Cut the working week to 20 horus

[Sheilbh]

Obviously wages would go down, people would be working half as much.

You don't reduce unemployment by cutting work hours, even if you manage to enforce that mandate.

Well that depends.  You can avoid unemployment by doing it.  That's part of the German system and is something that happened here during the immediate financial crisis.

[Viking]

In reality people work according to need and recieve according to ability.

[garbon]

If people earned less, then positional goods like real estate would also go down in value.  Not by the same proportion as the average salary, but it will go down.  High salaries and high cost of living feed off each other and leverage each other to some extent.

That's all well and lovely but it would be a hell of a transition for us all.

[Ideologue]

I'd support some cut.  I'd say 35 hours would be workable with our economy.  Scaled down an hour per year for five years, something like that.

The end of work is not yet upon us.  Though it's surely coming, and we should start changing our social mores and governance to reflect the reality that the human economy is rapidly growing out of its need for human beings--which was, or ought to have been, the goal all along.  Somehow the ideal got lost along the way.

In reality people work according to need and recieve according to ability.

That's very cute, but I think you'll find it's every bit as aspirational as Marx's epigram.

And gabs, you don't really work 40 hours a week already.  You've said so.

[garbon]

And gabs, you don't really work 40 hours a week already.  You've said so.

Depends on the week. Lately, no. But then I'm disgruntled.

[Habbaku]

we should start changing our social mores and governance to reflect the reality that the human economy is rapidly growing out of its need for human beings--which was, or ought to have been, the goal all along.

  This is almost as laughable as the idea in the OP.  Or is your idea of "rapidly" something akin to "within a few more thousand years"?  We are nowhere near growing out of the need for humans to labor, unfortunately, and won't be for some time.

[Viking]

In reality people work according to need and recieve according to ability.

That's very cute, but I think you'll find it's every bit as aspirational as Marx's epigram.

It is cute and it's a descriptive rather than aspirational statement. The main difference is that with mine I aspire to work for my benifit, in Marx's statement I demand that soembody else work for my benifit.

[Ideologue]

we should start changing our social mores and governance to reflect the reality that the human economy is rapidly growing out of its need for human beings--which was, or ought to have been, the goal all along.

  This is almost as laughable as the idea in the OP.  Or is your idea of "rapidly" something akin to "within a few more thousand years"?  We are nowhere near growing out of the need for humans to labor, unfortunately, and won't be for some time.

Some humans will clearly have some place for the foreseeable future, but I don't know on what basis you think most or all humans can meaningfully contribute to an increasingly automated, computer-dominated economy.

I've presented a plausible vision of the future--an economic system which requires only those of the highest skill and aptitude to function, as the need for unskilled and semi-skilled labor in industry and service sectors dwindles.  What's the competing vision?  Do we all work as hobbyists making handcrafted goods, or as migrant farmhands, and earn living wages from doing so?  Is that equally plausible?

[Ideologue]

In reality people work according to need and recieve according to ability.

That's very cute, but I think you'll find it's every bit as aspirational as Marx's epigram.

It is cute and it's a descriptive rather than aspirational statement. The main difference is that with mine I aspire to work for my benifit, in Marx's statement I demand that soembody else work for my benifit.

'Kay.  I meant it's aspirational in the sense that the language in the U.N. Charter or in human rights treaties is aspirational.  It's certainly not how the world appears to work--unless ability simply means "ability to receive income, "at which point it simply becomes tautological.  You receive according to the market.  And anyone who believes the market is a perfect mechanism must've been in a... well, I guess you do spend a lot of time on oil rigs.  Perhaps you haven't heard.

[Berkut]

I recently saw a graph that showed the standard decline in the manufacturing workforce in America since the 50s. Over on the left it is really, high, over on the right, really low. Nothing really new there.

What was interesting was a graph over the same timeframe of US manufacturing output. Now the assumption is that a priamry driver for teh decline in manufacturing jobs in the US is that all that manufacturing left the country for cheaper labor.

Not so much. In fact, manufacturing output in the US has climbed consitently, while the nubmer of people employed has declined tremendously.

I don't know if it is possible to translate all that higher efficiency into fewer hours worked per person. What I do know is that we haven't even tried - exactly the opposite in fact. All that increased efficiency has gone towards increased productivity, lower costs for manufactured goods, and increased salaries and profits for the specialized workers that remain and their bosses.

[Josquius]

I'd support some cut.  I'd say 35 hours would be workable with our economy.  Scaled down an hour per year for five years, something like that.

The end of work is not yet upon us.  Though it's surely coming, and we should start changing our social mores and governance to reflect the reality that the human economy is rapidly growing out of its need for human beings--which was, or ought to have been, the goal all along.  Somehow the ideal got lost along the way.

Agreed.

I recently saw a graph that showed the standard decline in the manufacturing workforce in America since the 50s. Over on the left it is really, high, over on the right, really low. Nothing really new there.

What was interesting was a graph over the same timeframe of US manufacturing output. Now the assumption is that a priamry driver for teh decline in manufacturing jobs in the US is that all that manufacturing left the country for cheaper labor.

Not so much. In fact, manufacturing output in the US has climbed consitently, while the nubmer of people employed has declined tremendously.

Its the same in the UK.
Its quite a common populist chant to moan about how Britain doesn't make anything anymore.
I recall Clarkson for instance once talking about the British car industry and how it used to make so much and employ so many and we should go back to that... Well Britain makes more cars than it ever did in the 70s...but with a fraction of the people. Other industries are similar.

I tell myself off for having thoughts about this being a bad thing. Its the same sort of crap the Luddites pulled and weren't they shown to be anti-progressive and wrong. We really seem to be in a totally different situation these days though, one in which the entire world is capable of being industrialized, when it was just a few countries as factories for the world it worked and kept people in those countries employed. With everyone capable...
The way things are these days is that factories determine how much they need to make then do it. Our production capacity far outstrips our demand.

[Martinus]

Even if you disregard the obvious problems that others have mentioned, this would only work for relatively low-grade, menial jobs, where continuity is not important.

[The Brain]

I don't know which standard work week is ideal.

[Phillip V]

Two people contributing to society, giving their kids a chance in life, etc.... vs a person taking the work of both who doesn't contribute anything more but can afford to stay somewhere nicer when he goes on holiday and has a bigger TV.
I'd prefer option 1. It reduces the profits of their employer slightly but hugely   increases the wellbeing of the country and the individuals involved.

Why is a person "working" zero hours lesser in your eyes?

[MadImmortalMan]

I don't know which standard work week is ideal.

It's not the same for everybody.