All By Myself?
This piece in The Washington Post argues that Americans have become increasingly socially isolated.
"For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money, and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle '60s and have gone in the other direction ever since," [Harvard public policy professor Robert Putnam] said.
One small observation: It would be interesting to see whether there's a correlation between this "social isolation" and the decline in church-going that's occurred over the last several decades, wouldn't it? (If you have stats, please end 'em to me).
Finally, there's this:
The current structure of workplace regulations assumes everyone works from 9 to 5, five days a week," Putnam said. "If we gave people much more flexibility in their work life, they would use that time to spend more time with their aging mom or best friend."
So where was Putnam when John Ashcroft's flextime proposal (which would allow workers themselves to decide whether they wanted to be compensated for overtime with time off or pay) was being savaged by his political opponents and the unions?
"For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money, and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle '60s and have gone in the other direction ever since," [Harvard public policy professor Robert Putnam] said.
One small observation: It would be interesting to see whether there's a correlation between this "social isolation" and the decline in church-going that's occurred over the last several decades, wouldn't it? (If you have stats, please end 'em to me).
Finally, there's this:
The current structure of workplace regulations assumes everyone works from 9 to 5, five days a week," Putnam said. "If we gave people much more flexibility in their work life, they would use that time to spend more time with their aging mom or best friend."
So where was Putnam when John Ashcroft's flextime proposal (which would allow workers themselves to decide whether they wanted to be compensated for overtime with time off or pay) was being savaged by his political opponents and the unions?
posted by LadybugUSA at 9:52 AM
7 Comments:
I may be wrong on this, but I believe the proposal was to allow the workers themselves to make a choice between "comp" time off and overtime pay - not to eliminate overtime pay.
It's not just church, though that probably has a lot to do with it, but goes back to the whole idea of I, Me, Mine...and we are too BUSY, because of we aren't BUSY, then we aren't IMPORTANT...
It's so cool these days to be BUSY.
"flexibility" doesn't necessarily have to do with overtime or comp time - it can also have to do with the hours people work within an 8/40 schedule. Flex time might be 4 days at 10 hrs a day, or 4 days one week, 5 the next, or coming to work at 6am and leaving at 2:30pm or coming at 10am and leaving at 9pm - any of that sort of thing. Obviously some jobs don't permit this sort of flexibility, but many do. Certainly being able to work from home could make stuff like this possible, but that too has drawbacks.
"Paying bills" ... when I grew up, we had one car. No teams for anything - we played in the open area outside our house - what would be a condo today - and everybody watched everybody's kids. No one worried about kids being snatched. We had no tv(period factor, not money factor). No moms worked, housing was smaller, and the rule of thumb was that you bought a house(if you owned your own) that was no more than 4x your annual income. Try that today!
Taxes today are higher - the columns have stayed the same although the wages earned are higher. Tax on the second income - if there is one - starts at the point where the other stops. I wonder how many additional dollars that second income actually brings in if there is child care involved. If no child care is involved, then at a cerain point, you have latch-key children. Children don't civilize themselves. They are frequently being raised by parents in absentia.
We really need to consider how to get back to family life!
"Ashcroft's bill would allow employers the option of offering comp-time or flex-time. First, the difference between the two: comp-time would allow employees previously eligible for overtime pay to trade that pay for one and a half hours of paid time off. Flex-time, on the other hand, is a straight trade, hour for hour, of overtime for paid time off."
This is from the article referenced by Carol. I haven't gone to the original Ashcroft bill, but this _does_ seem to say what I thought it did. Have you another source?
Flextime
Sometimes life gets in the way of working regular hours. Flextime is one of several alternative work options that can help you balance your life. Employees may have a schedule that involves working four ten hour days or may work a staggered schedule.
http://careerplanning.about.com/cs/flextime/a/flextime.htm
or: http://tinyurl.com/or6ny
Maybe the problem is that the article writer and I don't define flextime the same way. Above is how I define it, and a source for that definition.
Ditto is jealous.
Because otherwise you wouldn't have brought up his retirement package at all. What's it to you what he retires on?
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