In the wake of the Great Recession, my full-time education job was reduced to .8. I was given the choice to work reduced hours every day or take a full day off. I chose to take Mondays off, and it was life-changing. The pay cut necessitated difficult changes, but the additional day to take care of the business of our lives woke me up to how unreasonable and unmanageable my job had become. I eventually went back to full-time work, but I was not the same full-time worker I had previously been. Our current wealth imbalance affects all work, not just for-profit industries. The only thing that trickles down is hardship for those expected to do more and more for less.
Where I live in northern thailand with my family in my wife’s village, people generally only work for two hours a day. They live well. Simply, but well. They value family, food and leisure. We all could live this way if we remembered how to live in community and with land. It’s not a pipe dream. I live this way now and have for ten years (I write about it on my substack). We have forgotten how to do this so we don’t know what to do but there is a very very different way to live. Life can be much more easy and enjoyable.
Joshua, thank you for this! The 4-day work week and a $20 minimum wage is too little, too late. They successfully stalled long enough to make these seemingly 'amazing' changes obsolete.
Thanks for these insights. There was a book that I read back in the 2010s about living slower (the title escapes me). It named several corporations in the U.S. that used to have a four-day work week, and recounted that the effects on both the workers and the corporations were overwhelmingly positive and beneficial. If I come across the title, I'll re-post.
Agreed that "...to change the world we need more time. We need time to organize, to learn, to teach, and simply to be with one another." However from my experiences after decades in the workplace and this culture, we only want to be with certain types of people....our people. In order to get to the level of organization we need in order to circumvent the outrageous price-gouging of rents and everyday costs of living (I will not call it inflation when it's simply greed), we are going to have to interact closely with people we normally think of as "those people." We would have to be willing to cut back on things that we think of as rightfully ours to have...our personal space, our things, our "believies". And that's a very tall order right now for people in the U.S.
When I was in highschool we were told the 4-day workweek was just around the corner. That was the mid 70s, such optimistic times! Let us hope this time is the charm 🤞🍀
An excellent post. Sadly we cannot have a grown up conversation about work, not in the US, not in the UK, because frankly, our politicians are not grown ups. Plenty of companies are trialling the four-day week and they are not going back to five days. Why would you?
I may be a dummy, but there's something fundamental that I can't seem to grok. According to Economics 101, the free market should fix situations like an owner not willing to give up profit. In that case, someone else should come around, open a bunch of new fast food restaurants, take a smaller profit, this way being able to sell burgers for a lower price and/or use better ingredients and/or pay higher salaries and therefore hire the best workers, and ultimately take all the customers. But it's not only what we're taught in school, it also seems to make perfect sense. Yet, in the real world things don't really work this way. Why? Why do we keep having to fall back to politicians passing policies (so instead of owner's money greed, we're now subjected to politician's power greed)? Is it really impossible to "fix" the market, or to invent some other kind of decentralized, self-regulatory system that actually works?
Also, how much of capitalism's problems are actually problems with the free markets and competition, as opposed to being related to a _lack_ of competition? I mean, ownership is actually kind of the opposite of competition: as soon as you own something, you no longer have to compete for it, you are now free to abuse it, or let it rot, or whatever. (And no, I don't think state ownership would be the solution, that's even worse, by a huge margin. Something like the Harberger tax though...)
"the working class deserves all we create" -- well, no, I think this is not strictly true. Investors / owners do indeed risk part of their wealth in launching these companies, and getting _some_ compensation for that is fair. We don't actually want them to stop doing that, we want to incentivize them to do more. But yeah, the proportions are way messed up these days. And (apart from monopolies) I don't see why the market is so unable to fix that.
'We’ve been taught that all this worker empowerment and “having a better life” stuff is unrealistic, but somehow 10 guys having as much money as four billion people is realistic and reasonable'.
So true. The amount of -I'm going to say it- gaslighting is disgusting, and every day more of us are disillusioned. Yet capitalism doesn't stop for anyone so we don't ever stop going to work. It's a well oiled machine.
..an all-important topic to keep on discussing and working towards. Along with the issue of productivity and lagging wages, the related issue of inequality and uneven distribution of wealth in society needs constant attention and action, in my view
...an all-important topic to keep on discussing and working towards. Along with the issue of productivity and lagging wages, the related issue of inequality and uneven distribution of wealth in society needs constant attention and action, in my view
In the wake of the Great Recession, my full-time education job was reduced to .8. I was given the choice to work reduced hours every day or take a full day off. I chose to take Mondays off, and it was life-changing. The pay cut necessitated difficult changes, but the additional day to take care of the business of our lives woke me up to how unreasonable and unmanageable my job had become. I eventually went back to full-time work, but I was not the same full-time worker I had previously been. Our current wealth imbalance affects all work, not just for-profit industries. The only thing that trickles down is hardship for those expected to do more and more for less.
A shorter work week is better for workers, better for families, better for communities, and better for the Earth.
https://www.jphilll.com/p/a-four-day-workweek-is-more-than/
@newmeans
Where I live in northern thailand with my family in my wife’s village, people generally only work for two hours a day. They live well. Simply, but well. They value family, food and leisure. We all could live this way if we remembered how to live in community and with land. It’s not a pipe dream. I live this way now and have for ten years (I write about it on my substack). We have forgotten how to do this so we don’t know what to do but there is a very very different way to live. Life can be much more easy and enjoyable.
Joshua, thank you for this! The 4-day work week and a $20 minimum wage is too little, too late. They successfully stalled long enough to make these seemingly 'amazing' changes obsolete.
With the increase in productivity from advances in technology it’s about time we demanded a 32 hour work week and overtime for anything more.
Thanks for these insights. There was a book that I read back in the 2010s about living slower (the title escapes me). It named several corporations in the U.S. that used to have a four-day work week, and recounted that the effects on both the workers and the corporations were overwhelmingly positive and beneficial. If I come across the title, I'll re-post.
Agreed that "...to change the world we need more time. We need time to organize, to learn, to teach, and simply to be with one another." However from my experiences after decades in the workplace and this culture, we only want to be with certain types of people....our people. In order to get to the level of organization we need in order to circumvent the outrageous price-gouging of rents and everyday costs of living (I will not call it inflation when it's simply greed), we are going to have to interact closely with people we normally think of as "those people." We would have to be willing to cut back on things that we think of as rightfully ours to have...our personal space, our things, our "believies". And that's a very tall order right now for people in the U.S.
Every Friday I think about how we shouldn’t be working on Fridays. Two days to recoup, after working five days straight, is just not enough.
When I was in highschool we were told the 4-day workweek was just around the corner. That was the mid 70s, such optimistic times! Let us hope this time is the charm 🤞🍀
If folks are interested in getting involved, join us at workfour.org, where we’re fighting to make the four day workweek happen in the US
An excellent post. Sadly we cannot have a grown up conversation about work, not in the US, not in the UK, because frankly, our politicians are not grown ups. Plenty of companies are trialling the four-day week and they are not going back to five days. Why would you?
I’ve been waiting for this since the 90s. Hurry up world, catch up.
The four-day, 32-hour, less-than-full-time-with-benefits work week. Corporations will love it.
I may be a dummy, but there's something fundamental that I can't seem to grok. According to Economics 101, the free market should fix situations like an owner not willing to give up profit. In that case, someone else should come around, open a bunch of new fast food restaurants, take a smaller profit, this way being able to sell burgers for a lower price and/or use better ingredients and/or pay higher salaries and therefore hire the best workers, and ultimately take all the customers. But it's not only what we're taught in school, it also seems to make perfect sense. Yet, in the real world things don't really work this way. Why? Why do we keep having to fall back to politicians passing policies (so instead of owner's money greed, we're now subjected to politician's power greed)? Is it really impossible to "fix" the market, or to invent some other kind of decentralized, self-regulatory system that actually works?
Also, how much of capitalism's problems are actually problems with the free markets and competition, as opposed to being related to a _lack_ of competition? I mean, ownership is actually kind of the opposite of competition: as soon as you own something, you no longer have to compete for it, you are now free to abuse it, or let it rot, or whatever. (And no, I don't think state ownership would be the solution, that's even worse, by a huge margin. Something like the Harberger tax though...)
"the working class deserves all we create" -- well, no, I think this is not strictly true. Investors / owners do indeed risk part of their wealth in launching these companies, and getting _some_ compensation for that is fair. We don't actually want them to stop doing that, we want to incentivize them to do more. But yeah, the proportions are way messed up these days. And (apart from monopolies) I don't see why the market is so unable to fix that.
'We’ve been taught that all this worker empowerment and “having a better life” stuff is unrealistic, but somehow 10 guys having as much money as four billion people is realistic and reasonable'.
So true. The amount of -I'm going to say it- gaslighting is disgusting, and every day more of us are disillusioned. Yet capitalism doesn't stop for anyone so we don't ever stop going to work. It's a well oiled machine.
..an all-important topic to keep on discussing and working towards. Along with the issue of productivity and lagging wages, the related issue of inequality and uneven distribution of wealth in society needs constant attention and action, in my view
...an all-important topic to keep on discussing and working towards. Along with the issue of productivity and lagging wages, the related issue of inequality and uneven distribution of wealth in society needs constant attention and action, in my view