Why work for eight hours a day ?

So where your clothes and shoes, and brandy will come from, genius? You would be consuming three times more than average person who produces the things. And then you will get into trouble, and millons will be spend to save you and heal you. You probably consume more than you produce as it is anyway.

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So a reduction in general working hours means a 100% end to production now does it, genius?

 

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The thing is that the consumption must be supported by the production
The working time comes in through the number and average productivity of the producers and the number and average consumption rate of the consumers.

If you were to reduce working time without raise of the productivity or of the number of producers, you would have to reduce the consumption rate. But there are limits on that - you would not want to go without food, or closing, or police protection, or housing.

So, the actual working time is defined by the balance, not by the wishful thinking that we see here.

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Ahh, I see, you're saying that the unemployed would stay unemployed rather than making up the shortfall in production?

 

The unemployed have a lot of time on their hands - is not that what you want?

To employ a person for real, means to make a person so productive that he/she would be able to produce more than their direct additional consumption, plus additional consumption by the employer to support their work and benefits.

If you think it is an easy proposition - well, you are wrong. Try to employ someone yourself. People do that, although!

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I've employed a few people over the last 10 years of owning\operating a retail business, I do not need to try

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So, you know better than I, that it is not always worthwhile for employ more people, even if you cut the salaries and workhours.
From the whole society point of view it might be an investment, but the 'society' has to make sure that it is a wise investment, not just a feel good crap that shall eventually backfire.

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I'm for a 24 hour work week split in to 3 days. I'm not suggesting thats all people be allowed to work. If a 24Hr week doesn't provide enough money or satisfaction for a person they could take on another job or start their own enterprise.
It is too expensive employing multiple people but that is something that needs to be reduced regardless of how many hours per week mean full-time employment, there is too much red tape!

 

extrasense,

we've invented machines to do the time consuming work.

The only reason the first world works so much is because we live in a surplus society and everybody wants more of everything. This will surely change once the flow of cheap goods from the third world slows and we become less reliant on inefficient sources of energy.

 

You see, your experience is from the low skills/low education business. It would be exceedingly expensive to educate more people than it is done now to the levels needed. We have an acute shortage of qualified applicants as it is now.

You forget that even without red tape the salary would be cut in half. And, the "red tape" mostly is related to taxes and mandated benefits, so you apparently would have to suggest to cut those.

Admit, that the whole utopia you are talking about has really no sense at all

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You do not understand. It appears to you that machines could go faster - but to keep them going, they require high maintenance work force, services, which is expensive. You need a lot of research, development and engineering, a lot of people behind the curtain to keep those machines moving, with just few operators.

So we will have to work even harder to make those goods ourself. As to energy, the sources of energy are becoming more hard to find and less efficient, as the old ones dry out.

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That is a good point. We're also a disposable society, most of our manufactured goods are designed not to last. So of course we keep consuming at predictable rates.

Do you believe everything politicians tell you? You could argue that one till you're blue-in-the-face but I wont believe it. There is always a skills shortage according to the powers that be.

I've said work 3 days instead of 5, so 3 is half of 5 now...

I never claimed it would be utopia.

 

The skilled people shortage is a fact, for example your thinking skills are are not adequate, considering the task you take on here. You simply were fooled by the commie propaganda.

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Au contraire lesser mortal you've proven your lack of cognitive ability by resorting to a personal attack, you lose

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The thing is, that crooked commies use a rule they like instead of sticking to the reality. The idea of arbitrary changing work hours is a lie or/and stupidity - this is a fact and I have proven it. Marx was a crooked idiot and a liar, learn to live with it.

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People would avoid mandatory exercises.. It would probably INCREASE absenteeism. And on top of that.. there are other issues to consider. For example, I have Spina Bifida, are you going to expect me to jump out of my chair and jazzersize? or wave my arms around when my back is in excruciating pain?

I am all for the 20 hour work week. This represents a problem though.. I know I spend a lot more money on my days off than I do working, sure I would manage it if I had more days off, but not everyone has money managing skills... Think about it, I doubt this is just me, but you do more things on your days off, and those things cost money...

Also, what about 24/7 operations? Doctors, Kwik-e-Marts, etc.. If you have a 20 hour work week, you have to hire twice as many people to cover all the hours. Are you going to cut wages in half?

Sure it works in an office setting, where you have specific tasks that need to be completed, but how do you man a desk that always has to have someone behind it?

 

because we dont live in switzerland

 

I've had that idea before, after taking a macroeconomy course. I'm still working on it, but it is not as simple as this. It is not simple to implement and it is not viable if many things are taking into consideration.

 

Why work at all?

The concept that, somewhat, labour is dignified or even noble is one of those things that is used to corral the wild mind.
It’s equal to the sesne of shamefulness associated with going bankrupt, a fast and easy way of wiping away debt and screwing the system in the process, if not for this moral, illusionary stigma.
Not surprising then that Bush rushed to pass that anti-bankruptcy law, while his indifferent, distracted people still wondered about Iraq and its oil and if it is still worth dying for.

You want to see what modern slavery looks like?
Watch an overextended moron, who has lived beyond his means under the influence of cultural normality, the promise of consumerism and peer pressure, scramble to find a way out of the hole he’s dug for himself, only to find that it will only become deeper and deeper until his very life will be owed to the company that seduced him with his own stupidity.

 

That's canibalism.... I mean... "capitalism"....

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