20 Hour Work Week

[opebo]

Also, you ignore fixed time costs involved in working. Or the costs in education and training involved in having to keep multiple staff. Then you have informational costs involved in having to coordinate people. And, finally, human capital loss that follows from working too little.

But all of your arguments militate for a 60 or 80 hour work week just as much as they do for not decreasing it from 40 to 20, Gustaf.  Why not increase it?  (and of course we have in practice been increasing it ruthlessly since the advent of the neo-liberal era).

[opebo]

Eh...no. There is also fatigue that sets in if the week is too long as well as a simple decrease in marginal utility from leisure which makes it less worthwhile for people to give up another 10 hours of leisure if they are already having preciously little of it.

So it is merely a matter of preference and degree.  I find that for myself, 20 hours is the maximum I can toil without experiencing the sufferings of the damned, and given the profound and pervasive dissatisfaction in modern society, and the near universal hatred of 'ones job' (not to mention many a pop song which idealizes and longs for 'the weekend'), I can way with confidence that I am not alone in abhorring the 40 hour week.

All of the above is why my first post said there was a reason we have a 40 hour week. It is the week that strikes the roughly correct balance between these different effects.

Perhaps, but only for the purpose of maximizing the amount of production which can be extracted from the worker (a dubious purpose to say the least, and one which serves only the interests of the empowered, namely the owner, and, after all, completely neglects the equally important demand side of the economic equation).

And, of course, I do not want the week to be a certain length. I want people to decide on the market how much they want to work, instead of forcing them to abide by some arbitrary rule set by you.

Obviously the 'choice' you imagine is unrealistic - they must work however long the employer forces them to work for the subsistence level wage.  The only way for powerless people  (workers) to alter their working week would be through political change which removes some of the power from their employers and relocates it to the worker.

Nothing about my proposal 'forces' workers to do anything - it would merely abolish the current system, which forces workers in most jobs to work at least 40 hours.

[opebo]

And you seem to have no idea how real work-life functions. People aren't forced to do much of anything (excepting people like prostitutes of course).

Everyone must toil or starve to death, Gustaf, except for the rich.

I'm still unclear on where the resources come from in this society. You want half as much to be produced and yet expect demand to sky-rocket? How will that work exactly?

Its called a good economy, Gustaf.  I understand at your age you've never seen real economic growth, but I can tell you it once existed, back in the seventies.

[opebo]

By the way, some folks on here are espousing socialist/communist ideas. My questions to them:
 
When did you last visit a DMV?

I've visited them here in Thailand within the last year, and at the USA within the last three years.  In both cases I received prompt, brisk, friendly service.
 

How about a public toilet?
Do you think public toilets are better than the private toilet you access on a daily basis?

Buddy, I thank the good lord for public toilets every day!  What do I care if they are slightly less clean than my toilet at home? (in fact in my case it is probably the converse as I've never cleaned a toilet and don't intend to start now)  The point is when you need to go, there they are - the public toilets.  And if you have even a hint of IBS, as I believe I may, such edifices are manna, however pooey.

Do you really want most everything to be publicly owned with politicians and bureaucrats in charge?

Heck yes!  Politicians and bureaucrats are infinitely more responsive when you're broke than are the capitalists.

[opebo]

...humans are irrational

If we can be sure of nothing else, we can be sure of this, Politico..  though in fairness the 99% in our society who are slaves are operating under severe conditioning and in ignorance, which makes rationality generally beyond them (even aside from the fact that they don't have the power to do the rational thing - kill the rich - even if they were fully sentient).

[opebo]

...I can't respect that, even if it's done for that abominable word that I won't repeat.

Pussy?

To Politico - the point isn't whether or not 'socialism works', the point is that capitalism doesn't work as evidenced by our current depression.  (and even if it did there is no reason for most people to accept it).

For myself I've always proposed moderate Keynesian solutions, however much more satisfying and appealing simply slaughtering the oppressors would be.

[opebo]

My God, but there's a lot of Fail in this thread. Not had a chance to read through the rest of the recent developments 'till now. Lord.

It's an Opebo thread on economics - it's to be expected, is it not?

You find it a 'failure' to suggest that some other amount of working hours per week than 40 might be preferrable as a political choice or policy?  My goodness but you are a bit dogmatic!

[opebo]

You win. Now can we get back to the original point of the thread? I feel like we have destroyed this thread.

Or perhaps the thread destroyed you.  Get back to work!