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We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

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Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#41

Post by jblow »

mattschoch wrote: post #15

Great idea in theory, but there's a reason young people work such long hours: money. If a 22 year old graduates from college and works 25 hours a week, they won't have enough money to pay off their (almost certain) debt and live comfortably, much less have excess money to spend traveling and doing fun things. Young people work so hard so they can have the money to buy and do the things they want. Most just never stop…

Costs of stuff like rent and cars are normalized to average income levels. (Though of course with cars there is a base cost of manufacture that makes them less flexible than something like rent).

Which is to say, if everyone works 25 hours a week, rents will go down (because if they don't, you have most properties sitting empty). If instead everyone works 60 hours a week, rents go up.

Of course, economics is really complicated and rarely works out this simply. But that's the idea. It's a little silly to post here presuming that someone in Mr. Vaupel's position has somehow not thought of the fact that when you work fewer hours your nominal earnings go down. (I think this qualifies for what pg was calling Middlebrow Dismissal). It's a more reasonable response to say, well, of course he has thought of that, but I wonder what the answer is?

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#42

Post by michaelochurch »

25 hours is a good number for average people. I'd say 15-20, even.

Ambitious or highly dedicated people will always work more than that, and that's a good thing. What they should have is a lot more freedom in how they spend that time-- working two jobs, one job and school, side projects.

The problem is this bullshit conformist fiction in which everyone has to pretend to be ambitious (but only internally) and dedicated (despite mediocre social status and compensation, that fail to justify such dedication). I don't think that such a problem can be legislated away. The best that the law/government can do is to break up the collusions (e.g. among VCs) that keep talent trading at such a dog-low rate against property.

The other problem, and one of the main reasons why the 40-60 hour anachronism lives on, is that companies aren't really buying (as they see it) 40 hours of time. They're also buying (in their entitled view of the world) single-minded loyalty. That's why they demand hours at such a level that a person can't possibly hold two jobs, even if she is easily capable of the work. The goal isn't just to get some quantity of the person's work, but to take that person off the market so no one else can hire her.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#43

Post by zanny »

ekianjo wrote: post #23
Zigurd wrote: post #2

Until we come to grips with what will likely be a post-labor world, this is a good transitional approach. The 40 hour week is an arbitrary standard, and it may now be rational to reduce that number. Few jobs are now so arduous that 70 year olds cannot perform well. We are suffering from outdated standards for work weeks and retirement age, and un-sticking our assumptions is likely to benefit the situation.

> what will likely be a post-labor world Says who ? This preposterous way of thinking has been around for x years already. "when the world population will reach 4 billions people, there will be no jobs for everyone", yet the population is still increasing beyond 6 billions and most people still work to live/survive. There is no hint we are moving to a post-labor world. You will see that there is a strong relationship…

Well one, getting to post-labor has nothing to do with raw population figures. No matter how many people you have, they want to eat, probably want comfortable living (housing + climate control), and in a modern context want Internet access and electricity.

You could have a hundred billion people and everyone would still want that. The difference is post-labor comes when you don't need human capital (or at the worst, a negligible amount) to produce the necessities for people to survive. We are approaching that, look at how manufacturing is returning to the US in 99% automated facilities. Once you can grow food (or fabricate it with molecular engineering) without requiring human labor to produce it, you can already distribute it with automated vehicles, and you can produce electricity via solar, hydro, or nuclear wtih very little human capital involvement after you set the system up.

The idea is you put systems in place that the fruits of them are effectively infinite without human engagement. Once you can do that, you have post-scarcity bounded on the limits of the planet and our ability to deploy infrastructure, not in how much labor we can produce. We are getting there, but the fundamental problem is we try to squeeze these no labor return systems into classic market capitalism and it isn't working (a concentrated wealthy class ends up owning these means of production, and power and wealth are concentrated as a result).

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#44

Post by ekianjo »

_delirium wrote: post #32
ekianjo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the standardization you are talking about is also heavily driven by work regulations, saying that a work week is x hours and nothing else. If such restrictions were abolished I believe there would be much more flexibility (up and down) in the job market.

The regulations just put a maximum; there is nothing preventing companies from offering lower hours if they wish. Before those maximums were brought in, you had the same situation as now, just with more hours being standard: you had to agree to 6-days-a-week, 10+ hour days, or nothing. The union movement successfully negotiated that down to 5-days-a-week, 8-hour days as a cap, which was at least an improvement.

Note that there are drawbacks in several countries of not working "full time". You do not get the same rights towards a pension, you do not get the same rules for overtime, and other benefits do not apply. Therefore there is also a strong incentive, based on regulations, not to work less than 40 hours either.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#46

Post by zanny »

_delirium wrote: post #20
ekianjo wrote: post #17

25 hours to earn less? What's the point of having more free time if you have no money to do anything with it ? There's a reason why we have a current optimal 40-60 hours kind of range for working hours in most countries. That's an equilibrium point between how much people are willing to work vs how much they are willing to earn. Everyone still wants to have free time, but not at the expense of their well-being or the…

Because of standardization on "normal" workweeks, it's pretty hard to have the choice even if you're willing to forego salary for fewer hours. Google won't let you work a 4-day week for 80% of the regular salary, for example (or even for 60% of it!), and more traditional companies are even less likely to. You take their 5-day, 40-hour offer or you don't. You typically only have an option to work a 25-hour week if you…

One other problem is that the whole 40 hour thing is also a farce in the presence of salaried positions - most places want you on site all day, under the assumption that they can keep you during crunch. If you are only working 4 days, unless you have infamous "come in on Sunday" talks with your boss, they have less opportunities to keep you for free overtime since you are salaried and they often put on weekly caps on extra hours before they have to pay overtime (or none at all, depends on the company).

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#47

Post by mylittlepony »

msoad wrote: post #13

I don't get it. Why we have fixed number of working hours when we have deadlines for our tasks? You want me to solve that problem for you by Friday? Why should I come to office and stare at monitor four days if I figured it out right in Monday?

When I worked as an employee, I learned to slow all my tasks down to finish them right on time. That way I wouldn't be assigned more tasks than my coworkers, in punishment for being efficient and fast.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#48

Post by zanny »

mattschoch wrote: post #15

Great idea in theory, but there's a reason young people work such long hours: money. If a 22 year old graduates from college and works 25 hours a week, they won't have enough money to pay off their (almost certain) debt and live comfortably, much less have excess money to spend traveling and doing fun things. Young people work so hard so they can have the money to buy and do the things they want. Most just never stop…

As a 21 year old, I'd love to only work 25 hours a week. I'd just get involved with more FOSS projects and work on what I want to rather than what someone paying me wants me to do.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#49

Post by olliesaunders »

readme wrote: post #22

This guy might be on to something, but I have an even better idea, and it required 0 scientific research to synthesize. We should all do whatever the fuck we want, until we die.

> We should all do whatever the fuck we want, until we die.

Yeah but we’re not allowed to. Most employers will demands you show up for 40 hours a week and then frown at you or, at least, never promote you if you don’t stay for a lot more.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#50

Post by ekianjo »

_delirium wrote: post #40
ekianjo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just ideology, the size of government in Scandinavia is way smaller than in other developed countries. See the economist article last week about this subject.

It's true that regulations are relatively low, in terms of invasive bureaucracy in the economy. Yet in Denmark we have a 37-hour maximum workweek, 8 weeks of vacation, and strong unemployment benefits, and all that doesn't seem to be ruining the country. Perhaps that can't be replicated elsewhere, but I don't see a solidly established relationship between working hours, unemployment benefits, and economic prosperity.

Out of interest, can you find out where the budget of the government in Denmark is spent in, and in what proportions ? On top of that, how much of welfare system relies on private actors instead of governmental/public ones?
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