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Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

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Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#121

Post by Cthulhu_ »

furyg3 wrote: post #112
adventured wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch are also the most indebted people on earth: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2013-en/images/g... http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020375260... http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2013/11/netherlan... Which means that as a country the people will have to either fall into bankruptcy, dramatically cut their quality of living, or work a lot more. All that leisure time came at…

Well... this is slightly disingenuous. The WSJ article specifically mentions that this relates to secured debt (mortgages), not credit card debt. Interest rates are fully tax deductible in the Netherlands, which incentivizes higher mortgage debt than in many other countries. Many people own homes, and the ones that do borrow the majority of the market value when buying. Housing prices did fall recently (and are now h…

^this; In part it's a culture thing that one buys a house when one gets married and the like, but the tax rules (deductible mortgage interest) and whatnot give people an incentive to never finish paying off their mortgages.

Another factor (IIRC) is that before the crisis, housing prices just went steadily upwards, doubling or even tripling their values during a lifetime (probably less if you take inflation into consideration). This caused a lot of people to extend their mortgage or take a second or even third mortgage on the gained value of their house, which was used to add to the house or buy a car or things like that.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#122

Post by vidarh »

adventured wrote: post #93
vidarh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "innovative US economy" had to be forced by socialist unions to cut the working day to roughly 8 days. It took decades of strikes, demonstrations and bloodshed to reach that goal. You know why people demonstrate and celebrate workers right on May 1st? Because then largely socialist and anarchist US unions decided, led by the AFL, in 1888 to restart demonstrations for the 8 hour working day with a major demonstrat…

Capitalism allows for the concept of unions, and in no way inherently outlaws or stops labor from unionizing. It was in fact Capitalist unions, in a Capitalist system, that you're referring to. And in fact it was one of the so called Capitalist robber barons, Henry Ford, who had the greatest impact on shifting to the 40 hour work week. He proved it could work and blazed the path for all other industrialists to follow…

It was in fact to a large extent socialist unions, or unions with a large contingent of socialist and anarchist memembers.

Even the traditionally a-political AFL sent representatives to the socialist Second International.

And crediting Ford for the 40 hour work week is just pure, unadulterated bullshit. By the time Ford cut the work week for his staff, large segments of the work force already had achieved it, and provided the evidence needed that a shift to the 8 hour work week was economically feasible.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#123

Post by luke1972 »

justnotsure wrote: post #17

The innovative US economy will make it all irrelevant anyway by introducing more and more work from home jobs. Work from home is almost common in the US and basically non-existent in Europe. I wouldn't trade Swedish 6-hour workday with my American-based 8-hour while working from my coach at home. Somehow socialists are always one step behind Mother Nature, i.e. free markets.

You've got a coach at home you use as an office?? Amazing.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#124

Post by vidarh »

justnotsure wrote: post #77
vidarh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "innovative US economy" had to be forced by socialist unions to cut the working day to roughly 8 days. It took decades of strikes, demonstrations and bloodshed to reach that goal. You know why people demonstrate and celebrate workers right on May 1st? Because then largely socialist and anarchist US unions decided, led by the AFL, in 1888 to restart demonstrations for the 8 hour working day with a major demonstrat…

I appreciate Unions and I strongly believe that capitalism works well only in connection with democracy. Sure if people who just didn't try hard enough at school and end up at bad jobs vote for 6 or even 2-hour day work, let them have it! I don't care, I'm paid per hour I want to put as many hours as possible.

The point was that your supposedly amazing free market was not what led to the 8-hour day. It took bloodshed and illegal strikes; demonstrations and decades of fighting for legislation.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#125

Post by CMCDragonkai »

cabalamat wrote: post #80
wobbleblob wrote: post #47

> "though the United States is an outlier here, working both long and hard" The article conflates productivity with 'working hard'. Productivity is a measure of how much value is produced ('money is made') per hour of work. A bulldozer operator working an 8 hour day to move a few tons of dirt is more productive than a worker who needs many 12 hour work days to move the same amount of dirt with a shovel and wheelbarro…

> Productivity is a measure of how much value is produced ('money is made') per hour of work. [..] A trader at a bank who moves millions of shares with a phone call and a few mouse clicks is more productive than the bulldozer operator. [..] A high productivity per hour in a country means fewer ditches are dug using shovels, and more credit default swaps are sold. When you say "value is produced", you seem to be confl…

Value is in the eye of the beholder. Determining how much value one creates is inherently a value judgement.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#126

Post by guard-of-terra »

Benji_San wrote: post #117
guard-of-terra wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always a tough choice between a huge house in sprawlville on one side of spectrum and a tiny apartment in the centre of the (non-urban-flighted, alive and walkable) city. And of course everything in between. You can't say that in "better standard of living", home size matters and home location doesn't. Europeans have less sprawl but smaller houses, that's just it.

It shouldn't really be a tough choice. The "suburbia" dream is flawed on so many levels that it isn't even funny. Yet people are clinging on to it like leeches because they've been told it will make them happy.

Well, on the other hand it's very hard to make the whole large urban core interesting and alive. Urban core is always smaller to fit everybody, hence unrealistic prices (think SF).

And urban city outskirts aren't so much fun (still small apartments but not much life; crime is sometimes a problem too). Not much better than suburbia.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#127

Post by adventured »

furyg3 wrote: post #112
adventured wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch are also the most indebted people on earth: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2013-en/images/g... http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020375260... http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2013/11/netherlan... Which means that as a country the people will have to either fall into bankruptcy, dramatically cut their quality of living, or work a lot more. All that leisure time came at…

Well... this is slightly disingenuous. The WSJ article specifically mentions that this relates to secured debt (mortgages), not credit card debt. Interest rates are fully tax deductible in the Netherlands, which incentivizes higher mortgage debt than in many other countries. Many people own homes, and the ones that do borrow the majority of the market value when buying. Housing prices did fall recently (and are now h…

First of all, household debt is household debt, it is not disingenuous, it's exactly what it sounds like. And it obviously does not only include mortgage debt.

Second, who said anything about the United States? Why is that always the knee-jerk reaction? Mortgage debt is included in the US calculation anyway, so what's the point exactly? The US doesn't get a special calculation for household debt that is different from the Netherlands. Non-the-less I wasn't comparing the two. Let's compare the Netherlands to the rest of Europe who they are in theory most similar to: their individual debt is drastically higher than basically all of Europe.

Third, having eg 100% of your home consumed by debt, means you do not own equity in your home. That's household debt, and it should count just as much as credit card debt should: you have to pay for it, it's going to come out of your future earnings one way or another, and if you do not pay for it there will be serious financial consequences. And when the number is 250%+, you can bet that is coming home to roost sooner rather than later.

My point stands: to deal with that extreme level of household debt (and that's assuming there isn't another crisis any time soon that tips a dangerous situation into an untenable situation) will require a dramatic change to how the people of the Netherlands live. Most likely part of that equation will have to be working more. My argument is that a social trade-off has been made between work, leisure and debt, and to the extent that compromise has been made, in the future it will have to be reversed.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#128

Post by fetbaffe »

mkempe wrote: post #103
cabalamat wrote: post #81

A 6-hour workday would be 30 hours/week. If we're going to reduce the working week, then instead of spreading that over 5 days, why not work a 4-day week (7.5 hours/day)? That would reduce commuting congestion by 20%, and make everyone who doesn't like spending an hour a day in a traffic jam happy.

The purpose is not to diminish time wasted by commuting. In many European cities and regions one does not commute for hours every day. For instance, my brother lives in a 2000 year-old city and walks to work -- it takes him 2 minutes. When I lived in London it took me 15-20 minutes to get to work, with the tube. In a Swiss city before that, 15 minutes driving. And for my job before that, 4 minutes biking.

However not the case in Göteborg.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#129

Post by homakov »

Kiro wrote: post #95
vidarh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it was left up to business, we had 14 hour+ days. It took many decades of extensive strikes and demonstrations, during which dozens of workers were killed, before the 8 hour day became the norm. The US union that is now the AFL-CIO leadership in pushing for the 8 hour day led directly to making May 1st the international day for labor demonstrations, in part in commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre. If…

Do you hate capitalism?

I love capitalism, I hate socialism.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#130

Post by vidarh »

justnotsure wrote: post #83
oellegaard wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The innovative Scandinavian economy has resulted in the highest general happiness for its citizens. Maybe you should consider why you actually work - is it because work is the best thing that every happened to you, or something you do so you can afford to take the rest of your time off and hangout with friends and/or family?

So why in Norway they vote extreme right? Here is your dirty secret about Breiviks and Scandinavia: we can pay high taxes as long as it goes to us. But the very second it goes to Muslims, immigrants, etc. we are not socialist anymore. We are more like national socialists ;-) You see scnadinavian socialism seems to work only in national states. Once you have high immigration and you pay for immigrants, nobody wants it…

> So why in Norway they vote extreme right?

They/we don't. The "Progress Party", which is the furthest right party represented in parliament, got 16.3%. Down from 22.9%. They're for the most part to the left of the Republican Party. That they were invited into a coalition government for the first time was shocking to us, as it means it's the closest we've gotten to "American conditions" - a traditional slur in Norway, as most people, including a substantial majority still, do not want most of what the Progress Party wants.

You'll note that despite getting into a coalition with the conservative party (which got 26.8%, up from 17.2%), they have been unable to get through more than a few token tax cuts. Why? Because the centre-point in parliament is to the left of either one of them. They have to lean on the Liberal Party (Venstre), which is social-liberalists that'd fit in roughly on the left of the Democratic Party, or the Christian Democrats, which are social-conservative centrists, to get a slight majority.

Similarly, they've gotten through a few minor token changes to immigration policies, but have to give up on most of their policies because no other party in parliament agree with them on immigration.

About 50% of parliament is made up of the social democrat Labour Party, the Socialist Left party, and the slightly left of centre Centre Party who ruled for the preceding 8 years.

Norwegian "tradition" is that right wing governments sits for less than one period, up to almost two. No right wing government has survived a second election.

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