40 working hours per week it's an anachronism. We should have been doing far less hours.
We are in the computing era (plus robotics), not in the 19th century.
We are in the computing era (plus robotics), not in the 19th century.
The median individual is not going to be working less than 40 hours a week. The system has found a balancing point and people will compete with each other for the money, resources and status as much as their sanity can endure it. There is nothing anachronistic about it, because it has been the case long before 19th century and will remain the case long after 19th century.
Today, ~1600 school districts across 24 states in the US are on 4 day weeks to attempt to retain teachers, for example.
https://www.aei.org/research-products/working-paper/world-de...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-18/us-faces-... | https://archive.today/Lyr5t
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-wor...
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26633/w266...
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2025/01/rise-of-4-day-workweek
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
We can do the same for 30 hour working weeks in this century.
But there is. We literally live in the most era time in the entirety of human history.