is there any actual research to support this? I'm always wary of arbitrary numbers being mandated by the federal government. Seems like the result would be like the healthcare bill, just more people forced to work multiple part-time jobs
[1] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ ("From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation").
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-t...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-... ("The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks")
The "sin" is more shared, sure. Big industry can get a lot done with new people, and thus small bussines soaks up the freed up labor just enough to keep people busy and suffering, but not so much that the labor market is tight. Small business also has a lot of power in shitty FTP democracy like ours, when big industry can't be as geographically wide spread without loosing efficiency.
By taking out the small bussiness with rising "minimal productivity", we force there to be a UBI because it's the only way the big industry can have customer's. That however in turn means big business not hiring people no longer creates the same desperation for jobs. This means that big business must have better working conditions too.
Going after yachts, alone, is stupid virtue signalling which doesn't fix the injustice that is the labor market. No one gives a fuck if Bezos's life is more boring is that neighbor asshole owning the McDonald's franchise can still bully his burger flippers.
> highly overpaid higher-ups
is close. CEO's payment and personal consumption that allows is a symptom, not cause.
I don't think people should "go after yachts" or that the labor market is unjust. People are as free as ever to choose where to work. Saying otherwise is simply a lie. And the government, especially the progressives who, on the whole have never run a single business between them, shouldn't tell people how to run their businesses.
Lets continue to raise the productivity floor so if you can't figure out how to make your business efficient, you fail.
Right now, we have some efficient large business, and a bunch of sad pathetic small businesses that thrive on cheap labor. The more efficient the big industry get, the more you little exurb car dealership or coffee shop can exploit people that have few other options.
These small business are receiving a huge handout in cheap labor, and it sickens me. We must depend dependency culture where any chucklefuck that bought a house a few decades can run a reverse mortgage and start a little service company, having broke has potential employees clamoring to sign up. This ingrates don't deserve the cheap labor or home appreciation and need to learn to work for living.
There, hows your rhetoric sound right back at you?
Yes, at the bottom end, from people already with multiple employers, the benefit will be indirect.
Reasons to think 36 hours could be reasonable:
- We've had a 40 hour work week since 1940; since then productivity has gone up by 6x, but for most of recent history labor has not shared in the gains from productivity growth.
- Other developed countries have adopted a 35 hour work week with success and are even considering 32 hours now.
- Automation is displacing many jobs; shortening the work week to reduce the supply of labor comparably makes sense.
- Alternative schedules of 9x4 or alternating 4 & 5 day workweeks of 8 hours a day make a lot of sense and would reduce stress on transport infrastructure and free up commuting time, too.
If productivity is sublinear, that's an even better argument for shortening the week. If you reduce hours worked by x% and production is reduced by much less than x%, that's great for society too. I mean, what's our objective-- chaining people to the workplace or getting things done?
Many jobs requiring coverage / a person to be present will still make the "reduced supply" argument true.
Maybe companies would then be forced to eliminate what is commonly called "bullshit jobs" and invest in process optimization. There is so much potential for trimming fat in processes, it's incredible - for example in large companies, sometimes five to six people are involved in reimbursing a 5$ expense: the employee who bought a thing, the team lead, department VP, the data entry person in accounting, the accounting team lead and the person responsible for paying out money/cutting checks. Altogether, that simple 5$ expense burned half an hour of time (or, depending how horrid the processes and tools are, anything to two hours).
If the labor cost of all these people would make such processual time waste inexplicably expensive, maybe companies would be forced to give the team leads a budget for small scale expenses and implement a fully digital process.
Or your average "daily scrum meeting": no matter the company, everyone sans the boss who wants "progress reports" to show to superiors (again, see my take above on "bullshit jobs"...) loathes it, even if it's "only" fifteen minutes. No I don't care what the fuck you are working on, if you want help for a problem or are stuck somewhere post it in the Teams channel, now leave me the fuck alone to drink my coffee in peace. A team of eight people wasting 15 min each work day is 10 working hours a week.
Or inadequate equipment: thankfully I have been at places that issued top notch equipment for the majority of my career, but I began in the public sector in sysops - and my private laptop had double or thrice the CPU and RAM power that the ages old desktop office machine. The amount of time wasted waiting for compiles or even loading Office... jesus.
Or inadequate tooling: just how many corporate processes are built on slow, complex Excel datasheetsm slow 1970s-ish mainframe UIs or require manual copying of data between applications is mind-boggling.
On the contrary, today's automation is half-assed machine learning bullshit for shits and is giggles, because there is not enough labor shortage to make the boring stuff (more kiosks, more trains, etc.) a good investment.
Cheap labor is the cause of automatino and undermines the capitalist drive for automation. The only way to us programmers to meaningfully contribute to society outside of stupid moon shots is to continuously reduce the supply of labor so their is demand for efficiency --- honest demand that isn't predicated on the tech in question being "cool".
We have plenty of kiosks, self-checkout, automated fulfillment and logistics, etc happening. We also have plenty of higher skilled jobs having portions automated. Productivity is way up in the last 50 years, and that's through automation and mechanization.
> Cheap labor is the cause of automatino and undermines the capitalist drive for automation.
Honestly, I cannot figure out what you're saying, between the pronouns, typos, and jumbled sentences.
> We have plenty of kiosks, self-checkout, automated fulfillment and logistics, etc happening. We also have plenty of higher skilled jobs having portions automated. Productivity is way up in the last 50 years, and that's through automation and mechanization.
We have indeed accumulated tons of this stuff over that time, and that's good! But the more labor id frees up, the less incentive it is to continue down that route.
Like, why buy another kiosk, if there is a gazillion people clamoring to be your cashier?
The only way to keep constant the financial incentive for further automation is to keep labor markets tight, which we either do by bumping up demand, or reducing labor supply.
My point is a lot of people talking about a "jobs apocalypse" seem to assume the technology will just happen no matter what, but that's not true. Stuff gets stuck in the research phase if it's not profitable to develop. The supply of "potential automation" doesn't create it's own demand for actually deployed automation and this is even worse, because the resulting stagnation obscures the root problem.
https://4dayweek.io/blog/benefits-of-a-4-day-work-week-the-p...
The point is under capitalism technology is prevented from reducing human labor. The more stuff is automated, the cheaper labor becomes, and there is no reason to further reduce the use of labor --- instead we get innovation that replaces more expensive machine with cheaper machines or the like.
Furthermore, the only time workers get more power is some sort of labor shortage, but if that is due to high demand there still isn't a reason to work less --- if anything, work a lot to save up for the next down term.
The is no way for the system to endogenously shrink the work-week, so it must be endogenously imposed.
I would prefer other things, but UBI is simple enough that I think it could work.
EVERYWHERE online, people are complaining about the epidemic of houselessness. it sucks for everyone.
For the businesses that have to deal with the people our society has abandoned. For the people being forced to live on the streets.
At this point we have a choice. Give the unhoused access to subsidized healthcare and housing, or accept the permanent shanty-towns like we live in a 3rd world country.
This works the problem from both ends: it supports employment and wages by reducing the supply of labor, and it still betters the situation for those who are most negatively impacted by shortened work weeks.
Until we replace all social programs with something better, less corrupt, UBI will never work
UBI is very great. The real risk is not inflation, but not enough stuff or any of that other bullshit. The real of UBI is that the work ends up being distrusted highly unevenly, as we birfurcate into poor by not destitute happy do-nothings and rich happy workaholics, and the sometime later the latter group decides to cut off the gravy to the former.
(Sure that is a long ways off, and that's why UBI is a fine first step on it's own)
Shortening the work week forces the work to be more evenly distributed, which might bumb out people in the short term if they already had UBI, but is best for the long term.