While I have not put much thought into this topic, I recently stumbled across a blog post (https://www.bytesizestory.com/post/cut-the-hours-cut-the-stress) talking about the benefits that have been seen in the data across many countries with the four day work week. New Zealand is one in particular that has seen “productivity increase and life satisfaction increase”. Before I give my take, let me say that the literature on this topic is very strong in favor of this proposal of a shorter work week (at least from what I have seen so far).
I always found it funny that people are surprised and ecstatic when productivity increases after cutting the hours of work in a week. If your boss at a company you work for gave you a weeks worth of work and you had a one day work week, what do you think would happen? Your productivity would skyrocket because you need to finish your work or else you won’t be working there for too much longer. So does that mean we should advocate for a one day work week? Would life satisfaction go up then?
Let me point out an opinion that seems to be declining in our era today…work is good for human beings. The first benefit of work is that it allows us to be more social both within our community and our individual social groups. The idea of a strong social life leading to well being and happiness is rock solid in that the evidence backs it clearly. Another thing, lots of people actually enjoy their work and rely on it for their happiness so adding on another free day, in which their overall pay most likely goes down, will not be an easy pill to swallow.
The last points I will bring about involve other issues that are intertwined with this idea. When developing arguments myself, I love to connect them with other issues because I think we have a tendency to think too unilaterally when ideas are thrown out. For example, what will happen to the idea of wage inequality when this issue takes place? Personally, wage inequality does exist yes, however I do not believe it is as large as some people claim especially if you look at how many hours CEO’s work and the hard work they put in to build that company. However, if this four day work week does go through I believe the people who seek more equality will point to this policy change and see that it lead to even more inequality. What do you all think?
This is a very interesting topic and I look forward to hearing all your perspectives because I always love a good, old fashioned online debate!
the-curious.org 