Are corporations and the 40 hour work week the modern form of slavery?

[trubadour]

Sod off, ye daft bugger! You Scoti . . . oh, wait, you're not Sandman. WTF.

The "40 hour work week" is a product of the Great Depression. Prior to that, people worked six days a week, and all the hours they could be flogged into. See, for example, Lochner v. New York, one of the great Constitutional Law cases, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state law limiting bakery employees to a mere 60 hours per week was unconstitutional, because it interfered with the freedom to contract.

But in the GD, the government tried to promote a "share the work" ethic -- 40 hours a week meant that businesses would have to hire two people to do the job that one was already doing. And the U.S. Supreme Court got browbeaten into letting FDR do whatever socialistic crap he wanted, which is how we ended up bankrupt and enslaved to out-of-control state bureaucracies.

I'll take that as a compliment!
I'll look into the history of the 40 hour work week.
Meantime, I think you might find Graber interesting.

[Charlie Jack]

Nowadays, the special little flowers out there all think that even 40 is too much, and they should be able to pull a France -- 35 hours a week, retire at 60, get full pension benefits. . . .

I'm an extra-special little flower. I think that 20 is too much and that I should have been able to retire at 30 with full benefits. And I favor whatever economic arrangement benefits me the most and inconveniences me the least. Moreover,

. . . until I get something from somebody, sometime,
I don't intend to do nothin' for nobody, no time.

[Super Hans]

What makes one a slave is either abject poverty OR the inability to save a good whack more than you earn.

Excuse me for being dumb, but I'd really like to know how to save more than I earn.

[GuyInTaiwan]

What makes one a slave is either abject poverty OR the inability to save a good whack more than you earn.

Excuse me for being dumb, but I'd really like to know how to save more than I earn.

All you have to do is buy my book and attend my seminar and you too can learn the secret of how to save more than you earn, all for a reasonable fee, of course.

[headhonchoII]

Well spotted, spend I should say. But GITs book sounds intriguing , where can I subscribe to your newsletter.

[jay209]

Apparently, excessive education won't make you earn more.
Majority of the Asian population believed that excessive education means higher income but what they didn't realize is the debt that comes with excessive education.
Self employment may be a good choice if, only if you guys wanted stable income fast.
Self employment maybe hard but the outcome will be plentiful.

[trubadour]

The interview I posted above was broadcast on PBS. No subscription necessary!

[Gao Bohan]

Some years back I was watching a documentary on slavery in the pre-Civil War South. I was surprised to learn just how common it was for white slave owners to rape their female slaves. I had known about such rapes of course, but I imagined it to be the acts of a minority of depraved men. But it was widespread, and the evidence is in the white genes that nearly every black American carries. It was also illegal for slave couples to marry, but secret marriages occurred nonetheless - meaning that slave husbands had to stand by while their wives were routinely raped by their masters. It would be bad enough, being forced to labor for all hours of daylight, beaten and lashed if you try to rest of disobey, then quickly tend to your own patch before all light is lost to provide your own meager substinence, only to be dragged away and raped, or watch this happen to your wife, night after night.

Fast forward a couple of centuries, and most Americans are spending their days working in climate-controlled offices, protected by a host of labor, safety, and environmental laws, free to quit anytime they please and find some other way to make a living, and with evenings, nights, weekends, national holidays, and vacations to look forward to.

I'd say the answer is no, corporations and the 40 hour work week are not slavery in any form. To call it such is to render the term meaningless.

[Super Hans]

Put well into perspective there, Goa Bohan.

[headhonchoII]

You don't even have to go back in history, abject poverty and slavery is alive and well in many forms all over the world. Even in Taiwan the 40 hour workweek does not really exist for most private workers.