There's always going to be a competitor who is willing to work 5 hours.
"In the short term, what's not to like? But there comes a point when you realize that you've been funding this on credit, that you've been depending on external assistance, and that your productivity has fallen further and further behind until you've got to the stage that we've now reached where it takes 4 Germans to work the same hours as 3 Americans. And that in the long term that is just not sustainable. Europe now that it's in a globalized economy competing against China and India and indeed North America, finds that it is shrinking precipitously. In the 1970s, in 1974, Europe accounted for 36%, or Western Europe, for 36% of World GDP. Today it's 25%, 10 years from now it will be 15%. That is an extraordinary decline, over a period when the US share of world GDP has remained pretty steady, round about 26%. So there was always going to be a reckoning and I'm afraid that reckoning has come now." Daniel Hannan https://youtu.be/Ufyov9RO8I0?t=648
I've seen plenty of coworkers trading Facebook or whatever, and people chit-chat all the time. Well, not everybody of course, but for example, my own morning routine involves visiting the coworkers at their desks to check on their work and coordinate, and that includes some friendly banter, of course.
The Germans aren't particularly indebted, certainly not as much as the US or UK.
Daniel Hannan has a deeply Eurosceptic view which colours his thinking on everything.
The answer is very simple: Benefits, overtime, breaks, and other bits of labor law are written around an eight-hour day. This coerces employers and employees alike into preferring eight hours over seven or nine, simply as a matter of optimizing the business's need to pay out overtime with the employee's need to secure FTE benefits.
If there were such a thing as a 20hr work week in law, not defined as part-time with no benefits, but defined as part-time with partial or full benefits, then I imagine that everybody's tune would change quite quickly and we would end up multimodal, with one peak at four hrs/day and another at eight hrs/day.
Were that the case, there'd be such an effect now. Businesses don't seem to be driving 9-hour days. Some lawyers, doctors, and others do work that much, I will grant you that. But they're clearly the exception because they also make good money, had to work hard to become accredited, and generally clearly chose that kind of lifestyle rather than being forced into it.
Sure, you could now claim 8 hours just happens to be the economic equilibrium. But then I invite you to reread this article.
> That doesn't seem to hold back the businesses working 8 hours though.
I'd much rather whip out two 16-hour days than waste all week accomplishing the same tasks.
Then again, their last point about hunter-gatherers isn't very convincing, since our needs have dramatically changed in the last couple hundred years.
Basically people adjust really quick to the new baseline.
On the other hand, you're right if you mean workers abroad would be willing to work longer hours for less pay --be they overseas outsourced workers or otherwise.
But, internally, at least, it could be made illegal to get over the competitive aspect out of the picture.
Great, and as long as they will work 5 hours, and I will work 4, I know I will have the fresher, better ideas in the long run.