Americans want a four day work week

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Boss Lady works 4x10 and appreciates the three (and sometimes four) day weekends. She pretty much does nothing but sleep, work, and prep for work during those four days, but has no problem with that.

 

[iceaura]

Ah, Reagonomics, everything bad is due to Reagonomics. He served for 8 years, 30 some years ago, he's been dead for nearly that long but his influence is still greater than those guys with stopwatches.

Not everything bad. Just the stuff Reaganomics has governed and controlled since 1982 - the taxation and regulatory policies of the US Federal government, for example. The entire influence of Federal policy on the US economy.

And it's not "his" influence - it's just labeled with his name because he was the President when it took over US Federal policy via the Republican Party. Clearly Reagan himself was largely a figurehead or PR spokesman.

It's not that clear cut obviously. If you are in a business that supports other businesses and you have your employees working 4 days then you have to hire another set of workers to cover Friday.

What's not clear cut about that? If the business is set up to require productivity-lowering work schedules, and cannot be set up otherwise, so be it; productivity is not everything.

If it was really that clear cut it would be happening more often.

It is that clear cut. Your various explanations for why it is no longer recognized and planned around as it used to be (often in tandem with unions, notice) are well taken, but they don't change the bottom line - the businesses afflicted are trapped in a suboptimal equilibrium.

Someone has to oversee, program, repair factory automation equipment. That will pay more than assembly line work because it requires at least a little training. People will be happier in those jobs.

That will be contracted, if current trends continue, and the people from the US doing the work are likely to be refugees from better jobs that have vanished - that being the pool of the trained and educated.
The people I know doing such work now are candidates for burnout - travel, uncertainty, long hours, messed up sleep schedules, and the pay isn't that great. Life in motel rooms. Skyping to see your kids.

Those jobs tend to attract immigrants and imported folks, in consequence - plus, as with anything else that requires training and education in the US, it's cheaper and easier to hire from somebody else's education system. You don't have to pay them enough to retire large student loans, for starters.

btw: the local machine shop I am most familiar with just folds its maintenance and simple programming and oversight duties into the hired CNC machinists's daily routine - anything they can't handle is sent offsite or delegated onsite to an imported temporary contractor. In the serious cases guys are flown in from Sweden, Finland, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France, some US affiliate of the company involved, wherever. If the automation improves enough (long way to go) the machinists themselves will be just loading stock and tools into the robot's trays, pushing the "run" button, and clearing debris.

And the pressure to improve the automation enough to get rid of the skilled employee is large - when they got rid of the unions they got rid of the union training programs; when they cut the taxes they cut the expensive vocational classes at the local high schools; and in the thirty + years since Reagan enabled those changes a generation of skilled machinists got old and retired. Every highway that feeds my town now has a billboard advertising for CNC machinists, big bonuses if they can do setups; but the education of a skilled machinist is not cheap or quick, and the entire burden of cost and time falls on the prospective employee these days - who is faced with accruing large debt and devoting fourteen hour days (because they have to work a day job to pay rent etc) for months or years to a project of uncertain personal worth or payoff.

It's a hole. Reagan's Party dug it, and defends it. The country will have to overcome that Party to dig out.

 

[Seattle]

Not everything bad. Just the stuff Reaganomics has governed and controlled since 1982 - the taxation and regulatory policies of the US Federal government, for example. The entire influence of Federal policy on the US economy.

And it's not "his" influence - it's just labeled with his name because he was the President when it took over US Federal policy via the Republican Party. Clearly Reagan himself was largely a figurehead or PR spokesman.

What's not clear cut about that? If the business is set up to require productivity-lowering work schedules, and cannot be set up otherwise, so be it; productivity is not everything.

It is that clear cut. Your various explanations for why it is no longer recognized and planned around as it used to be (often in tandem with unions, notice) are well taken, but they don't change the bottom line - the businesses afflicted are trapped in a suboptimal equilibrium.

That will be contracted, if current trends continue, and the people from the US doing the work are likely to be refugees from better jobs that have vanished - that being the pool of the trained and educated.
The people I know doing such work now are candidates for burnout - travel, uncertainty, long hours, messed up sleep schedules, and the pay isn't that great. Life in motel rooms. Skyping to see your kids.

Those jobs tend to attract immigrants and imported folks, in consequence - plus, as with anything else that requires training and education in the US, it's cheaper and easier to hire from somebody else's education system. You don't have to pay them enough to retire large student loans, for starters.

btw: the local machine shop I am most familiar with just folds its maintenance and simple programming and oversight duties into the hired CNC machinists's daily routine - anything they can't handle is sent offsite or delegated onsite to an imported temporary contractor. In the serious cases guys are flown in from Sweden, Finland, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France, some US affiliate of the company involved, wherever. If the automation improves enough (long way to go) the machinists themselves will be just loading stock and tools into the robot's trays, pushing the "run" button, and clearing debris.

And the pressure to improve the automation enough to get rid of the skilled employee is large - when they got rid of the unions they got rid of the union training programs; when they cut the taxes they cut the expensive vocational classes at the local high schools; and in the thirty + years since Reagan enabled those changes a generation of skilled machinists got old and retired. Every highway that feeds my town now has a billboard advertising for CNC machinists, big bonuses if they can do setups; but the education of a skilled machinist is not cheap or quick, and the entire burden of cost and time falls on the prospective employee these days - who is faced with accruing large debt and devoting fourteen hour days (because they have to work a day job to pay rent etc) for months or years to a project of uncertain personal worth or payoff.

It's a hole. Reagan's Party dug it, and defends it. The country will have to overcome that Party to dig out.

So what you are saying is that people should have guaranteed jobs waiting for them right out of high school with no training required on their part? It's not hard to take classes at a local community college for 6 months and then get such a job. If they can live at home for 18 year, they can live at home for 18 years and 6 months.

The union isn't the answer to every problem. The sky isn't falling.

 

[RainbowSingularity]

The union isn't the answer to every problem.

your an anti-unionist ?

The sky isn't falling.

6 months.

training to get to the top of the candidate list of how many dozens of applicants with degrees ?

 

[iceaura]

The union isn't the answer to every problem.

Nobody said it was.
It is one of the answers to many of the problems mentioned here - we know that because it did in fact answer those problems in the past.

So what you are saying is that people should have guaranteed jobs waiting for them right out of high school with no training required on their part?

Why do you guys post that kind of garbage? Asking you to deal squarely and honestly with what people actually post is not asking a whole lot.
Meanwhile, the Germans (among others) have set up an "answer" to your bs "question". Check it out.
Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I like that idea anyway. If these corporations were facing the prospect of having to hire the senior class of the local high school at decent wages, they might think twice about muscling tax breaks out of the local community's school funding.

If they can live at home for 18 year, they can live at home for 18 years and 6 months.

They already are. Their full time job(s) doesn't pay enough to rent an apartment. They do work too many hours to allow much in the way of community college, though.

It's not hard to take classes at a local community college for 6 months and then get such a job.

1) Yes it is.
2) Six months won't do it. The average joe needs three to five years of combined schooling and ojt to handle setup in a modern machine shop (look up the former union programs). The unusually talented and focused can take on carefully restricted work of the kind sooner, of course - but that means an attentive and risk-taking employer (a lot of machine shops and other such operations in the US are owned, or go through a period of being owned, by distant financiers who would have trouble operating a vicegrip. Why? Because that's where the money went during the rise of income and wealth inequality in the the US since 1980. That's an illustration of why economies with too much economic inequality stagnate)
3) You are asking unskilled and inexperienced and completely unfamiliar young folks to incur large debts they cannot even escape via honest bankruptcy, on speculation - and assuming they can. That's kind of the opposite of "saving", eh?

In my experience the ones who can are enabled by family equity - somebody cosigns, often a parent putting up their house as collateral (an important element of the currently inflating debt bubble: it's called "student debt", but it's leveraged against general wealth including the remaining and partially recovered housing equity). When the student debt bubble pops, the effects will be economy-wide.

The sky isn't falling.

But the next Republican crash is coming. And so is the bill for AGW, speaking of the sky.

So what exactly is wrong with a four day week, again?

 

[Seattle]

Nobody said it was.
It is one of the answers to many of the problems mentioned here - we know that because it did in fact answer those problems in the past.

Why do you guys post that kind of garbage? Sure, you're ignorant and bigoted and devoted to personal attack and not the brightest bulbs on the tree, but asking you to deal squarely and honestly with what people actually post is not asking a whole lot.

They already are. Their full time job(s) doesn't pay enough to rent an apartment. They do work too many hours to allow much in the way of community college, though.

1) Yes it is.
2) Six months won't do it. The average joe needs three to five years of combined schooling and ojt to handle setup in a modern machine shop (look up the former union programs). The unusually talented and focused can take on carefully restricted work of the kind sooner, of course - but that means an attentive and risk-taking employer (a lot of machine shops and other such operations in the US are owned, or go through a period of being owned, by distant financiers who would have trouble operating a vicegrip. Why? Because that's where the money went during the rise of income and wealth inequality in the the US since 1980. That's an illustration of why economies with too much economic inequality stagnate)
3) You are asking unskilled and inexperienced and completely unfamiliar young folks to incur large debts they cannot even escape via honest bankruptcy, on speculation - and assuming they can. That's kind of the opposite of "saving", eh?

In my experience the ones who can are enabled by family equity - somebody cosigns, often a parent putting up their house as collateral (an important element of the currently inflating debt bubble: it's called "student debt", but it's leveraged against general wealth including the remaining and partially recovered housing equity). When the student debt bubble pops, the effects will be economy-wide.

But the next Republican crash is coming. And so is the bill for AGW, speaking of the sky.

So what exactly is wrong with a four day week, again?

What is wrong with a 3 day week?

 

[iceaura]

What is wrong with a 3 day week?

Lowers productivity, delays the accumulation of expertise, doesn't pay enough, increases turnover, etc.
C'mon - surely you don't really need guys like me to do all your thinking for you.

(In point of fact: three day weeks are common: they are often called "weekend shifts", and many employers as well as employees like them).

 

[cluelusshusbund]

It's not hard to take classes at a local community college for 6 months and then get such a job.

Right as rain... an the proof is in the puddin... cause its only logical that if its easy for some it shoud be easy for any who simply put forth the effort.!!!

I mean... we are all humans wit the same rights... wit very simular backgrounds/opportunities... but for some reason the "unfortunate" among us seem to perfer a pay-check to pay-check life style.!!!

Mayb its ther genes which makes 'em lazy... or have a low iq... or somethin as simple as they have no pride an durther just mooch off of workin tax payers.!!!

 

[RainbowSingularity]

(an important element of the currently inflating debt bubble: it's called "student debt", but it's leveraged against general wealth including the remaining and partially recovered housing equity). When the student debt bubble pops, the effects will be economy-wide.

hide the sausage in the vegan closet

patriarchal predatory boom n bust economics hiding the debt cost to society by loading it covertly on to the young who have no other option and have no ability to reject the dictatorship of national policy and have no voting rights.