In Sweden, Happiness in a Shorter Workday Can’t Overcome the Cost
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The trial was in a retirement home, which is by design somewhere that needs 24x7 cover. This means that any reduction in hours needs to be covered by more staff, obviously necessitating more expense.
What would be far more interesting to me, is a trial on an industry like software development where output isn't measured in number of hours but more in the product created. It would be interesting to see if a reduction in hours negatively or positively affected the quality/quantity of code produced.
Sure everyone can be an engineer, I've seen companies that give a title of "customer services engineer" to their phone banks, but at the end support staff which unless you work at a startup can be as high as 80% of the work force does need to be present for as many hours as possible, even 24/7 in many cases.
> Toyota has been using the shorter workday there for more than a decade.
This is typically lazy American reporting when considering different political systems/paradigms.
If anything is lazy its the idea that poltical view is all that matter.
And that's before factoring in lawsuits.
(I.e. the theory is that people are so much happier with shorter working hours that they come up with the same productivity. However, with a drop from 8 to 6 hours this doesn't really happen, although the productivity does not drop 25 % as it would without any dynamic effects).
The market distinguishes between the users (eg - people using MS Excel or Google search) and the initiators (in this case Microsoft or Google).
Put in another way - would people be as efficient if we remove the tool they are using for the increased technological efficiency?
We may be further from the jobs drying out than we think we are, and humans may have an ability to generate "work" for themselves greater than is generally thought. Among possible explanations anyway, there are surely many more :)
And it hasn't been a massive success, except that employees mostly like it. But the unemployment level is roughly the same 10 % as it was before 2000, and the last time French government did not have budget deficit is still 1974.
Given the benefits of a shorter work week accrue primarily to workers, why do we not advocate for giving them the flexibility to work fewer hours if they want to?
It's harder to make this argument in software, but in shift-based employment this should almost be a no brainer.
In the US at least they already do, but probably not for the reasons you'd expect. US companies only have to pay benefits for employees to work >= 40 hours/week. So 2 employees working 20 hours/week costs less than 1 employee working 40 hours/week. (Of course this is not beneficial to the employees.)
Because it's the only way to keep the ongoing and increasingly shaky fiction that "we need everybody to work" hanging together? Foolish patches on the status quo, like "pay people more for less work", are the only way forward until we adult up and realize that the welfare state is both inevitable and beneficial (even to the self-anointed "makers" so busily hoisting themselves up on their crosses).
Getting past this fiction is only the beginning. Many, many people find meaning in their lives through performing a task that others deem necessary. When nobody is necessary, the economy decouples from the people. We actually have examples of societies that operate like this right now: Eritrea [0] for one. The government of that country has decided it has no real use for most of its people. It makes business deals with foreign resource extraction companies directly. Many people live in abject poverty while the government enriches itself and does little/nothing to help them.
Assuming we do reach a state where we no longer sustain the fiction that we need people to work, the question becomes "How do the unnecessariat [1] justify their own existance to those who control capital?"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea
[1] https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
Going from 5k€ to 4k€ per month after tax is not the same thing as going from 2.5k€ to 2k€...
Monaco is a small rock < 1 sq mile that is a fiscal paradise and a home for billionaires.
I just read a short story called Manna about where U.S. workers were displaced by robots and automation, and the 10% lived in luxury, the rest were put in styrofoam living areas, given meals, but weren't allowed to leave the compound, much like a concentration camp, or prison.
Some people though through inheritance, etc were given 'tickets' to go live in the Australia project, which was where everyone got 1000 credits to spend as they like weekly in a catalog of things like clothes, etc.. They got housing and food provided at no cost. They could do whatever money wasn't really a thing, people worked if they wanted, did scientific research, etc...
This thinking on here that we are doing humanity this huge service by automating all their pesky little maniacal jobs away is insane, and it needs to stop. There is more than one world view out there.
Related, interesting read: https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but...
I am making myself familiar with Mr. James Livingston -- it's an argument that has been made many times before -- that there aren't enough jobs to go around, that the private sector doesn't really create all the jobs, and ends with some form of UBI. I have heard it a thousand times. I still remain unconvinced.
People working less because they do not need to work so long to finance their desires is one way to achieve that.
> What did we come up with all this automation for?
To drive down the cost of goods and services that no longer need a human component.
Because the "standard" work week is an artificial construct that has arbitrary definition. Also because this is a way to bridge the gap between accepting universal income and re-evaluating what is the role and importance of work/job in the society.
Countries can legislate this, but they will not be able to prevent their economies from stagnating like some of the european countries. (Flight of capital, companies moving their workforce to other places etc.)
The only way (as I see it) is if we, as a society accept lesser returns on our investments (via our 401Ks and pension plans) and allow that to be reflected in the compensation and productivity of the workforce. With the increasing life expectancy, even that can turn out to be a problem in the long run, but we cross that bridge when we reach it.....
That doesn't check out.
Either working shorter hours will produce the same result. This is true in knowledge workers etc., being more rested and well-being, and cutting on jabbering in the kitchen, you can produce the same net result easily in 5-6 hours a day instead of being overworked, sitting like a zombie for 10 hours. Then, while you pay the same for shorter hours, there will be no incentive to employ new workers, you pay the same, you get the same results, it is only done in shorter hours and pay-per-hour increased, but you don't need more workforce.
Or working shorter hours will produce less results. This is true in "mechanical" jobs - e.g., car production lines, or in "overwatch" jobs - e.g., power plant control rooms. Then you will need more workers and have no incentive to pay the same for less results and then pay the same for new workers to make up the results. Yes, you can pay the same numerically for less hours (i.e. when forced by law), but now producing a unit of car, flour, bread, delivering a package from e-shop, programming a feature in software system costs more and the currency will be devalued. So you will work less hours, get the same pay (numerically), but for the same number, you will be able to buy less hours from others (whether it is a product or a service).
Qatar has literally brought in masses under indentured servitude to build their workforce.
Not exactly countries with workforce practices that I'd like to see emulated in the USA.
2014-06-03 Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday (washingtonpost.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7838459
2014-07-14 Sweden's Six-Hour Workday Experiment Officially Kicks Off Tomorrow (entrepreneur.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8029162
2015-10-01 Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day (fastcoexist.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10306635
2016-04-22 Gothenburg's six-hour work day experiment hangs in the balance (thelocal.se) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11543538
All in all, the HN posts were not that bad, but in social media - Facebook and Twitter - I saw plenty of overly optimistic, baseless junk spouting the magnificence of how Sweden just went to 6-hour workweek for the nation and productivity gains were so huge. It was actually depressing...
Well, obviously people are happier if they work a shorter day and get the same salary, and the productivity per hour may actually increase somewhat. But it won't reach the productivity of 8 (or 7.5) hours.
Your income is a benefit conferred by the society in which you live, so it makes sense to return part of it to enable that society to exist.
What I'm saying is that the real cost is actually 12.5 hours of work: 10 hours to purchase the item and 2.5 hours to enable a system in which you can purchase the item at all.
If you're not willing to work the extra 2.5 hours, you're actually externalizing (part of) the cost of your perk -- by not paying part of its manufacturing and delivery cost (ie, the portions of those which rely on society).
Arguments against paying taxes while benefitting from societal systems is just arguing you deserve a discount on what you want. Selfish and dishonest accounting.
Im not saying that there aren't examples of excesses or that deductions for charitable giving aren't a good idea. Just that the view there should be no taxes or that it's somehow your money being taken away are both mistaken (and fundamentally rely on the notion you should be allowed to externalize costs).
As to your point:
"the view there should be no taxes"
I think killing puppies is bad. That has about as much relevance to the discussion as your comment does.
Your comment "it's somehow your money being taken away [is] mistaken" is simply specious and illogical. You want my government, which gains money through taxation, to provide for people who don't want to work.
Are you suggesting I wouldn't pay more to support your program that gives money to people who don't want to work?
If you want luxuries, then you have to work for them, and that includes paying the cost of using the systems that enable you to work. You don't get to use systems to earn luxuries and expect others to pay for them.
My position is that we're very wealthy (as a society) and luxuries (or just running up the scoreboard) are pretty motivating, so we don't need to organize society in a fundamentally coercise manner, merely make luxuries more expensive.
The amount of luxury cost increase relative to the amount of coercion and suffering we could alleviate means society is better off.
I would even go so far as to say that we'll end up wealthier as a result, but that's a controversial position.
Cutting your better toilet gets us about a tenth of a percent to this week's goal!
You're not going to have basic income without raising taxes a huge amount. Current tax revenue per year is about $2 trillion, which covers about 2/3 of the current federal budget. If you decided to cut all that spending and spread it equally among the population would be like 6 grand a year, not nearly enough to live on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
US: 596.0B
Target easily reachable.
One answer may be automation, and typically, the excess value is passed on to the customer in the form of lower cost. (That's why we ought to talk about value, even if we can't easily measure it).
One alternative is not to pass on the value to the customer, but to give it to the workers. You could do this by reducing hours, increasing pay, or some combination.
There are two problems with this:
1. You can't do this in an open, market economy. The government could do this with government jobs where they have a monopoly.
2. It is kind of arbitrary that you decide to value this particular worker over this particular consumer.
Another solution is to give everyone a basic income with all the extra value (collected as taxes, roughly equally) that automation generates. So the seller might give a discount to the customer but the rest of the value would go to the state.
Then people can decide how they want to spend it.
Companies be required to offer various plans, at the employees discretion, that have different pay rates. For instance, working 75% of 40 hours might get you 80% of the salary. (with the hope that you are at least a bit more productive during your more limited hours than you would be if doing 40 hours)
Employees shouldn't be discriminated based on which plan they take. They just have to give a couple months notice if they change plans, especially if it is a small company where the impact might be greater.
Benefits is a complication, but personally I'd prefer health insurance etc was just separated from employment. Regardless, if you work less hours, you'd probably have to chip in more toward insurance.
This may still be costly to employers, but if all companies have to do it, it should work out. (sure, there are foreign competitors, but that is a different issue) And this can potentially help with unemployment.
1.5x pay at 30 hours
2x pay at 40 hours