Bernie Sanders: workers should reap AI benefits in form of ‘lowering workweek' | Hacker News Reader

Bernie Sanders: workers should reap AI benefits in form of ‘lowering workweek'

theguardian.com

84 pointsc42041 comments

Okay but what does this mean in terms of actual policies? At least in the short term it doesn't seem like AI is going to replace workers wholesale. Chatgpt/copilot isn't going to make programmers obsolete, but it might make them do their work faster. In this context how do you "reap AI benefits in form of ‘lowering workweek'"? If chatgpt saved you 8 hours a week, do you take the friday off? What if your coworker would rather continue working 40 hours? What if you're a plumber or similar job that can't be automated for AI? Do you continue toiling 40 hours/week? Maybe you tax AI and redistribute the proceeds? How would you determine the value of AI? Where do you draw the line between AI and not AI but still labor saving (eg. some one's spreadsheet)?

Seems like he just wants everyone to have a 32 hour work week. Don't think he suggested actually accounting for it. More of a "if we going to be even more productive, let's work less"

Correct.

Sentiment, not policy.

Until, of course, people start creating sentimental policies

What if one person wants to continue working 40 hours so they can save more to go on a big holiday or retire sooner?

I just can’t see how this is meant to work. You already could work less now if you wanted to, but you’ll always have less things and less money than those who chose to work more.

My SO works 80% but gets paid for every hour of overtime. No one bats an eye, and she enjoys her life and works as hard as she wants.

> What if one person wants to continue working 40 hours so they can save more to go on a big holiday or retire sooner?

What if someone wants to work 60 hours to go on a big holiday or retire sooner?

> I just can’t see how this is meant to work. You already could work less now if you wanted to, but you’ll always have less things and less money than those who chose to work more.

How does it work today? The five day work week has not always been the norm and isn’t even the norm in all countries (e.g. Chinese 996 where you work from 9 AM to 9 PM 6 days a week).

> What if someone wants to work 60 hours to go on a big holiday or retire sooner?

They can, and sometimes do. Just like you could work a shorter week right now if you were ok with taking a pay cut.

You can already work 100 hrs of you want, then you can 10 big holidays. He didn't propose to illegalize overtime.

> Maybe you tax AI and redistribute the proceeds?

Yes, yes, yes!

The luddites were not antimachine. All they wanted was a piece of the progress for themselves. Imagine if, instead of throwing obsolete workers out on their asses we paid them a portion of the profits of their layoff.

That would be UBI and I’m all for it but then 70% of people wouldn’t work. If you argue otherwise you know you’re wrong. What would be amazing is if we find a way to make society still function that way.

How long would you keep paying them? Machines have never obsoleted workers. If we look at how many jobs have been replaced by machines and computers, you’d expect to see a hundred trillion unemployed people. But the reality is they haven’t put people out of work, only changed what we work on and how much stuff we have to consume.

It puts people out of work immediately and people need food and housing immediately. We can progress and take care of people who get hurt along the way. It is possible.

That’s what the welfare system is for. Trying to account for jobs displaced by automation is absurd and mostly impossible.

> Machines have never obsoleted workers

At one time, switchboard operator was the most common job for young women. Then, the automated switchboard was invented.

> What if your coworker would rather continue working 40 hours?

That's called overtime

If we apply the AI gains to working less and people in Asia simply add them to their current productivity we will continue to lose the economic battle. Local productivity gains probably don't matter in a world where we compete globally, only relative gains against our global competitors.

This reminds me of a meme I saw recently where an American emails his European colleague boasting that the latest reporting shows, yet again, that America is leading Europe in every economic measure.

He receives a reply from his European colleague, "Thanks for your email. I'm currently out of the office on a family vacation until October 16th..."

It’s madness for me how much people in US care about GDP numbers, richest people in the world etc. maybe being very proud while in the queue for the food bank

Seems like it’s about 3/4ths of the way through the Tortoise and the Hare if you ask me though. Bragging about current state benefits when the trajectory of things suggests significant loss is not great. Europe is in decline.

The American would be the hare in this story.

Europeans bragging about lifestyle benefits is the thing that I find a bit ironic.

There’s a lot of luxuries to European life that folks insist are a basic dignity. Maybe that’s fair, maybe that isn’t. The ones to ask if that makes any sense isn’t the current gen Americans but the future gen Europeans.

I can’t help but imagine future generations will think extremely poorly of current gen Europeans for the plate their being handed.

Unions, social security, get healed at the hospital without having to raise a mortgage, laws protecting minimums... Yeah sure, you don't need those if you are wealthy enough. But if you're not rich, what is guaranting you this decency in America ?

These are good things and I think America could do better on all of these that you have listed. But again, the question when it comes to making claims about “decency” and “dignity” should not compare to the US, but to Europe’s future. I find it utterly nonsensical and non decent to suggest that the European way is net wiser when it’s actively declining and it’s children will be worse off.

I don't quite understand your point, you seem to imply the future Europe will have less good things than today's America ?

Maybe you're right, I can't predict the future.

So you don't care about living without good things today and seem to be satisfied with the only fact that Europe's future will be worse than US' present.

Luxury != decency

My point is that in the parable about Americans bragging about economic achievement while the European auto replies while on vacation we are to assume that the European has the wiser and more worldly lifestyle. But if this parable ends with the Europeans grandkids have markedly worse opportunities in life because the elder generation chose leisure, then it’s not really wisdom they were invoking but some mix of selfishness and / or hubris about the sustainability of it.

Europe is trending down.

Do the healthcare and FIRE sectors help the US compete against other economies?

Apart from the fact that there is no generalized "economic battle", the productivity gains in most Eurasian countries will go straight to paying for pensions. Of the countries with healthy demographics, the US is in fact the only large and fastly growing economy.

Working less also doesn't necessarily reduce productivity btw.

When people are given more free time and disposable income, they have the bad habit of creating new stuff. Just because you aren't making Jim, stare at a screen for 40 hours a week, doesn't mean that he won't be contributing to the economy. In fact, there is reason to believe that, the more we chain people to offices and desks, the less we advance as a society.

Just look at silicon valley and the businesses popping up out of nowhere. Imagine if Job, Wayne, and Wozniak didn't have the spare cash to make computers in a garage. Imagine if they had all been working 80 hour work weeks in the coal mines or offices.

But the owners of capital want either faster workers or no workers.

It is a systemic problem.

>But the owners of capital want either faster workers or no workers.

That's why unions exist.

At this point, they all want no worker. More workers is just more headache.

Productivity has increased by nearly an order of magnitude since the 1960s but real wage growth hasn't kept up. The vast majority of wealth created in our current economic system flows to corporations and asset management, which has had its good effects -- creation of new capital enterprises, VC, etc -- but also created a massive network of rentier capitalists like Ken Griffin whose motives for said wealth generation are unclear. The latter group would like nothing more than to sit on their unrealized gains and watch their porfolios increase in value with little to no concern for the net benefit of free enterprise, entrepreneurship, or society at large.

Given that, it's hard to imagine a technocratic future where ML and LLMs enable increased productivity with a lower workload. The prevailing trends just run diametrically counter to the idea that this type of technological progress will yield any significant relief for the working and middle classes. The more likely scenario is that you use AI to increase your productivity and end up working the same hours every week with minimal wage growth, all in sacrifice to the great god of GDP.

Income inequality is ultimately a public policy problem, not a productivity problem

> Productivity has increased by nearly an order of magnitude since the 1960s but real wage growth hasn't kept up

You're thinking quite locally, while the labor market is now largely global. What is our increase/decrease in productivity relative to our global competitors in Europe and Asia? Since we buy almost all our goods from them now, intuitively our wage increase/decrease would more closely track that than our local productivity.

In a service economy with limited urban housing, all productivity gains go into rising housing prices and Landlord wealth.

If AI writes my emails for me, then spending hours getting personalized ai emails written for each recipient is 1 waste of time replaced by a bigger waste of time.

It would be nice but it won't happen.

Not sure if this theory has a name, but it's worth considering:

As productivity increases the financial sector extends more credit. Productivity gains are then essentially claimed by the financial sector through increased debt servicing costs.

40 hour work weeks didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a number than unions fought for. That number can change.

Yeah, just how workers reaped the benefits from productivity increases. Oh, wait.

bernie: "workers should reap ..."

capitalism: let me stop you right there boss

What about when ai agents start impersonating people, and start asking for handouts that they can spend on their own compute ?

Maybe people would rather work longer hours and be able to avail themselves of more goods/services in their off-hours. What trade-offs people make shouldn't be mandated with this kind of one-size-fits-all policy.

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