Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees
cnn.com
cnn.com
The younger have been giving the middle finger to these kind of companies for a while now. Either literally, by proxy, or going elsewhere and/or quit the whole corporate culture altogether and doing "shit" jobs with more flexibility instead (they feel screwed either way, at least they'll do it on their own term)
This 4 days week measure has a realistic chance IMHO, otherwise these gov job will stay the bottom of the barrel in the new generation's perception.
She only sends her a text on Christmas and her birthday, that's the extent of their yearly interaction!
They will prioritize their hobbies over basically anything, including socialization (they can still socialize inside their hobby group, but they might not be "friends" in the traditional way)
I'd see it as the same line of thinking as DINK, except with a single income and no fucks given about romantic relationships. Of course the situation could be different if they were super affluent, but as they have to prioritize they choose what makes them happy regardless of social norms.
In this case, I know my friend's friend talked about constant overtime and not having a life outside of the office.
I sent Mai this video of the crazy day-in-the-life of a salaryman in Japan [1], and we both felt it was crazy, but she said "I actually think he likes it". Some people are cut out for overtime every day but I know I'd go crazy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tmjXp_AYg0
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Unrelated, but I (sort of) wish English had an obviative case. It's hard to give a story about a friend and their friend of the same gender in English without ambiguity, hence why I gave [person 1] a name.
Japan clearly has its own problems, but honour and duty play a significant part in their culture and, admirably, contributes to the creation of a high-trust society.
I'm just someone who is different and western civilization applauds individualism to some extent (except highly religious communities, army, etc).
For people like me such societies are pretty cruel.
Another version of this is, what happens if the younger generation doesn't take the deal -- do they get fired? Keeping them on is a form of reciprocation, even if bleak.
Likewise, is there an implicit deal where when the young get old, they get to work less? If so, it is eventually reciprocated.
I do think it is not reciprocated instantaneously.
It should be unidirectional giving. Give to your children, and save for yourself. Retire to an assisted living facility, don't become a burden. Hope to die as soon as you become a burden. If you decide to die, because you are done living, I firmly believe that you can die.
Paying social security (and saving for retirement) when you are young, and getting (some) coverage when you are old, is one thing. It's "only" money.
Having your time, availability, emotional capacity, mental health sucked dry by the elderly in your own family is an entirely different thing. Raising small children is an extreme challenge that requires all your resources; young and middle-aged Japanese are entirely reasonable not to start families.
I recommend reading this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandwich_generation#Other_chal...
Indeed, and in the past, this would've been offset by everyone around the parents - the old, the young, the other families and the childless aunts and uncles - all chiming in to share the burden. Social security & retiremenet is basically an attempt to give a substitute for that, for the village, but things are getting more and more pathological with each generation.
They all generally depend on the model of there being population growth though in order to keep the burden on the younger generations tolerable.
Most employers, be it private or state ones have 0 issues with this setup. 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway. What is gained is very well worth it, time with parents is crucial in many ways for small kids and if that window is missed you can't make it up later. Catching up with stuff like bureaucracy which is unavailable during weekends is possible only during such time.
Its true that having kids fundamentally changed my view on wealth and how much should I pursue higher paychecks, life is darn short anyway and double that with kids. I am switching to 90% contract from 1.1.2025 - working usual 5 days a week but having altogether 48.5 MDs of paid vacation (90% of 25MDs I had on 100% + 0.5 MD per each week in year, our HR recipe). It feels like being a teacher but on corporate paycheck (and work intensity). Even with 4 mortgages (for 2 properties) and no family to help financially if we hit hardships, this was a nobrainer. Other aspect would be retiring in 60 (max 61), but that's too far down the line to care much about now.
I am looking very much into spending that time on family and myself. One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races. For such benefits alone I don't care about higher paychecks, money only can get you so far in life.
or else, something maybe horribly broken in your country.
I'm happy for you, that you can easily dismiss 15% net income. Try that in Hungary, where generally two full time jobs together are nearly insufficient just to stay afloat.
> One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races
Very true, which is why mental health issues are rampant in the Eastern Bloc.
My family used to believe, adn they still do, that the only reason you'd go to psychiatrist is because you're "weird" and that only crazies who belong in mental hospital go there...
All of a sudden, every Thursday evening felt like the start of vacation!
I remember when in France, the work week went from 39 to 35, that was 35h work week paid 39 - no pay cuts.
Now I get that the economy/job market isn't like it was then, what with all the layoffs to protect shareholder from growth dropping from +9% to only +5% (arbitrary example from one company).
But I am baffled at how quickly employees seem to have internalized the idea that reduced hours require reduced pay before even getting a chance for any negotiations. With all the value that's being produced, we're just accepting that it continue to be unfairly distributed, and that workers see no benefit (or barely) from the increases in productivity.
I'm sorry, if a pay cut is required, or condensed hours are required, it's no social progress, just lip service at best to exploit people more under the guise of flexibility.
I'd prefer having fridays officially off instead of being stuck at my pc not doing much work. If I'm already not working most fridays, why is it such a big deal to just make it official, get paid the same and not have to warm a seat poitnlessly?
Until employers run out of qualified someones willing to work for less, they don’t have much long-term incentive to pay you 25% more than someone else is willing to take for the same job.
And I know only all too well employers will continue even at the point of hiring unqualified someones willing to work for less...
But I'm wondering if there is more at play. Like is the web so full of HR BS that people don't know better? Is the economy really that bad or is it a self fulfilling prophecy because corporate scare tactics work?
And don't get me started on LLMs confidently repeating the same one sided HR BS when you ask anything about work conditions, and then claiming it intends to provide a comprehensive list of unbiased potential solutions to try, conveniently leaving out the last one which should be if all else fails start sending resumes...
Anyway, I'm seeing more unions spin up and more strikes this year, so I guess that gives me a bit of hope at least.
And given a ratio of 80% spending and 20% saving, that Friday can be the difference between living paycheck-to-paycheck and early retirement.
Essentially if you make 5k a month, spend 4k and invest 1k at an 8% ROI from age 25, you'll have:
180k, 570k and 1400k at age 35, 45 and 55 respectively. If you live off of 4% of that, you'll have a passive income of $0.6k, $1.9k and $4.6k respectively at the same ages.
In other words working that relaxed Friday from age 25 and investing the proceeds, will get you to the point that you passively earn the same as you did working Monday through Thursday by age 52 or so, without working again. And that's true for any income, at those same ratios.
For many tech jobs the salaries are so high that you can feasibly get to early retirement in your 30s.
There's a lot to be said about the power of a 3-day weekend though. It's not just that you get an extra day of weekend, you also lose a day of work. Expressed as a ratio, is when it clicked for me: You go from 5:2 to 4:3, or in other words: 2.5 days of work for every 1 day of leisure -> 1.3 days of work for every 1 day of leisure. It's approximately twice as good a ratio. And you really feel it, you feel rested and refreshed.
I'm still doing 5d a week. For me the holy grail is to find a company that does 36h contracts with fulltime pay, where you have a 4 day week every other week. All the benefits of full pay, the occasional relaxed friday, but also two long weekends each month allowing trips, hobbies, projects, rest etc.
35 hour weeks used to be pretty common in a lot of businesses before the overtime rules were watered down.
during my last job search i was thinking exactly the same. id' hapily give up the usual 10-15% pay rise i look for when hopping from one job to another, maybe even consider giving up a 5-15% in order to get a 4-days work week.
I'm not rich by any means, but right now in my life "more money" don't appeal to me that much but more free time certainly does.
I also enjoyed the 9/80 schedule there, nominally 9 hour days with a little flexibility with every other Friday off for everyone.
There's plenty of people who are still financially short after a 40h job.
As a high-earning childless person myself, I'll freely acknowledge that I should have been paying significantly higher taxes in order to benefit my counterparts who did have kids. Although it would be a challenge to do that redistribution in a way that doesn't just get captured by daycare and college.
But I get it, and the idea of kids was scary at one time, but it turns out they're pretty easy all things considered. Lots of talk of "sacrifice" between friends back then but as it turns out you're trading something of little value for something of immense value. But to each their own!
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-... ("64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men.")
They have 2 or 3 kids. They love their kids and love spending time with them. Yet, they still have time for hobbies and side projects. I don't know how they do it
1 friend, 2 kids (8-12), FAANG job, 2nd company on the side with a partner, plays horror games and writes about them.
1 friend, 2 kids (7-11), FANNG job, plays video games with this brother remotely, takes his kids out often and they hang out with this friends (we all love the kids). He's also the cook in the house and has people over often. Goes snowboarding in the window.
1 friend, 3 kids (6-8-10), plays videos games (hobby 1), plays guitar (hobby 2), does photograph (hobby 3), see his picts on facebook all the time of the latest thing he's doing
1 friend, 3 kids (8, 10, 12), makes video games for a job and makes his own at home for hobby. One of this kids is also into making video games which they share.
1 friend, 2 kids, tech job, loves VR, plays VR with kids, writes tech tutorials for blogs as hobby.
I'm not saying "you can do it too", I'm just saying I see example of people that somehow *seem* like they're enjoying visiting friends, playing music, having time for hobbies, and they have kids
Would love to know if they just lucked out. If there's specific things they do. Or if it's just an attitude. Or something else.
They will never forget.
yeah, there are times when I've felt like that, but they're pretty fleeting
at what age did you start a family? I think one of the reasons people should start a family a bit later (early thirties maybe) is so that they have the opportunity to experience/enjoy those things without kids (and not have to wait until the kids are all grown up and then they're in their 50s and it's just not the same as the stuff you can do in your 20s).
My friends who are parents are very much trapped at home, it's actually great for me because if I'm bored I know they're not doing anything are are starving for social contact with another adult. It's hard for parents to not inadvertently isolate themselves.
- The cost (financial, time, stress/health) is incredibly high. When cost of living as one person increases somewhere between notably and substantially faster than wages, it’s hard to justify paying for another person while likely also taking an income cut. You end up with entire classes of people whose careers will struggle to pay for their own life, let alone that of a kid. This is playing out in real time - I personally know people who commute 30-45 minutes by car to make $23/hour (in Canada, in a moderately high CoL city - that’s $16USD). When I was in university, some of my classmates who worked at the Starbucks near campus had coworkers (there were at least two instances of this that I know of) in their 40s with kids who commuted over an hour to make however much money Starbucks managers make, and one had a second job on weekends. It’s not hard to look at that and think, “how is that something you’d want to do to yourself?” - The feeling (perceived or real) that the world is becoming a worse place. 24 hour news and social media don’t help, with either the perception or the actual situation. Why would I want to raise a kid who could be a victim of one of the weekly school shootings? Or who’s going to be left dealing with an even harder life financially/etc? Or who’s going to resent older generations for selfishly wasting the earth’s resources?
It’s generally quite easy when you work in tech with a partner who works in tech to just assume that having kids is an easy choice (I work with people who are like that, who apparently only see the world through rose-tinted glasses, and are shocked someone could even possibly not want to pop out as many babies as possible). But when you look at the level of struggle a significant portion of the population endures, as they become generally more educated and more capable of critical thinking over time, it’s pretty clear why large swaths of people will start thinking “maybe we shouldn’t have kids just for the sake of having kids, especially if we don’t actually want to.”
That’s ignoring of course the general overpopulation and lack of sustainability of the western lifestyle (and the associated impact of having a kid on climate change - pretty much the single worst thing you could do, if you can about that at all). People who are tuned in to those sorts of issues are also more likely to not want kids, either because they don’t want to contribute to the problem, or raise kids who will have to deal with the fallout.
If you’re driven crazy by people having a different viewpoint from your own, you may want to consider reflecting on why you are so deeply entrenched in your beliefs. It is rarely productive.
If we want to get all utilitarian about it, these things might be the most important:
1) Identifying the kids with the highest potential to contribute the most to society, and giving whatever support it takes.
2) Identifying which kids and parents are the most needy, who will benefit the most from support that enables them to have a good life. It’s probably not the average family in a developed country.
If there’s someone who wants to raise my taxes to pay for that stuff, I’ll vote for them.
I'm glad we are finally getting representation on that instead of all these social science studies contorting themselves to come to a child-aspiring default that couples are somehow failing to reach
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/well/family/grandparent-g...
These days, people can choose, and many women are happy to stop after 1 or 2 kids. Going through childbirth is, by many accounts, very difficult and not that much fun. All the pro-natalists (generally men) seem to completely dismiss actual women's feelings on this matter for some reason.
Anyway, when you have a society where a bunch of people aren't having kids, and the ones who are are only having 1-2, sometimes 3, the overall average is going to be well under 2, which isn't enough to maintain the population level.
As I've said many times before in these discussions online, societies need to come up with a new model, because obviously the old one isn't working, and it isn't going to come back.
Those things are given up because parenting-time is up 20-fold from a few generations ago.
From the 1960s back, kids needed parents a few hours a week.
But we reduced kids' roaming area from many sq mi to just their own property. At the same time, we instituted 24/7 adulting. Most of those hours are filled by parents.
Kids have permanently lost daily hours of peer-driven growth - the ones where complex social interactions occurred naturally. Parents are now left with trying to construct artificial environments (leagues, programs) where maybe some of that can occur.
Those efforts eat time and resources. And they're a poor substitute for the vital environments that kids once had for free.
I spent 20x the time parenting that my mom did. For all of that, my kids had little-to-none of my growth opportunities.
I suspect there are no other kids outside because there are few/no desirable places for kids to congregate - places that are safe from moving cars, enforced property laws and adults with poor judgment.
And honestly I agree with the "if you are single you should pay more taxes" as a motivator to either get you to have your own kids or to simply ease the burden of those who are actually making humanity move forward but as a parent I am a bit biased here. It should be a significant amount.
My parents' lives revolved around their children too, and me and my brother are both working abroad at the moment (for work, love and adventure). My dad hasn't invested much in his social life, hobbies or skills, because he had a family. Divorced with kids out of the house and even out of the country, he's lonely.
Meanwhile his childless brothers and sisters have much more active social lives. They're an active part of the family life as well, but it's not the only thing they have going for them.
You don't owe your children much more than food, love and a roof over their head. Sure, you might want to give them the world, but don't listen to anyone telling you that's the expectation - that's a fast track to resentment.
Though I agree that doesn't have to mean conforming to societal expectations of ivy league schools and so forth. Food, love and a roof over your head goes a long way.
To be specific I dislike your framing and use of the word "forced". I do agree though that parents should deeply love and support their kids which is what it sounds like you are trying to say. And in turn, your kids should do the same despite "generational differences".
One can also turn around your moral argument: Your children owe you everything, since they wouldn’t exist at all without you.
I offer that the above is the first truth of parenting.
After I understood it, organizing my priorities became far simpler.
Parenting is service.
As a parent you want to give them everything but you then have to balance that against realities & other priorities. That's part of the training of a good moral character: learning to manage life's limitations & your response to those limitations.
What's the difference? If you don't boost them with all your might, you effectively condemn them to a life of struggle and misery, in today's world. Knowing this, it's gonna be you forcing yourself to give them your all, not society's expectations.
That's not my experience of the world at all. Quite the opposite, in fact: I had a pretty good time when I was coasting by on minimum effort, and I'm having an even better time now that I'm putting in some mild amount of effort.
I have no reason to suspect this will change in the next generation. If anything the falling costs of goods and services everywhere suggests they'll get an even easier ticket.
except that "love" part is a huge bucket that includes pretty much everything that we do for our kids (which is a heck of a lot more than food and shelter)
> expectation
it's not social expectation that drive what we sacrifice for our children; it's our love for our children that does, at least the parents I know (including myself)
Well OK sure I get that that would be good for kids but you're also gonna limit the number of parents if that's the new normal.
- entertaining themselves
- working/providing for themselves
- having to do things that they don’t want to do
- being told no, and dealing with unfulfilled desire
All with balance, I am not proposing that kids are just left to fend for themselves. Caring for your kids materially and emotionally is important, but so is living your own life and making them live theirs.
I may be having kids in the not too distant future, and when I think about how I would parent, I consider 2 families I know who I have seen raise children.
In one, the kids are often denied requests they make for objects they want to own and activities they want to do. The parents drag their kids along to things that they (the parents) want to do, rather than not doing the thing because the kids don’t want to. At family gatherings, their parents expect that they will take care of and entertain themselves, while the parents enjoy time with the other adults.
In the other family, the kids are showered with toys and attention, and their mom goes to great effort to open any door for them that they express interest in. At family gatherings, the parents are always checking on their kids, and indulge every request the kids make of them.
Which family has happier, more capable, and well-adjusted children? Which family has happier parents? The answer to both is the first family.
And past a certain point it's not.
That's a rather simplistic view where your kids don't get ill and are born healthy.
Not to mention many other complications.
While this isn’t strictly impossible, it’s well beyond the reach of most, and so I suspect that this group mostly ends up never having kids.
I find it surprising this is somehow difficult for governments to grok.
We really have done a great disservice to a generation which believes the planet will be dead in a few decades.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/06/young-adults...
Humans can handle storms. We can rebuild homes, change where we settle and live, build with better materials and practises, and improve storm infrastructure and protections.
Yeah, people don't want to raise children in this sort of chaotic, apocalyptic scenario where your town is wiped out by some major, never seen before flash flood event. You rebuild and some new major storms topples it.
In fact, as the temperature rises slightly, fewer people will die due to temperature extremes. This is because at present, many more people die due to exposure to low temperatures than high temperatures.
Not where I live, farmers were having trouble doing their jobs due to the extreme heat this year. In 50 years at current trajectory? More people on earth, likely less food, what will that be like?
The reasoning behind this is even with the best quality of life, many women will have 2 children, but insufficient women will have 3 or more children such that it offsets the number of women who have 0 or 1 child.
Those with zero children really drag the average down, and if it is because partnering with a certain portion of the population is simply not worth it, then government efforts on improving quality of life via work and benefit policies are not going to bump TFR to replacement rate.
Pensions: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Taxes: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Socialized health care: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Rent: Wealth transfer from young to old.
Inflation: Wealth transfer from young to old (who owns the real estate?)
Capitalism: Wealth transfer from young to old (who owns the stocks?)
National debt: Wealth transfer from young to old.
It seems like all different systems at work in industrialized nations has the single goal of extracting all productivity from young workers and giving it to the current generation of elderly. Even the ideologies who on the face are against each other (socialism vs capitalism) both work mainly to reap everything form the young to give to the old.
A significant part of the decrease in fertility rates comes from the sharp decline in teen pregnancy (counted as live births) over the past 30 years.
That's what I mean when I say they should try making life better. Make it so that with kids I can have a house and family vacations and all the other things that my parents had access to. It's logically equivalent to say "life is harder with kids" or "life is easier without kids".
The demographic problems during a decline are only temporary.
If the world had only 1 billion people it would be a lot easier. The whole idea that humanity would go extinct is ridiculous. And humanity is still growing anyway due to the many countries that don't have falling birth rates.
There's always people wanting to have kids. This is just society adjusting itself to the current overpopulation.
I'm not going to idly sit by and let people who have children take my hard earned money from me. If you think increasing taxes on those without children won't cause a massive retaliation by the men who are not able to find female mates to have children with, you are in for a massive surprise.
The people I've seen doing this are also just exhausted, as they've said directly.
It comes down to... the rent is too damn high.
Young people without children willing to spend 1/3 to 1/2 of their total income servicing mortgages or rent drives the cost of living to ridiculous levels. People can't afford child care either by having family live close to high earners to help, or to hire child care. So it's unaffordable. There's nowhere to live for families in high density places (apartment buildings optimize for the highest rent tennants, 1,2 BR single people)
Lots of people want children but can't engineer a life for themselves to have them without moving somewhere really far out and boring or being in the top 5% of earners, or living in squalor despite high incomes.
While some of it may be overbearing parenting due to wanting kids to compete or train for the future, there is also the fact that kids cannot be left alone, and there is no extended family supervision for them, and you are told you cannot let your kids sit in front of a screen all day.
There’s no neighborhood chain of kids ranging from high school to toddler playing with each other, there is no outside time without adult supervision, an adult who is legally liable.
And of course, cars. The environment is optimized for cars, not kids, so kids either sit inside alone or with 1 sibling or they need to be supervised.
Not applicable to every single family, but many.
To give an idea of what it takes to solve a housing shortfall, Sweden successfully embarked on a million-homes program over a decade in the 70s when the population of Sweden was 7 million.
NYC recently just celebrated the passage of a zoning reform that allows at most 80,000 new homes, and the population is 8.2 million.
parenting doesn't have to be like this for the kids to be happy; in fact, it's probably counter-productive in many cases
I have also seen this and in many cases it's pressure for the kids to succeed. Back in the 70s and early 80s you literally just had to not fall off the wagon, and could get a job and be okay. Wanted to go to Stanford, or become a doctor? Sure it would take some work, but completely doable. Want your kid to go to Stanford now if they like? You have to put your kid through a horribly stressful regime that starts in preschool, and even then it's going to be a lottery. Granted you don't need to go to Stanford to be happy but my point being that you want your kids to have opportunities, and getting those opportunities is SO FUCKING HARDER than it was for you as the parent when you were young (and way way harder than your own parents). And so you have to optimize for it, and the earlier you start, the better your chances. It's crushing for the parents and the kids. And the more successful the parents were, the more pressure to give their kids the same opportunities they had.
Won't happen explicitly, The masses are short sighted. Might happen implicitly through a series of co-incidental events but never by design.
Right now, with earned income tax, we do the exact opposite. We punish the people that do things, and reward the rent seekers with tax breaks (1031 exchange/low land value tax rates/senior citizen discounts/etc). The proof is in the pudding, everyone wants to become a rent seeker, and this is what society will look like if that is the case.
They still are seen as a way to increase quality of life but in a more vibey sort of way.
Family didn't offer as much support as it appears. Average kids are working farms rich children are sent away to be raised.
The social bonds of the modern world still exist in the same places as the past. It starts with the church.. so if you crave the social connections you can still go to church to find it.
not sure which "past" you're referring to, but in agricultural societies, more kids was important to survival and quality of life, as you needed hands on the farm; also, the child mortality rate was much higher so you had to have more kids to start with; that was also pre-birth control -- as soon as that was introduced the birth rate started to fall tremendously
Why do poorer people have more kids? Sex is free, birth control and netflix is not
Look at Europe which has significant maternity and paternity leave, subsidized daycare and free college. Lots and lots of support for young parents.
Yet birth rates haven't really budged.
I think it has more to do with the expectation of how much effort to raise a kid has drastically increased.
75 years ago, you'd pump out 5 kids and they'd be independent quite young. By 4-5 years old it was "go find something to do". As long as the kid wasn't failing school, grades didn't matter. If the kid was involved in school sports, they made their own way to events. Parents didn't attend regularly. By the time they were 7-8, they could help with the younger kids.
By the time your kids was a 8-10, it was pretty much "keep em fed and out of trouble".
Today, expectations are way, way higher. Parents worry about what elementary school their kids get into. After school academic and sports activities start super young. Parents want to attend the big events. Then high school and it time to grind. Tutors, SAT prep, college tours, etc, etc. Minimal chores because that would interfere with school and sports.
One kid today is equal to the effort of 3-4 kids 75 years ago.
Financial incentives for giving birth have been around in some countries for decades. In France it's called "prime à la naissance". This is on top of delivery being almost free.
Here are just a few reasons to not have children that may not have to do purely with selfishness. Many of these may not come up in casual conversation. It is easier to look selfish and say you prefer to keep the money and spend it on yourself for fun than going in the details of things like:
- "not wanting to do that to your body" can be more than concerns about appearance. Even if survival rates for mothers is much better, there are still plenty severe injuries and side effects to deal with. Plus among my relatives, I have yet to find a woman who didn't suffer from medical violence during her pregnancy or when giving birth. This wasn't talked about among women until they were pregnant not so long ago, understandably knowing what to expect can make it much less appealing.
- same thing with expectations about what parenting is like. Parents are more open about struggles, or regret. Even if they don't regret their kids a good number I know said if they could go back, though wouldn't have their kids even if they love them. Add to this social pressure to parent a certain way, non parents being quick to judge etc.
- some folks dont want kids because they don't think they can afford it despite having two incomes, or consider that their income would severely drop if one parent has to stop working to care for the kids, making it unaffordable. They want to give the best to their kids, so they delay forever or accept they won't ever be in a good enough place.
- some people wouldn't be good parents and know it. I've talked to enough childfree women, and many felt obliged to have kids but didn't because their own mothers were resentful parents, which resulted in a traumatic childhood.
- some want kids to care for them when they're old but see elders being left to fend for themselves or forgotten in abusive retirement homes - they may decide even with kids there's no guarantee so why bother?
- some maybe tried and couldn't conceive until they found it was too late, or couldn't afford medical assistance, or lost a child during pregnancy and couldn't bear to try again.
- some may not think their genes are something they should pass on, or don't feel the need to pass on their own genes.
- Some may have cared for sibling/cousins/nephews and know they wouldn't make good full time parents but would be ok helping others as part of "the village".
Being a DINK also has disadvantages, like constantly being expected to pick up colleagues workload when they have parenting demands during work hours, not getting nearly as many benefits (at least where i work), feeling like your free time is a free for all for anyone to take outside work because you don't have kids, so it's assumed that you have nothing going on in life. Like, feel free to ask and I can help but you don't have to be so callous about it.
I see it can be hard to have compassion for each other, if each thing the other should just deal with the consequences of their decisions. I read several posts pitching DINKs against parents over income distribution. If anything, it should be all of us parents and non parents against a system that favours a handful of extremely wealthy people.
ps: also let's try to make parent's lives better instead of saying DINK have it too good. Surely we can work to make everyone equally happy instead of making everyone equally miserable...
"Nobody really wants more people except certain religious sects, and that is only because it allows them to use sexuality to control people. Most modern capitalists would favor automation precisely because it takes unreliable people out of the capitalistic equation and makes conversion of real property to wealth and power easier. The only reason why we're hearing about fertility and birth rate in the last few years is because certain religious organizations are scared they're going to end up losing their tax-free status and leveraging current social crises to make sure they stay relevant by any means necessary. I'm betting they have armies of incels ensnared in their fundamentalist ideologies getting tax-free money to shitpost on the various social networks."
I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem.
Anyway I disagree with his premise because COVID-19 did really expose weaknesses in the supply chain and global world order and showed that depending completely on foreign entities can make you non-resilient in the face of disaster. So we do need strong families and all that stuff that's being talked about, it's a real actual need. And I do think making life better for people is the way to go, but we need to fix whatever decided that landlords should be getting most of the non-rich people's money first.
No one is going to commit him over that grandpa, seriously.
As an aside, some religions do teach a duty to be fruitful and multiply. While I don't think capital G "Government" cares who does or doesn't procreate in their country, there are large organized political groups that promote this for strictly ethno-nationalist reasons.
So arrogant.
Someone should have you committed for your personal opinions, which are also wrong, and see how you like it.
By your own suggestion, I think they should start with you.
You sound like a terrible person for him to have in his life & I hope he cuts you out of it.
Not everything, but many more companies will allow for flexible hours for instance, full remote has stayed in many places, and more traditional place usually allow one or two days or remoting every week.
There is a communal sense that growth is basically gone and better conditions are negotiable. Newer companies have been offering better conditions and older companies are having to compete and follow up to some point.
This initiative is following that trend. Schools are facing the same "adapt or get shunned" situation where just nobody wants to be a teacher and family/friends will actively try to stop someone from going there.
So things are changing.
I don't think it's an easy job in most countries, but in Japan in particular the pay is low, hours are long and the expected work load is super heavy as it includes endless meetings, paperwork, watching extracurricular activities often including on weekends, seasonal events etc.
Some still enjoy it as a vocation, but on paper it's just mind crushing.
According to the data below, there's anywhere from 33k to 161k metropolitan employees depending on where you draw the line.
https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/tosei/hodohappyo/press/2024/01...
Sounds like office workers only.
32 hours, 4 days a week seems better to me. But if all you do is take 40 hours and make it 10 hour days I’m not that much happier.
But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.
That extra hour those four days felt torturous, so it meant four days of feeling awful just so I could leave a few hours early on a day in which most people (and myself) already weren't working too hard anyway.
I hated it.
This was at a very low output insurance company, btw, so there often wasn't huge pressure to get things done quickly (new software releases were once a quarter, and IT would complain that two months lead time wasn't enough time to provision a single new server that was a clone of an existing server, as an example of how slow things moved), and the days dragged on way long.
I worked more high pressure startups before where I was often there for 9 or more hours by necessity to meet deadlines that didn't feel so bad.
Many people took the 4x10 but then discovered they couldn't handle 10 hour days every day. Like you said, the last 1-2 hours were so unproductive they might as well have been not working.
So some people didn't even try to work those last 2 hours. They'd sit at their desks and watch things or play games, pretending to work when anyone came in. Kind of ruined it for everyone.
Sounds like you spread Friday across the other days. Still a good deal to me, I'd take some online courses or something I wanted to do anyway in my free time.
Oh, joy. I definitely wouldn't prefer a prison cell with a bed, tv, bookshelf, and privacy. What were those WFH people crying about?
> But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.
This is SOP at my work in Spain. It's fine for me, they're very flexible anyway. And I work from home so much that it doesn't really exhaust me.
But I have been WFH the past six years and at this point I can't really handle going to the office for a full day anymore. Every once in a while I go into the office for something and after 4 hours I'm staring at the clock and itching to leave (even if I have work to do).
I usually duck out after about 6 hours, I say it's to beat the worst of the traffic (which is true, it's still pretty bad, I still have a 60-90 minute commute home), but also just because I feel super antsy by that point.
And my current office isn't terrible (but it's not good either). The one where I had to work 9 hour days that one summer was twice as sterile, with terrible dim flourescent lighting, and it was way too formal.
Agreed. I have to go twice a week officially but I wouldn't know how to cope if I actually did that. I end up going once every two weeks or so and I come late and knock off early. And yeah like you say I'm super drained after it. One time my vision even started flashing when I was in the metro. Now I have to say I'm neurodivergent so these things take a lot out of me.
But the office has changed also. Before the pandemic I used to come 2-3 times a week but I had my own desk, sat beside colleagues who I actually worked with and that understood the thing about IT which is if I have my headphones on I don't want to be interrupted because I'm concentrating on something.
Now we have people from all departments all over the place, like sales and marketing blabbing on the phone. It's very distracting. We have to fight over desks (often people take my booked desk and other people book one and don't show up), I have to carry around my stuff like I'm in playschool. It just feels like it's just a show, it no longer accomplishes anything. It's a very hostile work environment now.
WFH is just so much better. I'm more relaxed, my head is clear, I have more time to chat with others on Teams, and if I need to do something at night I just grab my screen because it's all open anyway. There's much less barriers.
We actually work 9hs here in Argentina (1h is for lunch, although you're probably still at the office and discussing work-related things anyways so...)
Is the common thing in the US to work 9-5 (8hs) with lunch included? Or do you guys just not take lunch?
One fewer day of needing to context-switch would be a major life improvement.
Tasks expand to take up the available time, even if usefulness doesn’t.
I suspect you’d see little loss in cutting down to 32/hr/week, and I suspect it would be more than made up for by the gains of giving people that extra day. So it may be a net positive.
I guess my main concern is that a lot of companies (not speaking about Japan here, just the US) might decide to use four days a week as a way to make people crunch four days thinking that having three days off would make up for that. And things wouldn’t really be any better.
If you took a 4x per week job, you'd usually get a 20% pay reduction; however, many jobs could be compressed to 4 days without any loss in productivity.
but if you've got a project, and you can just put your head down and work, then 10s are really nice.
The biggest issue with 10s is commute time. If you work 10s with an hour+ commute, that's just awful.
Otoh, if you take mass transit, waiting an hour or two may put you into all stop trains which could increase your commute time.
Things improve, jobs take less time to do, so they give us more. But it’s the same number of hours so pay doesn’t go up.
We all get screwed.
It was so much easier since then.
I'd much much rather work 4 x 10 than 5 x 8. Having a whole day without work makes a huge difference. Also, I find myself working 10 hrs a day anyway, so 5 x 10 (or more like 5 x 12).
Most of these four-day workweeks are almost always bullshit, because they insist on keeping the same hours. I hope that's not the case here. Some companies have been experimenting with just slashing a day a week completely and it always increase productivity, retention and happiness.
We've just implemented it for the winter and, while kind of good, the expectation is that you'll just get your work done with no conversation about capacity or differences between employees and departments and workloads.
I've actually said it ... I'd prefer 5 days with hybrid than a 4 day week
Who thought everyone wants a 4 day week? ... I just want the freedom to choose a balanced life and get a job done ... effectively giving the employer a day back!
I feel like we've learned nothing from Covid.
Having ranted that. For those implementing this properly. Kudos.
Source: https://www.jcer.or.jp/english/new-population-projection-how...
Japan has now fewer productive workers per elderly person than most developed countries.
Maybe, over the long run, we could change the expectation that elderly people can't be productive. Perhaps eliminating 20% of the workweek will allow people to maintain careers that are longer? The need to race towards retirement may lessen if we ease the burden of our weekly work schedule.
Having an older population is only a problem if want unskilled labor to remain cheap relative to it's social value. The whole world has seen from America that relying on an immigrant underclass creates too many negative externalities for the price saved, I doubt Japan will copy this plan, they will just bite the bullet, pay more, and then act surprised when NEETs decide to work.
It's less about fear and more about economic realities.
The transition to much lower deficit spending certainly won't be popular and might go catastrophically poorly. I actually think there's a pretty good chance that things will go quite poorly, but there's no reason it has to be so.
Besides basic human nature.
If they are looking at a large aged population (lots of retirement savings) and lots of debt, inflation seems like an obvious solution, right? People not working will take a QoL hit due to their savings being worth less. But that is… what it is, I guess.
Fewer working hands have to support more elderly retirees.
Less spending means less development, less maintenance, things break down and nobody can afford to fix them. Entire towns and villages slowly wither into nothing. It’s a long, slow, grinding, painful process with no other way around it.
And it’s easy to say “maybe that village should disappear” when it’s not your village.
There are solutions other than pleading with people to have more kids.
It's the US government saying "since we are a wealthy nation, we will not let you spend your elderly years destitute."
That's it. That's literally all it is. It was meant to keep grandpa from being a burden on his family when he was too old to work, which in the 1930s meant when you were too old to do actual physical labor.
Since then the American public has seen it as a nice little bonus they get for living past 65 and has started stealing from younger generations in the form of sovereign debt in order to maintain that instead of treating it like the insurance policy it actually is.
The money doesn’t take care of people, people paid by the money do.
I don't know if the same would be true for most people, though (I make significantly more than the average household income -- although probably less than a lot of people here because I'm not making Silicon Valley money -- and I don't have children).
It's an interesting idea worth exploring, but I'm not sure if just switching social security money to retirement accounts would be sufficient.
Administration and making sure people don't dig into them before retirement would potentially be very expensive too (although to be fair, I'm sure Social Security administration costs are very high also).
Are you aware of any studies that analyze such a solution? I imagine there must be something out there.
Otherwise I don't think there's a single unique solution. No having a miserable life is probably a good firth step that enables more advanced and varied measures.
Since there is confusion here, I'll pose this as a different thought experiment to make my points more clear: If it isn't good for the economy to reduce the average hours per worker then does that mean it is good for the economy to increase them? If we reduce the free-time of people then they will have even less time to spend their money and consume goods. Arguably they would also have less incentive to care about free-time activities that they can only, at best, sample.
The basic question I am raising is why is 5 days of 8 hours magically the right number. I'd argue that the more free time people have the more chance to consume they have. We balance that with the need to produce though. So an optimum point is actually driven by efficiency. The more efficient we are the more we should be diverting to free-time in order to drive more demand for the the. efficient goods we are producing. In a world where we are infinitely efficient then 100% of time should be spent in free-time in order to consume the most goods produced by that infinite efficiency. We aren't there yet so we still need to balance production against free-time but we are more efficient than we were 20 years ago so we should be finding ways to give back free-time to drive up demand.
(It’s a fallacy, but I’m too lazy to face the criticism if I explain it in full. In summary, please inform yourself on why both breaking windows and working less don’t create jobs).
Maybe government work is different from private industry work, but the folks at my company worked six days a week, with Saturday being a “half day” (only 8 hours). However, Saturday wasn’t an “official” office day, so casual attire was allowed, and the A/C was often turned off.
I hated going in on Saturdays.
It still seems like an incredibly odd argument to me given that the birth rate is only marginally lower than in the most generous, least working European nations. Hungary spent 5%(!) of its GDP on direct family support and it did very little (raised the birth rate by 0.15 give or take).
I wonder when people will just acknowledge that most of the secular decline of 1-2 children is simply down to personal choice, family planning, education and financial freedom. (and adjust economic policies accordingly)
The problem is that it doesn’t move the needle. At least in Tokyo it’s more or less impossible to not have two working parents and own a house. Outside of Tokyo, you might own a house, but there’s no jobs and everyone around you is 60+
What do you have in mind? My understanding is that this is not something there is much of an economic solution for short of canceling benefits (pensions / medical care)
Not enough discussed is also how much potential for labour saving tech there is. The most 20 common jobs almost haven't changed in decades. Retail, transport, clerks, back office, admin, even without magic "AI" solutions, if we wanted to we could design work around drastically cutting labour already. It's actually one benefit of the demographics, a lot of automation isn't happening because manual labour is cheap in a lot of places, so there's potential for growth even.
When you live in a city, you have more opportunities to do anything else other than having children. Also, Japan’s fertility rate isn’t that much lower than Canadas. They just got to the problem earlier than anyone else, so trying to resolve it with any possible means. The biggest problem still continues though — there’s no real reason or incentive to have more than 2 children, other than “for the good of the society”. And women are less likely to sacrifice bare minimum of 6 years of their lives to give birth to 3 children. Especially when they can do… literally anything else.
Every educated girl friend of mine thinks exactly the same way as well. Some had a child or two, but more than that it’s just a burden to the couple. I’m obviously simplifying things, and once the third child is born, they’re loved and etc. But it’s going to be a very hard sell for anyone.
Do people really think new 4 day roles, if it becomes the norm, will be budgeted same as 5 days? No chance. Have you ever met the upper class types who run the majority of companies...
This is partial redundancy for everyone whitewashed as caring for your employees. It's just not apparent yet
And compressed hours? Employees and employers just lying to themselves as it enables what both sides want
There's so many stories of corporate overwork.
Does the entire country just desperately want to work for the government?
When the US government adopts an employment policy private companies usually follow. Either because they do business with the government and have to comply, or it affects so many people there's a shift in norms.
My employer hired me for 4 tens. I felt like a zombie during the week. I'd much rather have a few extra hours every day than a Friday to myself, especially since I need to go into the office on Friday's occasional anyways. I moved back to 5 8s.
At least for myself, I was raised with the notion that working harder would be recognised and eventually rewarded. That has not turned out to be the case, so I am seeking a rebalance.
The problem is, you can’t let the competitive market to make it happen, as your competition will eat you. The best thing you get is talent retention. But not the shareholder value or the products that you might be manufacturing.
Is scary that big cities never sleeps. People moan about depression, about lack of good sleep, wellbeing. Well, you created shitty environment for yourself...
This is really nice, this was the option that I wanted for my first kid. I would want this from the day they were born though, not just grades 1-3. It helps with breastfeeding scheduling.
I'm just pointing this out because I hear "4 day workweek" talked about a lot, but it's never clear to me if folks mean that everyone is getting those 4 days, including childcare providers or teachers, and if that's actually what folks want. People in this thread talk about getting chores done, but I'm not getting any chores done if I'm taking care of my lil kids, I'm just getting an even messier house. :D
I do think that remote work is great for mothers though, as it makes pumping/nursing more doable, whether we are working or not.
Perhaps the government can provide more subsidies for quality childcare.
It’d be more exciting if this was basically anywhere else, but I guess we have to start somewhere.
Next we need to tackle over growth in other countries.
Alcoholism is a different problem from workaholism.
Also, for government employees only...
Surely your argument isn’t, “at this point, why bother to do anything?”
Surely if the effort exceeds the value of the outcome, then it shouldn't be done?
stopping a career and foregoing 18 years of promotions cost how much?
governments are just mucking about with the garnishings and ignoring the meat of the matter.
but then maybe they cant afford it, either. hah.
I mean technically they have 5 day work weeks now, but Japanese "salarymen" are notorious for working 80 hours weeks. (Though maybe this isn't the case for government workers)
Just getting people down to working 40 hours / week would be a huge improvement in QOL.
I know this is mostly tangential, but I think that this should be the way humanity should benefit from technology. Better technology shouldn't just exist to make capitalists richer, but it should exist to make everyone richer. One of the most important ways you can be richer is to have more time.