, but that needs a good reason and is only short term. When I'm inthe groove I can do a lot of work, but I put on headphones and have noting playing. I block out the universe. But not for days. Not for weeks. Not for the life of a badly designed and planned project. I have succeeded b/c I'm the guy who can deliver a crisis solution out of the blue. But I can't keep that level indefinately nor for idiot projects or someone else's incompetence.
I would only point out that local governments have linked house sizes & taxes to school funding--which means the bigger the house, the better the school district. And homeowners can be assholes about attempts to integrate "low income" or even smaller house sizes into large home neighborhoods. (Ie, "but think about the mountain lions!" ) This ends up making people who have kids and can't afford a house to buy regardless.
“It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more entirely with our joy than with our sorrow, that we make parade of our riches, and conceal our poverty. Nothing is so mortifying as to be obliged to expose our distress to the view of the public, and to feel, that though our situation is open to the eyes of all mankind, no mortal conceives for us the half of what we suffer.” -Adam Smith
Louder for the people in the back! 40 hour workweeks are so outdated! Everyone I know literally pretends to work, and like it causes so much anxiety when you're new to the workforce because it makes you feel lazy for not working "enough hours"!
#3 is so true I was astounded when i lived in the us by the idea that it was common enough to be middle or solidly working class and to end up bankrupt due to health bill reasons.
I can think of a couple of people that spend too much on lattes and sneakers and then complain about it, but that doesn't negate the facts in this video. What would get on my nerves, though -- they buy these things and then complain, a lot, about being poor, while I am here struggling and sometimes giving myself health issues while eating "economically" (read: eating tiny meals so I don't have to buy food)
The part about pretending to work 80 hour work weeks reminds of that scene in American Psycho when Bateman arrivez in his office and just kinda... keeps listening to music tapes, I guess..
Wow TFD. Really hit one out of the park with this video. Saw it posted in the Breadtube subreddit and was not disappointed. Hopefully the Market Fundamentalists will be more capable of listening to the Facts from a buttoned up successful person like yourself
I think the author makes a key mistake in the base premise: These aren't Capitalism myths, these are American myths. European countries as a whole all have Capitalist economies (with differences in mentality and organization), and still they have been lowering work weeks, people most often only work 1 job and that's enough, people get maternity leave, unemployment pay... A whole host of benefits and protections that allow to balance the free market with the interests of the people. Is it a perfect system? No, but definitely better for people than the US: So the majority of the myths in this video have nothing to do with Capitalism, rather with American culture/mentality.
One important detail that caught my attention in the US as a foreigner is pharmaceutical advertising on mass media. It's illegal almost everywhere in the world, definitely illegal in all developed nations. Why? Because advertising a prescription drug does nothing but hike its price. So when you're paying $100 for an injection in the US, while Australians pay $9, a substantial amount of that $91 is going in the pockets of media and advertising executives. Secondly, in this system you simply cannot expect media networks to be critical towards pharmaceutical companies (Oxycontin anyone??), because those companies buy airtime from those networks. In other words, their commercial relationship is costing you lots of money and those fat cats don't want to lose it.
Great job on this one! The trap that most fall into is living at their income level. Living below your means is a great way to always have as much as you need and often as much as you want.
I've always wrapped my identity in my financial health, perhaps cause I grew up poor and it was the largest determining factor in everything and everything I could do. It's been hard, because after the pandemic I am in a pretty bad situation and that makes me feel bad about myself. It's hard to uncouple finances from identity. I think I am just learning to let it go all together, which may not be helpful, but is the best I can do. If I can feed myself and pay my bills, I am going to give less weight to what a sheet of paper says about me.
Love when you go full "Capitalism bad, actually", more so than usual, thanks for the comprehensive video. You, Richard Wolff and Rodrigo Aguilera are my first source of understanding how modern economics works. I'm curious about your political stance at a more specific level tho. Do you have a video where you speak about it or is it something you prefer not to delve too deep into it? I'm willing to guess you're a market socialist like Wolff
capitalism isn't the evil. but the greedy crony capitalism that focuses on squeezing all the life out of the workings to maximize profit is what most consider video game.
Chelsea peppers in her politics into her various videos. The short version tho is she was fully supportive of Bernie Sanders for president, along with his centerpiece Medicare For All platform. And she's very, very, very socially liberal
@Eduardo well i have seen her political view. im more of the reward the hardworking people to move up like new grads and young prpfessionals. and provide bare min to those who truly need it like the disabled, dirt poor people, etc. but do rigorous checks to weed out those who are on benefits but shouldn't qualify. also increase the min vacation period to something competitive with Europe. like over 5 weeks. im in canada and we have mostly 3weeks max. which is nothing for an overseas trip.
@@asadb1990 We already live in a de facto post scarcity society, and people aren't gonna go lazy, in this very video you're commenting on, there's example on how every UBI experiment hasn't caused people to be more lazy, quite the contrary, much more active. What it has made them is harder to exploit, but until you learn this, you'll keep on being clueless about labor, economics, and the industrious nature of humanity. I recommend more TFD videos, they write great explanations if you're willing to listen, and Chelsea delivers them in a way that everybody can understand.
Another couple of myths (or dumb utterances) I've heard is "capitalism lifts people out of poverty" and "without billionaires and business executives there would be no jobs." SMH
Recently all of our hours were cut. Even 1-2 days were shaved off. Because we simply have too many people compared to when we had hardly any people during covid time (which resulted in a slight raise back then). Back when we hardly had anybody we were months behind in one section and weeks behind in another. Now we finally have enough people and are caught up, and they can't pay anyone for the amount of people we need? And we still have specialized job openings that are empty that no one already hired can do??? And not only that they keep giving you more and more things to do which requires more people to keep you sane, while also not giving you the money for it. And that was going on long before covid. With the cut hours I know I definitely feel more productive. People around me seem to be in a better mood, but they're also saying that if it keeps up they can't stay here to support themselves. It's to the point that most people can't reach benefits It's a big company it should be able to give us what we need. But yeah, it's a company.
A good video, I just have to point out one thing: people in the pre-industrial era were working just so much to survive, however, this was more than we work today, both when it comes to the intensity and time spent, because they did not have all the automatisation, electrification and other stuff that came with the industrial revolution. By the way, it sounds crazy when I hear "healthcare" and "paid sick leave" being called "benefits". We Europeans see it as a basic worker´s right.
3:07 There is a concept called Production Possibillity Frontier (PPF) in economics, basically describing the same thing. The more time you put in, gradually the less productivity you're going to get per hour. So the lesson is it's sometimes even not beneficial to work over a certain hours (the curve can also go down if you go to the very extreme).
2:30 What anthropologists are saying this? A 19th century farmer would work from 5am to 8pm from March to September, starting as early as 3am during harvest. He would then generally work dawn to dusk the rest of the year 6 days a week. Breaks in the middle of the day were common, but this is way more than 40hrs.
As a third generation person from a full subsistance farming family... most of the projections about how single family farming work-life played out is a bit warped. They often include time spent on gathering eggs, preserving food and other such chores as part of the work-life and exclude the comparable time of shopping, driving and planning done in our modern lives. It makes the farm life seem like so much more work...it isn't. Also, we never got up at 3am for a harvest. What the heck...
@@mettamia2008 "preserving food" And it should. My grandmother spend days preserving food for winter and I can buy the same amount of preseves in few hours, but with money that I earn in my work. So her work hours should count like my work hours, not my housework hours.
Hey Chelsea I am waiting on your opinion on the "Inventing Anna" Netflix series, and how do u think the appearence of having money changes the way people threat us. Specially because u lived in New York and the story happened there.
Quick advice, for investors only Most people think, Investing in crypto is all about buying coins, then leaving it to rise, come on it takes much analysis to be a successful crypto trader. I've made $16,000 in 2 weeks of trading. With a capital of $3,400
Whether I agree or disagree, I thank you for the preparation and thought and obvious effort in thinking about the subjects. You don't just vomit some book or college class you might have taken, so it leads to good criticism and analysis, and makes one think about the subjects from (mostly) a fact based point of view.
I think one of the biggest lies capitalism teaches us, is that socialism and by extension communism (the horror!) is absolutely evil and bad bad bad. I dunno, socialism seems to be working a-ok in Scandinavia, and Communism as an economic theory is a noble and idealistic idea. Communism failed when it also became a political doctrine - the rule by communist parties lead to totalitarianism, political repression, restrictions of human rights, poor economic performance and cultural and artistic censorship. Or perhaps it failed because it demanded too much out of humans - most people are inherently narcissistic, selfish and opportunistic, and have no idea or interest in what true solidarity means. Capitalism is much more aligned with primal human urges and psychological traits, of hoarding food and "stuff" for the leaner times, and fighting for resources, just like it was for the neanderthals.
I wish it was that simple. Socialism works in Scandinavia because they have a few uncommon characteristics: income from oil, a very homogeneous population, a very small population. It is great for them, but try and apply this to where I live in Brazil and it crumbles apart very fast. Our economy is driven by the production of agricultural commodities, we have a huge and very heterogeneous population over an enormous territory. Capitalism for sure isn't great, but socialism just taxes the middle class and fails to help the poor up the ladder. The rich do well regardless, but the middle class and the lower classes suffer even more under a "let's divide between the not even rich and the poor and make social mobility next to impossible" idea.
I live in Germany, less socialism than Scandinavia but still WAY more than the US. It's still pretty nice and I wouldn't want to switch to the US system.
@@aturchomicz821 I know next to nothing about Bolivia. A quick wikipedia read has told me that the population is about 10 million and that the economy is based on mining. Brazil's population is around 200 million and the economy is based on large scale agriculture. We are neighbors, sure, but - on the point that i was making - not that similar.
My neighbor who is a nurse in an emergency room sometimes works 14 hours in a day. Some of my teacher friends work more than 50 hours a week. So many people I know work very long hours.
Honey the problem is not that people were encouraged to buy houses when it was not feasible for them, the problem is that it was not feasible for them.
The Worktime thing really just boils down to have a job that has a balanced work pay relationship. It's not really something to do with capitalism in itself.
Per my personal experience (or bias) for having been in a union at my last job it hardly made my job any better as my then boss said they were going to hold me to a "higher standard" which I interpret as that they're going to make my job more difficult. So long story short with having been a union member I wasn't really getting the help I needed from them.
I believe that. You all need your pay doubled. You are seriously helping folks raise the next generation. 👏 Positive vibes from New Hampshire, remember to be kind to each other and yourself during this pandemic and social crisis
Sorry conservatives who have posted here but I'm with Chelsea on this. She sees the big picture. In today's society, compromises are only expected for things that the working class needs but the wealthy pretty much get whatever they want. So yes, when working people were unionized more, they were better off generally. It's as simple as that. So yes, better things for ordinary people are possible. The problem is that we don't have enough ethical people to run for political office. We have too many of those who make excuses for the wealthiest and accept numerous and huge "campaign contributions," AKA legal bribes. That's pretty much the situation we're in.
35 h of work per week is the best way in my oppinion for a person to have a good relationship with work, to reduce burn out and to keep people interested in their work. It's sad that the norm rith now is to be in burn out and not have enough time to enjoy life
Bravo. Especially the big house thing. I'm pushing 40 and have enjoyed living in a modest apartment but the social pressure to buy a huge house is unbearable. Even to the point where I no long hear from some of my homeowner friends. They think they are in some social stratum where they can't associate with renters, no matter how content the renter is.
Incredibly great video! 2 comments- 1- the executives of the fortune 400s that were born on HomeBase (21.25%) were "gifted" their status and inheritance - they did not "earn" it. 2- For many people, though they are "financially house poor," their home is their security and status. I can personally say I would rather be in my home of 43 years than anywhere else. So there's a balance that makes it all worthwhile. I would like to see the federal tax code changed to allow for seniors who have lived in their home more than 30 years to have a special low capital gains tax in order to get out from under. Stay well. 🌺🌴😊😎
Being "on site" is seen as working, or at least they get paid for it, thus I chose a business where I pay workers for what they DO and they do it anytime they feel like it (mostly) when it comes to actually producing the things I need for the business, but that gives THEM the freedom to work when and as much as they see fit, while it gives me the peace of mind that I am not paying someone for just sitting there on site doing nothing FOR the business. Being on site is how Elon Musk for example can claim to work "round the clock" because he moves his small house to the worksite, I get it, he was only going home to sleep, but basically he calls being available 24/7 working, which in a way it might be, but it isn't really working ALL the time. In that sense any business owner is working all the time, since if they are on call for anything that may present itself out of the ordinary at all times.
