3 ms·

Hum, do we really need to see this as white and black. Work or no-work? Why not just introduce 30 hours/week or even 25 hours/week. And by that I mean employees

Hum, do we really need to see this as white and black. Work or no-work? Why not just introduce 30 hours/week or even 25 hours/week. And by that I mean employees keep the same weekly salary, companies use the gain in productivity by automation to give back some family time to employees. What we get in exchange, is one or 2 extra days of consumer spending. People tend to spend more during weekends anyways, so everybody is a winner. We keep the same salary, we have an extra day free in the week, companies get the 15% increase in consumption, and get slowly ready for full work automation.

zanny 10y ago
Businesses don't want to hire people at 20 hours a week if they are willing to work 40. And this isn't black and white - we have been in transition to mental labor automation for the past 50 years. We have just been replacing desirable industry jobs with service jobs that people hate with a passion, as wealth inequality grows and those dropped out of economic potential switch to basically waiting on those that have not yet fallen. UBI I would argue is much more desirable, if you were going to try to legally force 20 hour work weeks. UBI actually lets you absolve a lot of historical regulation that holds industries and growth back, that was all established as an attempt to protect the poor and uneducated from exploitation. When everyone has an easily accessible minimum standard of living, regulations in the workplace can be retired to enable more innovation since the workers can finally negotiate evenly with the employer rather than being exploited to survive. It also lets those workers with the ethic to do so to spend as much time as they want making as much money as they want, knowing they won't starve or go homeless when they stop. Either you keep cracking up the extreme regulatory machine currently asphyxiating the American corporate sphere (ever wonder why all the innovation is in software? It isn't just because its new, it is also because relative to almost everything else it is extremely unregulated) or you just use increased taxes on unfettered growth to provide for the masses so that the unleashed potential doesn't destroy lives.
- i_am_olo 10y ago
  So basicly, let's deploy UBI, and if people want to work 3-4 day weeks, it is up to them. I agree with this idea, and it clears up the work-no-work part of my argument. I just felt that UBI is such a big step, that just lowering the number of weekly hours had a precedent (from 7 to current 5 days a week) and was not associated with a more leftist sentiment, thus being easier to pass.
  - zanny 10y ago
    UBI is as big a step as you want to make it. Alaska has an effective UBI with its dividend from oil revenue, and nothing really stops you from starting it at a lower amount and ramping it up over time.
3chelon 10y ago
Your point about consumer spending is spot on. The five day week is only 100 years old, and it was none other than Henry Ford who was partly responsible, so that his own staff (who happened to be some of his best customers) could take time off to drive their cars.
wott 10y ago
> What we get in exchange, is one or 2 extra days of consumer spending. People tend to spend more during weekends anyways, so everybody is a winner. We keep the same salary, we have an extra day free in the week, companies get the 15% increase in consumption, and get slowly ready for full work automation. It dost not work this way :-) Most people spend all they have, and it just happens when they have time to spend it. Since you don't raise the salary, there is nothing more to spend. The same amount of spendings will be spread along 3 days instead of 2. Increase in spending can only concern people who do not spend everything. Even in this limited set, those people are not going to eat more, they are not going to buy more sofas or whatever, they are not going to buy a bigger house because they have an extra free day, they are not going to consume 15% more, not even close.

zanny 10y ago

Businesses don't want to hire people at 20 hours a week if they are willing to work 40. And this isn't black and white - we have been in transition to mental labor automation for the past 50 years. We have just been replacing desirable industry jobs with service jobs that people hate with a passion, as wealth inequality grows and those dropped out of economic potential switch to basically waiting on those that have not yet fallen. UBI I would argue is much more desirable, if you were going to try to legally force 20 hour work weeks. UBI actually lets you absolve a lot of historical regulation that holds industries and growth back, that was all established as an attempt to protect the poor and uneducated from exploitation. When everyone has an easily accessible minimum standard of living, regulations in the workplace can be retired to enable more innovation since the workers can finally negotiate evenly with the employer rather than being exploited to survive. It also lets those workers with the ethic to do so to spend as much time as they want making as much money as they want, knowing they won't starve or go homeless when they stop. Either you keep cracking up the extreme regulatory machine currently asphyxiating the American corporate sphere (ever wonder why all the innovation is in software? It isn't just because its new, it is also because relative to almost everything else it is extremely unregulated) or you just use increased taxes on unfettered growth to provide for the masses so that the unleashed potential doesn't destroy lives.

i_am_olo 10y ago
So basicly, let's deploy UBI, and if people want to work 3-4 day weeks, it is up to them. I agree with this idea, and it clears up the work-no-work part of my argument. I just felt that UBI is such a big step, that just lowering the number of weekly hours had a precedent (from 7 to current 5 days a week) and was not associated with a more leftist sentiment, thus being easier to pass.
- zanny 10y ago
  UBI is as big a step as you want to make it. Alaska has an effective UBI with its dividend from oil revenue, and nothing really stops you from starting it at a lower amount and ramping it up over time.

3chelon 10y ago

Your point about consumer spending is spot on. The five day week is only 100 years old, and it was none other than Henry Ford who was partly responsible, so that his own staff (who happened to be some of his best customers) could take time off to drive their cars.

wott 10y ago

> What we get in exchange, is one or 2 extra days of consumer spending. People tend to spend more during weekends anyways, so everybody is a winner. We keep the same salary, we have an extra day free in the week, companies get the 15% increase in consumption, and get slowly ready for full work automation. It dost not work this way :-) Most people spend all they have, and it just happens when they have time to spend it. Since you don't raise the salary, there is nothing more to spend. The same amount of spendings will be spread along 3 days instead of 2. Increase in spending can only concern people who do not spend everything. Even in this limited set, those people are not going to eat more, they are not going to buy more sofas or whatever, they are not going to buy a bigger house because they have an extra free day, they are not going to consume 15% more, not even close.