Greece introduces the six day work week • Hacker News Board

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#31

Post by jackcosgrove » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:16 PM UTC

rafamvc wrote: post #13

If Robots/Ai allow us to extract more value per hour worked, it will unlock more work that wasn't worth doing before. Paradoxically, efficiency generates more available work, not less. The amount of work to be done is not finite.

> The amount of work to be done is not finite.

That's only true because expectations rise. It's the old economics problem definition of finite supply and infinite demand, which may be true for a lot of people but not all.

It is easier to provide for "basic", however that is defined, needs such as food and clothing than ever before, and there are a lot of NEETs who live minimal lives without working because of this.

There are two sectors which have an inelasticity problem, healthcare and housing. Healthcare demand is inelastic, and housing supply is inelastic. (Housing demand is inelastic to a point where everyone is housed, and healthcare supply is inelastic because of the lag of training newer professionals, but these have less of an effect than the converse.) These are two of the sectors seeing the most price increases even as consumer staples fall in price. Housing is already correcting itself through reduced birthrates. Healthcare is the tougher problem to solve.

Theoretically the amount of work to be done is infinite, but practically people can trade work for free time, and accept the lower earnings, and still survive. Many people already do this to varying degrees.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#32

Post by chmod775 » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:16 PM UTC

Zarathustra30 wrote: post #12

Isn't Greece's unemployment rate the highest in the E.U.? Yes, they may be "low-quality" workers applying for jobs, but if a company can't find "high-quality," they must make do. How did we lose the art of training new hires?

> but if a company can't find "high-quality," they must make do.

At some point it isn't economical to "make do", because paying for in-training employees eats into margins. Especially if "training" means you have to teach to read and write properly and teach how to do more arithmetic than counting on your fingers. No Greek business is going to squirm at investing a few months of training, but the reality is that many people are lacking years.

Greece has been ranking near last in the EU on some important education metrics (specifically those that affect composition of their workforce, like early leavers and those who never went to school at all) until they recently got their stuff together and did a complete 180, but for now they're still stuck with a workforce whose education isn't a strong match for the kind of work that is available now.

There's very little work for people with tertiary education in Greece, and at the same time there's a large number of people who simply hadn't had any formal education at all or dropped out early. The middle ground is extremely under served.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#33

Post by pnut » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

EncomLab wrote: post #23

AGI and General Purpose robots are both so far off in the future they should be considered science fiction at this point. The "Woz Standard" - a robot is dropped in front of a random house and proceeds without any assistance to brew a cup of coffee - is hard to imagine being met before 2040, if not even later.

2040 is basically tomorrow, as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#34

Post by generic92034 » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

kjksf wrote: post #20

I'm confused because economically it doesn't add up. Shortages of labor should lead to higher wages. Supply and demand. So it would make sense to relax laws prohibiting working more than 40hrs in order to unleash additional economic output i.e. increase the amount of money made. The article claims that for some reason that defies logic, it will just make employers demand more work for same amount of money. I see two…

> A country-wide collusion between employers to fix wages. That doesn't seem possible.

Why? I would rather guess that this is very common. Obviously, they cannot fix wages directly, but they might outsource the job of estimating wages to some agencies providing the market wages for relevant positions. If every employer asks the same agencies, they all arrive at the same wages, with minor variations.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#35

Post by nerdjon » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

SeanAnderson wrote: post #11

"While the 40-hour work week is still officially in place, employers are permitted to require staff to work up to two unpaid hours per day for a limited period in return for more free time." This is kind of a wild quote from the article. WTF? two hours unpaid work per day? "A supplement of 40% of the daily wage will be paid for the sixth day of labor." It's unclear to me if this means they're receiving 100% + 40% for…

I came back here wondering the same thing.

The first paragraph ends with “in return for more free time” which makes zero sense if they are working 2 more hours for each day. I was expecting something later like it’s banked and you work a 4 day week or something. But nothing on that.

And then yeah one place it says unpaid and another place (to me) said 140% pay rate for that time.

Screams AI written or bad translation.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#36

Post by TomatoCo » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

klysm wrote: post #9

krasin wrote: post #7

Two things happen at the same time: 1. people say that robots are taking all the jobs 2. countries raise retirement age & adopt 6 day work week, because there's too much work to be done I am not entirely sure, but maybe robots are not that bad, assuming appropriate taxation to fund pensions & 5-day work weeks?

No amount of automation has ever seemed to result in a net reduction in work to do thus far

Sounds like a labor version of Jevon's Paradox, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox where increases in efficiency cause a resource to be consumed more, not less.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#37

Post by okasaki » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:18 PM UTC

krasin wrote: post #7

Two things happen at the same time: 1. people say that robots are taking all the jobs 2. countries raise retirement age & adopt 6 day work week, because there's too much work to be done I am not entirely sure, but maybe robots are not that bad, assuming appropriate taxation to fund pensions & 5-day work weeks?

Much of the improvement in working conditions, general welfare and home ownership came from western elites' fear of communism.

As that fear recedes, elites feel more comfortable squeezing us.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#38

Post by emporas » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:18 PM UTC

krasin wrote: post #7

Two things happen at the same time: 1. people say that robots are taking all the jobs 2. countries raise retirement age & adopt 6 day work week, because there's too much work to be done I am not entirely sure, but maybe robots are not that bad, assuming appropriate taxation to fund pensions & 5-day work weeks?

People not working at all, or working significantly less, is not acceptable by any political system of the western countries. The proof here, is the exponential rate in which debt goes up. That debt is directly funding the anti-automation each political system imposes. In other words, automation has to be stopped, and it's gonna take as much money as it needs.

This anti-automation process, created the biggest bubbles in history, equity bubble, real estate bubble, government bond bubble, pharma bubble, cryptocurrency bubble, currency bubble in short TEB(The Everything Bubble).

That's gonna end of course, and soon. It has just started yesterday actually with some triple A derivatives blowing up again like in 2007. By the end of the summer, the first bubbles will start popping off. It's gonna be fun.

[EDIT] There are more bubbles, I just put some in there. [EDIT] The triple A blowing up is not correct.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#39

Post by whazor » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:18 PM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #10

krasin wrote: post #7

Two things happen at the same time: 1. people say that robots are taking all the jobs 2. countries raise retirement age & adopt 6 day work week, because there's too much work to be done I am not entirely sure, but maybe robots are not that bad, assuming appropriate taxation to fund pensions & 5-day work weeks?

3. Greece's unemployment rate is almost 11%. What a bizarre situation.

Greece biggest economy is tourism, so it is seasonal. They need most workers in the summer.

Re: Greece introduces the six day work week

#40

Post by cyberax » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 8:18 PM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #10

krasin wrote: post #7

Two things happen at the same time: 1. people say that robots are taking all the jobs 2. countries raise retirement age & adopt 6 day work week, because there's too much work to be done I am not entirely sure, but maybe robots are not that bad, assuming appropriate taxation to fund pensions & 5-day work weeks?

3. Greece's unemployment rate is almost 11%. What a bizarre situation.

It's a whole bunch of toxic factors working synergistically.

The Greek economy is dominated by low-wage tourist-oriented businesses, a whopping 20-30% of employed people are directly involved in them.

And they have to compete against Turkey, Egypt, and other low-income countries. These businesses simply cannot pay high salaries, there's no profit margin for it. So people don't want to work in these miserable conditions, and business owners have problems attracting labor.