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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

#121
post #114
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if that country also legislates heavy penalties for companies that produce their goods in countries with worse labor laws.

Almost like we needed some international worker's organization to put pressure on all relevant countries at the same time...

Hey don’t go talking crazy about some kind of global labor solidarity and collective bargaining

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

#122
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!

What's your point about increased capital gains? Taxing income based on ownership should be higher than income via actual labor. It's insane that's not the case in most places.

If you start a business and grow it from hard work, you will now be taxed more. It's not just passive gains, it's all gain.

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

#123
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%

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?

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

#124
post #28

Speaking as an American, I don’t give a shit if it increases productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We, as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to pay hefty ove…

Do workers really care about productivity? As long as I get paid that's what matters.

As long as they feel growth of productivity results to increase in their standard of living then why not?

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

#125

Speaking as an American, I don’t give a shit if it increases productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We, as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to pay hefty ove…

Lot of shoulds, oughts, etc. How about this: do whatever you want. Nothing is stopping you from setting up a 3 day workweek co-op. More power to any group that wants to. There are a number out there already. But it's worth considering why it hasn't totally taken over "naturally".

You can ask that question in the opposite way too: Why does the weekend still exist? Why aren't people working 24/7?

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

#126

Speaking as an American, I don’t give a shit if it increases productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We, as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to pay hefty ove…

Speaking as an Australian, our productivity has been lagging[1] compared to the US, largely due to the availability of cheap labour (attributed by economists to foreign students)[2]. I heard one economist on the ABC give the example of carwashes[2]. From the 1990s to the early 2000s, car washes in Australia were largely automated and hand-wash car washes were relatively uncommon. However, the abundance of cheap labou…

The car wash example is interesting, as something I’ve seen and experienced but never thought about in that way.

I wonder how it truly factors into productivity, though. How is productivity measured, and does that measurement capture what is true?

You mention automated car washes as a baseline. I never used those in the past because I figured they’d be rubbish or would scratch the car or whatever. So I’d occasionally wash the car myself, and that’s it. Now that we have manual car washes available, I use them from time to time. They clearly (I assert) do a better job than anything automated. And they do it inside and out.

So I find the comparison interesting, but in need of elaboration.

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

#127

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…

If everyone has 40 hours a week + overtime and you have a coop that pays competitively for 24 hours a week and no overtime you won't get as much market share, can be outcompeted. It has to be done on a large scale, historically as a matter of policy. This was true for tons of different reductions in the workday and other labor rights improvements in the past.

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

#128
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what would happen to costs if we had a 90%+ tax rate on the ultra wealthy... maybe if all these record profits were instead funneled back into society everyone would be better off AND prices would drop... a system like this would be good for society it seems... we should come up with a good name for that system, tho...

I think its pretty naive to thing that it'd work this way. It's really bad idea. If someone has company that debuts on stock market, and stock price increases let's say 100x times, who is he funneling the funds from? I'd say it's not funneling but creation of wealth, economy is not zero-sum game.

If someone has a company doing an IPO, it’s extremely unlikely that the company was so small that one person did all the work. Why is it a given that one person should retain nearly all of the proceeds of the sale? To answer your question, that person is funneling funds from investors who are expecting returns derived from the labor provided by the undercompensated employees.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an Australian, our productivity has been lagging[1] compared to the US, largely due to the availability of cheap labour (attributed by economists to foreign students)[2]. I heard one economist on the ABC give the example of carwashes[2]. From the 1990s to the early 2000s, car washes in Australia were largely automated and hand-wash car washes were relatively uncommon. However, the abundance of cheap labou…

The car wash example is interesting, as something I’ve seen and experienced but never thought about in that way. I wonder how it truly factors into productivity, though. How is productivity measured, and does that measurement capture what is true? You mention automated car washes as a baseline. I never used those in the past because I figured they’d be rubbish or would scratch the car or whatever. So I’d occasionally…

It's a tautology, if productivity is measured as GDP per worker. Productivity, so defined, is down because each worker is moving money around less, although there may be more workers. Which is the same thing as them being paid less. Question is, if they accept that, and cars still get washed, does it matter?

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

#130
post #96
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%

Why are you not leaving right now?

I could as a German but my partner has a weaker passport so I’m just waiting till she got her australian passport
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