| I think our wires are still crossed a little. Imagine that you are hiring for a programming position and have two available candidates. One has a degree from Stanford and three years experience at google, while the other has only fast food experience and has been a self taught programmer for a year. They both want the same salary for the job. All else being equal most people are going to employ the Stanford grad who is more likely to already be relatively wealthy than the self taught programmer. If the Stanford grad has a limit to the amount of hours they are willing to work then the self taught programmer can offer to work for a higher number of hours, possibly making them a more attractive hire than the Stanford grad. Once you place a cap on the number of hours that can be worked this gives the Stanford grad the advantage unless the self taught person is willing to significantly lower their salary requirement. Thus an opportunity for economic mobility is lost. If you pursue policies that emphasise personal enrichment time over freedom to work then you are likely to hurt those who have the most need for the latter over the former, these are most likely to be poorer people. You also reduce the amount of public services that can be provided (or at least the growth thereof) because you need both labour and capital (from taxation) to provide these services. It might not be a positive thing for google employees to have more time to spend studying french poetry rather than paying extra tax to support education programmes, drug rehabilitation programmes etc. |
Your setup implies that the person from Stanford is rich, and the self-taught programmer is poor, no? When in truth the first could be $50K in student debt and the second in the black.
In any case, are they both equally qualified for the job? I assume they aren't. How is it that the lessor qualified candidate can still fill the position, simply by working twice as much? If after a few years, when the candidate has enough on-the-job experience to be equal to a new Stanford grad, will Google support reducing the hours worked to 30/week for the same pay?
If the answer is "no", then it sounds like you've set things up to exploit the poor for their willingness to work more. If the answer is "yes", then Google is working as a career trainer, which is quite noble of them, but atypical.
As I understand your description, you are also opposed to the existing 40 hour work week. You see the opportunity for additional work as a way for the underclass to achieve financial success. Historically the 40 hour work week law was demanded by labor because what you see as competition for a person to get ahead ends up as a race for everyone to get to the bottom.
Do you want karÅshi to be part of the US system?