This economic perspective was not updated for the advent of office and technological jobs. If you're running a factory, reducing total work hours by 20% would r

This economic perspective was not updated for the advent of office and technological jobs. If you're running a factory, reducing total work hours by 20% would reduce output by about 20%. If you're writing software, doing desk job work, etc, this would not be the case. For example, how active is Hacker News during what would be expected to be work hours. How many people are taking time out of their work day to post on facebook, reddit, twitter, or here? People aren't doing 8 hours of technical work for 5 days a week. They have a certain amount they're expected to produce over the course of a week, and they spend their time accordingly. If they had 4 days to do it instead of 5, with the same length of a day, they would spend more of those 4 days doing productive work, and enjoy their 3 days off more, without feeling guilty during work hours about "slacking" when people really can't stay this technical, or creative, productive for 40 hours a week. This is also why tech CEOs and managers are so paranoid about people working from home. They know that the job doesn't really require 40 hours of work. They just want to make sure they're getting 40 hours of captive time.