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Comment by atwood22 | Hacker News Reader

> That's quite a stretch. Ask any engineer about having that a-ha moment in the shower, or when out for a walk. Downtime is incredibly important for mentally intense work.

I agree but I think you’ll find that working usually contributes economic value. Not working usually doesn’t. The key word being usually. if you’re in doubt, just try to record the economic value delivered by your downtime. How many hours are idled for every a-ha moment? Not that there is anything wrong with idling…

> That doesn't mean that the US prioritizes work., and it definitely doesn't mean that Germany doesn't prioritize work.

I’m using productivity as a measurement. Ideally, productivity accounts for inefficient work by comparing inputs (labor) to economic outputs. The U.S. is more productive in this sense, so it’s more than just butts in seats.

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This is only true to an extent.

During WW1, the British "Health of Munition Workers' Committee" collected some fascinating data on production and working hours from armament factories. These were fairly motivated workers, doing semi-skilled manual tasks where you'd expect productivity to scale linearly with time on the job.

Moving from 25 hours/week to 30, 40, or 45 hours did lead to a proportional increase in output, but it then begins to plateau. Teams working 7x 10 hour shifts produced about as much as those working 8x6.

Check out the first few figures of Pencavel, J. (2014). The Productivity of Working Hours. The Economic Journal, 125(589), 2052–2076. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12166

Data collected from American workers during WW2 showed a similar pattern. I'd expect that "creative" work has an even smaller linear range, but I'm not aware of any studies.

> I’m using productivity as a measurement. Ideally, productivity accounts for inefficient work by comparing inputs (labor) to economic outputs. The U.S. is more productive in this sense, so it’s more than just butts in seats.

Actually, the differences are quite small and in 2017 Germany overtook the US in labour productivity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...

That data is adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). So in real dollars Germany did not overtake the US.

> I agree but I think you’ll find that working usually contributes economic value.

_Some_ people have to be "not working" in order to make use of all the other areas of the economy - shops, transport, leisure centres, clubs, nightlife, the arts, self-care (beauty, massage, counselling etc). That's a fairly large slice of the economic activity in many countries.

Sure, but they can’t spend more than they make, and they can’t make more than they produce. Obviously this might not hold true for every individual, but it holds true in aggregate.

By that logic economic value is only created by active work, and not by any of the thought process that goes into it. That's an asinine thought process.

Yes, value is created by work. The asinine thought process is to somehow suggest that a meaningful amount of economic output is intangibly created by not working. Economic output isn’t the end-all-be-all metric to use for life. But it’s a little crazy to suggest that you can move this particular metric by doing nothing in aggregate.

Economic value has no strong meaning. When you mow your lawn yourself, does this action have economic value? If so, why is it not measured? If not, why does it have if you hire someone to do the work for you? Likewise for some jobs that are quite country specific: do old people who need a job to survive have more economic value than old annuitant people who can take care of their grand-children? What about reading a book? What about then discussing about said book with others? What if that discussion makes some students better? What if you are a teacher? What if you are a benevolent? What about writing a novel that would have had tremendous economic value if published but keeping it to yourself? What if that novel is then published after your death?

Productivity has no strong meaning either. How do you measure it? GDP PPP / worker / hour? What if it actually depends on externalities like the amount of carbon released in the atmosphere? What is actually a worker (back at the what is "work" and "economic value" point)? What if it counts destroying then rebuilding things (as-is)? What if it counts absurdly high health expenses? What if it counts absurdly high health expenses coming in part because some people illegal pushed for addictive drugs to be way over-prescribed by corrupting physicians?

> I agree but I think you’ll find that working usually contributes economic value.

That's unimportant, though.

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