Destroy The 40-Hour Workweek
frugaling.orgHear hear! One quibble though: it’s not quite true that the market demands this. We, the people, consumers and producers alike, are the market. The market here is constrained to the 40hr work week by a multitude of regulations and assumptions codified into law, affecting everything from full/part time work status to preferential tax treatment to labor laws. Many of these laws are design innocent enough but they happened to be designed in the context of a 40hr work week being paramount. That assumption, now cast in steel, is now inflexible to more modern needs and demands.
Those wishing to change the status quo should seek to end tax treatment of employer provided healthcare, reform of overtime wage rules, reform payroll taxes, and overall placing freelancers, small business and independent contractors on equal footing with W2 labor.
The classic struggle of labor vs employer has been waged entirely within the context of the W2 9-to-5 employment paradigm. That entire war has been fought within the confines of a prison.
I like having more money and stuff.
With money I can buy stuff like homes, cars, and education.
With money I can take vacations (in style).
With money I can buy my way out of trouble.
With money I can afford a macbook pro, even though I don't own one.
If it requires my working 40 hours a week to have all this stuff, I will continue to do so for years to come.
I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not, but after having acquired a lot of that stuff, I can tell you it's highly overrated (maybe not the vacations)
I value my free time more than my money. I can always make more money; I will never have more time than I do now. So up to a point, I will gladly trade money for time.
In any case, unless your work is very low-skilled, it doesn't make any sense for your income to be tightly coupled with the number of hours you work.
What if having all your stuff required working 50 hours a week? 80? 100? At what point does it stop being worthwhile?
I agree with the conclusion, but the author could have chosen much better arguments to support that conclusion than rapid population growth, global warming, and the Koch brothers' political activities.
The issue here is that corporations need to enable a workplace where people can still attain necessary benefits, while working about 35 hours a week.
Well that was a terrible article.
I am trying to work 2-3 days a week to work on open source....