Forum Post: Test for authority: If an IMPORTANT PERSON like a well-known economist or politician (like the President) were to....
Posted 12 years ago on June 21, 2012, 2:23 p.m. EST by Misaki
(893)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Say we need to use the accelerated work week to end inflation, unemployment, inequality, and the influence of money in politics ("political corruption"), would you support this and encourage your friends to spread the word/vote for that politician?
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.~Leonardo da Vinci
Can't see that it will do any of those things. Inflation does not matter. Quickest way to open jobs is lower the retirement age. Give me a decent incentive and you can have my job tomorrow.
To create jobs you have to have more consumer demand. That means more money in your pockets. I trust you will go buy something with it. Unlike the rich who will buy treasuries or oil futures.
Raise the minimum wage is a quicky way to do that.
Inequality requires a high marginal tax rate.
Money in politics requires a constitutional amendment. Move to Amend.
You are too logical. Are you sure you're on the right forum?
Inflation would not need to go away if unemployment is low—in fact, with the traditional (non-accelerated) system low unemployment leads to high inflation because the rich have plenty of money to burn getting people to do frivolous things—but since most people (that aren't economists) dislike inflation, it would probably go away once it's no longer necessary which is what could lead to the market crash.
I like this so will quote it again:
"So when Lehman collapsed, every single player panicked, going, 'If Lehman was nothing but a Ponzi scheme--and I know what I'm running is a Ponzi scheme--holy shit, that means everyone else is running a Ponzi scheme too! Run for the exits!' No one trusted anyone else, everyone pulled out, and the entire global economy collapsed just like that."
First you would have to prove that this program would work, which I don't think has been established.
Can you also show me the connection between the accelerated work week and political corruption?
from
If they want to work less, but make more (higher wage rate, not higher total income) that option is not currently available to people.
Nice of your government to do that. I noticed that the government in my area seems to require that businesses give people eco-friendly work options, one of which is the "flexitime" system but people who use it are still required to work the same number of hours—it's not about working less time, even if someone were to do the exact same amount of work in reduced time.
The change in wage rate, going from a higher rate to a lower rate, is important because it helps signal that working less is an acceptable thing to do. If people assume that working more helps the economy—which many people seem to do, when they are less willing to support wealth redistribution now than in 2007—then taking the work-share option could be seen as the sign of a "selfish" or undedicated worker who would then be passed over for promotions.
If we assumed that everyone was already expressing their most selfish desires, as economists tend to do... tangent:
Curtis's narration concludes with the observation that the game theory/free market model is now undergoing interrogation by economists who suspect a more irrational model of behaviour is appropriate and useful. In fact, in formal experiments the only people who behaved exactly according to the mathematical models created by game theory are economists themselves, and psychopaths.
Then you could assume that if educated, high-income people had any desire to work less they already would be. But this assumption completely falls apart if, in fact, people are only working as hard as they do because they think it "helps the economy".
As I pointed out here, while the rich may have good intentions it is difficult to transform those into actual help for the economy. So working harder does not actually help anything if it just gives more money to people who cannot effectively use it (the rich, who either buy a TV like you said or donate to a charity which is not effective at creating jobs).
I see we have run out of replies below>
"But this assumption completely falls apart if, in fact, people are only working as hard as they do because they think it "helps the economy"."
People work hard to make money, or increase their opportunity to be successful. People also work hard because they love what they do, or are dedicated to their job/profession/whatever. I don't know of anyone - and can't imagine anyone - saying "I'm going to bust my ass because it helps the economy."
Working harder does help the individual. You have to admit that an individual is going to improve their own personal economic position by opting to work 40 hours for 40 hours of pay instead of 30 hours for 32 hours of pay.
I guess it is a sort of tentative conclusion. But people do get upset about the whole "Bain Capital laying off workers", and the "profitable corporations laying off workers during the recession and the CEOs getting huge bonuses" things, so there might be an idea of helping co-workers (the "in-group") even if people don't have any particular interest in helping the nation as a whole (the "out-group" that someone has no social contact with).
What if they're currently working 55 hours per week? Since after all, 51% of males work more than 44 hours per week.
It is a fact (or at least, a statistical observation) that people are less efficient if they have long work hours. This is data for the construction industry for example, that found that "there is about a 10% increase in efficiency losses for each additional 10 hours per week added to the schedule beyond 40 hours." (It also found that concentrating work into fewer days with more hours was more efficient than spreading it out, so 4 days of 10 hours instead of 5 of 8 hours.)
Now, it is also true that there are additional costs, and things like health insurance are currently expected to cost the business the same whether someone works 40 hours or 60... or the cost of training a new worker vs how long they are expected to last at the business. But these are both not very important. If anyone would be willing to work less if they understood it helped with unemployment and so on, and was "better for the nation"—and despite the lack of polls for this specific idea other than the the99vote.com poll—then it would, well, help with unemployment.
Certain people in the US do have a reason to want that result. The President, for example. A full 56% of the population say that economy/jobs is the most important issue in their choice for president.
Lets end on a point that I know we can agree on.
Corporations do not need to keep pushing for endless growth. If they were satisfied with growing to match inflation, they could some some of that profit around to the workers through bonuses or through hiring. If a CEO makes $1.2m last year, why does he feel compelled to make $1.4m this year. If stockholders made $10,000 on dividends, why must they make $10,750 next year and so on.
I get it. I get the fact that companies are focused completely on growth. All it takes is for a company (really the management and stockholders) to be satisfied that they are making enough - then you wouldn't need all these different models and schemes.
First you have to prove that political corruption is really that frequent. Answer this question:
Suppose that jobs in the private sector provide on average X utility to society. You are the head of a government agency, and some people who work for you provide X utility while others only provide X/2 utility. The government is offering to give you even more money so you can "create jobs". Do you 1) Accept the money, and employ more X/2 utility workers. 2) Reject the money and let another government department have it. 3) Fire your existing X/2 utility workers so you can return even more money to Congress and taxpayers.
High Wall Street profits are NOT evidence of political corruption, unless by "political corruption" you mean "willingness to support positive inflation".
So as head of a government agency, what would you do in the above situation?
As to whether it would work, see replies to this thread: http://occupywallst.org/forum/informal-poll-do-you-think-working-harder-helps-th/
If I were totally in charge of my own resources, I would fire the ones working half productivity, as to return the highest value to citizens. I feel like that is more my responsibility than making sure that slackers have jobs.
The thread you linked proves or disproves the effectiveness of the accelerated work week.
The responses to that thread are generally in agreement that someone with a job working harder does not help the unemployed.
In other words, working less time helps the unemployed.
Now, government has become very efficient but unemployment is even higher. The tax money went back to taxpayers, which mostly means the rich, and they already have plenty of money so even if they spend some of the savings it will probably just go to corporate profits and back to another rich person. As we can see from this example, and also from the Great Depression, "a more efficient government" does not really help anything when the 'problem' is high productivity and inequality.
You are making quite a leap there. What your twisted logic would actually infer is that working harder doesn't help the unemployed, so therefore if i worked less hard, then the company would have to hire more people to pick up the slack. Just because working harder doesn't help the unemployed doesn't mean working less does. That is like saying taking an aspirin a day does not help my allergies, therefore not taking one should help.
In your second point, you are describing a model in which the government employs people just so they have jobs. The government should not be intentionally ineffective just so people get a paycheck. in essence, that is just another welfare program. If you don't want to return the savings to the taxpayer (rich in your mind), then spend on economic development programs, citizen training courses, improving infrastructure or something - don't make a job a hand out.
Precisely. The accelerated work week is just the way to do this honestly, and without wasting any time for the people involved.
If someone slacks off it might help society (by forcing the company to hire someone else), but it doesn't really help the individual if what they REALLY want to do is take the day off to go skiiing or something. It just makes them depressed and so on.
Which is exactly why "conservatives" are opposed to bigger government and why Democrats lost in the Wisconsin recall vote.
Your whole premise is based on the premise that people will work harder during a shorter work week. That might work for a little while, but I think people will soon return to their normal pace of work. In order to keep pace, you will have to have supervisors riding their employees that much harder, potentially making people more miserable at work - and resulting in terminations of people who don't produce enough - right?
People would have an incentive to eliminate institutional inefficiency, not just make their hands move faster.
This is why "higher efficiency" doesn't work as a way of allowing people to earn more for most jobs (besides sales). There is an existing example of rewarding people for working less with FedEx (formerly Federal Express), in this speech/article by the business partner of Warren Buffett. They decided to pay people per shift so planes could be loaded up faster and it worked.
But the reason WHY it worked was that if they were to lower pay, workers could potentially "retaliate" by working slower so the planes wouldn't get loaded up on time. Similarly, with work conservation, if the reduction in institutional inefficiency did not lead to roughly equal increases in worker pay, employees could retaliate by working slower, which would give them a higher income even if it was at a lower marginal wage rate.
So an efficiency increase is possible for all but the best-managed corporations (which probably pay their CEOs and management very well to provide that efficiency boost). The fact that people do get paid more for working more (unlike with monthly salaries) gives an incentive to provide fair wages so this doesn't happen, which would waste everyone's time.
I don't disagree that people should be paid for accomplishing objectives and not just paid for the time that they are there. I'm salaried at work, that means I don't have to put in 40 hours a week - I just have to get my job done. If it take 37 hour or 43 hours - I get paid the same. It does motivate me to work more efficiently and not waste a bunch of time. That accelerated work week doesn't create employment.
In the Fed Ex example, they didn't pay the employees less because they worked more efficiently - in fact, their hourly wage could potentially go up because they aren't working as much. Under your model, if 4 people got 40 hours of work done in 30 hours - they would be paid for 32 hours of work, and then the company would hire 1 additional person with the hours that were left over. That doesn't even make any sense. if the 4 people achieved the organizational objectives, then the company doesn't need any more employees. Once again, you are looking at that new job as a hand out. The company doesn't really need anyone, but since they are saving so much money, they can just go hire someone because it is the nice thing to do.
It doesn't add up.
A long example, lifted from this comment.
Often, someone would do a lower total amount of work which is why someone else could be hired. Quick example:
Someone does 30 hours of "real" work, spends 2 hours on Facebook, 3 hours on completely unnecessary procedures that their boss told them to do, and 5 hours on necessary-but-very-easy work that anyone could do with no training.
If they eliminate Facebook usage, they work 38 hours, get paid for (20*1.2 + 180.8) = 38.4 hours and the business saves the wage cost of 1.6 hours because the exact same amount of work is being done. *This is the best case for the business but many employees would have no motivation to do this if they can normally get paid for visiting Facebook.
If they eliminate Facebook usage, AND can convince their boss that the completely unnecessary procedures aren't needed, AND get "permission" to let someone else do the 5 hours of work anyone can do, then they end up working 30 hours and getting paid for (20*.12 + 100.8) = 32 hours of work. Meanwhile, the business hires a new person. Even if they get paid at exactly the same wage (instead of lower for being new and unskilled) they will end up doing 5 hours of work and be paid for 5\1.2 = 6 hours of work, meaning that the business pays for 32+6=38 hours of work instead of 40 as before and the exact same amount of work gets done.
But since the new person is new, and was previously unemployed and desperate for a job, maybe they only get paid 2/3 the rate of the experienced employee so the equivalent of 4 hours of work, so the business pays for 36 hours of work and has the same results as when it was paying the experienced employee to work for 40 hours.
A key point here is that the employee is responsible for pointing out what types of work are completely useless. If they are right, they end up working less time and getting paid slightly less. If they are wrong, eventually someone will realize this when things go wrong and the employee will take responsibility for that.
There are so many senseless variables to this.
Why would someone give up 8 hours of pay each week? The fact is, they will make almost 25% less money which isn't "slightly less." I don't know many people who would be willing to take a 25% pay cut just to stay home more. If they did, it would be called part time employment.
Even beyond that, why would someone give up 5 hours of pay to "give" to someone else? If I need money to pay my bills and put food on the table, why would I give 5 hours to someone else? Be realistic.
I asked about benefits in another thread - we agreed that the benefits associated with the extra positions would suck.
Many companies already have reward programs for employees that identify inefficiencies. Sometimes it includes a bonus based on a percentage of the cost savings.
You can look at this mathematically and think - hey, this is a win=win. People get paid a little bit more per hour, and get to work less. Plus another person gets a portion of a job, and the company pays out less in wage. That doesn't mean that this makes real-world sense.
\3. If given the choice 71% of males would prefer to have a job outside the home instead of staying home and taking care of a house and family, compared to 48% of females. [http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/SunMo_poll_0209.pdf] (from here)
The problem with part time employment:
Hourly wages are considerably lower for part-time workers. Women who have the same levels of education and experience and who have comparable family structures (i.e., married, divorced, number of dependents, etc.) earn, on average, 20% less than their full-time counterparts . . . Although some part-time workers receive health insurance benefits from their employers (17%), many more (59%) receive health insurance via a spouse working full time.
If you have trouble paying for those things, you obviously wouldn't be someone who would choose to work less.
Someone who makes $100k+ per year could easily afford to work less though.
I said they would be reduced proportionally.
This might be effective for some people. But beyond a certain point, offering people more money doesn't really increase their mental performance (contrasted with physical performance). Maybe a single study or two isn't very convincing, but regardless... working less time would create jobs. That is a fact. The only problem is getting people to accept the idea that no, we don't win any special prize if GDP is high, and there are people who would be willing to fill in for any job—they might just lack work experience (catch 22).
Also, if those existing programs were so effective, the entire management consulting industry described in an article linked above wouldn't exist.
Ultimately though, it is usually the political leadership of the nation that takes the blame for economic problems, so they do have an incentive to fix it.
I think you just try to find statistics on the internet that are obliquely connected to your point. The percentages don't show who would take a pay cut to stay home - beside, people can get part time work right now if they want it. Show me a study that asks "Would you prefer to work 30 hours and get paid for 32 or work 40 hours and get paid for 40, at your current rate of pay."
You state that it is a FACT that working less would create jobs. You have no evidence to support this as FACT, it is just a theory. You can't show me a company that has cut its fully time staff back to 30 hours a week to hire more people. If one person works harder,and smarter - there is no incentive for a company to throw the savings into hiring more people just to be nice.
You can quote statistics, link articles, and do the math - but you and I both know that no one is going to buy into this program.
At a lower wage rate, and likely without benefits. Those are important, as you say yourself that some people would be unwilling to accept even a 12% drop in pay (going from 40 to 35 hours).
The accelerated work week is about having the option to work less time at a higher wage rate.
I am sorry, there are no such studies because this idea has never been tried before. Germany's work share program is slightly similar, and since those who participate get unemployment benefits while still retaining all their benefits and being paid at the normal rate for the work they do get to keep I guess they do effectively have a "higher wage rate"... but it's paid for by the government and therefore an emergency measure, which might also discourage people from using it (the way that there is a stigma against using food stamps in the US). The closest thing to a survey/poll is on the99vote.com, which has a whole 8 votes. Most of the ideas on the site have mostly positive votes as well.
I admit there are theoretical situations where it wouldn't create jobs elsewhere in the economy, as a result in the specific patterns of spending, but for a single business it would create jobs the same way that if someone were to quit, the business would certainly hire someone else to do the same work.
Example of how it might lead to job loss elsewhere: someone is currently making $2000 per month. $700 on rent, $700 on "competitively priced goods", and $600 on "luxury goods" with high profit margins.
Suppose they were to work less, and as a result only earn $1500 per month. Let us say further than instead of cutting luxury items out of their budget, they instead cut out the competitively priced goods which lead to higher employment for a given amount spent. So, they're still spending $700 on rent, $600 on luxury goods and only $200 on competitively priced goods. Instead of the average economic effect of their spending going up as it would have if they had cut out luxury goods, it has instead gone down.
Um... the Congressional Budget Office rearranged their site (and removed a nice graphic) but if you look at the PDF report attached to this post.. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/21671
The CBO calculated "Estimated Output Multipliers of Major Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act". This is missing some data but they deleted/lost the document with the chart I wanted to reference, which showed the estimate for specific policies of the effect on GDP and on the "full-time equivalent employment years" that $1m of spending would produce in each category. The point is that the CBO is aware, and includes in its models, that certain types of spending have a higher "multiplier" which is slightly different for GDP vs employment, since jobs pay different amounts.
In other words, the Congressional Budget Office is fully convinced that statistically, money that goes to poor people has a greater effect on the economy than money that goes to rich people. It might not be a FACT that we can't rule out the chance of some statistical oddity that causes the accelerated work week to not create jobs, the same way that due to extreme thermodynamic improbability a snowflake might form in on the surface of the sun, but the most effective course of action is to assume that extremely improbable events will not occur.
What does that have to do with this idea? No companies are currently using this, although in Germany there ARE many companies that used the work-share program with support from the government.
Very true, which was the focus of a recent TED talk that had a lot of controversy. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/here-is-the-full-inequality-speech-and-slideshow-that-was-too-hot-for-ted/257323/
And how do you know that?
"At a lower wage rate, and likely without benefits. Those are important, as you say yourself that some people would be unwilling to accept even a 12% drop in pay (going from 40 to 35 hours)."
This supports my point. If someone wants to work less, and make less with crappier benefits - they can find a part time job. I don't think the lion's share of people are doing that . People don't want to work less to get paid less. Even your part timer makes less pay and benefits.
"money that goes to poor people has a greater effect on the economy than money that goes to rich people."
I don't disagree with this. $1000 to a group of poor may result in the purchase of 20 $50 items, while $1000 to a rich person may go to a portion of 1 television. That may be a bad example, but I don't dispute what you are saying.
Now, to make this program work you need to get people to agree to work less and get paid less, give away part of their work hours - AND change their consumer habits.
I work for a local municipal government. We have a work-share option where people can basically share the salary and benefits of a full time position. The only people that I know of that do it are women who are coming off of maternity leave and trying to balance work and home life. Work-sharing exists in the US - but once again, people don't want the pay cut.
"And how do you know that?"
I don't actually KNOW that...but I feel pretty good about the assumption.
In closing I will say this - while I personally don't think this program would work I certainly appreciate the fact that you are looking at this from another angle and the creativity required to put this together. Someone needs to be looking for alternatives to our current system.
Question Authority
the accelerated work theory is not logical.
Really, have you read all 26 posts on the topic (including the three that are on pastebin.com instead of the dedicated site)?
Which isn't even counting the threads I've made on these forums like this one.
The original comment said it was "not well thought out" or logical.
I've read 2 of your posts about this now and followed a link which outlined it on another of your posts.
I don't think it's a good idea. It's not logical.
You don't think it would reduce unemployment? Or something else?
I don't think it's a good idea. I can't really say I like any aspect of it.
We need a monetary policy and tax system that works for everyone and not just the banks and the 1%. And as always we need major campaign finance reform.
You DO think it would reduce unemployment, but for some other reason it isn't a good idea?
The idea itself makes no logical sense.
Businesses already expect people to maximize their time. If they don't have work to do, businesses fire people or make cuts to hours. This is where your entire theory is flawed.
Maximizing production and limiting expenses in workforce is a standard practice of capitalism already.
This guy explains capitalism pretty well here as well as inform people about job creation - http://www.upworthy.com/breaking-you-know-that-nick-hanauer-ted-talk-you-werent-supposed-to-see-here-it-
Exhibit 1: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059451/Facebook-work-important-large-salary-college-graduates.html
"More than half of students said that if they were offered a job at a company that banned social media use, they would either turn it down, or find a way to flout the policy."
Exhibit 2: http://ycombinator.com/munger.html (by the business partner of Warren Buffett)
The great defect of scale, of course, which makes the game interesting—so that the big people don't always win—is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy. And with the bureaucracy comes the territoriality—which is again grounded in human nature.
And the incentives are perverse. For example, if you worked for AT&T in my day, it was a great bureaucracy. Who in the hell was really thinking about the shareholder or anything else? And in a bureaucracy, you think the work is done when it goes out of your in-basket into somebody else's in-basket. But, of course, it isn't. It's not done until AT&T delivers what it's supposed to deliver. So you get big, fat, dumb, unmotivated bureaucracies.
They also tend to become somewhat corrupt. In other words, if I've got a department and you've got a department and we kind of share power running this thing, there's sort of an unwritten rule: "If you won't bother me, I won't bother you and we're both happy." So you get layers of management and associated costs that nobody needs. Then, while people are justifying all these layers, it takes forever to get anything done. They're too slow to make decisions and nimbler people run circles around them.
Exhibit 3: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/4883/?single_page=true
Mayo’s work sheds light on the dark side of the “humanist” tradition in management theory. There is something undeniably creepy about a clipboard-bearing man hovering around a group of factory women, flicking the lights on and off and dishing out candy bars. All of that humanity—as anyone in my old firm could have told you—was just a more subtle form of bureaucratic control. It was a way of harnessing the workers’ sense of identity and well-being to the goals of the organization, an effort to get each worker to participate in an ever more refined form of her own enslavement.
...and to confront the naked truth about what motivates their fellow human animals. These works are every bit as relevant to the dilemmas faced by managers in their quest to make the world a more productive place as any of the management literature.
Note emphasis on motivation. Organizations can invent various point systems or ways of measuring performance, but do you really think those are fundamentally more effective motivators than the prospect of having more free time AND getting a higher wage rate?
Read the TED talk, thank you. Commented on his site (comment awaiting moderation) and emailed him.
we need a shorter work week
Have already pointed out the problems with that: people would just ask for overtime. France tried it, and "more overtime" is exactly what they got.
what's an accelerated work week ?
A totally optional thing where you can choose to either work the exact same as you were before (or, if you were unemployed, to get a full-time job) or you can choose to work "part-time" at a HIGHER, instead of a lower, wage rate while still getting reasonable benefits.
hoiw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flextime
Like this, except instead of getting paid nothing for working more and getting paid the same amount for working less (the British are fine with that but that's why the US has a better national "brand"), there would be a slight change in income for both of those situations.
and what would that change in income be ?
As mentioned before, something less than your average wage rate. The (1.2x rate for 20 hours, then 0.8x rate) is only a suggestion. Maybe instead of being 1.5 times the lower rate, the initial rate could be twice as high. The amount from working normal full-time hours for the job would still be the same (so, if overtime pay is normal, then the "average rate" includes that) but there would be greater benefit from working few hours and eliminating inefficiency.
The financial markets are very complex. This complexity leads to a transfer of wealth from stupid people to smart people,
When this is someone's first line is there any real reason to keep reading?
Are those lines somehow incorrect?
If you want Wall Street to win, by all means please avoid using your brain.
Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs don't hire just any person off the street; they aim for Ivy League graduates.
[Deleted]
She is richer than 99.9(9?)% of the population of people who are eligible to vote.
The original comment asked if all rich people were smart, including Paris Hilton.
Would I still be allowed to work tons of overtime if I choose to?
A business would always want you to work more, which is why in some jobs working overtime is actually required.
But situations like this police officer getting $166k per year in overtime would probably be less common. Unless you are already extremely well-paid, you would see more purchasing power from your normal work week so working overtime would be less necessary to earn a living wage.
But what if I wanted more than average?
If by "more" you mean total income, then the business should let you work more (unless there isn't any work available, which is unlikely if the economy is at full employment).
Or you could just find a better-paying job.
The employer also limits the hours someone can work due to overtime - this is called operating on an effective budget. The 166k per year? Likely due to favoritism in the department. If it is not the norm look for the connections.
Overtime is also very popular in construction. In an international comparison of construction costs, US costs for skilled construction work ranged from $53/hour for "General labourer" to $75/hour for "Site foreman", compared to $2 and $6 for the same positions in Chinese construction work.
Unemployment in the construction industry is currently around 17%. This culture of overtime is very good for those who can find work, but not as good for those who can't.
You can not compare USA pay scale to the Chinese pay scale - two totally different worlds/economy's. Employers will only pay overtime as a last resort and part of that decision is that it is cheaper to have your people work overtime then it is to hire more workers and take on the additional overhead of employment as well. If they had construction worker temp agencies (?) you would see that practice change - you would also see workers getting a lower wage. Unions protect workers. Employers do not - not by choice.
I think most construction work is temporary, and done by [construction-specific] staffing agencies... and that this is both good and bad for workers. But when the client is willing to pay high wages, for this specific industry it doesn't seem likely things will change on its own. I'm sure you will agree that the construction industry is not a totally competitive market.
But high wages for construction workers is not a good reason to keep inequality high.
UNION staffing - Union Jobs.
This guy's grand proposal is a regressive pay scale, where you get paid less per hour as you work more hours. In one of his explanations, you get paid more for the first 20 hours than you get paid for the second 20 hours in a week. So presumably you also would get paid less for the NEXT 20 hours and the next 20 hours after that. So you're de-incentivized to work overtime, which is part of his intent.