Massive eyeroll at this article. It has been predicted for literally a hundred years that technological advancements would make it so we all only work a couple hours a week. Somehow it didn't turn out that way.
Of course, in a competitive economy with property rights, it's impossible that we all only work a couple hours a week. If you say "I'll only work 20 hours a week, but I still want a salary that completely supports my lifestyle", chances are someone else is willing to work 40 - 60 hours a week to get ahead.
These utopian seeking articles that give zero analysis to basic economics, nevermind basic human nature, are just daydreams.
All that is necessary to enable the average worker to work many fewer hours a week is for the amount produced in those fewer hours (over the whole economy) to be sufficient to allow everyone to live comfortably, and for the output to be shared reasonably equitably.
We have the former. We've had it for 50 years. The only problem is the latter: We have allowed the people at the very top to take all the extra gains from the productivity increases since about 1970.
Changing the system to prevent that level of blatant skimming off the top, and ensure that the benefits of the economy are shared equitably, is what we as a society need to be working on right now.
I don't really disagree with you that much. Clearly there are government policies that can redistribute wealthy more equitably than, for example, what happens in the US, as evidenced by other 1st world social democracies that have very different tax policies and lower Gini coefficients.
But that said:
1. In a competitive economy, that can never be handled by a company-by-company basis (except for companies that have huge monopolistic moats, hence all the perks at the large tech companies), as other companies will be willing to work more and take more business. So it would have to be handled at a government/societal level, and this article talks nothing about that.
2. In a competitive global economy, it can be extremely difficult for one country to provide tons of worker protections and benefits if other countries are willing to forgo those benefits to get ahead. Indeed, that has happened in many Western European countries: if you have a job, especially a government or trade-protected job, you're sitting pretty. However, many of these countries have had to deal with overall lower growth which has resulted in staggering youth unemployment.
That skimming off the top is via ownership of shares. I wish we had a culture that rather than savings, we invested. If the masses did that there'd be much less cause to complain and more right for ordinary people to vote on company board members that promote better values.
This reads very much as "I wish the poors and plebs would start doing things my way, rather than criticizing my way for being only accessible to the wealthy and effectively legalized gambling."
I forget the exact numbers right now, but a depressingly large percentage of Americans today literally do not make enough money to be able to save anything. These are not problems that can be solved by market solutions. We cannot fix inequality that dwarfs that of the Gilded Age by encouraging people living paycheck to paycheck to buy stock so they can have the privilege of a single vote out of millions on whether Rich White Guy A or Rich White Guy B gets to be on the board.
Before retiring recently, I worked as a lead programmer at a minimum of 10 hr/day 5 days a week and occasionally Saturdays, and some months I worked 7 days a week since we always had deadlines and our execs changed stuff every single day. I finally had enough of this madness. No way you could do my job in 5 hrs/day.
can i ask you why you did it? did you ever look at reducing the amount of work / switching jobs? To me this sounds a little bit insane (but in a non-judgmental way).
40 years is enough; if for some bizarre reason I'd ever want to work again for someone, I'd switch to Product instead of Dev. Understand both what to build and how is a huge benefit.
jobs and what you are payed are in no way related to the value you produce. if anything, you should be payed more.
a 10 hour work week is doable but will never happen because capitalism and controlling the masses of people.
what do you think people would do if all of a sudden they had to work 20 hours instead of 40? people with free time are one of the most dangerous things to the “ruling” class.
re: 60hours/week. Do you really have a lifestyle at that point? Do you even have a life?
> re: 60hours/week. Do you really have a lifestyle at that point? Do you even have a life?
I mean, this comment basically proves my point. You appear to be saying "60 hours a week is basically inhumane", but many eager young people are willing to work far longer and harder, and, importantly, not because they are worried about starving, but specifically because they want to get ahead: think doctors (in 2003 in the US physician residents had their hours limited to just 80 hours a week - i.e. they were working far longer than that), and bankers (e.g. Goldman Sachs bankers recently asking for an 80 hour cap: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56452494).
Point being, there are plenty of people willing and desiring to work hours you consider "inhumane", and those people will certainly desire a far greater share of the "pie" than those working much less.
They're not eager to do it for its own sake. They're eager to do it because they think it's their only shot at a comfortable lifestyle.
There's no reason this should be the case. There's no reason anyone in this country should have to worry about having a less-than-comfortable lifestyle, given how much food, energy, and various necessary and luxury products we're able to produce. It's only the case because of the massive income inequality we have today.
> they think it's their only shot at a comfortable lifestyle.
That is patently ridiculous if you've ever known any Goldman Sachs interns or medical residents. These folks all have plenty of much easier options for having a comfortable lifestyle, and they know it, but it would be a comfortable lifestyle with certainly less luxury and prestige than GS banker or doctor.
That is basically my whole argument, that there are a subset of people who will work super hard just because they want to be at the top of the totem pole. Arguing that these type A folks think that working 80-100 hour weeks is "their only shot at a comfortable lifestyle" is laughable.
nope. someone being able and willing to do “insane” things for a bigger piece of the pie should not make this the norm. should people that are one paycheck away from
being homeless be okay with the 80hours?
gonna ask again: at this point do you have a life?
Of course, in a competitive economy with property rights, it's impossible that we all only work a couple hours a week. If you say "I'll only work 20 hours a week, but I still want a salary that completely supports my lifestyle", chances are someone else is willing to work 40 - 60 hours a week to get ahead.
These utopian seeking articles that give zero analysis to basic economics, nevermind basic human nature, are just daydreams.