I want a way to get where I want to go after 5pm, sure, but reduced working hours means, necessarily, that for a greater portion of the population than is currently the case, that will not be an individual, human-driven conveyance per party seeking transportation, and that's fine.
> 4 Day work weeks, shorter hours - all great ideas but all ideas that either negatively impact the poorest portion of our society.
No, they don't. Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group, which is odd because they are exactly the group (unlike elite workers who are generally exempt) to whom wage and hour laws apply.
> or a shop or restaurant to be open on a public holiday.
Actually, I want far fewer shops and restaurants open on public holidays, of which I would like to see more than currently exist.
> Even universal basic income, which ostensibly would have a positive impact there would still not allow those individuals to work less.
Yes, it will. It would drive up the costs for the wealthier people that would like the things provided by them working as much as they currently do, which would lead to a mix of reductions I working hours and downward movement of wealth, both of which benefit the poorer workers.
> Which is why my challenge is always; first we need to automate out the poorest roles in society (and then give them UBI obviously) before we solve our own lengthy work weeks.
That's backwards. We change the general workweek standards (which aren't, after all, hard limits but when, for non-exempt workers, extra costs for the employer and extra pay for the worker in the form of mandatory overtime compensation kick in), and establish UBI funded by taxes on capital income, and then the resulting pressure on labor costs drives automation, with the increasing pre-tax aggregate returns to capital as labor is minimized in production increasing the UBI funding bucket.
> Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group
I'd qualify it more as; I don't believe these ideas are easy to implement for that group vs. non-service roles.
Now, I am based in the UK so things may vary around the world but I disagree with your assertion about the wage & hours laws.
For example; here we have a maximum working week of 48 hours. This was supposed to help people in the service industry but actually it mostly helps office workers. We have leverage to kill off the crazy hours expected in creative roles. However, service workers have wage pressure to sign waivers to let them work more than the 48 hours (because minimum wage is not a living wage).
These things have to work in tandem to drive up lower-income wealth but they just don't - so I object to other initiatives which don't directly address the problem.
Anything that says "just hire more people" is an unsustainable plan which ignores the economics (most people work in service industry, and mostly in part time roles). The outcome of increasing demand on that industry OR forcing the full time workers to work less is that the part-time workers would need to work more.
> No, I don't.
Great! We all need this attitude.
But I assert the vast majority will still want their 10pm Starbucks, Friday restaurants and Sunday shopping trips (also, it's not a high-wage sacrifice - the majority are also service workers and they also want these things, it's a circular economy!).
Oddly we are probably largely in agreement; I just think we need to be more radical in how we fix this otherwise we will just have another cycle that depresses the lower-income workers opportunities.
> However, service workers have wage pressure to sign waivers to let them work more than the 48 hours
US wage and hour laws are not generally individually waivable, as the entire point of wage and hour laws is to address power imbalance between workers and their employers. When talking about the length of the legal workweek in the US, the discussion is of laws as to when overtime compensation for non-exempt employees is required, the added cost creates pressure on employers to limit excess working hours of non-exempt employees.
If UK wage and hour laws are waivable the way you suggest, that suggests a fundamental problem with the structure of the law which renders any discussion of fine tuning their coverage irrelevant.
Interesting point; but I think the US laws have similar effect in different ways.
For example; the overtime laws just create incentive to work more than 40 hours a week. On average US workers work much more than other OECD countries.
No, I don't.
I want a way to get where I want to go after 5pm, sure, but reduced working hours means, necessarily, that for a greater portion of the population than is currently the case, that will not be an individual, human-driven conveyance per party seeking transportation, and that's fine.
> 4 Day work weeks, shorter hours - all great ideas but all ideas that either negatively impact the poorest portion of our society.
No, they don't. Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group, which is odd because they are exactly the group (unlike elite workers who are generally exempt) to whom wage and hour laws apply.
> or a shop or restaurant to be open on a public holiday.
Actually, I want far fewer shops and restaurants open on public holidays, of which I would like to see more than currently exist.
> Even universal basic income, which ostensibly would have a positive impact there would still not allow those individuals to work less.
Yes, it will. It would drive up the costs for the wealthier people that would like the things provided by them working as much as they currently do, which would lead to a mix of reductions I working hours and downward movement of wealth, both of which benefit the poorer workers.
> Which is why my challenge is always; first we need to automate out the poorest roles in society (and then give them UBI obviously) before we solve our own lengthy work weeks.
That's backwards. We change the general workweek standards (which aren't, after all, hard limits but when, for non-exempt workers, extra costs for the employer and extra pay for the worker in the form of mandatory overtime compensation kick in), and establish UBI funded by taxes on capital income, and then the resulting pressure on labor costs drives automation, with the increasing pre-tax aggregate returns to capital as labor is minimized in production increasing the UBI funding bucket.