60-hour weeks basically means you live to work. Have you considered that perhaps someone's economic usefulness shouldn't be the only determinate of whether they have to spend essentially their entire lives on Earth just trying to survive?
You can also do things like require the same sort of benefits for all employees. Pro-rated vacation and sick time, if offered, as well as retirement, discounts, and other such things.
Brutal is an exaggeration. Americans don't come close to leading in the 50+ hour work week category. The US now ranks below: Iceland, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea on that metric and has been falling down those rankings for decades.
https://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2016/08/15/employees-wo...
Models are paid to be very, very good-looking. "What you produce" is a value decision in the first place, one that society makes together by how we allocate resources.
Not what they produce, but how good they are at convincing other people to give them money. Whether it's by building a product, being very good-looking, or asking for a handout. (Sure you can say that we pay people based on what they produce if you argue that a homeless man is producing good feelings when you donate to him, but I think that's a bit silly).
Obviously this is always going to be the case to some extent in a free society, but we should definitely do more to help those who don't happen to be good at convincing other people to part with their cash.
One way around this is to assign a base value to a person because they are a member of the human race and a citizen of your country, and then let them demonstrate additional value through the usual capitalist means.
It's imperfect, certainly, but it works well enough in many developed countries, and it's more accurate than the model that says what can't be measured has no value.
I see no evidence to support your premise that the US is brutal toward its people, given the high wages the US pays, the high standard of living the US offers at the median, and the extraordinarily high disposable income levels the US offers at the median ($44,000 household disposable income vs eg $28,000 in Finland). Where's the brutality? The sole thing I can see that is actually bad is in healthcare.
Let's compare the US median to the medians in: Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Czech, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia.
The only thing you're going to find where the US lags significantly, is in regards to healthcare costs. In nearly every other economic respect, the US exceeds those nations and the radical majority of the planet.
Yes our median and mean incomes, disable incomes, household wealth etc... are high.
But those values aren't very evenly distributed at all. Just look at average household wealth by race. You'll find an enormous discrepancy. (I was actually shocked when I looked at this. I knew it was bad, but not that bad)
We have a huge number of people doing incredibly well, and a huge number of people barely getting by. The social programs other developed countries offer go a long way towards easing the burdens of that 2nd group.
You can point to Finland and say that yes they have $16k less in disposable income, but they have universal health care (which you already pointed out), they have paid family leave, they have worker protections, better unemployment etc...
Update - Getting downvoted, so here's explanation:
This doesn't align with the culture over there at all. I think this source is questionable.
For example, if you compare the average hours worked per worker over a year (descending), the U.S. is #18 with 1,789 hours while Australia is much lower at #27 with 1,664 hours [1].
Have you considered that perhaps it's someone's prerogative and right to choose whether or not they want to pay for other people's lack of "economic usefulness"?
We're in this mess precisely because we had good intentions of helping the needy, and propping them up. All that did was raise their number, putting all sorts of economic pressures on existing poor people's salaries. Now we're expected to foot the bill even more?
You know, at some point, people are going to start saying enough to that sort of thing. It's borderline emotional-terrorism to guilt people into supporting so many needy. NO I am not a bad person for wanting the best for the people I care about. And not wanting to sacrifice it for the people who are reckless about bringing innocents into this world on my expense, and then teaching them anyways to hate me for not wanting to sacrifice further.
One last thing. I come from a family where the sole bread-winner did work 60-hour work weeks, and still does. Precisely so that I and my sibling wouldn't have to. Though I still do, because I want even better for the people I care about and brought into this world.
There's countries in the world where the bottom rung isn't such a terrible place, and people don't have to constantly sacrifice just to make sure they don't end up there. And those countries are doing just fine - there's no horde unemployed destroying their economies. There is, however, less stress, less fear, and a better standard of living for the median person. And sure, there's no country that's perfect, but what I'm saying is there's at least one alternative, which is currently working well in real economies, to the "red in tooth and claw" fight that Americans feel is necessary.
I'm not making a guilt-trip argument here. If you're a working class person in America, by a wide range of objective measures (access to health care and education, life expectancy, time with family, class mobility, exposure to crime, etc.) you're worse off than if you were in the working class in many other countries, ones with higher taxes and more generous welfare systems. Sure, if you look at just your taxes going out, it looks worse, but the situation overall for everyone in the 99% is improved. You just have to get over your distaste for your taxes helping poor (and sometimes lazy) people, because despite that it still ends up helping you.
Yes. We have. A great many of us have considered this at significant length over the course of centuries. The question is not novel by any reasonable measure.
Do you have a suggestion along the lines of an answer, or did you wish to merely pose the question?
However, history suggests that translating that laudable sentiment into actual resource-allocating policy and social organization is upon occasion slightly less than maximally clear, obvious, or straightforward.
I take it you're European? What's the youth unemployment rate in your country?
So first off that's kind of offensive. Secondly, one commentor on HN doesn't reflect the views of 300M+ people.
People typically come to HN because it fosters good discussion. Throwing insults at an entire country doesn't accomplish that at all.
It's not an insult. It might not reflect the views of the entire country, but it is an accurate depiction of our labor policies.
We are the only developed nation in the world without paid maternity/paternity leave. No universal healthcare. No protection from arbitrary termination. And a terribly low minimum wage that hasn't kept up with inflation.
Some people might not care about their fellow workers but some of us do. Typecasting all Americans as brutal is offensive. I say this as someone who actively helped to campaign for a higher minimum wage. But yeah, I'm American so I must not care about anyone else. I'm fucking sick of this stereotype.
How does that help people who aren't working for your company. That's like saying America isn't brutal to it's workers because rich people can afford good dental plans. Sure we're not brutal to people who have good well-paying jobs. We're brutal to people who aren't that fortunate.
> But yeah, I'm American so I must not care about anyone else. I'm fucking sick of this stereotype.
Work to change it. Our country sucks when it comes to labor rights and social welfare compared to every other developed country.
As long as that's true it's not really unfair to call us brutal to workers.
Obviously there are those of us who aren't, but it's a pretty fair generalization for the country as a whole.
Dental plans as practiced in the US only make sense if someone other than the beneficiary is paying the premiums. So what really matters isn't whether someone is rich but whether their employer is paying for a dental plan.
Now "rich people" can afford to just pay the dentist, of course. Not least because dentists typically have sane price transparency (e.g. will tell you ahead of time how much something will cost) and dental emergencies are very rare, so people can usefully shop around. As a result dentists are actually subject to price competition, unlike most of the other parts of the medical profession.
It's worth it to me because I'm self employed, so I can deduct dental insurance premiums, but I make too much to deduct direct dental costs (they're too small a percent of my income).
Since my marginal tax rate is close to 50% it only costs me about $350 a year, which is a bit less than it saves me on average each year when I've needed normal stuff like 2 cleanings, x-rays, a filling or 2. And my cost after tax deduction is a lot less than it would save me if I did need some major work.
> So first off that's kind of offensive.
Perhaps, but it's also true, at least when restricted to relative comparisons within the field of employment.
If I say the Japanese love seafood that doesn't mean I think there are no Japanese people who hate seafood.
We're speaking in a natural language not Lojban.