7 ms·

Scotland Joins the Growing Global Movement Towards a Four-Day Workweek

116 points by intellaughs 5y ago

coldcode 5y ago
Nice idea, but I generally was happy if it was only 5 days a week; often I went months with 6 or 7 days. How would you do coding with insane deadlines, insufficient people, terrible management, and constant changes (with no change in dates) in only 4 days?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  You use labor law to disincentivize such behavior by a business. If the business can’t successfully manage and profit with 4 work days per week, creative destruction.
  - Sanguinaire 5y ago
    I wish more people were au fait with this concept. If a small business can only exist due to paying bottom-tier wages it is perfectly OK for that business to be squeezed out of existence in short order.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > How would you do coding with insane deadlines, insufficient people, terrible management, and constant changes (with no change in dates) in only 4 days? - Don't have insane deadlines - have enough people - have better management - forbid changes after the project plan has been approved. I have worked in one company that worked like that, or perhaps it was just one factory in that company. It works at least some of the time, or at least it did at that time (late 70s to early 80s) and place Mullard, Southampton.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  From the article it isn't clear if this is a legal mandate, but perhaps it is not referring to ultra-high-paying jobs that require insane crunch schedules? In the article, it mentions that Microsoft saw a 40% increase in productivity by allowing looser schedules, so perhaps programmers solve problems faster when they aren't staying awake 48 hours a stretch drinking Jolt* and eating pizza three meals a day? * dated myself
  - bob229 5y ago
    It’s just the SNP wasting even more money
- YZF 5y ago
  The problem you're describing is that the business is probably not viable. In some countries what you're describing would be illegal. In others there are sometimes exemptions for tech workers (we should work to cancel those!). It is also doubtful whether such an employer is actually getting any additional productivity out of this practice. On a personal level, the solution is to not work at this place. If that's an option. Some sort of organizing (like the U word) could help create leverage against abusive employers. Consider that the 5 day work week is a relatively recent thing. Not too long ago everyone worked 7 days a week. The world didn't stop spinning when most people shifted to actually working 5 days a week with normal hours. In Canada there is an endless supply of tech jobs that are 5 days a week and 8 hours per day. I am a hiring manager in a company where we care about our employees and pay them well and I can't find enough people. Partly because people prefer to work at places with a terrible work environment for various reasons (looks better on the resume, bragging rights, our work maybe isn't as exciting ...).
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    I'd call it a "marginal" business - the kind of thing that would get killed off by this proposal. It's up to the reader to decide if this is good or bad.
  - jkepler 5y ago
    Actually, before the modern 5-day week, many Christians, Jews, and Muslims worked 6 days but had off on their respective holy days--- Sunday, Saturday, or Friday. Not sure what historical period you're referring to with broad 7-day work weeks.
    - YZF 5y ago
      I forget where I read this exactly, but while some religious Jewish people would not work on Saturday I don't think this was the rule. Christians seem to have no religious issue that I know of today and plenty of secular Jewish people also still work on the weekend. Anyhow, I can't find the source right now. https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html "In 1890, when the government first tracked workers' hours, the average workweek for full-time manufacturing employees was 100 hours and 102 hours for building tradesmen." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time "Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was a financial incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery by having long hours. Records indicate that work schedules as long as twelve to sixteen hours per day, six to seven days per week were practiced in some industrial sites" (citation needed though) https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
- Sanguinaire 5y ago
  In short, more suitable staffing and scoping. Hopefully I don't need to explain the arbitrary nature of the 40-hour week. A lot of people like the idea of flexibility along with these reduced hours, but I'd actually prefer if we went to a uniform 3-day weekend with Friday off. This would have the benefit of aligning the definition of the weekend in the middle East with that in Europe and the US.
- zepto 5y ago
  Years ago I was doing consulting work for a startup, and was able to negotiate a 4 day week. I worked 2 days at a time with Wednesday off. My next job was as an FTE at another very early stage startup, where we were constantly working and in the office 6 days a week, with some all-nighters before demos etc. I was vastly more productive during the 4 day week period.
  - randycupertino 5y ago
    That sounds like a great schedule- you could use Wednesday to do chores and errands, "life stuff" and then actually relax and enjoy the weekends! One of the biggest perks of moving to wfh for me has been the ability to do random household chores on breaks from work during the week and now actually have weekends for relaxing instead of things like laundry and grocery shopping.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Exactly - generally I used Wednesday mornings to do life stuff, and then just unwound and relaxed in the afternoon. I was very energized for Thursday and Friday compared to my colleagues.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Do you run your own business? That's the only way I can understand someone choosing to work 6-7 days/week for months. I'm an employee at a FANG and have been there long enough where I effectively just work 4 day weeks for most of the year by taking Monday's off, and I am literally just as productive as I was when I worked 5 days.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    "I don't understand why someone would work 6 or 7 days. I'm rich, my company pays me crazy amounts of money, and I don't work more than 4 days." Guess everyone will have to work on adtech, surveillance and engagement-at-all-costs so they can all have 4-day-weeks and still make 5 times the national average.
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      Do you have any insights to OPs situation or are you just ranting?
- 6510 5y ago
  Some laws in NL allow averaging out over a longer period. Its not a real example but say for example you work 3 days on average over a period of 6 months by doing 6 for the first 3 months. Its surprisingly comforting to look forwards to.
Tarsul 5y ago
I'm all for more human-friendly ideas but why do we have to go so far with our next step as a general 4-day workweek or basic universal income. Instead, guarantee that every worker has the OPTION to work part-time and also that overtime must not be a permanent condition (with heavy fines for companies who don't care). After that, we can talk about a general 4-day workweek or similar. (I know, e.g. the Netherlands are far more advanced regarding part-time work than other countries, maybe they can go further.) Go step by step.
- mikhailt 5y ago
  It's a two way street, companies have the right to have fixed schedules from their workers to ensure planning and everything else goes smoothly. It is easier and sustainable to work around four-day work schedules than to give workers the flexibility of changing their hours. Also of note, laws and regulations around the world differ in what full time means because full time is where the benefits kick in by laws; in other words; if the worker change to part-time, then the entire benefits package can be drastically impacted. For an example, in many companies in US, if you work less than 40 hours, then companies are not obligated to give you any benefits such as paid time off, health insurance, etc, they can mark you as a contractor and not an employee. Changing the 40 hours down to 30 hours as full time would not allow the companies to do that. So, I rather have four-day weekend with full benefits first and then part-time would be considered anything less than 30 hours. Your idea means that it is more likely that the employees get less benefits while still requiring 40 hours work-load as baseline.
- Sanguinaire 5y ago
  Options are problematic because you end up with a competitive/tragedy-of-the-commons situation, where no-one really ends up having the option at all if they want an appealing job or competitive salary. Using national-level regulation to define a "new normal" isn't what I would choose by preference, but I just don't see anything else working without side-effects undoing all of the potential advantages to employees.
238475235243 5y ago
It's not like Scotland was exactly the home of efficiency and productivity to begin with... But good for them! I look forward to visiting and taking a dram on the occasional day when they're open.
- 238475235243 5y ago
  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/most-people-rejected-his-message https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/most-people-rejected-his-mess...
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
Might be nice to just have extra PTO, which is a bit more flexible than a 4 day workweek. You could go from the current 5ish weeks of vacation in Europe to around 15 weeks per year. I wouldn't mind working 5 days a week during fall/winter/spring if it meant taking all summer off. I'm sure society would find a way to adjust to it. Less work would get done in the summer and more in the winter.
- purple_ferret 5y ago
  the point of the 4 day week is that the 5 day week is too long to be efficient/time productive
  - jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
    I'd say the 47-50 week work-year is too long to be efficient/time productive.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    Yeah, but also perhaps the 2-day weekend is too short. It seems way more of a stretch to have a non-regular work "week" of 8 days. But I'm more skeptical that 5 days is too long vs 2 days is too short. There is a gigantic difference between 2 day weekends and 3 day weekends. Literally, it's 50% longer. From a work-week perspective, 4 days vs 5 days is only 20% shorter. And the difference is not that noticeable. Another possible solution to achieve similar goals is to give workers ~47 Mondays and Fridays to use as vacation at their disposal. Some people might want to have 4-day weekends for half the year. Some people might want 3-day weekends the whole year. This is not really a logistics nightmare to plan around for non-service jobs.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Depends on the job. Desk workers, sure, you could get more done in four days than you used to in five. It's not like that for everyone else though. If your job does not involve creativity chances are you do more work in five days than could be physically done in four, unless you go from working eight hour days to ten hour days.
bob229 5y ago
This will never happen. The chronically incompetent SNP are too busy spending hundreds of millions on two ships and and ensuring men can run women’s rape crisis centres to achieve anything that would require even a modicum of skilful administration
jacksonkmarley 5y ago
Well it will be interesting to see what is actually implemented. The reduced hours trial was an SNP election promise earlier in the year, and the recent news is of a report getting published rather than any official statement from the Scottish government, if I understand correctly.
jl6 5y ago
How does this work in practice? Say you’re a small business who wants a receptionist on the front desk 9-5, Mon-Fri. The working week changes to Mon-Thu, so you pay 4/5 of the receptionist’s salary, and the government scheme pays 1/5. But you still need someone on the front desk on Friday, because you can’t control which days your customers want to do business with you. But it’s tough to hire 1/5 of a person, and if you can it will come with some job-sharing inefficiencies attached to it. So you just have to swallow these inefficiencies? Conversely, large employers can easily cope with these arrangements because of their scale and because they already have all the HR expertise and machinery required to juggle varied working patterns across larger teams. So small business loses?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  You were closed on Sunday and Monday before the change, now you just add Friday as a closed day too.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    That doesn't really mesh with the "no productivity hit" arguments though. For all that knowledge workers resent the idea that being there at certain times has much impact on their output, in many vocations that's the plain and simple truth
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - arsenace 5y ago
      > That doesn't really mesh with the "no productivity hit" arguments though Sure it does. Any customers who call on Friday will quickly learn you are closed, in future they'll call mon-thurs instead. The no-productivity-hit claim is based on the fact that both businesses and customers are adaptable and quickly change their behavior to match new norms.
drno123 5y ago
I wonder how long this productivity increase lasts. From what little I know on psychology, people’s productivity and motivation increase after they get some benefit - a raise, a promotion or a bonus. Then after 6-12 months, their productivity goes back down. Could the same effect be seen with cutting down the work week from 5 to 4 days - and that all these studies were shorter than 1-2 years to fully evaluate the productivity gains? To better explain my point of view, I am a co-owner of 10-people IT company, where we work 40 hour weeks with no overtime.
- thegrim33 5y ago
  Well then it'll just become the "growing global movement" for three day workweeks after that, or 6-hour work days, etc. of course. There's no way if they just get this one thing then they'll be happy and done. See: gun control advocates
  - kaishiro 5y ago
    Who is "they", and why are you not a part of that group?
thegrim33 5y ago
To summarize, an article which re-summarizes an article from the BBC, where both articles bestow praise on the idea and don't bother giving a single shred of a voice to anyone that thinks it's a bad idea, or from anyone with an opposing viewpoint. Journalism at it's finest, just pure, biased, opinion pieces. Articles like these aren't meant to inform, they're just pure propaganda pieces used to seed and normalize the idea in the populace. Any opposing viewpoints? No voice.
- finfinfin 5y ago
  To be fair not all types of articles have an obligation to present all opinions on the matter. If they are reporting news then in most cases they are reporting what happened and not analyzing the benefits and downsides of what happened.
- blahblahblogger 5y ago
  Journalism is a punch-line now. In my mind it used to be a respectable profession, but now it's just partisans against partisans. Even for issues that aren't on their face overly political.
- WaltPurvis 5y ago
  >Journalism at it's finest, just pure, biased, opinion pieces. You apparently misunderstood what you were reading. The author is not a journalist and the article does not purport to be journalism. The author is an executive recruiter who writes a personal opinion blog hosted by Forbes.
Proven 5y ago
Economic nonsense and fantasy news are always welcome on HN!

116 points by intellaughs 5y ago

Nice idea, but I generally was happy if it was only 5 days a week; often I went months with 6 or 7 days. How would you do coding with insane deadlines, insufficient people, terrible management, and constant changes (with no change in dates) in only 4 days?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
You use labor law to disincentivize such behavior by a business. If the business can’t successfully manage and profit with 4 work days per week, creative destruction.
- Sanguinaire 5y ago
  I wish more people were au fait with this concept. If a small business can only exist due to paying bottom-tier wages it is perfectly OK for that business to be squeezed out of existence in short order.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
> How would you do coding with insane deadlines, insufficient people, terrible management, and constant changes (with no change in dates) in only 4 days? - Don't have insane deadlines - have enough people - have better management - forbid changes after the project plan has been approved. I have worked in one company that worked like that, or perhaps it was just one factory in that company. It works at least some of the time, or at least it did at that time (late 70s to early 80s) and place Mullard, Southampton.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
From the article it isn't clear if this is a legal mandate, but perhaps it is not referring to ultra-high-paying jobs that require insane crunch schedules? In the article, it mentions that Microsoft saw a 40% increase in productivity by allowing looser schedules, so perhaps programmers solve problems faster when they aren't staying awake 48 hours a stretch drinking Jolt* and eating pizza three meals a day? * dated myself
- bob229 5y ago
  It’s just the SNP wasting even more money
YZF 5y ago
The problem you're describing is that the business is probably not viable. In some countries what you're describing would be illegal. In others there are sometimes exemptions for tech workers (we should work to cancel those!). It is also doubtful whether such an employer is actually getting any additional productivity out of this practice. On a personal level, the solution is to not work at this place. If that's an option. Some sort of organizing (like the U word) could help create leverage against abusive employers. Consider that the 5 day work week is a relatively recent thing. Not too long ago everyone worked 7 days a week. The world didn't stop spinning when most people shifted to actually working 5 days a week with normal hours. In Canada there is an endless supply of tech jobs that are 5 days a week and 8 hours per day. I am a hiring manager in a company where we care about our employees and pay them well and I can't find enough people. Partly because people prefer to work at places with a terrible work environment for various reasons (looks better on the resume, bragging rights, our work maybe isn't as exciting ...).
- HPsquared 5y ago
  I'd call it a "marginal" business - the kind of thing that would get killed off by this proposal. It's up to the reader to decide if this is good or bad.
- jkepler 5y ago
  Actually, before the modern 5-day week, many Christians, Jews, and Muslims worked 6 days but had off on their respective holy days--- Sunday, Saturday, or Friday. Not sure what historical period you're referring to with broad 7-day work weeks.
  - YZF 5y ago
    I forget where I read this exactly, but while some religious Jewish people would not work on Saturday I don't think this was the rule. Christians seem to have no religious issue that I know of today and plenty of secular Jewish people also still work on the weekend. Anyhow, I can't find the source right now. https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html "In 1890, when the government first tracked workers' hours, the average workweek for full-time manufacturing employees was 100 hours and 102 hours for building tradesmen." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time "Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was a financial incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery by having long hours. Records indicate that work schedules as long as twelve to sixteen hours per day, six to seven days per week were practiced in some industrial sites" (citation needed though) https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
Sanguinaire 5y ago
In short, more suitable staffing and scoping. Hopefully I don't need to explain the arbitrary nature of the 40-hour week. A lot of people like the idea of flexibility along with these reduced hours, but I'd actually prefer if we went to a uniform 3-day weekend with Friday off. This would have the benefit of aligning the definition of the weekend in the middle East with that in Europe and the US.
zepto 5y ago
Years ago I was doing consulting work for a startup, and was able to negotiate a 4 day week. I worked 2 days at a time with Wednesday off. My next job was as an FTE at another very early stage startup, where we were constantly working and in the office 6 days a week, with some all-nighters before demos etc. I was vastly more productive during the 4 day week period.
- randycupertino 5y ago
  That sounds like a great schedule- you could use Wednesday to do chores and errands, "life stuff" and then actually relax and enjoy the weekends! One of the biggest perks of moving to wfh for me has been the ability to do random household chores on breaks from work during the week and now actually have weekends for relaxing instead of things like laundry and grocery shopping.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Exactly - generally I used Wednesday mornings to do life stuff, and then just unwound and relaxed in the afternoon. I was very energized for Thursday and Friday compared to my colleagues.
oh_sigh 5y ago
Do you run your own business? That's the only way I can understand someone choosing to work 6-7 days/week for months. I'm an employee at a FANG and have been there long enough where I effectively just work 4 day weeks for most of the year by taking Monday's off, and I am literally just as productive as I was when I worked 5 days.
- luckylion 5y ago
  "I don't understand why someone would work 6 or 7 days. I'm rich, my company pays me crazy amounts of money, and I don't work more than 4 days." Guess everyone will have to work on adtech, surveillance and engagement-at-all-costs so they can all have 4-day-weeks and still make 5 times the national average.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    Do you have any insights to OPs situation or are you just ranting?
6510 5y ago
Some laws in NL allow averaging out over a longer period. Its not a real example but say for example you work 3 days on average over a period of 6 months by doing 6 for the first 3 months. Its surprisingly comforting to look forwards to.

Tarsul 5y ago

I'm all for more human-friendly ideas but why do we have to go so far with our next step as a general 4-day workweek or basic universal income. Instead, guarantee that every worker has the OPTION to work part-time and also that overtime must not be a permanent condition (with heavy fines for companies who don't care). After that, we can talk about a general 4-day workweek or similar. (I know, e.g. the Netherlands are far more advanced regarding part-time work than other countries, maybe they can go further.) Go step by step.

mikhailt 5y ago
It's a two way street, companies have the right to have fixed schedules from their workers to ensure planning and everything else goes smoothly. It is easier and sustainable to work around four-day work schedules than to give workers the flexibility of changing their hours. Also of note, laws and regulations around the world differ in what full time means because full time is where the benefits kick in by laws; in other words; if the worker change to part-time, then the entire benefits package can be drastically impacted. For an example, in many companies in US, if you work less than 40 hours, then companies are not obligated to give you any benefits such as paid time off, health insurance, etc, they can mark you as a contractor and not an employee. Changing the 40 hours down to 30 hours as full time would not allow the companies to do that. So, I rather have four-day weekend with full benefits first and then part-time would be considered anything less than 30 hours. Your idea means that it is more likely that the employees get less benefits while still requiring 40 hours work-load as baseline.
Sanguinaire 5y ago
Options are problematic because you end up with a competitive/tragedy-of-the-commons situation, where no-one really ends up having the option at all if they want an appealing job or competitive salary. Using national-level regulation to define a "new normal" isn't what I would choose by preference, but I just don't see anything else working without side-effects undoing all of the potential advantages to employees.

238475235243 5y ago

It's not like Scotland was exactly the home of efficiency and productivity to begin with... But good for them! I look forward to visiting and taking a dram on the occasional day when they're open.

238475235243 5y ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/most-people-rejected-his-message https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/most-people-rejected-his-mess...

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

Might be nice to just have extra PTO, which is a bit more flexible than a 4 day workweek. You could go from the current 5ish weeks of vacation in Europe to around 15 weeks per year. I wouldn't mind working 5 days a week during fall/winter/spring if it meant taking all summer off. I'm sure society would find a way to adjust to it. Less work would get done in the summer and more in the winter.

purple_ferret 5y ago
the point of the 4 day week is that the 5 day week is too long to be efficient/time productive
- jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
  I'd say the 47-50 week work-year is too long to be efficient/time productive.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Yeah, but also perhaps the 2-day weekend is too short. It seems way more of a stretch to have a non-regular work "week" of 8 days. But I'm more skeptical that 5 days is too long vs 2 days is too short. There is a gigantic difference between 2 day weekends and 3 day weekends. Literally, it's 50% longer. From a work-week perspective, 4 days vs 5 days is only 20% shorter. And the difference is not that noticeable. Another possible solution to achieve similar goals is to give workers ~47 Mondays and Fridays to use as vacation at their disposal. Some people might want to have 4-day weekends for half the year. Some people might want 3-day weekends the whole year. This is not really a logistics nightmare to plan around for non-service jobs.
- Causality1 5y ago
  Depends on the job. Desk workers, sure, you could get more done in four days than you used to in five. It's not like that for everyone else though. If your job does not involve creativity chances are you do more work in five days than could be physically done in four, unless you go from working eight hour days to ten hour days.

bob229 5y ago

This will never happen. The chronically incompetent SNP are too busy spending hundreds of millions on two ships and and ensuring men can run women’s rape crisis centres to achieve anything that would require even a modicum of skilful administration

jacksonkmarley 5y ago

Well it will be interesting to see what is actually implemented. The reduced hours trial was an SNP election promise earlier in the year, and the recent news is of a report getting published rather than any official statement from the Scottish government, if I understand correctly.

jl6 5y ago

How does this work in practice? Say you’re a small business who wants a receptionist on the front desk 9-5, Mon-Fri. The working week changes to Mon-Thu, so you pay 4/5 of the receptionist’s salary, and the government scheme pays 1/5. But you still need someone on the front desk on Friday, because you can’t control which days your customers want to do business with you. But it’s tough to hire 1/5 of a person, and if you can it will come with some job-sharing inefficiencies attached to it. So you just have to swallow these inefficiencies? Conversely, large employers can easily cope with these arrangements because of their scale and because they already have all the HR expertise and machinery required to juggle varied working patterns across larger teams. So small business loses?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
You were closed on Sunday and Monday before the change, now you just add Friday as a closed day too.
- notahacker 5y ago
  That doesn't really mesh with the "no productivity hit" arguments though. For all that knowledge workers resent the idea that being there at certain times has much impact on their output, in many vocations that's the plain and simple truth
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - arsenace 5y ago
    > That doesn't really mesh with the "no productivity hit" arguments though Sure it does. Any customers who call on Friday will quickly learn you are closed, in future they'll call mon-thurs instead. The no-productivity-hit claim is based on the fact that both businesses and customers are adaptable and quickly change their behavior to match new norms.

drno123 5y ago

I wonder how long this productivity increase lasts. From what little I know on psychology, people’s productivity and motivation increase after they get some benefit - a raise, a promotion or a bonus. Then after 6-12 months, their productivity goes back down. Could the same effect be seen with cutting down the work week from 5 to 4 days - and that all these studies were shorter than 1-2 years to fully evaluate the productivity gains? To better explain my point of view, I am a co-owner of 10-people IT company, where we work 40 hour weeks with no overtime.

thegrim33 5y ago
Well then it'll just become the "growing global movement" for three day workweeks after that, or 6-hour work days, etc. of course. There's no way if they just get this one thing then they'll be happy and done. See: gun control advocates
- kaishiro 5y ago
  Who is "they", and why are you not a part of that group?

thegrim33 5y ago

To summarize, an article which re-summarizes an article from the BBC, where both articles bestow praise on the idea and don't bother giving a single shred of a voice to anyone that thinks it's a bad idea, or from anyone with an opposing viewpoint. Journalism at it's finest, just pure, biased, opinion pieces. Articles like these aren't meant to inform, they're just pure propaganda pieces used to seed and normalize the idea in the populace. Any opposing viewpoints? No voice.

finfinfin 5y ago
To be fair not all types of articles have an obligation to present all opinions on the matter. If they are reporting news then in most cases they are reporting what happened and not analyzing the benefits and downsides of what happened.
blahblahblogger 5y ago
Journalism is a punch-line now. In my mind it used to be a respectable profession, but now it's just partisans against partisans. Even for issues that aren't on their face overly political.
WaltPurvis 5y ago
>Journalism at it's finest, just pure, biased, opinion pieces. You apparently misunderstood what you were reading. The author is not a journalist and the article does not purport to be journalism. The author is an executive recruiter who writes a personal opinion blog hosted by Forbes.

Proven 5y ago

Economic nonsense and fantasy news are always welcome on HN!