4 ms·

The 4-day work week is long overdue. Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week thanks to productivity gains, but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up

by mcv 3y ago

The 4-day work week is long overdue. Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week thanks to productivity gains, but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking. Lots of people are overworked and underpaid. I've been working a 4-day week for well over a decade (also because I've got kids, but I did this well before I had kids), and I strongly recommend it for everybody.

badpun 3y ago
> but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking. I'd say there were mostly eaten by increased standards of living. Compare median global standard of living in Keyens times (say 100 years ago) and today. The difference is astounding, and we even work less for it than we did - just not "15 hours workweek" less.
walteweiss 3y ago
How would you do that if you don’t work for yourself?
- mcv 3y ago
  I tell every prospective employer that I work 4*8. Only once over the past 24 years has this been an insurmountable obstacle for an employer. Thought I suppose that this might be a lot harder in more conservative exploitative cultures. Working 4.5 days, with one free day per two weeks, is incredibly common in Netherland. Part time is not uncommon.
ernst_klim 3y ago
> Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week And I bet he was quite right, but there is an important nuance: it's true for the 1940s level of consumption. If you reduce your level of consumption to 1940s level, you could easily manage to have 15-hour week. > but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking You seem to gravely underestimate the huge gap in economic value between what people were consuming in Keynes' times and what they consume now. The productivity gains are embodied in goods in services like Uber, Amazon, Netflix, computers and stuff, computerized cars. The newly built 1940s-level goods and services would cost a fraction of price.
- pjc50 3y ago
  How's the fraction of income devoted to housing in that calculation? A lot of people would love to go back to 1940s house prices, but of course you simply can't do that.
  - ernst_klim 3y ago
    > A lot of people would love to go back to 1940s house prices In USA? Adjusted for inflation, you had pretty flat housing prices until mid 90s, where the housing bubble started. And even now and on peak of the housing bubble of 2008 the house will cost you 250% the cost of 1940s house (or 180% of the 1950s which is more fair comparison since it was after the war) which is not that bad.
    - mcv 3y ago
      Don't know about the US, but corrected for inflation, Dutch housing prices have risen steadily since the 1950s, and shot up a lot faster since the late 1990s: https://www.mejudice.nl/artikelen/detail/huizenprijzen-sinds-1870-de-hockeystick https://www.mejudice.nl/artikelen/detail/huizenprijzen-sinds...
- mcv 3y ago
  It's probably a combination. Of course our standard of living has gone up, but so has wealth inequality. And in a way, we're actually working more. Back in the 70s, a single income was enough to maintain a family with a house and kids and everything. These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs, which often depend on what people can afford to pay for the house they need, and with double income, we can afford to pay twice as much, so housing prices have gone through the roof. I suspect we shouldn't have gone from one parent working fulltime to two parents working fulltime, but to two parents working part time. I've got a feeling we may have accidentally ruined this for ourselves.
  - ernst_klim 3y ago
    > These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today? Internet says that median house size in US went from 500sq feet to 907 sq feet. So yes, the consumption standards had risen significantly. > These days, it's common for both parents to work Can't say for US, but in EU these days it's common for parents to travel. It's common for parents to go on a massage or SPA on the weekends. It's common for parents to do sport, buy a bicycle etc. And I'm talking about regular blue collar peps. My parents didn't do all that. They lived a much more humble life than most parents today. Also my mother did a shitload of manual work, she washed all the clothes manually, she did cleaning mostly manually, she fixed clothes with her own hands manually. How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing? So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home (because absent/more expensive goods and services) and they overall live a pretty humble life by today standards even adjusted for better services". If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent. But neither you, nor your spouse and kids will like that standards of living.
jfim 3y ago
Four day week as in four days of ten hours or as in 32-ish hours a week?
- mcv 3y ago
  I work about 32 hours a week. Slightly more when working from home. A bit less when in the office.
  - freilanzer 3y ago
    No, same time for office and remote.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
4-day work week with same salary means that 20% productivity increase is required just to compensate, which is quite big. At the moment we need growth fuelled by productivity gains at constant hours, or even increased hours, not a reduction of working hours, which goes in the opposite direction and, again feels like Europe is giving up. Keynes did not "predicted" that based on continued increased productivity, not because of any rights to it. Unfortunately productivity gains have largely stalled for years: growth is very weak while population keeps increasing.

by mcv 3y ago

badpun 3y ago

> but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking. I'd say there were mostly eaten by increased standards of living. Compare median global standard of living in Keyens times (say 100 years ago) and today. The difference is astounding, and we even work less for it than we did - just not "15 hours workweek" less.

walteweiss 3y ago

How would you do that if you don’t work for yourself?

mcv 3y ago
I tell every prospective employer that I work 4*8. Only once over the past 24 years has this been an insurmountable obstacle for an employer. Thought I suppose that this might be a lot harder in more conservative exploitative cultures. Working 4.5 days, with one free day per two weeks, is incredibly common in Netherland. Part time is not uncommon.

ernst_klim 3y ago

> Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week And I bet he was quite right, but there is an important nuance: it's true for the 1940s level of consumption. If you reduce your level of consumption to 1940s level, you could easily manage to have 15-hour week. > but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking You seem to gravely underestimate the huge gap in economic value between what people were consuming in Keynes' times and what they consume now. The productivity gains are embodied in goods in services like Uber, Amazon, Netflix, computers and stuff, computerized cars. The newly built 1940s-level goods and services would cost a fraction of price.

pjc50 3y ago
How's the fraction of income devoted to housing in that calculation? A lot of people would love to go back to 1940s house prices, but of course you simply can't do that.
- ernst_klim 3y ago
  > A lot of people would love to go back to 1940s house prices In USA? Adjusted for inflation, you had pretty flat housing prices until mid 90s, where the housing bubble started. And even now and on peak of the housing bubble of 2008 the house will cost you 250% the cost of 1940s house (or 180% of the 1950s which is more fair comparison since it was after the war) which is not that bad.
  - mcv 3y ago
    Don't know about the US, but corrected for inflation, Dutch housing prices have risen steadily since the 1950s, and shot up a lot faster since the late 1990s: https://www.mejudice.nl/artikelen/detail/huizenprijzen-sinds-1870-de-hockeystick https://www.mejudice.nl/artikelen/detail/huizenprijzen-sinds...
mcv 3y ago
It's probably a combination. Of course our standard of living has gone up, but so has wealth inequality. And in a way, we're actually working more. Back in the 70s, a single income was enough to maintain a family with a house and kids and everything. These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs, which often depend on what people can afford to pay for the house they need, and with double income, we can afford to pay twice as much, so housing prices have gone through the roof. I suspect we shouldn't have gone from one parent working fulltime to two parents working fulltime, but to two parents working part time. I've got a feeling we may have accidentally ruined this for ourselves.
- ernst_klim 3y ago
  > These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today? Internet says that median house size in US went from 500sq feet to 907 sq feet. So yes, the consumption standards had risen significantly. > These days, it's common for both parents to work Can't say for US, but in EU these days it's common for parents to travel. It's common for parents to go on a massage or SPA on the weekends. It's common for parents to do sport, buy a bicycle etc. And I'm talking about regular blue collar peps. My parents didn't do all that. They lived a much more humble life than most parents today. Also my mother did a shitload of manual work, she washed all the clothes manually, she did cleaning mostly manually, she fixed clothes with her own hands manually. How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing? So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home (because absent/more expensive goods and services) and they overall live a pretty humble life by today standards even adjusted for better services". If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent. But neither you, nor your spouse and kids will like that standards of living.

jfim 3y ago

Four day week as in four days of ten hours or as in 32-ish hours a week?

mcv 3y ago
I work about 32 hours a week. Slightly more when working from home. A bit less when in the office.
- freilanzer 3y ago
  No, same time for office and remote.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

4-day work week with same salary means that 20% productivity increase is required just to compensate, which is quite big. At the moment we need growth fuelled by productivity gains at constant hours, or even increased hours, not a reduction of working hours, which goes in the opposite direction and, again feels like Europe is giving up. Keynes did not "predicted" that based on continued increased productivity, not because of any rights to it. Unfortunately productivity gains have largely stalled for years: growth is very weak while population keeps increasing.