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Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

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Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#481

Post by namdnay »

ineedasername wrote: post #301
namdnay wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that if the additional costs are applied to everyone, prices can increase without one restaurant in particular being penalised Demand is probably slightly elastic, but not that much (there are plenty of restaurants in France, despite very high cost of employment)

If we're just talking about restaurants in France, at least part of the higher employment costs are cancelled out-- relative to the US-- by not having to tip 20%, so the menu prices can be higher without actually passing all of that increase on to the customer.[1] As for demand, it is always elastic. A lot of people eat fast food, and a lot of those people are going to be in a position where they're just barely fitti…

Careful, that table does not use a unified definition of poverty… so someone making 80USD a day with no health insurance is not considered “poor” in the US

And the French definition of poverty is equally useless, it’s just a percentage of the median income

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#482

Post by andrewmcwatters »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #425
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This meme is just foolish and overly repeated. If we just printed money forever we’d be like Germany or Venezuela. Do you really think that at large scales the need to watch spending just dissolves? Why do you think nations have budgets? Do you think it’s all a fun game? If what you’re suggesting doesn’t work, people don’t just go back to work longer hours. Some people die, some people lose their homes. Incredible. B…

I think it’s reasonable to iterate and experiment with policy without devolving to extreme positions such as your comment. We’ve forgiven $3 billion in student loan debt in the US, for various legitimate reasons, without consequence for example. Yes, the US has more power to do this because it’s a reserve currency, and no you can’t do it forever, but there is room to experiment when you’re a nation state. https://www…

There really isn't a consequence here, it's just taxpayers paying off other people's student loans.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#483

Post by mdavis6890 »

ehnto wrote: post #326
kqr wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think what passes for appropriately staffed in the West is actually understaffed. What's called optimal staffing in the West is just at capacity, which is a nice way of saying "with no spare capacity." Of course, with Japan being the land of just-in-time, one could argue that spare capacity is bad -- but that's an oversimplification. Necessary spare capacity is good. What's bad is not being able to addres…

From my experience visiting, there were lots of jobs that were "nice to have". Like the man making sure people don't fall in the hole, or the person standing by the carpark exit making sure the way is clear. You could probably do without them, but it's a nice thing to have. There's lots of examples of that, people doing things that you would see brutally optimized out of western city and those cities I feel are worse…

"versus pocketing the profit and calling it efficiency."

You mean vs allowing those people to spend their time on something that might instead be more productive for society?

If that person is going to spend an hour doing something, is that truly the greatest contribution they can make? Maybe it is! Then again, maybe not.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#484

Post by mdavis6890 »

franciscop wrote: post #235
onion2k wrote: post #213

I think a lot of the replies in the thread so far have focused on tech (understandably, this is HN after all) but that's missing something obvious - the 4 day week would apply to everyone. In tech it's very likely someone going from 5 days to 4 days could still achieve the same amount of actual work. As other commenters have said, many tech workers don't do productive work all the time they're present. Retail workers…

I fully agree with your comment overall, but as someone who lives in Japan I'd like to point out that specifically "people who fill in the holes in roads" is a running joke in Japan since small street constructions always seem way over-staffed. It's amazing because they do finish a lot faster than in western countries, but you can definitely remove 20% of the people in street-level construction and would see little d…

I don't know if Japanese construction projects are overstaffed or not, but if they are, do you think that would change? My guess is that they would continue the same staffing arrangement and get less construction work done.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#485

Post by ineedasername »

SilverRed wrote: post #268
ineedasername wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our country is wealthy enough That's really going to depend on the business. Plenty of businesses-- specifically ones with a lot of customer-facing staff-- would not be able to sustain labor cost increases up to 20%. To take an easy example where I already know the #'s in the US, labor costs at a fast-food restaurant are around 25% of costs. Net profit margins range from 5% up to around 20%, but that top end is for M…

It doesn't matter as long as all competitors have to do the same. The price of a burger could go up and it wouldn't matter as long as every other burger goes up the same amount.

Don't focus on burgers. That is a specific example. This dynamic would play out with countless other items, raising the cost of living and partially if not fully cancelling out the increased wages of the people we're trying to help.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#486

Post by nkssy »

ggm wrote: post #245
nkssy wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you're envious of the typical US 2 weeks vacation allowance.

20 years in with two rounds of long service leave that would be "no"

I sense there are colorful words before that word "No".

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#487

Post by nsonha »

rtkwe wrote: post #397
nsonha wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can they already do this with all the data they have in github? Not that I would endorse it, but that sounds like better data for tracking. Instead of enforcing time you enforce activities.

No this is massively more invasive than checking your commit history. Github doesn't know moment to moment what you're doing while these invasive tracking programs do.

my point is that they can already do this with commit history (and more), while this is an inferior way of tracking, regardless of privacy concerns.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#488

Post by rtkwe »

nsonha wrote: post #487
rtkwe wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is massively more invasive than checking your commit history. Github doesn't know moment to moment what you're doing while these invasive tracking programs do.

my point is that they can already do this with commit history (and more), while this is an inferior way of tracking, regardless of privacy concerns.

Commit history only tells them when you do commits... these tools tell you what people are doing between commits. There's no way a single tool's history gives more information than logging every keystroke and monitoring the screen... At best it's a less noisy stream but doesn't contain nearly as much information.
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