Talk:951: Working
Unless you're unemployed, in which case spending extra time to find deals is *probably* a good idea since you're not going to be earning any more money with that time anyways. Davidy²²[talk] 08:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
- Unless you read the title text. At which point, you are burning enough gas to not only negate the savings, but actually make the cheaper gas more expensive. Sure, if you have 2 gas stations across the street from each other, go to the cheaper one, but even unemployed people should just get the most convenient gas. --71.186.225.22 17:59, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
- Not true. Our objectives in life is not to maximize our income. We also value leisure. In equilibrium, the marginal value of a minute of leisure is worth the marginal value of a minute of working. Now you could argue that due to frictions, the workweek is stuck at 40 hours, so a person who values working more than leisure doesn't have the option to work more overtime at will, so we're not actually at equilibrium. So if you are this kind of person, then go ahead. However a lot of people who work 40 hours a week actually value their leisure more, i.e. they wish they could scale back their hours at a proportional wage rate to enjoy more leisure. Indeed, it is likely that in aggregate, marginal value of leisure is very close to marginal value of labor; it just varies on an individual basis. Mac520 (talk) 14:31, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
- I bet they're not taking benefits into account -- if your employer was paying you 97.5% of your current salary for 39 hours per week instead of 40, you'd have to expect 2.5% less contribution to your health and dental care, your 401k, and whatever else. Some of which would probably be illegal to contribute less to (especially if you're unionized), so the difference would be taken out of your paycheck instead. Promethean (talk) 02:12, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
- Not true. Our objectives in life is not to maximize our income. We also value leisure. In equilibrium, the marginal value of a minute of leisure is worth the marginal value of a minute of working. Now you could argue that due to frictions, the workweek is stuck at 40 hours, so a person who values working more than leisure doesn't have the option to work more overtime at will, so we're not actually at equilibrium. So if you are this kind of person, then go ahead. However a lot of people who work 40 hours a week actually value their leisure more, i.e. they wish they could scale back their hours at a proportional wage rate to enjoy more leisure. Indeed, it is likely that in aggregate, marginal value of leisure is very close to marginal value of labor; it just varies on an individual basis. Mac520 (talk) 14:31, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
The trick is that unless there is someone willing to pay you for your time at the moment, your time really cost nothing. Which means that for people working 40 hours a week, there are 128 unpaid hours per week. Okay, it can be argued that instead you could be doing something more pleasurable or useful (i.e. doing it yourself instead of paying someone else for the service). But in reality there still is plenty of time simply wasted, so 10 minutes one way or the other just doesn't matter. And by the way, at the typical U.S. marginal tax rate, a penny saved equals almost two pennies earned. 108.162.246.11 21:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
- You don't have 128 hours available to spend on doing things for yourself instead of paying others, or on saving money. You need to eat and sleep and exercise. Paying someone else to do these things won't really do anything for you (except in the sense that the improvement in the other person's health could have some indirect benefit to you). And if we are going to consider societal benefits, then you have to consider the value of the tax you pay as much as the value of the health care spending reduction from paying someone else to exercise, eat, or sleep. 172.69.33.245 17:44, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
