What the hell?

Normally slate does a decent job with it's stories and punctures the spin of the people trying to pull the wool over our eyes so we don't get upset at how much we're getting screwed.

Normally.

http://www.slate.com/id/2161309/fr/flyout (Hopefully this will take you to the story)

Quick summary: The poor have less money, but more leisure time than the poor of a generation ago, while the rich have more money, but less leisure.

The story is attempting to make it sound as if factory workers, store clerks and other low wage position holders have had some benefits to the Reagan/ Bush/ Clinton/ Bush economic plans.

What it didn't take into account is that most of the people at the top of the economic ladder have ful time positions. There aren't very many on-call CEO's.OR seasonal CFO's.

But once you get into the lower end of the spectrum, you run into part time positions, unemployment, and more stay-at-home parents. You also run into people with seasonal positions such as teachers, lifeguards, camp counselours, exterior painters, landscapers, carpenters, etc. These issues were not taken into account. Just who has more free time.

So this is the new spin: "Yeah, you're making less money, but you have more free time to spend with your family."

and my point: "Free time doesn't mean anything if I can't afford food asshole"

What the study needed to look at was the amount of free time that was had by people at the same point in their parallel career paths. for example comparing a master carpenters free time with a district account manager would be fair, but comparing Bill Gates to the guy that puts mayo on my burger isn't going to be close.