A bit of trivia: the origin of the 40-hour workweek: Henry Ford Read his logic. It's a really interesting perspective.
Actually it was "invented" more than 100 years before by socialists. US workers were pressing for it in the 1860's.
So you are enjoying your job posting at clutch fans because of government intervention, not because technology has increased the yield of a farm from producing enough to feed 4 people in the 1850 to 78 people in 1980. Extrapolate this to all industry and you can see why the average worker does no physical labor. Technology is what got people out of coal mines and steel mills.
The simple fact is that all laws limiting work hours were passed after strikes and publicity campaigns by labor unions. The mythical idea of some benign force of the invisible hand doesn't stand a close analysis of the facts. Technology may have enabled the capitalists to stomach the hit that they took. But the actual changes happened because of unions and labor-sympathetic press.
Question to OP. Everything you cited, all the horrible stuff done to our water, didn't that occur despite of the existence of the EPA and the Clean Water Act? Where is the correlation between less government and polluted water supply? Your evidence as in the article states to the contrary that even with the presence of federal regulatory agencies, our water supply was contaminated with god knows what. In essence, isn't that a direct FAILURE of big government? How can it be that anything that works reasonably well with or without federal intervention in this country is automatically credited to our big government but even a massive failure right under their nose is treated with indifference? Its always the same ploy, when those in power fail they demand more power.
What difference does that make. My point is very few people work back breaking jobs anymore. Its because of technology, not due to labor laws. We just don't need a lot of man hours working farms or steel mills now. You could limit the work week to 3 days and we could still produce enough food to feed the country. The labor laws were a product of a time when much more human labor was needed in production.
Not all jobs are purely tech based, and there is also a percentage of tech based jobs that still only limit the hours because of the laws.
No, it is because of labor laws. I know of shady employers who still try to get their employees to commit to 60-80 hour work weeks without any overtime. They operate on the fringes precisely because of labor laws. People do get fined and arrested all the time for violating labor laws, even in this age of plenty. Your arguments prove that people can work fewer hours, not that they would in the real world with real employers who like to work the staff long hours.
BTW I am one of these shady employers and guess what in order to avoid paying over time, I just hire another part time employee. So a 60 hour work requirement is spit into 40 hours FT and 20 hours PT. All legal thanks to our laws. Now the disadvantage is to the employee working 40 hours a relatively comfortable job at a desk, that one could easily perform for 60 hours without any loss of productivity. Considering the recession and financial situation of many employees, what would they rather have, more hours at the same rate or no money while having to watch someone else get paid for work that they could easily perform? That is the reality of labor laws especially jobs that involve very little specialized skills. Our government and its labor laws have indirectly set the floor (minimum wage) and cap (wage * 40 hours) on a worker's earning potential. This affect the largest group of workers in the country yet we still argue why people don't make enough money?
