I never have enough time to do all the things that I need and want to do. Working 40 hours a week, housework and laundry and grocery shopping and tending to 2 acres, leaves me with little time for recreation. The fact that I only need about 4 hours of sleep a night helps, but it’s not just about me. Darn it.
Anyway, I think there are good reasons to move towards this model. According to this cite Working time - Wikipedia The Netherlands are set to become the first country to have an average of under 21 hours.
One of the arguments against this idea is increased business costs, but I’d like to see health care removed from employment anyway, so if that were to happen, I think that argument goes away. The big corporations are moving to 25 hour weeks to avoid the health care mandate, so I think they’d be okay with this.
Unemployment would be lower. Life satisfaction is greatly improved. Even health is improved, which helps with health care costs too. Win win. Right?
So what would it take to move to this model? What are the arguments against?
Are you suggesting 20 hours, but with the same pay and no medical benefits? Even you mean something different, please explain. If you mean this, show your math, because cutting people’s hours roughly in half for the same pay would blow up most business models.
Well, not quite. I know I’d be willing to take a cut in pay if it meant I could work half as many hours, but I’ll grant that I couldn’t do it for half the pay. But if we could also move to a universal health care type thing, I could accept less. And for the really winning ticket, if we move to a system that pays every citizen a yearly stipend, I could accept even less. But I know that’s asking for a lot.
Maybe we could use some of the money we save on unemployment to supplement small business owners that are negatively affected. I don’t know, I just think it’s worth talking about.
I believe that technological advances are moving us in this direction anyway, so why wait?
Aren’t we as smart as the folks in The Netherlands? They’ve figured it out, haven’t they? Why can’t we?
In order to seriously combat global warming, people are going to have to live much closer to their workplaces, and with less living space. This could solve the 2 acre problem.
Personally, I am one of the lucky ones who likes their job, so 20 hours a week would not be fulfilling.
– Believe that Netherlands housing is concentrated except for farmers. At the edge of a town, you have attached houses on one side of the street, and on the other side, pure farming countryside.
The problem is cultural. I haven’t been to Denmark in awhile, but they are incredibly strict about many aspects of their lives. No one gets to, for instance, push their girlfriend off a cliff. Even the underlying activity (sans attempted homicide) is right out.
And yet we have a culture that, even if you don’t ever want to be near a rope and a cliff we don’t care that some want to be. Let them have their fun and/or grizzly death, right?
The Dutch model works incredibly well for them because they are a very culturally restricted group that heavily endorses a regimented existence.
We have to accept that American culture is different enough that their methods would not work out very well here without some very oppressive reaching into people’s lives.
I heartily endorse the 20-hour work week. I just got myself into one about 4 weeks ago and our family life is just so much more enjoyable it’s not funny. We can live on the lower income - mostly because my husband is still doing the 40-hour stick. But suddenly, we have no need of after-school care, and the chores and errands can get done during the week, so we can actually have fun during the weekends. What a concept!
This country is killing its workers through low paid jobs and the result of having to work ungodly amounts of time at multiple jobs just to support a family. It’s not right and is more akin to a nightmare than a dream. If we had living wages for all, then more families could decide to have at least one person in a part time gig to handle all the other stuff that needs doing in life.
Also - health care should definitely be universal and single payer. I just don’t know how bad it will have to get before people in this country wake up to that obvious fact. Durf.
The problem with this is that there are plenty of people who are fine working 40 hours a week and would rather not have to find a second job, due to the inefficiencies involved with juggling multiple jobs. Like scheduling conflicts, added transportation costs, and stress from one job affecting one’s ability to perform in another. The whole reason I went to school for as long as I did was so I could get away from the shittiness of shift work.
Also, how would this change business hours? Am I going to get off work at 1:00PM, expecting to be able to run various errands, only to find all the stores closed? If so, then this sucks. If not, what’s the point? If a business has to hire more people to cover regular working hours, then that represents a burden to them in the form of training, pay role, and scheduling. And overtime, too.
(Not to mention, there are many projects that already take way too long to finish, and that’s with people working 40+ hours/week on them. I shudder to think how current inefficiencies will be made that much more with everyone leaving in the middle of the day to go windsurfing or whatever else people do when they aren’t at work.)
We should put our efforts into enforcing the 40 hour/week, since so many employers have a hard enough time just with this.
Sorry, there is no way in fucking hell we could survive on $360 a week even if there were no healthcare costs at all. What are you suggesting, that the bank that holds our mortgage would half the payments and remaining balance from the goodness of their stony little hearts? That CL&P would half the energy costs? That the grocery stores would half their costs too?
I don’t know Alessan, I doubt that’s how it should work. I’ll research and see if I can learn how The Netherlands handle that issue.
Monstro, I don’t think it would change business hours, it would just mean two people in place of one. Sort of job sharing. But in order for it to work, the pay can’t be cut in half, so that’s why I suggested that the savings from unemployment might be used to supplement wages for small business.
I would start off by creating time and 1/2 after 32 hours and double time for saturdays. I htink over a period of a few decades we could phase in a 24 hour work week. A lot of disabled and un employed would be back at work. Mothers would be better able to manage their time around school and such.
I would like to see a lot of culural changes that would make this possible. Build furniture and appliances to last longer. Don't keep building bigger and bigger houses. Make society less disposable and more pride in well made things. More leisure time would encourage more creativity in society. Our quality of life would improve drasticaly.
I don’t know if this is inevitable. Maybe it is or maybe we’ll be hit by something like the Black Plague and there will be jobs for anyone that wants one. I don’t know.
I think giving people more leisure time will exacerbate some social problems and reduce others. For good or bad, work keeps people occupied for 8+ hours of the day. They go home tired, sit down in front of a TV, eat some grub, play with the kids, maybe do a couple of house chores, and then it’s beddie bye. Not a whole lot of time to get in trouble, engage in risky behaviors, or think/feel too much. Maybe we’d end up with a larger population because people are out having sex than they normally wouldn’t have.
On the other hand, maybe people would spend that time in productive ways. Like running their own businesses or engaging in creative pursuits. Personally, I think I would go crazy. I’m so accustomed to the 9-to-5 lifestyle that I can’t imagine anything else.
It’s not the worst idea ever, and has some historical precedent. The initial drives towards a five day and 40 hour week came about through ‘share the work’ movements more than 100 years ago.
I’m not saying it’s a good idea, and would likely require a great deal of cultural readjustment in the US, but it’s wrong to say it’s not feasible on the face of it.
Correct. 1400 work hour a year is 27 hours a week if no weeks off for vacation and 29 if they take off 4 weeks a year. And no evidence that it is dropping.
As far as their regulations - max is 60 hours worked in a week, 55 averaging over 4 weeks, and 48 averaging over 16 weeks.
CNN confirms. Average work week there is the shortest of any industrialized nation, but is still 29 hours, not 21. They do have a large population of people working part time hours. GDP per capita there is about $46K compared to almost $52K in the U.S. Still productivity per hour worked, i.e. GDP per hour worked as measured in purchasing power parity, is higher in the U.S. … albeit not by much, and the positions were reversed back in 2005. On a per capita basis, using purchasing power(normalizes for cost of living) the US is (per IMF numbers) at $51704 and the Netherlands $41527. So they work less and have a lower real income. No magic there.
To me the bigger issue isthe degree of income inequality. (Lower is less inequality.) Netherlands’ Gini is middle of the pack at 0.294, the U.S. is 0.378, only above Turkey, Mexico, and Chili (after taxes).
I know people who work 20 hours or less on their jobs. The problem is they have to have two or three jobs to feed, cloth, and provide housing for their family.
