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Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

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Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#281

Post by refurb »

reverendsteveii wrote: post #29

I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people.

I'm skeptical that falling birth rates have much to do with the demands of a dual working household.

Look at Europe which has significant maternity and paternity leave, subsidized daycare and free college. Lots and lots of support for young parents.

Yet birth rates haven't really budged.

I think it has more to do with the expectation of how much effort to raise a kid has drastically increased.

75 years ago, you'd pump out 5 kids and they'd be independent quite young. By 4-5 years old it was "go find something to do". As long as the kid wasn't failing school, grades didn't matter. If the kid was involved in school sports, they made their own way to events. Parents didn't attend regularly. By the time they were 7-8, they could help with the younger kids.

By the time your kids was a 8-10, it was pretty much "keep em fed and out of trouble".

Today, expectations are way, way higher. Parents worry about what elementary school their kids get into. After school academic and sports activities start super young. Parents want to attend the big events. Then high school and it time to grind. Tutors, SAT prep, college tours, etc, etc. Minimal chores because that would interfere with school and sports.

One kid today is equal to the effort of 3-4 kids 75 years ago.

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#282

Post by pessimizer »

xandrius wrote: post #273
Aurornis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a job that offered your choice of 4x10 or 5x8. Many people took the 4x10 but then discovered they couldn't handle 10 hour days every day. Like you said, the last 1-2 hours were so unproductive they might as well have been not working. So some people didn't even try to work those last 2 hours. They'd sit at their desks and watch things or play games, pretending to work when anyone came in. Kind of ruined it for…

So you traded 1 whole day for 2h a day to do whatever you wanted but at the office? Sounds like you spread Friday across the other days. Still a good deal to me, I'd take some online courses or something I wanted to do anyway in my free time.

> 2h a day to do whatever you wanted but at the office?

Oh, joy. I definitely wouldn't prefer a prison cell with a bed, tv, bookshelf, and privacy. What were those WFH people crying about?

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#283

Post by coliveira »

dukeyukey wrote: post #151
coliveira wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, the Japanese view a society that takes care of the elderly with respect as a benefit to themselves. In the other hand, it is a characteristic of Western society to see every moment as an opportunity to make immediate profits, even at the expense of their own future.

In this case, it's taking care of the elderly to the huge detriment of the young. And when you do that, you kinda lose the future.

You forget that every young person will become old later (if alive). That's what they consider when looking at the future.

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#284

Post by lotsofpulp »

colechristensen wrote: post #140
beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a problem you can pick around at the edges. You have to take some big swings to try to resolve it. Politicians, businesses, and the entire voting public, need to take a hard look at the real things they can do that will have an actual effect. 4-day workweek is a big one.

Second item: housing needs to be a bad investment. Both for individuals and corporate.

Land (and rent seeking) need to be a bad investment. Building housing (and building anything in general, whether it be housing, businesses, families, etc) should be a good investment.

Right now, with earned income tax, we do the exact opposite. We punish the people that do things, and reward the rent seekers with tax breaks (1031 exchange/low land value tax rates/senior citizen discounts/etc). The proof is in the pudding, everyone wants to become a rent seeker, and this is what society will look like if that is the case.

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#286

Post by neycoda »

7thaccount wrote: post #2

That sounds....huge. I know many working couples where one would probably take that in a heartbeat. You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge, not to mention clocking out early each day to be able to pick up your kid and not have to get back to work or whatever.

Too many people in the US are living paycheck to paycheck on hourly wages, many with two people in the household working full-time. This is becoming normal. A 4-day workweek will hurt them.

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#287

Post by naveen99 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #199
05 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unbounded population growth is sufficient but not necessary for continued existence of a civilization..

The problem goes the other way - developed nations, the ones where you have people living comfortably enough to talk stuff like RiverCrochet's nephew, are all living below replacement rate . As things currently are, our countries are already extinct, they just don't know it yet. The irony. For the past 50+ years, we were so obsessed with the threat of overpopulation that we didn't think of the opposite; didn't even r…

There just may not be as much of a need for as many humans in the future as robots are built instead.

So maybe instead of 8 billion humans, we will have 1 billion humans and 99 billion robots. Then the humans can all be the 1%. Or maybe there won’t be any humans, and the robots can decide how many robots there should be.

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#288

Post by carlosjobim »

imetatroll wrote: post #213
orangecat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually that life is too good for childless people, especially when they're wealthier. Take a DINK couple with high paying jobs, say an engineer and an attorney. Without kids they can have a nice house or condo, regularly take great vacations, and still be saving enough to have the option of retiring in their 40s or 50s. But with kids, that mostly goes out the window. The societal expectation is that you should…

I entirely agree. And when you lather on the tidal wave of endless "entertainment" and options available to most people they end up framing everything in their minds as "having fun" vs "having kids". I also know many women who say they don't want to "do that to their bodies" so ... where is this all going. And honestly I agree with the "if you are single you should pay more taxes" as a motivator to either get you to…

[flagged]

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#289

Post by TeMPOraL »

naveen99 wrote: post #287
TeMPOraL wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem goes the other way - developed nations, the ones where you have people living comfortably enough to talk stuff like RiverCrochet's nephew, are all living below replacement rate . As things currently are, our countries are already extinct, they just don't know it yet. The irony. For the past 50+ years, we were so obsessed with the threat of overpopulation that we didn't think of the opposite; didn't even r…

There just may not be as much of a need for as many humans in the future as robots are built instead. So maybe instead of 8 billion humans, we will have 1 billion humans and 99 billion robots. Then the humans can all be the 1%. Or maybe there won’t be any humans, and the robots can decide how many robots there should be.

> There just may not be as much of a need for as many humans in the future as robots are built instead.

Maybe, but we may never get there if the population that can build robots becomes too small to impact the direction of the economy.

> So maybe instead of 8 billion humans, we will have 1 billion humans and 99 billion robots

It's fun until you ask yourself, how will you allocate voting rights?

That is, again, if we can even get there, because again, differences in birth rates across countries and cultures, plus voting rights, means a shift in mindsets and priorities.

Re: Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

#290

Post by [deleted] »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #161
orangecat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually that life is too good for childless people, especially when they're wealthier. Take a DINK couple with high paying jobs, say an engineer and an attorney. Without kids they can have a nice house or condo, regularly take great vacations, and still be saving enough to have the option of retiring in their 40s or 50s. But with kids, that mostly goes out the window. The societal expectation is that you should…

I'll gladly volunteer to be the first to say "Fuck those societal expectations, that's insane." You don't owe your children much more than food, love and a roof over their head. Sure, you might want to give them the world, but don't listen to anyone telling you that's the expectation - that's a fast track to resentment.

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