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The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

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Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#131
post #11

Australia also has a 60 year productivity low and a government that is boosting taxes on capital gains on shares/business to basically a worldwide high. So take our experiments with a grain of salt!

How is the recently announced 2026 Australian Government budget relevant to this study done in 2023-2024? There is a whole bunch of other factors to Australia's productivity, not at least the drop in GDP per capita and fall in Total Factor Productivity.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#132
I was contacted this week for a position that was openly 6 days a week. We need to end H1B in this country as soon as possible and keep the 996 schedule firmly out of the United States.

They call you lazy for not wanting to compete against the entire world in your own country.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#133
If you look at Australian IT companies they're management and consultant heavy. Roles like architects, review boards, program managers etc., exceed actual engineering roles. In such a set up it takes forever to get any real work done.

Then Australian real wages have also declined. So there is already low motivation to work beyond the minimum expectation.

Australia also has strong social security, at least until now, and there are plenty of odd jobs due to the real estate and tourism industries, so there is little pressure to survive unless you owe too much credit.

Automation and technology adoption also lags behind. For example, people still wait thirty minutes on a call to get an appointment with a doctor instead of making an online booking.

For all of these reasons productivity has been low and declining. An extra day off work is a strong stimulus for squeezing what gets done into the rest of the days.

In my opinion this is an extreme, just as the work yourself to death culture in India and China is. On a scale of a few decades economies where people worked agressively harder have grown tremendously but at the expense of the long-term wellbeing of the people. Places like Australia that were well off and felt little pressure to compete have sustained good quality of life but at the expense of having no competetitve edge anymore.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#134
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax is already bad here, even without it. I paid $89,000 taxes just for the last financial year because stock gains are added up on top of the income and my partner doesn’t work and there’s no family support allowance here. I can apply Australian citizenship next year but I will leave ASAP after becoming a citizen for Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong where the tax is < 20%

You're breaking my heart. To pay $89,000 in taxes you'd have to be earning in the range of $350k. Do you think you're hard done by? I'd be rather annoyed if you were eligible for family support allowance in that earning range? (partially because I'd be missing out on a decent chunk of government support myself) What am I missing about your situation that makes it remotely sympathetic?

If you live in inner Sydney, the rent alone is $1350 pw and tax is ridiculous. I basically sold my stocks to have a down payment but then that got added on top of income. If i’d have stayed in HK, i’d have paid 0% for that.

I just treat it as paying for Australian citizenship to make me feel better and it still comes out cheaper than buying a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport. Australian passport also opens up the E3 visa to go to the USA

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#135
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax changes that have been overdue for twenty-odd years to address house prices and attempt to level the playing field between labour and capital. Pity they didn't also change the gas tax.

The tax is already bad here, even without it. I paid $89,000 taxes just for the last financial year because stock gains are added up on top of the income and my partner doesn’t work and there’s no family support allowance here. I can apply Australian citizenship next year but I will leave ASAP after becoming a citizen for Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong where the tax is < 20%

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#136
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be ok in a non-globalized world. In our world, any country that implements those laws will see a lot more offshoring.

This has the same energy as "if we tax the billionaires, they'll leave". That statement and yours are wrong. Why? Because if it was profitable, they would've done it already. Pretty much any employer would use you as fertilizer if there was an uptick in the stock price. But let's say it's true. Great. Punish them with tariffs. They also have diminished political power because they're no longer a local employer. We ar…

Fully agreed.

“Oh but businesses will leave”

Yeah so what, if they do, we either didn’t want them, or they _actually won’t_ despite the squealing, or they will go, and if their segment of the market is useful, will get snapped up by new/local versions which do respect local constraints from the get-go.

All of these are better outcomes than not doing anything because “what if”.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurdly ahistorical. Corporations take as much as they can. If there were no law limiting work to 40 hours / week, they would demand far more - as they had before massive workers' protests forced the current limits.

All the more reason people would prefer to work for a co-op, no? I really don't know why there aren't more co-ops, and am inferring they just don't work all that well. But if there are any regulations or something preventing them from succeeding, I'd love to know about it. Also, I guess it's worth noting I've been "exempt" all my life (not subject to 40 hours a week), so that particular labor win I guess didn't reall…

They can't strategize and adapt very quickly, because of all the cooperating.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#138
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax is already bad here, even without it. I paid $89,000 taxes just for the last financial year because stock gains are added up on top of the income and my partner doesn’t work and there’s no family support allowance here. I can apply Australian citizenship next year but I will leave ASAP after becoming a citizen for Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong where the tax is < 20%

You're breaking my heart. To pay $89,000 in taxes you'd have to be earning in the range of $350k. Do you think you're hard done by? I'd be rather annoyed if you were eligible for family support allowance in that earning range? (partially because I'd be missing out on a decent chunk of government support myself) What am I missing about your situation that makes it remotely sympathetic?

they are greedy and don't want to pay their fair share.

people that count their tax dollars are usually very selfish to begin with.

i generally think the gov can do better with how money is spent though.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#139
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax is already bad here, even without it. I paid $89,000 taxes just for the last financial year because stock gains are added up on top of the income and my partner doesn’t work and there’s no family support allowance here. I can apply Australian citizenship next year but I will leave ASAP after becoming a citizen for Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong where the tax is < 20%

As an Australian with a family and 2 high-paying salaries paying a LOT of tax, none of those countries are remotely comparable to Australia. If you hate taxes and fees, Singapore has a 60% Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty on residential property applied to foreign buyers, on top of an already insane property market. There's huge fines and government intervention into _everything_ and a massive high-stress culture. Hong…

I can get PR in Singapore through my partner, so no 60%. Company paid medical and everything so expat life and no responsibilities. And if I were ever have to have kids, you can’t hire a maid here sleeping at your apartment and you have to clean yourself which is ridiculous. In Hk, SG, Dubai you can get domestic helpers cheaply and they take care of everything

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#140
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be ok in a non-globalized world. In our world, any country that implements those laws will see a lot more offshoring.

So then all the productivity improvements are nothing more than boosting the hashrate of your crypto miner? You have to do it to not fall behind, but once everyone has done it, we all end up back in the same spot where we started?

Normal people, yes. The oligarchic class gets more and more bloated as you can plainly see.
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