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Comment by tcard | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is misguided at all. I've heard right-wing people say work hours should be an employee-employer agreement that shouldn't concern the government. The author argues, quite civically in my opinion, that one can disagree with this particular example but that shouldn't interfere with the main point.

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It's misguided because it's an uncharitable strawman of the right-wing position. It implies that people on the right think that workers should "work excessively long hours." But people on the right would instead say that workers should be free to work more or fewer hours depending on their personal situation.

So only poor people should work excessively long ours, then.

Hey look, another strawman!

As this is in fact a consequence of the proposition if you also consider market pressure and power imbalance between employee and employer, I don't think it's a strawman. But of course there can be other, more positive consequences too.

Why High Earners Work Longer Hours

"Between 1979 and 2002, the frequency of long work hours increased by 14.4 percentage points among the top quintile of wage earners, but fell by 6.7 percentage points in the lowest quintile."

http://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/w11895.html

I think what OP is getting at is that you can drop the "if you are [side of the political spectrum]-leaning, then..." clause and lose nothing substantive from the argument. It's there exclusively to poke at the opposition while adding nothing of value.

It also doesn't help that he sets the tone of the article by patting himself on the back about how modern and sophisticated he is, with a bilingual family of academics that are citizens of the world.

It's only back-patting if you take it that way. Is he supposed to deny his own personal circumstances, or the notion that they'll have an effect on his outlook? Of course things like that shape the way you're likely to view the world, and surely it's best to be upfront about it. To my ears, it didn't come across as boastful at all.

> I've heard right-wing people say work hours should be an employee-employer agreement that shouldn't concern the government.

That sounds like more of a hardcore libertarian position, which doesn't really fit neatly into the left-right dichotomy in my opinion.

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