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> Now figure a law that says that contractors shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week: what a disaster it would be for them and for society I agree that peop

> Now figure a law that says that contractors shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week: what a disaster it would be for them and for society I agree that people should definitely not be prohibited from working more than 40 hours. But disastrous? Let's assume such a law was passed. People would visit friends and family, spend time with kids, get better sleep, have time to cook, exercise, read more books. How is that disastrous? What is disastrous is people never having time to enjoy the things I just mentioned. So I would support simple policy disincentives to people working outside the range of let's say 30-50.

conanbatt 9y ago
It would be disastrous if it were enforceable. In the us the avg time is 47 hours: forcibly reducing 7 hours would mean that there would be 20% less labor. GDP would have such a huge contraction, and there would be not only less money, but less things to spend money on. It would be a huge economic hit in the aggregate. Of course, laws that would try to do such things always end up failing because people are pretty ingenious. People can make the choice every day to work less and enjoy more, but they dont not because they are forced to, but because they assess what they like the most. Every person has to do a trade off between work and leisure, and restrictions on work just messes with what people want.