As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is “not radical” given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for corporations but scraps for employees and the working class.

“It’s time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay,” Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed as he cited a 480% increase in worker productivity since the 40-hour workweek was first established in 1940.

“It’s time,” he continued, “that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities—and less stress.”

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is one of the few times when the correct word is “effect”, not “affect”. “Affect (v.)” means to alter, or have an impact on. “Effect (v.)” means to produce, and to create an effect (n.) of.

    Change is to alter something, not to create/produce something.

    I wrote it as wanting to affect how Congress does things, to change what Congress does, to have an impact on Congress, which is what lobbying does.

    I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

    • Intralexical@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Change is to alter something, not to create/produce something.

      It’s a transitive verb. “Affect change” places “change” as the object. You’re not saying you’re altering the political situation or you’re altering Congress; You’re saying the change is already happening, and you’re merely slightly altering its direction. “Effect change” means “Make a change”, which is what you’re trying to say. “Affect change” means “change the change”, which is probably nonsensical in most cases you’d use it.

      Also, “effect change” specifically is a standard idiom. “Effect change” shows up in the English language around 8X more commonly than “affect change” between 1800 and 2000, because “affect change” is a semantically incorrect misspelling of “effect change”. [1] “Effect a change” is also either explicitly defined in or given as an example usage in many major dictionaries, while the same isn’t true of “affect change”, because, again “affect change” is a generally incorrect usage that doesn’t actually make sense or mean anything outside of potentially very specific scenarios that don’t apply here. [2]

      1: Google Books Ngram Viewer.

      2: Defined in Collins. Used in example sentences by: Cambridge, Webster, American Heritage

      I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

      I mean. Feel free to, I guess?

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        You’re saying the change is already happening

        If I was saying that the change already happened I would have said ‘affectED’ past tense, which I did not.

        I’m advocating for something to cause change, I’m not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

        I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

        • Intralexical@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          If I was saying that the change already happened I would have said ‘affectED’ past tense, which I did not.

          I’m advocating for something to cause change, I’m not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

          Oh my god. You’re using “change” as an object noun after a transitive verb which itself has no connotation or denotation of creation or causation. That implicitly means you’re saying that the thing it’s referring to must already exist.

          I’m advocating for something to cause change,

          Yes! That is what “effect” means.

          I’m not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

          Yes you are! “Affect (v.)” already means “change (v.)”. “Affect (v.) change (n.)” means “change (v.) the change (n.)”. That implies that the “change (n.)” must already exist.

          It’s like if I said “This salt will really affect my spaghetti”. That implicitly says/presumes that “my spaghetti” already exists, or else it wouldn’t be able to be affected.

          I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

          🙄

          FFS, I explained the grammatical reasoning, and linked to historical usage data, and linked to four different dictionaries to back that up.

          You know what, fuck it. I only mentioned “effect” vs. “affect” because I thought that was somewhat interesting and more obscure rather than annoying to point out, but if you’re going to just be obtuse about it I may as well have some fun and point out the various other grammatical and semantic mistakes too…

          “The Congress app” should not have a definite article because the app you linked to is, per the app ID, developer info, and first line of its description, unofficial and unaffiliated with the U.S. Congress. “Representative” should be plural, though that’s probably just a typo. The second “despite” should have a conjunction such as “and” immediately before it. “Want” should be conjugated as “wants” after “citizenry”, because the noun it applies to in this case is the singular “majority”. “Affect” should be “effect”, because “affect change” isn’t a thing and is actually nonsense. The clause right after that, beginning with “that’s what the corporations”, is a run-on sentence and should probably be fixed with a conjunction denoting causality or reasoning. The clause after “involved” is also a run-on sentence, and should probably either be its own declarative statement or be semicolon-delimited. The third “to” on the second sentence of your next reply needs a listing conjunction right before it. And in your latest reply, the clause after “cause change” is also a run-on sentence and should probably be delimited by either a full stop or a semicolon instead of a comma.

          Now I suppose I’ll wait for you to explain why you “stand by” these other plainly incorrect (and, frankly, inconsequential) errors as well.

          It’s funny how you started out pretending to champion political change, and to be against frivolously “commenting about it on an Internet forum”. … I should know better.

          • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            You know what, fuck it. I only mentioned “effect” vs. “affect” because I thought that was somewhat interesting and more obscure rather than annoying to point out, but if you’re going to just be obtuse about it

            I’m not being obtuse, I’m just disagreeing with your interpretation of the words. I feel you’re ignoring the temporal aspect of when each word should be used, per how I learned to use those words in school.

            Honestly not trying to upset you, you’re just telling me something different that I’ve learned my whole life about. And you spewing out ChatGPT levels of text doesn’t convince me, it just makes me feel like you’re trying to obscure and be intellectually dishonest about the conversation.

            I may as well have some fun and point out the various other grammatical and semantic mistakes too…

            Honestly, why?

            Are you so offended with someone who would disagree with you that you have to go to such extreme measures in a public forum in an attempt to shame them?

            Would you act this way with somebody at a party who disagreed with you on something?

            Does your life have so little meaning to it that this is the only way you could gain satisfaction out of it?

            It’s funny how you started out pretending to champion political change, and to be against frivolously “commenting about it on an Internet forum”. … I should know better.

            Honestly not meaning this as a snarky comeback, but, ‘touch grass’, sincerely. It’s just voice-to-text dictation of opinions, not written prose in the style of the great writers.

            And yes, I still stand by how I’m using the word affect, versus effect. Oh wait, sorry: I still stand by how I used the word affect, versus effect.

            • Intralexical@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Bruh. I offered a polite correction on an ultimately inconsequential grammatical error you made. You’re the one who doubled down on the error, and then continued doubling down while ignoring everything I said except for specific sentences which you clearly didn’t understand.

              “Spewing out ChatGPT levels of text”? WTF is that even supposed to mean? I just quickly explained the grammar at first. Then, when you didn’t get that, I elaborated on the reasoning for it, and linked to like, five different independent sources, instead of just making blanket assertions. You didn’t understand, so I explained­— Jeez, but that’s the real issue, isn’t it? You don’t seem to like that very much.

              This is so stupid. Does it even matter? Do you do anything other than moralize down at Internet strangers about petty and incorrect semantics while repeating yourself?