Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay. The bill, over a four-year period, would lowe…
I can see how this appears burdensome to some jobs/areas of employment where productivity is directly related to output such as mechanics, plumbers, veteinarians, or maybe even like food service. It’s probably not an issue with many fields where productivity is achieved more through creativity/ideas/or generating more efficient workflows to save time. I suppose some fields are already at their “maximum efficiency” and will probably just need to raise prices to accommodate.
I’m actually cool with the prices of those sorts of things increasing if I get three day weekends. For one, I’ll have more time to do them myself if I desire, offsetting the cost entirely. Large corporations will hopefully be forced to just eat the loss; sure, companies have no problem kicking up the prices of their services… but I think they’ll find that we won’t be quite as dependant on eating out and buying garbage once we have more time to live our lives. Maybe people can learn to maintain their own cars as a swift “FU” to car manufacturers proce gouging and refusing to produce affordable automobiles for the masses.
Literally addressed this in my original comment. The key is not purchasing their products, which will be enabled by us having more time to do our own stuff. But obviously, it won’t apply to things we can’t replace or reduce the consumption of (gains, electricity, water)
But yeah, if Americans (for example) want to keep eating terrible, unhealthy food at exuberant expense from McDonald’s because they can’t be bothered to figure French fries out themselves, why wouldn’t McDonald’s raise their prices? Haha
which will be enabled by us having more time to do our own stuff
You may be underestimating the laziness of the average consumer. I don’t think people are going to use 1 extra day a week to start refining their own gas, making their own clothes or raising their own cattle.
This is a bad faith response. Of course nobody is going to refine their own gas, since it takes a multi-billion dollar refinery to refine gas. People can definitely do the two things I specifically mentioned, as well as a myriad of other things that I did not mention, which will take load off of the economy, and price gouging power away from the specific industries I mentioned.
And if not, then they can keep paying for overpriced, unhealthy food that they will continue to be price gouged on (which I also already said).
I didn’t explain that very well, but my thinking was that industries such as gas where there is no ‘DIY’ alternative will be immune to these positive effects.
Makes sense. But traveling to the office one day less per week, one day less per week of daycare, and having one more full day per week to do things like food prep will also help cool demand for adjacent markets. Not an expert though, obviously!
True, but keep in mind this is less revenue for the daycare center, less revenue for the coffee shop around the corner from the office, etc. That money doesn’t just go into a void.
I can see how this appears burdensome to some jobs/areas of employment where productivity is directly related to output such as mechanics, plumbers, veteinarians, or maybe even like food service. It’s probably not an issue with many fields where productivity is achieved more through creativity/ideas/or generating more efficient workflows to save time. I suppose some fields are already at their “maximum efficiency” and will probably just need to raise prices to accommodate.
I’m actually cool with the prices of those sorts of things increasing if I get three day weekends. For one, I’ll have more time to do them myself if I desire, offsetting the cost entirely. Large corporations will hopefully be forced to just eat the loss; sure, companies have no problem kicking up the prices of their services… but I think they’ll find that we won’t be quite as dependant on eating out and buying garbage once we have more time to live our lives. Maybe people can learn to maintain their own cars as a swift “FU” to car manufacturers proce gouging and refusing to produce affordable automobiles for the masses.
Just throwing out some thoughts!
They will just increase prices and pass the expense on to the consumer.
Literally addressed this in my original comment. The key is not purchasing their products, which will be enabled by us having more time to do our own stuff. But obviously, it won’t apply to things we can’t replace or reduce the consumption of (gains, electricity, water)
But yeah, if Americans (for example) want to keep eating terrible, unhealthy food at exuberant expense from McDonald’s because they can’t be bothered to figure French fries out themselves, why wouldn’t McDonald’s raise their prices? Haha
You may be underestimating the laziness of the average consumer. I don’t think people are going to use 1 extra day a week to start refining their own gas, making their own clothes or raising their own cattle.
This is a bad faith response. Of course nobody is going to refine their own gas, since it takes a multi-billion dollar refinery to refine gas. People can definitely do the two things I specifically mentioned, as well as a myriad of other things that I did not mention, which will take load off of the economy, and price gouging power away from the specific industries I mentioned.
And if not, then they can keep paying for overpriced, unhealthy food that they will continue to be price gouged on (which I also already said).
I didn’t explain that very well, but my thinking was that industries such as gas where there is no ‘DIY’ alternative will be immune to these positive effects.
Makes sense. But traveling to the office one day less per week, one day less per week of daycare, and having one more full day per week to do things like food prep will also help cool demand for adjacent markets. Not an expert though, obviously!
True, but keep in mind this is less revenue for the daycare center, less revenue for the coffee shop around the corner from the office, etc. That money doesn’t just go into a void.