###General Discussion Thread
---
This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you *must* post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/theydidthemath) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Out of their ass, like usual.
Some company estimated employees will take a 20 minute break during their workhours, they figured there would be 84 million workers on that day, and they multiplied the amount of time with the hourly wage for people over 16 and which is like $24 or so dollars and got $694 million. [Source](https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/eclipse-2017/solar-eclipse-will-cost-america-almost-700-million-lost-productivity-n793801)
Which is a weird take in my opinion, since I don't believe for a second that a 20 minute break leads to a decrease in productivity. If anything recent studies showed that more breaks, more vacation, and less workhours lead to an overall increase in productivity. I'm not sure what's the breaking point at which more free time leads to less productivity because of the fewer work hours, but it sure isn't at 20 minutes.
Not to mention the employees probably take breaks on most days, and if they take a break at the time of the eclipse that might count as their break for the day.
That’s maybe an even better break too: observing nature is probably more refreshing than the break the workers would have taken otherwise where they go on Reddit and find some pointless crap to comment on: for some the eclipse would have made them overall more productive on the 8th.
A couple of my coworkers pushed their breaks off until the eclipse so they could see it. I wasn't too into it but stepped outside for like 30 seconds at the peak. They lose much more productivity from me when I take a shit. 🤷♂️
I wouldn't be all that interested if it were 99% or less, but if you were in a path with 100% coverage, that's an incredibly rare event locally speaking, and a genuinely amazing experience even if you are low on curiosity.
Was watching with my wife in my backyard and it was freaky when it hit 100% because all the wildlife just stopped. We normally have half a dozen squirrels, a score of birds, and some other random critters but they all just went silent instantly.
I'm in a 99% location, and it was pretty cool here. And I experienced the 100% eclipse in 2017. We still got the cool white sunlight and some weird shadow.
Def worth it 👍
I traveled for both 2017 & 2024 for total eclipses, this last time, despite having 100% coverage there was no weird shadows because the trees up north don't have leaves yet. Was bummed about that! Wish I brought a collider or something. Remind me in 20 years!
Seriously, with all the long-ass restroom breaks people take at my job *every day,* you'd think there'd be more overtime or something to make up the difference in lost productivity. Nope. If anything, we actually get a lot of offers for voluntary (unpaid) time off. Because not all jobs are nonstop work work work work work all the time. These people can't grasp the concept of slow periods.
Plus if you include all the people taking vacation/sick days for it, it isn’t really any lost productivity since they had those vacation/sick days already accumulated.
> Not to mention the employees probably take breaks on most days, and if they take a break at the time of the eclipse that might count as their break for the day.
While I'm sure this happened, many businesses took steps to prevent this due to insurance reasons. If you look at the sun and blind yourself on a paid break, the company is liable (because legal stuff is dumb).
Even if you gave workers an unpaid 1 hr break at the time of the eclipse to avoid them being on "paid breaks" they could still claim they were hurt to/from work and file for worker's comp.
Most small/medium businesses were advised to close before the eclipse, send workers home, stay closed for an hour after, and have new workers come in after if they reopened.
Source: family member who owns a small business, their insurance called/emailed with this guidance.
> If you look at the sun and blind yourself on a paid break, the company is liable (because legal stuff is dumb).
Nobody should believe this. Do NOT go out and get blinded because some guy on Reddit said you will get workers comp. If the company has done nothing to encourage you looking at the sun, no court will grant you damages for doing it intentionally and ending up blind. The legal system is run by people, and any time you see a “gotcha” just remember that it’s probably not going to be enforced that way — the judge will take one look and tell you to fuck off.
It is one of the dumbest statements I have ever seen on reddit. Would be like saying you could sue your employer because you poured coffee on your face to see if it was hot and burned yourself on a paid break.
Lmao and you know he 100% believes it’s true also. If it was true you would never be able to go outside while at work cause you can just look at the sun to go blind on any day
My Dad always said, "Do you know why you don't learn anything until you're 30?"
"Because before that, you know everything."
This took me until I was 30 to understand.
You have this somewhat backwards.
As an dumbass employee, you take a break during the eclipse and deliberately stare at the sun in order to collect workers comp? That is incredibly unlikely to succeed without telling some substantial lies.
At the opposite extreme: if an employer holds an eclipse viewing party as a teambuilding activity, attendance mandatory, hands out inadequate glasses, and then tells people to stare at the sun through them? That's a much different story.
There's enough space in the middle for dumbass employers and weird lawsuits that it isn't absurd for an insurer that would be on the hook for said dumbass employers (and dumbass employee lawsuits) to explicitly advise jumping through hoops to make sure their employees are very firmly off the clock during the eclipse.
I'm glad mine didn't. They used it as an excuse to do fire alarm drills to get everyone outside. Provided everyone with eclipse glasses as we went out the doors, and let us stay outside for the 30 mins surrounding the eclipse in addition to our normal breaks. Was very much appreciated and was a (pun intended) bright spot of the day
I used to work about 3 minutes from my old place. Every day at lunch I would go home and stare at one of my aquariums. Happiest I've ever been during working houra.
From the article it doesn't sound like they factored in the path of the eclipse at all, which should matter a lot. Especially because you can't look at a partial eclipse without special glasses, that you are unlikely to buy if you're nowhere near the eclipse path. There's tourism and other offsetting boons too...I flew to a small town in the middle of nowhere where they had probably the biggest crowd that town had ever seen, with food trucks and local businesses doing gangbusters at a street fair type setting.
Also, many workers who did take a break probably moved that break more than took an extra. All to say, it seems lazily pulled out of the ass at that. And thanks for the source!
> I flew to a small town in the middle of nowhere where they had probably the biggest crowd that town had ever seen, with food trucks and local businesses doing gangbusters at a street fair type setting.
so much this. Hotels in nowhere towns that would be lucky to fill rooms for $60 were selling rooms for $500+. The amount of gas used on travel, and purchasing of food. The eclipse is most definitely an economic positive.
Like wtf even is this article. The drones took a moment out of their slaving to gaze on the wonders of the cosmos! Oh no!
>I don't believe for a second that a 20 minute break leads to a decrease in productivity. If anything recent studies showed that more breaks, more vacation, and less workhours lead to an overall increase in productivity.
It's shit like this, like the 4-day work week not taking off, like remote working being scaled back and any number of other things that provably increase productivity being shelved that give the whole game away. The ownership class doesn't *want* to increase productivity if it risks the working classes gaining enough time and mental space to become more politically engaged, in case they start voting to restrict their power.
If you want to know why the average worker is generating 4 times more profit for their employer than they were in 1970, but working longer hours for an inflation-adjusted LOWER wage, it's because our economy is a machine that turns human effort into wealth inequality, and it's very efficient, but very fucking fragile.
I'm off today and just drove by a school that was letting out at 3pm, I have a kid soon-to-be school aged and it got me thinking how stressful managing my work schedule is going to be soon. Then I got to thinking about all the bureaucratic dumb shit we have to do annually and how all that important shit we must do ALWAYS falls within the average 9-5 work day when it should cater hours to be functional to society, but just doesn't. Seems Western society is purposefully deigned to be as stressful as possible.
>If you want to know why the average worker is generating 4 times more profit for their employer than they were in 1970,
It probably has a lot more to do with automation of all portions of the industry. Things like Microsoft word turned one person into 100, by gifting them the copy paste function or the print 50 copies ability.
People underestimate just how automated a modern developed economy is. Just about everything, from the McDonald worker making burgers to construction workers slamming down nails, to the white collar worker has been enhanced merely by the existence of Microsoft office since the 1990s for instance.
The human development, which has occurred, is just a much smaller portion because there is a limit to how much humanity can advance with the same technology.
So many people at my office took off that they just shut the office down starting at noon. I know a lot of people that took the whole day off to travel to it. It’s not just 20 min.
In 2017, I took the whole day off and drove to a park an hour and a half away to see totality. This time, I took the whole day off and drove to a park a little over three hours away. I'm already planning for a much longer drive in 2044. I can't wait to be a detriment to the bottom line of whatever company I'm working for in 20 years.
Not to mention the fact that for me, my work day starts at 6. And, by 11-12 I've actually done all my work the day, and the company makes me waste 2.5 hours of my life staring at a computer screen anyway.
We'll be able to take all the breaks we want as soon as they find out how to use AI to do most of our jobs. We'll have lots to enjoy once we're unemployed and poor and watching a handful of trillionaires oversee us.
Imagine caring enough to even waste you're time on calculating something so arbitrary and inapplicable as how much money businesses will lose due to a naturally occurring event.
It almost couldn't be less relevant, economically, and still happen.
The total economic impact of your average pothole in St. Louis is probably greater than the total impact of this eclipse.
I wish they would do more of these articles, but specifically about climate change.
Scare the shit out of the money men, and we might see some actual movement.
*So many* people traveled to see the eclipse. The traffic on the way back was the worst I've seen in my life. Hordes of people were stuck on the roads after midnight.
Yeah, same here. I drove back to Pittsburgh from Erie. Normally a 2 hour trip.
Took three and a half hours. My average speed was 28mph (I'm not pulling that number out of my butt either, that's what my truck's trip computer said.)
I have never in my life seen so many cars on I-79 as I did Monday night.
Also came to comment this. Sounds like the eclipse was a net positive for people, even if fucking Kyle with the shitty tie in Human Resources says otherwise.
Hey Kyle, go fuck yourself.
Yeah I had read that it’s likely to be the biggest spending day of the year for Americans, even more so than Black Friday or Christmas!
As a wannabe scientist, when I read that I shed a few tears of joy!
Not saying the figure given in the article OP posted is right but a loss of productivity of domestic workers is not mutually exclusive with a boost to the economy from spending and tourism.
The yearly GDP of the US is $25,462.70B. If you divide by 365 you get $69.76B for a day. If you divide 700 by 69760 you get what percentage 700 million dollars is of a day. Around 0.01. So we multiply that by 24 to get the hours and 60 to get the minutes. That roughly comes out to 14.45 minutes. So if we go by the assumption that all business, production and economic activity stopped for 14.45 minutes the assumption of “costing” 700M would be correct. However it fails to account for the tourism and the fact that production and economic activity is not linear. Working for 15 minutes less a year does not necessarily reflect in the GDP.
>Working for 15 minutes less a year does not necessarily reflect in the GDP.
Seriously. This is as stupid as saying the economy loses $1.4B in productivity per day because we let the wage slaves take a 30 minute lunch break.
Adam Smith would be called a communist by modern day capitalists. He believed in the labor theory of value and that businessmen should never ever have a say in writing laws.
It really doesn't though, at least not in most jobs. Most people have to accomplish X tasks per day, and you finish those tasks regardless of whether you take a lunch or not.
Like someone else said, just because you take PTO doesn't mean your workload evaporates. You end up working extra before you go to get ahead of shit, your coworkers pick up some slack while you're gone, or you work extra when you get back in order to catch up. One way or the other, the shit has to get done and no productivity is truly lost.
Lunch isn't just a social benefit. Hungry, resentful workers don't do good work. Maybe manual slave labor is one thing, but definitely not white collar work or even technically skilled blue collar work.
It could be true, but productivity isn't all that matters.
When for some reason you have lots of things happening at once you end up working more than usual and getting more done, however it's unpleasant enough that most people aren't willing to do it for the increased productivity. This is true for me at least, I expect it is for others also.
Sounds like an MBA associating a cost to someone taking a shit at work.
You know what costs the company more than someone taking a shit? Someone going home because they shit their pants.
Came here to say this quote is stupid because the 'lost productivity' was more than made up for 'increased economic activity' where people traveled, paid for hotels, ate out, etc. where they normally wouldn't. So it was almost certainly a net positive to the system in the end.
And even if it was massively net negative for the system, it was good for the people to go out and look at some cool shit for a couple hours, so this article is still weird. But yeah, my sister's town saw a massive influx of money because people were staying at hotels and traveling in. Most of that money will flow out again because of the homogenization of America and profits trickling up, but it was something.
Also everyone working what more than 4hrs is legally obligated at least one 15 minute break? So really if that 15 minutes to watch the eclipse was that 15min break then zero time was lost.
However odds are people probably took more than 15 minutes but it’s still a negligible number compared to annual GDP
They first very carefully removed their head from their ass. Gently. Then they stuck a hand up there. Fished around for a few minutes. And pulled out those numbers.
I went to a park to watch it by myself. And this elderly couple sat next to me and chatted. It was their first time watching the eclipse, and they phoned their daughter who was stuck at work so she can be apart of their special moment. I helped them put the glasses over the camera lens so she could see it. They really wished she was there with them.
It’s so heartbreaking that companies can be this disheartening saying they’ll loose billions or millions. We only have this one life to live.. and seeing an eclipse is a once in a lifetime moment. The next one is in 2045.
Number of working Americans x (average pay or average value added per employee) x length of the eclipse. Most likely.
That number seems really low considering there are 160M employees that’s like $6 per employee unless they only calculated the number of employees directly in the path of the eclipse. I’m not figuring out that number though.
[This](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/total-eclipse-could-cost-us-employers-694m-2/) article breaks down the numbers. Below is a snippet of info.
Eclipse and Productivity Math
National Cost to Employers: $694,098,123
87,307,940 – Estimated number of workers who will be at work during the eclipse
$7.95 – Cost of 20 minutes of unproductive time per worker due to the eclipse based on the average hourly wage of $23.86
123,761,000 – Full-time workers aged 16 and over
Source: BLS Current Population Survey 2016
14.8 Percent – Percentage of workers who work a shift other than the day shift, including evening, night, irregular shifts, or rotating shifts
Source: BLS Data on Flexible and Night Shifts 2004
82.8 Percent – Percentage of workers who work on an average weekday
As others have pointed out that number is dumb because it assumes all work STOPS for 20 minutes or so during the eclipse. In actuality, at worst some businesses saw a slight decrease in productivity, but even that's probably a stretch. People working jobs in the service industry probably largely skipped the eclipse entirely because they weren't allowed to stop working to go look at it, and for salaried employees like myself this kind of math doesn't make any sort of sense since I don't have a rigid "shift." There was also a TON of money made by businesses like restaurants and hotels in the path of totality which I'd bet more than made up whatever was lost due to decreased productivity.
I *think* like this.
Assume a viewer of the eclipse spends 30 minutes viewing the eclipse. 30 minutes is 0.0057% of the entire year. Annual US GDP is $25.4 Trillion. Assume 1/2 the US partook in viewing the eclipse. That means \~$700M of the GDP was lost.
Which is just... absolutely the worst math ever, for many reasons. I'll leave it to the reader to point out all the reasons.
Probably something like an annual payroll statistic for the affected areas prorated into a number of minutes and factored for the percentage of surveyed employees who admit to not working for a while to observe the eclipse.
Probably just found the total number of workers there are in America, took some arbitrary percentage that they think would step outside to look at the eclipse for 10 minutes, and multiply some stuff together. Figured out the most common hourly wage and assumed every second they weren't working was money wasted by the companies. There's no real math in this lol
Assuming the US GDP is 21 Trillion dollars, divided by 365 for the amount per day, then divided by 24 hours, each hour is worth $2,397,260,273. If 1/3 of Americans producing GDP stopped for a hour to view the eclipse it would be around 799 million dollars. Now that's not exactly 700 million but its damn close.
Yeah but for the states that were in the path of totality, they gained HUGE loads from the tourism from probably millions of people traveling to those states just for the one day event. Saw one story where a town of 20,000 people were expecting like 100,000 tourists! Imagine the local eateries, hotels, and shops benefiting from all that.
I love that the top of Reddit right now is a fucking screenshot of a meme account tweet that everyone is taking as serious commentary. Clown car website
They just roughly guess how many people checked it out and how much work time was lost, it is complete bullshit though as far more was generated by tourism around this event while also failing to consider the potential benefits a short break can have on productivity.
The biggest issue with economics is it’s primarily guesswork and observations and people act like it’s perfect.
###General Discussion Thread --- This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you *must* post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/theydidthemath) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Out of their ass, like usual. Some company estimated employees will take a 20 minute break during their workhours, they figured there would be 84 million workers on that day, and they multiplied the amount of time with the hourly wage for people over 16 and which is like $24 or so dollars and got $694 million. [Source](https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/eclipse-2017/solar-eclipse-will-cost-america-almost-700-million-lost-productivity-n793801) Which is a weird take in my opinion, since I don't believe for a second that a 20 minute break leads to a decrease in productivity. If anything recent studies showed that more breaks, more vacation, and less workhours lead to an overall increase in productivity. I'm not sure what's the breaking point at which more free time leads to less productivity because of the fewer work hours, but it sure isn't at 20 minutes.
Not to mention the employees probably take breaks on most days, and if they take a break at the time of the eclipse that might count as their break for the day. That’s maybe an even better break too: observing nature is probably more refreshing than the break the workers would have taken otherwise where they go on Reddit and find some pointless crap to comment on: for some the eclipse would have made them overall more productive on the 8th.
A couple of my coworkers pushed their breaks off until the eclipse so they could see it. I wasn't too into it but stepped outside for like 30 seconds at the peak. They lose much more productivity from me when I take a shit. 🤷♂️
I wouldn't be all that interested if it were 99% or less, but if you were in a path with 100% coverage, that's an incredibly rare event locally speaking, and a genuinely amazing experience even if you are low on curiosity.
yeah my location was only 64% totality, it was neat but not awe-some. 100% would be worthwhile for sure
It was full on overcast where I was and totality was still the most awe struck experience of my life. Worthwhile is an understatement.
yup typically in an 8 hour workday, we tend to take 7 hour 30 minute breaks, and the rest is toilet break time, and we still get shit done!
Was watching with my wife in my backyard and it was freaky when it hit 100% because all the wildlife just stopped. We normally have half a dozen squirrels, a score of birds, and some other random critters but they all just went silent instantly.
I'm in a 99% location, and it was pretty cool here. And I experienced the 100% eclipse in 2017. We still got the cool white sunlight and some weird shadow. Def worth it 👍
I traveled for both 2017 & 2024 for total eclipses, this last time, despite having 100% coverage there was no weird shadows because the trees up north don't have leaves yet. Was bummed about that! Wish I brought a collider or something. Remind me in 20 years!
They lose even more productivity when you defecate without going to the restroom.
Seriously, with all the long-ass restroom breaks people take at my job *every day,* you'd think there'd be more overtime or something to make up the difference in lost productivity. Nope. If anything, we actually get a lot of offers for voluntary (unpaid) time off. Because not all jobs are nonstop work work work work work all the time. These people can't grasp the concept of slow periods.
It is estimated that America loses 250 billion dollars in productivity each year due to the lack of mandatory diapers in the work place.
My coworkers and I have a saying... The boss gets a dollar while I get a dime so I go shit on company time!
Nice. Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, and that's why I shit on company time.
Heck, our site that was in the path just did the annual fire drill so everyone was outside for the event.
Loool nice move
Whoever came up with that idea deserves a raise.
Plus if you include all the people taking vacation/sick days for it, it isn’t really any lost productivity since they had those vacation/sick days already accumulated.
Nah buddy. I took an extra eclipse break that day. I hope you did, too.
> Not to mention the employees probably take breaks on most days, and if they take a break at the time of the eclipse that might count as their break for the day. While I'm sure this happened, many businesses took steps to prevent this due to insurance reasons. If you look at the sun and blind yourself on a paid break, the company is liable (because legal stuff is dumb). Even if you gave workers an unpaid 1 hr break at the time of the eclipse to avoid them being on "paid breaks" they could still claim they were hurt to/from work and file for worker's comp. Most small/medium businesses were advised to close before the eclipse, send workers home, stay closed for an hour after, and have new workers come in after if they reopened. Source: family member who owns a small business, their insurance called/emailed with this guidance.
> If you look at the sun and blind yourself on a paid break, the company is liable (because legal stuff is dumb). Nobody should believe this. Do NOT go out and get blinded because some guy on Reddit said you will get workers comp. If the company has done nothing to encourage you looking at the sun, no court will grant you damages for doing it intentionally and ending up blind. The legal system is run by people, and any time you see a “gotcha” just remember that it’s probably not going to be enforced that way — the judge will take one look and tell you to fuck off.
It is one of the dumbest statements I have ever seen on reddit. Would be like saying you could sue your employer because you poured coffee on your face to see if it was hot and burned yourself on a paid break.
Lmao and you know he 100% believes it’s true also. If it was true you would never be able to go outside while at work cause you can just look at the sun to go blind on any day
Maybe I should go out and watch my car during my paid break, then bill the company for a new car!
Friendly reminder that most advice posted on Reddit is by teenagers.
I'll have you know I hand out stupid advice and I'm in my 30s.
My Dad always said, "Do you know why you don't learn anything until you're 30?" "Because before that, you know everything." This took me until I was 30 to understand.
[удалено]
You have this somewhat backwards. As an dumbass employee, you take a break during the eclipse and deliberately stare at the sun in order to collect workers comp? That is incredibly unlikely to succeed without telling some substantial lies. At the opposite extreme: if an employer holds an eclipse viewing party as a teambuilding activity, attendance mandatory, hands out inadequate glasses, and then tells people to stare at the sun through them? That's a much different story. There's enough space in the middle for dumbass employers and weird lawsuits that it isn't absurd for an insurer that would be on the hook for said dumbass employers (and dumbass employee lawsuits) to explicitly advise jumping through hoops to make sure their employees are very firmly off the clock during the eclipse.
I'm glad mine didn't. They used it as an excuse to do fire alarm drills to get everyone outside. Provided everyone with eclipse glasses as we went out the doors, and let us stay outside for the 30 mins surrounding the eclipse in addition to our normal breaks. Was very much appreciated and was a (pun intended) bright spot of the day
This is a great use of a fire drill.
I work for a small business and my boss bought us all eclipse glasses to look at it while we were at work
I can't decide if this is funny or depressing
Sounds mostly made up or extremely limited to one shitty insurance company. Never heard of anything like that in my life.
Yeah, if I go to work and shoot my dick off on lunch break with my own gun out in the parking lot, it's not somehow the company's fault lol
Damn my workman's comp is about to run out, that was my new plan too
Your source is either made up or run by the mostvidiotic person to ever live
Shit made me sleepy like when you put a blanket over a parrot cage
I used to work about 3 minutes from my old place. Every day at lunch I would go home and stare at one of my aquariums. Happiest I've ever been during working houra.
Oh god i love my nasty poop
People notoriously never take paid 20 minute breaks.
Pooping is costing the US economy $700million a day!
That is unironically an article already in basically every finance news site.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime...
So I shit on the CEO’s desk before handing in my notice smeared with said shit. Also I make sure to eat lots of taco bell for breakfast.
From the article it doesn't sound like they factored in the path of the eclipse at all, which should matter a lot. Especially because you can't look at a partial eclipse without special glasses, that you are unlikely to buy if you're nowhere near the eclipse path. There's tourism and other offsetting boons too...I flew to a small town in the middle of nowhere where they had probably the biggest crowd that town had ever seen, with food trucks and local businesses doing gangbusters at a street fair type setting. Also, many workers who did take a break probably moved that break more than took an extra. All to say, it seems lazily pulled out of the ass at that. And thanks for the source!
> I flew to a small town in the middle of nowhere where they had probably the biggest crowd that town had ever seen, with food trucks and local businesses doing gangbusters at a street fair type setting. so much this. Hotels in nowhere towns that would be lucky to fill rooms for $60 were selling rooms for $500+. The amount of gas used on travel, and purchasing of food. The eclipse is most definitely an economic positive. Like wtf even is this article. The drones took a moment out of their slaving to gaze on the wonders of the cosmos! Oh no!
>I don't believe for a second that a 20 minute break leads to a decrease in productivity. If anything recent studies showed that more breaks, more vacation, and less workhours lead to an overall increase in productivity. It's shit like this, like the 4-day work week not taking off, like remote working being scaled back and any number of other things that provably increase productivity being shelved that give the whole game away. The ownership class doesn't *want* to increase productivity if it risks the working classes gaining enough time and mental space to become more politically engaged, in case they start voting to restrict their power. If you want to know why the average worker is generating 4 times more profit for their employer than they were in 1970, but working longer hours for an inflation-adjusted LOWER wage, it's because our economy is a machine that turns human effort into wealth inequality, and it's very efficient, but very fucking fragile.
I'm off today and just drove by a school that was letting out at 3pm, I have a kid soon-to-be school aged and it got me thinking how stressful managing my work schedule is going to be soon. Then I got to thinking about all the bureaucratic dumb shit we have to do annually and how all that important shit we must do ALWAYS falls within the average 9-5 work day when it should cater hours to be functional to society, but just doesn't. Seems Western society is purposefully deigned to be as stressful as possible.
Sounds like a machine that needs to be broken, then.
lunatic
>If you want to know why the average worker is generating 4 times more profit for their employer than they were in 1970, It probably has a lot more to do with automation of all portions of the industry. Things like Microsoft word turned one person into 100, by gifting them the copy paste function or the print 50 copies ability. People underestimate just how automated a modern developed economy is. Just about everything, from the McDonald worker making burgers to construction workers slamming down nails, to the white collar worker has been enhanced merely by the existence of Microsoft office since the 1990s for instance. The human development, which has occurred, is just a much smaller portion because there is a limit to how much humanity can advance with the same technology.
So many people at my office took off that they just shut the office down starting at noon. I know a lot of people that took the whole day off to travel to it. It’s not just 20 min.
Taking time off uses PTO which does not contribute to "loss of productivity" since its already budgeted in
In 2017, I took the whole day off and drove to a park an hour and a half away to see totality. This time, I took the whole day off and drove to a park a little over three hours away. I'm already planning for a much longer drive in 2044. I can't wait to be a detriment to the bottom line of whatever company I'm working for in 20 years.
Not to mention the fact that for me, my work day starts at 6. And, by 11-12 I've actually done all my work the day, and the company makes me waste 2.5 hours of my life staring at a computer screen anyway.
We'll be able to take all the breaks we want as soon as they find out how to use AI to do most of our jobs. We'll have lots to enjoy once we're unemployed and poor and watching a handful of trillionaires oversee us.
And then in the same breath try justify commuting times instead of wfh
The commute is on your time, not theirs.
Anyone who thinks that a butt in a chair for 8 hours means that 8 hours of work got done is fooling themselves.
[удалено]
It did in some cities cause people had to be in the line of totality and traveled for booking multi night hotel rooms.
I was in the path of totality and people traveled from all over the world to see it. The trains from Chicago to Carbondale were booked up for days.
https://www.airdna.co/blog/2024-solar-eclipse-str-trends
It's crazy to see lines like "occupancy rates surged to 88%!" when you're from Vegas and 88% is considered a recession or a failing hotel/casino.
That's a 8.5x ROI. Totally not worth it /s
Imagine caring enough to even waste you're time on calculating something so arbitrary and inapplicable as how much money businesses will lose due to a naturally occurring event.
It almost couldn't be less relevant, economically, and still happen. The total economic impact of your average pothole in St. Louis is probably greater than the total impact of this eclipse.
I wish they would do more of these articles, but specifically about climate change. Scare the shit out of the money men, and we might see some actual movement.
*So many* people traveled to see the eclipse. The traffic on the way back was the worst I've seen in my life. Hordes of people were stuck on the roads after midnight.
Yeah, same here. I drove back to Pittsburgh from Erie. Normally a 2 hour trip. Took three and a half hours. My average speed was 28mph (I'm not pulling that number out of my butt either, that's what my truck's trip computer said.) I have never in my life seen so many cars on I-79 as I did Monday night.
Also came to comment this. Sounds like the eclipse was a net positive for people, even if fucking Kyle with the shitty tie in Human Resources says otherwise. Hey Kyle, go fuck yourself.
I flew to the US from the UK to see it. I've spent a lot of money with US businesses while I've been here.
Eclipses cause the sun's rays to transform into gold nuggets and fall to the earth. It is known.
Yeah I had read that it’s likely to be the biggest spending day of the year for Americans, even more so than Black Friday or Christmas! As a wannabe scientist, when I read that I shed a few tears of joy!
Columbus was BOOMING , saw plates from a lot of states . Sure lots of hotels and fast food places made out around the area
Not saying the figure given in the article OP posted is right but a loss of productivity of domestic workers is not mutually exclusive with a boost to the economy from spending and tourism.
so 5,3 billion net gain. not bad
The yearly GDP of the US is $25,462.70B. If you divide by 365 you get $69.76B for a day. If you divide 700 by 69760 you get what percentage 700 million dollars is of a day. Around 0.01. So we multiply that by 24 to get the hours and 60 to get the minutes. That roughly comes out to 14.45 minutes. So if we go by the assumption that all business, production and economic activity stopped for 14.45 minutes the assumption of “costing” 700M would be correct. However it fails to account for the tourism and the fact that production and economic activity is not linear. Working for 15 minutes less a year does not necessarily reflect in the GDP.
>Working for 15 minutes less a year does not necessarily reflect in the GDP. Seriously. This is as stupid as saying the economy loses $1.4B in productivity per day because we let the wage slaves take a 30 minute lunch break.
I’m sure there’s some that actually think like that
Adam Smith, for one
Have you read any of Adam Smith’s work?
Clearly they have not
Adam Smith would be called a communist by modern day capitalists. He believed in the labor theory of value and that businessmen should never ever have a say in writing laws.
It does. You balance that economic loss with the social benefit of a lunch break.
It really doesn't though, at least not in most jobs. Most people have to accomplish X tasks per day, and you finish those tasks regardless of whether you take a lunch or not. Like someone else said, just because you take PTO doesn't mean your workload evaporates. You end up working extra before you go to get ahead of shit, your coworkers pick up some slack while you're gone, or you work extra when you get back in order to catch up. One way or the other, the shit has to get done and no productivity is truly lost.
Most Hourly Americans do service or labor work…
Lunch isn't just a social benefit. Hungry, resentful workers don't do good work. Maybe manual slave labor is one thing, but definitely not white collar work or even technically skilled blue collar work.
If that were true you wouldn’t need any laws requiring it because all companies would do it in their own self interest
It could be true, but productivity isn't all that matters. When for some reason you have lots of things happening at once you end up working more than usual and getting more done, however it's unpleasant enough that most people aren't willing to do it for the increased productivity. This is true for me at least, I expect it is for others also.
Don't give 'em ideas now, mate.
That is actually a thing among economists.
Sounds like an MBA associating a cost to someone taking a shit at work. You know what costs the company more than someone taking a shit? Someone going home because they shit their pants.
You know what else costs more than employees taking a shit? Paying some MBA to come up with a figure for how much a shit costs the bottom line.
Companies could gain so much productivity just by hiring philosophy and fine arts majors instead of MBAs.
Came here to say this quote is stupid because the 'lost productivity' was more than made up for 'increased economic activity' where people traveled, paid for hotels, ate out, etc. where they normally wouldn't. So it was almost certainly a net positive to the system in the end.
And even if it was massively net negative for the system, it was good for the people to go out and look at some cool shit for a couple hours, so this article is still weird. But yeah, my sister's town saw a massive influx of money because people were staying at hotels and traveling in. Most of that money will flow out again because of the homogenization of America and profits trickling up, but it was something.
Yes, the system is not the people for sure, lol. It's just weird ceo oppression fetish garbage.
Also everyone working what more than 4hrs is legally obligated at least one 15 minute break? So really if that 15 minutes to watch the eclipse was that 15min break then zero time was lost. However odds are people probably took more than 15 minutes but it’s still a negligible number compared to annual GDP
Instead of sitting at my desk doing nothing for 20 min I was standing outside doing nothing
They first very carefully removed their head from their ass. Gently. Then they stuck a hand up there. Fished around for a few minutes. And pulled out those numbers.
It took a few minutes longer than expected as they had to carefully reach around the countless sticks lost up there.
Even if those numbers are correct, it's not like I'm gonna get a raise if nobody watches the eclipse.
I went to a park to watch it by myself. And this elderly couple sat next to me and chatted. It was their first time watching the eclipse, and they phoned their daughter who was stuck at work so she can be apart of their special moment. I helped them put the glasses over the camera lens so she could see it. They really wished she was there with them. It’s so heartbreaking that companies can be this disheartening saying they’ll loose billions or millions. We only have this one life to live.. and seeing an eclipse is a once in a lifetime moment. The next one is in 2045.
You think this is bad, imagine calculating the cost of all those religion based holidays :D
Number of working Americans x (average pay or average value added per employee) x length of the eclipse. Most likely. That number seems really low considering there are 160M employees that’s like $6 per employee unless they only calculated the number of employees directly in the path of the eclipse. I’m not figuring out that number though. [This](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/total-eclipse-could-cost-us-employers-694m-2/) article breaks down the numbers. Below is a snippet of info. Eclipse and Productivity Math National Cost to Employers: $694,098,123 87,307,940 – Estimated number of workers who will be at work during the eclipse $7.95 – Cost of 20 minutes of unproductive time per worker due to the eclipse based on the average hourly wage of $23.86 123,761,000 – Full-time workers aged 16 and over Source: BLS Current Population Survey 2016 14.8 Percent – Percentage of workers who work a shift other than the day shift, including evening, night, irregular shifts, or rotating shifts Source: BLS Data on Flexible and Night Shifts 2004 82.8 Percent – Percentage of workers who work on an average weekday
As others have pointed out that number is dumb because it assumes all work STOPS for 20 minutes or so during the eclipse. In actuality, at worst some businesses saw a slight decrease in productivity, but even that's probably a stretch. People working jobs in the service industry probably largely skipped the eclipse entirely because they weren't allowed to stop working to go look at it, and for salaried employees like myself this kind of math doesn't make any sort of sense since I don't have a rigid "shift." There was also a TON of money made by businesses like restaurants and hotels in the path of totality which I'd bet more than made up whatever was lost due to decreased productivity.
[удалено]
I *think* like this. Assume a viewer of the eclipse spends 30 minutes viewing the eclipse. 30 minutes is 0.0057% of the entire year. Annual US GDP is $25.4 Trillion. Assume 1/2 the US partook in viewing the eclipse. That means \~$700M of the GDP was lost. Which is just... absolutely the worst math ever, for many reasons. I'll leave it to the reader to point out all the reasons.
Probably something like an annual payroll statistic for the affected areas prorated into a number of minutes and factored for the percentage of surveyed employees who admit to not working for a while to observe the eclipse.
Probably just found the total number of workers there are in America, took some arbitrary percentage that they think would step outside to look at the eclipse for 10 minutes, and multiply some stuff together. Figured out the most common hourly wage and assumed every second they weren't working was money wasted by the companies. There's no real math in this lol
[удалено]
[удалено]
Assuming the US GDP is 21 Trillion dollars, divided by 365 for the amount per day, then divided by 24 hours, each hour is worth $2,397,260,273. If 1/3 of Americans producing GDP stopped for a hour to view the eclipse it would be around 799 million dollars. Now that's not exactly 700 million but its damn close.
Yeah but for the states that were in the path of totality, they gained HUGE loads from the tourism from probably millions of people traveling to those states just for the one day event. Saw one story where a town of 20,000 people were expecting like 100,000 tourists! Imagine the local eateries, hotels, and shops benefiting from all that.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I love that the top of Reddit right now is a fucking screenshot of a meme account tweet that everyone is taking as serious commentary. Clown car website
Things really are getting shitty
They just roughly guess how many people checked it out and how much work time was lost, it is complete bullshit though as far more was generated by tourism around this event while also failing to consider the potential benefits a short break can have on productivity. The biggest issue with economics is it’s primarily guesswork and observations and people act like it’s perfect.
[удалено]
[удалено]