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Comment by Bostonian | Hacker News Reader

Besides being coercive and wrong, this law is unenforceable when applied to work such as programming that can be done at home. If a 4-day workweek law were passed, it's likely that salaries would fall and that many people would do unpaid work on their day off.

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I heard this argument for the 35h work week in France. 10 years later, it proved baseless.

uh, not sure that using france as an example is smart as france has been a laggard in terms of economic performance for the past decade. this meant it being basically leapfrogged by a number of countries from across the world. end result? better quality of life, better infrastructure, etc etc outside of france than inside.

I live there. I've lived in many other countries as well. And I keep traveling.

I experienced the total opposite of your comment.

I've seen the road in the US. I've seen the health care in the UK. I've seen the internet in Spain. I've seen the cost of life in Switzerland. Heck, I've worked in Asia and Africa.

There are not a lot of countries where life felt as good as in France: germany, sweden, etc.

There are also not a lot of countries where people complain more than the French. It's a national sport.

> There are also not a lot of countries where people complain more than the French. It's a national sport.

Sounds like it's working

Clearly you have not lived in France :D

We complain about the US politics. We complain about the weather. We complain about how much we complain.

I'm pretty sure the gov cancels your citizenship if you don't reach your weekly complain quota. It's a matter of national identity.

it proved baseless.

Structurally high youth unemployment was the consequence. The French system is fantastic once you are over the hurdle of actually getting a permanent contract, but the barrier to entry is much higher than in comparable economies such as the UK. It just depends which segment of the population you are optimising for.

Back in the old days the English really knew how to keep youth employment high

It's more about the fact we can't fire anybody, so hiring is a scary game.

I've been heavily downvoted for opposing a 4-day week -- on the forum of a firm that seeds start-ups. Do people think a 4-day week should apply to founders and employees of start-ups?

i can guarantee there will be a queue of countries and corporations lined up to undermine any major difference from the globalised standard.

Makes you wonder how the globalised standard improved over the past century

(it was the unions)

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