Republicans The GOP's Presidential Candidates

There are also Republican politicians like Scott Walker who are trying to eliminate the weekend.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/08/sneaky-move-scott-walker-wisconsin-gop-workers-weekends.html

It's apparent that Republican POLITICIANS, let me make that clear, feel that workers should have no rights, should be slaves to their masters, and that everywhere even a progressive worker's state like Wisconsin should be a Kochtopia.


Now, I'm all for modifying work weeks, but Americans work more hours than any developed nation and have no right to paid vacation like others do. Americans are overworked and underpaid.

 

Everybody't workin' for the weekend

 

Didn't the lead singer of Loverboy apologize for that song the other day?

 

When I was on a logistics staff in the Philippines during the Iran Hostage deal, we worked 7 day weeks, (That is just before we embarked for 13 months..straight).

Tee shirts were cheap to get printed. One of the Captains had shirts printed that said:

"TGIF....Only 2 more work days till Monday"

We all wore them over our uniform shirts to a Friday staff meeting.

Once.

The Admiral went berserk. Pissed. Screaming. Never even put that shirt on again.

There is no positive spin on a berserk, screaming, cussing admiral. No siree!

 

There's no positive spin on a 7 day work week either, unless it's like offshore and there is a 7 day off week following it up. That's really the only way that's even remotely fair, or at least 4 days off after. I've seen odd 2-2-3 rotating shifts, 4-3's as well, that all comes with days off sprinkled in the middle. Does OSHA require days off? It makes sense though, Scott Walker crippled the unions in Wisconsin, now he's coming after workers right in that state. But they elected him. We got Jindal'd they got Walker'd.

 

@red55 well said and accurate. you correctly point out that high performing people from other countries are clamoring to get in. I think that those who aren't high performing in the traditional sense are also valuable. They work harder, are driven to succeed and most have the values that are important for the country to thrive. The fresh outlook ambition and drive of new immigrants is what has powered this country for239 years. We are a nation of immigrants and their fresh blood keeps us vital.

 

Work ethic used to be the signature of American virtue....it derived from mostly physical labor jobs, whether farmers, auto/aeronautic workers, etc. The idiom of pulling up one's bootstraps is how we trace our labor history....physical hard work. The internet changed much of that. At one time there was a prediction that the internet and it's speed would increase productivity...but has it?

"Back in the late nineteen-nineties, there was a lot of optimism about the future, and it wasn’t all emanating from those lucky souls who had gotten in early on the I.P.O.s of companies like Yahoo and Amazon. Many economists, with Alan Greenspan prominent amongst them, believed that over time the heavy investments in new information and communication technologies (I.C.T.) that companies were making would lead to rapid growth in productivity and wages. There was much discussion of a third industrial revolution, with the Internet playing the role that the steam engine played in the early nineteenth century and electricity played in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

For a time, the Labor Department’s productivity figures appeared to support the idea of an Internet-based productivity miracle. Between 1996 and 2000, output per hour in the non-farm business sector—the standard measure of labor productivity—grew at an annual rate of 2.75 per cent, well above the 1.5 per cent rate that was seen between 1973 and 1996. The difference between 1.5 per cent annual productivity growth and and 2.75 per cent growth is enormous. With 2.75 per cent growth (assuming higher productivity leads to higher wages) it takes about twenty-six years for living standards to double. With 1.5 per cent growth, it takes a lot longer—forty-eight years—for living standards to double.

No wonder people were excited. If the productivity growth rates of the late nineties could be sustained, Americans of the future wouldn’t merely be richer than their parents: they’d be twice as rich. Even after 2000, when the Internet stock bubble burst, productivity growth remained high. In fact, it rose further. During the four years from 2001 to 2004, output per hour increased at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent. Despite the mayhem on the Nasdaq, the Internet-productivity miracle seemed to be alive and well. And with all the talk of “Web 2.0”—2004 was the year that Tim O’Reilly, a notable Silicon Valley booster, held a conference devoted to that topic—the technology optimists argued there was plenty of scope left for further gains. Broadband penetration was rising rapidly. Social networking was in its infancy, as was the mobile revolution. Once practically everybody was permanently online, with the entire resources of the Internet at their fingertips, surely productivity would take another quantum leap.

It didn’t happen!

Since the start of 2005, productivity growth has fallen all the way back to the levels seen before the Web was commercialized, and before smart phones were invented. During the eight years from 2005 to 2012, output per hour expanded at an annual rate of just 1.5 per cent—the same as it grew between 1973 and 1996. More recently, productivity growth has been lower still. In 2011, output per hour rose by a mere 0.6 per cent, according to the latest update from the Labor Department, and last year there was more of the same: an increase of just 0.7 per cent. In the last quarter of 2012, output per hour actually fell, at an annual rate of 1.9 per cent. Americans got less productive—or so the figures said."
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/what-happened-to-the-internet-productivity-miracle

I have to wonder about the psychological impact of people sitting on their ass all day in front of the computer as opposed to requirements for producing widgets.

 

You are close. They are sitting in front of their computers on Facebook, ESPN, or whatever, ,and NOT DOING PRODUCTIVE WORK. That is the issue in a nutshell!