That sounds....huge. I know many working couples where one would probably take that in a heartbeat. You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge, not to mention clocking out early each day to be able to pick up your kid and not have to get back to work or whatever.
I kind of doubt this will be adopted practically in Japan. The old people get time off and leave work early in Japan by privilege and the young break themselves and any rule they need to permit it. The young would even lie about taking time off to make the boss look good, even taking less pay to sell the lie. Who can have kids when you already have to change everyone's diaper.
That was largely true 10 to 20 years ago and is still true in some pockets of society.
The younger have been giving the middle finger to these kind of companies for a while now. Either literally, by proxy, or going elsewhere and/or quit the whole corporate culture altogether and doing "shit" jobs with more flexibility instead (they feel screwed either way, at least they'll do it on their own term)
This 4 days week measure has a realistic chance IMHO, otherwise these gov job will stay the bottom of the barrel in the new generation's perception.
Not sure about rest of the world, but here in Switzerland mothers often take Wednesdays off - first years of school its not on Wednesdays, and then it starts with just mornings. Wife has it and she repeatedly claimed that she will never go back to 5 days workweek.
Most employers, be it private or state ones have 0 issues with this setup. 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway. What is gained is very well worth it, time with parents is crucial in many ways for small kids and if that window is missed you can't make it up later. Catching up with stuff like bureaucracy which is unavailable during weekends is possible only during such time.
Its true that having kids fundamentally changed my view on wealth and how much should I pursue higher paychecks, life is darn short anyway and double that with kids. I am switching to 90% contract from 1.1.2025 - working usual 5 days a week but having altogether 48.5 MDs of paid vacation (90% of 25MDs I had on 100% + 0.5 MD per each week in year, our HR recipe). It feels like being a teacher but on corporate paycheck (and work intensity). Even with 4 mortgages (for 2 properties) and no family to help financially if we hit hardships, this was a nobrainer. Other aspect would be retiring in 60 (max 61), but that's too far down the line to care much about now.
I am looking very much into spending that time on family and myself. One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races. For such benefits alone I don't care about higher paychecks, money only can get you so far in life.
> 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway
or else, something maybe horribly broken in your country.
I'm happy for you, that you can easily dismiss 15% net income. Try that in Hungary, where generally two full time jobs together are nearly insufficient just to stay afloat.
> One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races
Very true, which is why mental health issues are rampant in the Eastern Bloc.
Prior to retirement, I cut back to 32 hrs/week at 80% pay (well, closer to 85% because I kept my full health). I backfilled the pay cut by beginning a small 401k withdrawl.
All of a sudden, every Thursday evening felt like the start of vacation!
The issue is in corporate jobs (including tech) Friday is a very relaxed day. If you are working a shorter week than everyone else, you end up doing the same amount of work in less time for less money.
I remember when in France, the work week went from 39 to 35, that was 35h work week paid 39 - no pay cuts.
Now I get that the economy/job market isn't like it was then, what with all the layoffs to protect shareholder from growth dropping from +9% to only +5% (arbitrary example from one company).
But I am baffled at how quickly employees seem to have internalized the idea that reduced hours require reduced pay before even getting a chance for any negotiations. With all the value that's being produced, we're just accepting that it continue to be unfairly distributed, and that workers see no benefit (or barely) from the increases in productivity.
I'm sorry, if a pay cut is required, or condensed hours are required, it's no social progress, just lip service at best to exploit people
more under the guise of flexibility.
I'd prefer having fridays officially off instead of being stuck at my pc not doing much work. If I'm already not working most fridays, why is it such a big deal to just make it official, get paid the same and not have to warm a seat poitnlessly?
Agreed, the Friday is essentially the day with the highest pay:effort ratio. It's a 20% salary for relatively little effort.
And given a ratio of 80% spending and 20% saving, that Friday can be the difference between living paycheck-to-paycheck and early retirement.
Essentially if you make 5k a month, spend 4k and invest 1k at an 8% ROI from age 25, you'll have:
180k, 570k and 1400k at age 35, 45 and 55 respectively. If you live off of 4% of that, you'll have a passive income of $0.6k, $1.9k and $4.6k respectively at the same ages.
In other words working that relaxed Friday from age 25 and investing the proceeds, will get you to the point that you passively earn the same as you did working Monday through Thursday by age 52 or so, without working again. And that's true for any income, at those same ratios.
For many tech jobs the salaries are so high that you can feasibly get to early retirement in your 30s.
There's a lot to be said about the power of a 3-day weekend though. It's not just that you get an extra day of weekend, you also lose a day of work. Expressed as a ratio, is when it clicked for me:
You go from 5:2 to 4:3, or in other words:
2.5 days of work for every 1 day of leisure -> 1.3 days of work for every 1 day of leisure. It's approximately twice as good a ratio. And you really feel it, you feel rested and refreshed.
I'm still doing 5d a week. For me the holy grail is to find a company that does 36h contracts with fulltime pay, where you have a 4 day week every other week. All the benefits of full pay, the occasional relaxed friday, but also two long weekends each month allowing trips, hobbies, projects, rest etc.
My experience, especially post-COVID, is that meetings on Friday are discouraged and nobody blinks at noon departures. Etc. Not quite a four-day work week but came pretty close for a lot of folks.
I did this a few years ago at a company I was a partner in. We had a busy season where folks did overtime. The expectation for salaried employees was a 4-day, 35 hour week, but during that 3-4 week period, it may surge more.
35 hour weeks used to be pretty common in a lot of businesses before the overtime rules were watered down.
I worked out a 9hr/4 days week with my current company, I get more work done in those 36 hours than I did in the 40 hours before because I’m more relaxed after a long weekend and considerably happier
> You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge
during my last job search i was thinking exactly the same. id' hapily give up the usual 10-15% pay rise i look for when hopping from one job to another, maybe even consider giving up a 5-15% in order to get a 4-days work week.
I'm not rich by any means, but right now in my life "more money" don't appeal to me that much but more free time certainly does.
A long time ago when I was an intern at a defense contractor my boss was a woman who had worked her whole career 30 hours a week and was very happy about it, kept it up even when her kids were graduating high school.
I also enjoyed the 9/80 schedule there, nominally 9 hour days with a little flexibility with every other Friday off for everyone.
Too many people in the US are living paycheck to paycheck on hourly wages, many with two people in the household working full-time. This is becoming normal. A 4-day workweek will hurt them.
I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people.
It's actually that life is too good for childless people, especially when they're wealthier. Take a DINK couple with high paying jobs, say an engineer and an attorney. Without kids they can have a nice house or condo, regularly take great vacations, and still be saving enough to have the option of retiring in their 40s or 50s. But with kids, that mostly goes out the window. The societal expectation is that you should spend basically all your disposable time and income on your children, which means expensive daycare, travel sports (gotta start working on the college applications in grade school), and private schools (or "good" "public" schools gated by living in a super-expensive area). And even if you can avoid all that, colleges are very good at figuring out how much money you have and declaring that to be the tuition.
As a high-earning childless person myself, I'll freely acknowledge that I should have been paying significantly higher taxes in order to benefit my counterparts who did have kids. Although it would be a challenge to do that redistribution in a way that doesn't just get captured by daycare and college.
I enjoyed the DINK life for some time but eventually we decided to start a family and my only regret in life is we didn't start it sooner and have more kids. In the end all the fancy restaurants, nights out, fancy vacations with first class airfare, etc were nice in some ways but pretty vapid and unimportant when looking back. I won't value those years very much compared to the years with children in the house. The energy kids bring into a home and the meaningfulness of their existence is just incomparable in my experience.
But I get it, and the idea of kids was scary at one time, but it turns out they're pretty easy all things considered. Lots of talk of "sacrifice" between friends back then but as it turns out you're trading something of little value for something of immense value. But to each their own!
The government does already give significant subsidies to parents. Direct tax credits and public schooling (aka free childcare) are two big ones. I’m not arguing that parents come out ahead economically or that the subsidies are bad (many argue they should be higher). Just pointing it out, if it helps with the guilt about your taxes.
If we want to get all utilitarian about it, these things might be the most important:
1) Identifying the kids with the highest potential to contribute the most to society, and giving whatever support it takes.
2) Identifying which kids and parents are the most needy, who will benefit the most from support that enables them to have a good life. It’s probably not the average family in a developed country.
If there’s someone who wants to raise my taxes to pay for that stuff, I’ll vote for them.
It was actually just last month that I saw one of these falling birthrate articles actually acknowledge that many people just don't want kids, it was in the NY Times too
I'm glad we are finally getting representation on that instead of all these social science studies contorting themselves to come to a child-aspiring default that couples are somehow failing to reach
I agree with this as the main factor (over cost) for the falling birth rate. The opportunity cost of having children has never been higher: you give up leisure, hobbies, rest, social life, and income. Whether or not children is worth this cost is a personal thing, but it seems kinda obvious that as the cost increases, fewer will pay it.
I entirely agree. And when you lather on the tidal wave of endless "entertainment" and options available to most people they end up framing everything in their minds as "having fun" vs "having kids". I also know many women who say they don't want to "do that to their bodies" so ... where is this all going.
And honestly I agree with the "if you are single you should pay more taxes" as a motivator to either get you to have your own kids or to simply ease the burden of those who are actually making humanity move forward but as a parent I am a bit biased here. It should be a significant amount.
Great in the short term, really crappy and lonely in the long term. Couples like this get to enjoy themselves in themselves in their 30s, 40s, and 50s while their friends and families are investing in their children and grandchildren, and then then the DINKs retire and find that they don't have anyone around to spend time with. The friend's lives and social groups revolve around their children and grandchildren, and they don't have all that much in common with the childless couple that's in their 60s. Then they still have 20-30 years of life expectancy if the loneliness doesn't kill them first.
I'll gladly volunteer to be the first to say "Fuck those societal expectations, that's insane."
You don't owe your children much more than food, love and a roof over their head. Sure, you might want to give them the world, but don't listen to anyone telling you that's the expectation - that's a fast track to resentment.
There’s also some number of couples whose ideal is “no compromises” — that is, they hope to both provide the best for their kids and keep the nice house, vacations, comfortable retirement, etc.
While this isn’t strictly impossible, it’s well beyond the reach of most, and so I suspect that this group mostly ends up never having kids.
Many young people I know see nothing being done about climate change and make their choice right there. These are also smart, educated well-off types. The level of suffering we can expect isn't something they want to introduce children into.
I find it surprising this is somehow difficult for governments to grok.
Excellent comment. All the evidences suggests to me that removing Social Security/Medicare and other wealth transfers from young to old are actually the only thing that might incentivize sufficient people to have sufficient kids to meet replacement TFR AND raise the kids into the type of adults you want.
The reasoning behind this is even with the best quality of life, many women will have 2 children, but insufficient women will have 3 or more children such that it offsets the number of women who have 0 or 1 child.
Those with zero children really drag the average down, and if it is because partnering with a certain portion of the population is simply not worth it, then government efforts on improving quality of life via work and benefit policies are not going to bump TFR to replacement rate.
That's what I mean when I say they should try making life better. Make it so that with kids I can have a house and family vacations and all the other things that my parents had access to. It's logically equivalent to say "life is harder with kids" or "life is easier without kids".
If you survey couples people say it's the money. There's no need to invent a whole narrative. People just say it's money (and stuff downstream of money like not being able to afford bigger housing to have a second kid rather than just one)
I’m skeptical that most daycare spending is driven by prestige-seeking or social pressure. Some undoubtedly is but the “standard” options are crazy expensive.
Don't feel bad. It's good for the planet and society to reduce the population somewhat. It can't keep growing forever. All the major problems we have are a result of it. Climate change, housing shortage, resource conflicts etc.
The demographic problems during a decline are only temporary.
If the world had only 1 billion people it would be a lot easier. The whole idea that humanity would go extinct is ridiculous. And humanity is still growing anyway due to the many countries that don't have falling birth rates.
There's always people wanting to have kids. This is just society adjusting itself to the current overpopulation.
> It's actually that life is too good for childless people
I'm not going to idly sit by and let people who have children take my hard earned money from me. If you think increasing taxes on those without children won't cause a massive retaliation by the men who are not able to find female mates to have children with, you are in for a massive surprise.
The parents I've seen seem to spend every waking second doting on their children for at least a decade, which seems strange to me. This hovering "what can I do to satisfy your desires" literally just constantly (I've also seen people doing this with their dogs). Maybe I'm missing something or my sample size is skewed.
The people I've seen doing this are also just exhausted, as they've said directly.
It comes down to... the rent is too damn high.
Young people without children willing to spend 1/3 to 1/2 of their total income servicing mortgages or rent drives the cost of living to ridiculous levels. People can't afford child care either by having family live close to high earners to help, or to hire child care. So it's unaffordable. There's nowhere to live for families in high density places (apartment buildings optimize for the highest rent tennants, 1,2 BR single people)
Lots of people want children but can't engineer a life for themselves to have them without moving somewhere really far out and boring or being in the top 5% of earners, or living in squalor despite high incomes.
It's not really a problem you can pick around at the edges. You have to take some big swings to try to resolve it. Politicians, businesses, and the entire voting public, need to take a hard look at the real things they can do that will have an actual effect. 4-day workweek is a big one.
Quality of life was terrible, but some things were still easier. Most importantly, that terrible quality of life was cheap enough that your kids could probably support you in your old age. Medical care wasn't so advanced, which is cheaper, but also means you had a good chance of dying younger or of a condition we could cure today. Housing was cheaper but also worse back then. Investments weren't accessible to the vast majority of people and "retirement" as a concept didn't really exist for the lower classes except as an idea that you would probably be too old to effectively do your job someday.
Nowadays, your kids probably can't afford to support you into your old age, and you probably don't have a pension, which means making more money now so that you don't have to work until you die. You have a lot more options for a higher quality of life, but they tend to require that you prioritize money over a family unless you are either in the privileged position of being able to afford both or poor enough that it doesn't matter.
Was it more terrible? You certainly had more organic social connections and family support. Physically tougher than a modern white collar job? Sure. Better than commuting and working for some shitty boss though!
> In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue.
not sure which "past" you're referring to, but in agricultural societies, more kids was important to survival and quality of life, as you needed hands on the farm; also, the child mortality rate was much higher so you had to have more kids to start with; that was also pre-birth control -- as soon as that was introduced the birth rate started to fall tremendously
People didn’t have a choice back then. So the two options now are: “force people to have kids” or “make life better for people so they want kids”. I’d like to think we’ve evolved enough as a society to choose the later option.
I'm skeptical that falling birth rates have much to do with the demands of a dual working household.
Look at Europe which has significant maternity and paternity leave, subsidized daycare and free college. Lots and lots of support for young parents.
Yet birth rates haven't really budged.
I think it has more to do with the expectation of how much effort to raise a kid has drastically increased.
75 years ago, you'd pump out 5 kids and they'd be independent quite young. By 4-5 years old it was "go find something to do". As long as the kid wasn't failing school, grades didn't matter. If the kid was involved in school sports, they made their own way to events. Parents didn't attend regularly. By the time they were 7-8, they could help with the younger kids.
By the time your kids was a 8-10, it was pretty much "keep em fed and out of trouble".
Today, expectations are way, way higher. Parents worry about what elementary school their kids get into. After school academic and sports activities start super young. Parents want to attend the big events. Then high school and it time to grind. Tutors, SAT prep, college tours, etc, etc. Minimal chores because that would interfere with school and sports.
One kid today is equal to the effort of 3-4 kids 75 years ago.
> first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people
Financial incentives for giving birth have been around in some countries for decades. In France it's called "prime à la naissance". This is on top of delivery being almost free.
So many comments just focus on DINK being selfish but there are good reasons to not have children and I agree there needs to be better incentives, and barriers removed too.
Here are just a few reasons to not have children that may not have to do purely with selfishness. Many of these may not come up in casual conversation. It is easier to look selfish and say you prefer to keep the money and spend it on yourself for fun than going in the details of things like:
- "not wanting to do that to your body" can be more than concerns about appearance. Even if survival rates for mothers is much better, there are still plenty severe injuries and side effects to deal with. Plus among my relatives, I have yet to find a woman who didn't suffer from medical violence during her pregnancy or when giving birth. This wasn't talked about among women until they were pregnant not so long ago, understandably knowing what to expect can make it much less appealing.
- same thing with expectations about what parenting is like. Parents are more open about struggles, or regret. Even if they don't regret their kids a good number I know said if they could go back, though wouldn't have their kids even if they love them. Add to this social pressure to parent a certain way, non parents being quick to judge etc.
- some folks dont want kids because they don't think they can afford it despite having two incomes, or consider that their income would severely drop if one parent has to stop working to care for the kids, making it unaffordable. They want to give the best to their kids, so they delay forever or accept they won't ever be in a good enough place.
- some people wouldn't be good parents and know it. I've talked to enough childfree women, and many felt obliged to have kids but didn't because their own mothers were resentful parents, which resulted in a traumatic childhood.
- some want kids to care for them when they're old but see elders being left to fend for themselves or forgotten in abusive retirement homes - they may decide even with kids there's no guarantee so why bother?
- some maybe tried and couldn't conceive until they found it was too late, or couldn't afford medical assistance, or lost a child during pregnancy and couldn't bear to try again.
- some may not think their genes are something they should pass on, or don't feel the need to pass on their own genes.
- Some may have cared for sibling/cousins/nephews and know they wouldn't make good full time parents but would be ok helping others as part of "the village".
Being a DINK also has disadvantages, like constantly being expected to pick up colleagues workload when they have parenting demands during work hours, not getting nearly as many benefits (at least where i work), feeling like your free time is a free for all for anyone to take outside work because you don't have kids, so it's assumed that you have nothing going on in life. Like, feel free to ask and I can help but you don't have to be so callous about it.
I see it can be hard to have compassion for each other, if each thing the other should just deal with the consequences of their decisions. I read several posts pitching DINKs against parents over income distribution. If anything, it should be all of us parents and non parents against a system that favours a handful of extremely wealthy people.
ps: also let's try to make parent's lives better instead of saying DINK have it too good. Surely we can work to make everyone equally happy instead of making everyone equally miserable...
I had an interesting discussion with my nephew about this post. He angers me with the way he talks about stuff, but I consider it an exercise in mental fortitude. Allow me to share his absolutely crazy and unreasonable thoughts on this:
"Nobody really wants more people except certain religious sects, and that is only because it allows them to use sexuality to control people. Most modern capitalists would favor automation precisely because it takes unreliable people out of the capitalistic equation and makes conversion of real property to wealth and power easier. The only reason why we're hearing about fertility and birth rate in the last few years is because certain religious organizations are scared they're going to end up losing their tax-free status and leveraging current social crises to make sure they stay relevant by any means necessary. I'm betting they have armies of incels ensnared in their fundamentalist ideologies getting tax-free money to shitpost on the various social networks."
I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem.
Anyway I disagree with his premise because COVID-19 did really expose weaknesses in the supply chain and global world order and showed that depending completely on foreign entities can make you non-resilient in the face of disaster. So we do need strong families and all that stuff that's being talked about, it's a real actual need. And I do think making life better for people is the way to go, but we need to fix whatever decided that landlords should be getting most of the non-rich people's money first.
Your over-reaction sounds far more reminiscent of mental illness or drug abuse than any of his actual opinions, which are fairly pedestrian in 2024 (for the record I don't agree with them).
No one is going to commit him over that grandpa, seriously.
You might should read up on postmodern philosophy before you serve up your relative to the system, for deviating from your "one true narrative of history".
So arrogant.
Someone should have you committed for your personal opinions, which are also wrong, and see how you like it.
>>I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem.
You sound like a terrible person for him to have in his life & I hope he cuts you out of it.
For context, while Japan has a reputation of a shitty place for work culture, a lot has changed.
Not everything, but many more companies will allow for flexible hours for instance, full remote has stayed in many places, and more traditional place usually allow one or two days or remoting every week.
There is a communal sense that growth is basically gone and better conditions are negotiable. Newer companies have been offering better conditions and older companies are having to compete and follow up to some point.
This initiative is following that trend. Schools are facing the same "adapt or get shunned" situation where just nobody wants to be a teacher and family/friends will actively try to stop someone from going there.
I don't think it's an easy job in most countries, but in Japan in particular the pay is low, hours are long and the expected work load is super heavy as it includes endless meetings, paperwork, watching extracurricular activities often including on weekends, seasonal events etc.
Some still enjoy it as a vocation, but on paper it's just mind crushing.
One year a company did mandatory 'half-day Fridays' during the summer where the company closed after a half day on Friday.
But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.
That extra hour those four days felt torturous, so it meant four days of feeling awful just so I could leave a few hours early on a day in which most people (and myself) already weren't working too hard anyway.
I hated it.
This was at a very low output insurance company, btw, so there often wasn't huge pressure to get things done quickly (new software releases were once a quarter, and IT would complain that two months lead time wasn't enough time to provision a single new server that was a clone of an existing server, as an example of how slow things moved), and the days dragged on way long.
I worked more high pressure startups before where I was often there for 9 or more hours by necessity to meet deadlines that didn't feel so bad.
I had a job that offered your choice of 4x10 or 5x8.
Many people took the 4x10 but then discovered they couldn't handle 10 hour days every day. Like you said, the last 1-2 hours were so unproductive they might as well have been not working.
So some people didn't even try to work those last 2 hours. They'd sit at their desks and watch things or play games, pretending to work when anyone came in. Kind of ruined it for everyone.
I had a similar experience. I worked for a place where if you worked 48 minutes more per day, you'd get every 2nd Friday off. This was a unionized place that was pretty strict about not working extra hours due to overtime rules. After being hired, I didn't partake in this but had pretty short workdays. I would start at 8:30 and then leave at 4. It was great. However, pretty much everyone in the company did the system to get the 2nd Friday off. So I tried switching to that and I felt the same. It just felt so much longer.
> But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.
We actually work 9hs here in Argentina (1h is for lunch, although you're probably still at the office and discussing work-related things anyways so...)
Is the common thing in the US to work 9-5 (8hs) with lunch included? Or do you guys just not take lunch?
I always saw half time Fridays as just as bad as Fridays as a full work day. Now you’re just kinda making fun of workers with that. If I’m already doing the commute and the shower and the crap I have to do in the morning what’s the point?Might as well get some real work in and do a full day
It's Japan, so they alread have 10 if not 12 hour days, a lot of which isn't work in any sense. Cutting day out of the week also means removing the near-obligatory after-work 'socialising'.
I’d still likely take the option, I just think it’s unnecessary. Productivity is ridiculously up since the 8 hour day was established, even since just two decades ago.
Tasks expand to take up the available time, even if usefulness doesn’t.
I suspect you’d see little loss in cutting down to 32/hr/week, and I suspect it would be more than made up for by the gains of giving people that extra day. So it may be a net positive.
I guess my main concern is that a lot of companies (not speaking about Japan here, just the US) might decide to use four days a week as a way to make people crunch four days thinking that having three days off would make up for that. And things wouldn’t really be any better.
I did 4x10 and I found it horrible. During the four days, I didn't get to do anything other than work and commute. And the stupid thing was that my output (and that of my coworkers as far as I could tell) was not really higher with 10 hours than with 8 hours. Three day weekends are nice though.
i've worked 10s before, and it's alternately amazing and terrible. at an office job, answering emails and going to meetings, 10hrs is completely beyond my tolerance level.
but if you've got a project, and you can just put your head down and work, then 10s are really nice.
One of my previous jobs did just that: 10-hours days, 4 days a week. First as an experiment for a month. They found our that performance has grown across the board (engineering, sales, support, etc) and then made it permanent; everybody rejoiced.
Curious how this plays out and comments from anyone who works there now. From what I've read about Japanese work culture, there are many perks/benefits offered but most do not take it cause it's considered selfish etc.
I'd much much rather work 4 x 10 than 5 x 8. Having a whole day without work makes a huge difference. Also, I find myself working 10 hrs a day anyway, so 5 x 10 (or more like 5 x 12).
not that much happier, no, but it's non-zero. esp with commute time, arranging lunch outside the home, parking or public transportation costs, childcare costs and all sorts of other little expenses that just vanish when you can stay home. Plus a 4x10 schedule doesn't result in a pay cut the way going from 5x8 to 4x8 would. My mom worked 4x10 as a nurse my entire childhood and loved the extra day.
If they are just compress the 40 hours down to 4 days, then this won't work. I don't know how it works in Japan, but how the hell are you suppose to drop off and pick up kids with a 10 hour day, are schools and daycare even available 11-12 hours per day? They'd be increasing the stress four days a week to an ungodly level where families won't be able to function.
Most of these four-day workweeks are almost always bullshit, because they insist on keeping the same hours. I hope that's not the case here. Some companies have been experimenting with just slashing a day a week completely and it always increase productivity, retention and happiness.
Yeah, just implementing a 4 day week without clarity is horseshit
We've just implemented it for the winter and, while kind of good, the expectation is that you'll just get your work done with no conversation about capacity or differences between employees and departments and workloads.
I've actually said it ... I'd prefer 5 days with hybrid than a 4 day week
Who thought everyone wants a 4 day week? ... I just want the freedom to choose a balanced life and get a job done ... effectively giving the employer a day back!
I feel like we've learned nothing from Covid.
Having ranted that. For those implementing this properly. Kudos.
Japan is forecast to still have 50 million people in 2120. I wouldn't call this a population crisis. With some rewilding it could be quite pleasant! I suspect companies are afraid of not growing, and governments are afraid to cut spending.
The problem is not the absolute number of people, but the ratio of relatively younger people who work and produce something, and the elderly who already are too frail and can only consume (pensions, medical care, etc).
Japan has now fewer productive workers per elderly person than most developed countries.
Even if the birth rate suddenly tripled, it wouldn't solve that issue for at least a generation. There's going to have to be other solutions, maybe in the form of automation/robotics/etc in conjunction with societal/economic changes. I wouldn't be surprised if the older population resists necessary changes and exacerbates the problem, though.
==Japan has now fewer productive workers per elderly person than most developed countries.==
Maybe, over the long run, we could change the expectation that elderly people can't be productive. Perhaps eliminating 20% of the workweek will allow people to maintain careers that are longer? The need to race towards retirement may lessen if we ease the burden of our weekly work schedule.
The problem isn't that companies are "afraid of not growing", or governments are "afraid to cut spending", it's that they've already signed off on paying back loans over the span of decades and were expecting to be able to pay off those loans with the value created by a growing population.
It's less about fear and more about economic realities.
Western governments hardly operate on a shoestring budget, rather they've spent generations spending profligately with the assumption that massive sustained economic growth would bail them out without having to make any hard tradeoffs. That strategy has worked out ok so far but it has always been a fragile one and we might be entering an era where it fails to work in many places.
The transition to much lower deficit spending certainly won't be popular and might go catastrophically poorly. I actually think there's a pretty good chance that things will go quite poorly, but there's no reason it has to be so.
If they are looking at a large aged population (lots of retirement savings) and lots of debt, inflation seems like an obvious solution, right? People not working will take a QoL hit due to their savings being worth less. But that is… what it is, I guess.
A lot of Japanese videogames seem to be set in a sort of pseudo-post-apocalyptic sort of setting (Final Fantasy comes to mind), where it isn’t like… mad max raider stuff, but it is clear that society once was larger and more developed, and now things are diminished with some remnants. I’m wonder if their population dynamics inspired that.
When populations age and shrink, everything becomes more difficult.
Fewer working hands have to support more elderly retirees.
Less spending means less development, less maintenance, things break down and nobody can afford to fix them. Entire towns and villages slowly wither into nothing. It’s a long, slow, grinding, painful process with no other way around it.
And it’s easy to say “maybe that village should disappear” when it’s not your village.
The population more than halving in the next century causes issues for normal people with expenses of supporting aging population and maintaining infrastructure with an ever dwindling percent of the population working age. There are some benefits to lower populations but also significant practical drawbacks to working class people.
Especially for something like Social Security safety nets, which relies on a larger younger population paying into it. I'm not sure if Japan has an equivalent but I think they do.
I think this is an overall good move, and very much support it, but many countries with better work-life balance and robust support for new parents still see declining birth rates....I can't help but think that a decline in fertility rates is as much about values -- what the point of life itself is, and how much it should be bound up in what we call the family -- as it is about the material conditions surrounding the act of child-rearing.
We'd totally be OK with "mistakenly" improving work/like balance and then earnestly try to find other solutions to the birth rate problem.
Otherwise I don't think there's a single unique solution. No having a miserable life is probably a good firth step that enables more advanced and varied measures.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you that values are more impactful, but personally I think it’s very difficult/nearly impossible to intentionally steer a culture’s values. Do you think there is anything procedural/structural that could be impactful for declining birth rates?
This focuses on fertility, but the bigger deal here is it creates jobs. Because when you reduce the availability of labor you create more jobs and spur the economy. Not only will more people have jobs, but they will have more time to spend money. So this is potentially a win for the local economy.
If they’re just reshuffling the existing work to a larger pool of people, do you really improve the economy? If anything I’d expect efficiency to decrease?
This isn't destroying anything so I'm not sure why you say this has anything to do with the broken window fallacy or why this could be bad for the economy.
Since there is confusion here, I'll pose this as a different thought experiment to make my points more clear: If it isn't good for the economy to reduce the average hours per worker then does that mean it is good for the economy to increase them? If we reduce the free-time of people then they will have even less time to spend their money and consume goods. Arguably they would also have less incentive to care about free-time activities that they can only, at best, sample.
The basic question I am raising is why is 5 days of 8 hours magically the right number. I'd argue that the more free time people have the more chance to consume they have. We balance that with the need to produce though. So an optimum point is actually driven by efficiency. The more efficient we are the more we should be diverting to free-time in order to drive more demand for the the. efficient goods we are producing. In a world where we are infinitely efficient then 100% of time should be spent in free-time in order to consume the most goods produced by that infinite efficiency. We aren't there yet so we still need to balance production against free-time but we are more efficient than we were 20 years ago so we should be finding ways to give back free-time to drive up demand.
(It’s a fallacy, but I’m too lazy to face the criticism if I explain it in full. In summary, please inform yourself on why both breaking windows and working less don’t create jobs).
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The younger have been giving the middle finger to these kind of companies for a while now. Either literally, by proxy, or going elsewhere and/or quit the whole corporate culture altogether and doing "shit" jobs with more flexibility instead (they feel screwed either way, at least they'll do it on their own term)
This 4 days week measure has a realistic chance IMHO, otherwise these gov job will stay the bottom of the barrel in the new generation's perception.
Most employers, be it private or state ones have 0 issues with this setup. 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway. What is gained is very well worth it, time with parents is crucial in many ways for small kids and if that window is missed you can't make it up later. Catching up with stuff like bureaucracy which is unavailable during weekends is possible only during such time.
Its true that having kids fundamentally changed my view on wealth and how much should I pursue higher paychecks, life is darn short anyway and double that with kids. I am switching to 90% contract from 1.1.2025 - working usual 5 days a week but having altogether 48.5 MDs of paid vacation (90% of 25MDs I had on 100% + 0.5 MD per each week in year, our HR recipe). It feels like being a teacher but on corporate paycheck (and work intensity). Even with 4 mortgages (for 2 properties) and no family to help financially if we hit hardships, this was a nobrainer. Other aspect would be retiring in 60 (max 61), but that's too far down the line to care much about now.
I am looking very much into spending that time on family and myself. One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races. For such benefits alone I don't care about higher paychecks, money only can get you so far in life.
or else, something maybe horribly broken in your country.
I'm happy for you, that you can easily dismiss 15% net income. Try that in Hungary, where generally two full time jobs together are nearly insufficient just to stay afloat.
> One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races
Very true, which is why mental health issues are rampant in the Eastern Bloc.
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All of a sudden, every Thursday evening felt like the start of vacation!
I remember when in France, the work week went from 39 to 35, that was 35h work week paid 39 - no pay cuts.
Now I get that the economy/job market isn't like it was then, what with all the layoffs to protect shareholder from growth dropping from +9% to only +5% (arbitrary example from one company).
But I am baffled at how quickly employees seem to have internalized the idea that reduced hours require reduced pay before even getting a chance for any negotiations. With all the value that's being produced, we're just accepting that it continue to be unfairly distributed, and that workers see no benefit (or barely) from the increases in productivity.
I'm sorry, if a pay cut is required, or condensed hours are required, it's no social progress, just lip service at best to exploit people more under the guise of flexibility.
I'd prefer having fridays officially off instead of being stuck at my pc not doing much work. If I'm already not working most fridays, why is it such a big deal to just make it official, get paid the same and not have to warm a seat poitnlessly?
And given a ratio of 80% spending and 20% saving, that Friday can be the difference between living paycheck-to-paycheck and early retirement.
Essentially if you make 5k a month, spend 4k and invest 1k at an 8% ROI from age 25, you'll have:
180k, 570k and 1400k at age 35, 45 and 55 respectively. If you live off of 4% of that, you'll have a passive income of $0.6k, $1.9k and $4.6k respectively at the same ages.
In other words working that relaxed Friday from age 25 and investing the proceeds, will get you to the point that you passively earn the same as you did working Monday through Thursday by age 52 or so, without working again. And that's true for any income, at those same ratios.
For many tech jobs the salaries are so high that you can feasibly get to early retirement in your 30s.
There's a lot to be said about the power of a 3-day weekend though. It's not just that you get an extra day of weekend, you also lose a day of work. Expressed as a ratio, is when it clicked for me: You go from 5:2 to 4:3, or in other words: 2.5 days of work for every 1 day of leisure -> 1.3 days of work for every 1 day of leisure. It's approximately twice as good a ratio. And you really feel it, you feel rested and refreshed.
I'm still doing 5d a week. For me the holy grail is to find a company that does 36h contracts with fulltime pay, where you have a 4 day week every other week. All the benefits of full pay, the occasional relaxed friday, but also two long weekends each month allowing trips, hobbies, projects, rest etc.
35 hour weeks used to be pretty common in a lot of businesses before the overtime rules were watered down.
during my last job search i was thinking exactly the same. id' hapily give up the usual 10-15% pay rise i look for when hopping from one job to another, maybe even consider giving up a 5-15% in order to get a 4-days work week.
I'm not rich by any means, but right now in my life "more money" don't appeal to me that much but more free time certainly does.
I also enjoyed the 9/80 schedule there, nominally 9 hour days with a little flexibility with every other Friday off for everyone.
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There's plenty of people who are still financially short after a 40h job.
As a high-earning childless person myself, I'll freely acknowledge that I should have been paying significantly higher taxes in order to benefit my counterparts who did have kids. Although it would be a challenge to do that redistribution in a way that doesn't just get captured by daycare and college.
But I get it, and the idea of kids was scary at one time, but it turns out they're pretty easy all things considered. Lots of talk of "sacrifice" between friends back then but as it turns out you're trading something of little value for something of immense value. But to each their own!
If we want to get all utilitarian about it, these things might be the most important:
1) Identifying the kids with the highest potential to contribute the most to society, and giving whatever support it takes.
2) Identifying which kids and parents are the most needy, who will benefit the most from support that enables them to have a good life. It’s probably not the average family in a developed country.
If there’s someone who wants to raise my taxes to pay for that stuff, I’ll vote for them.
I'm glad we are finally getting representation on that instead of all these social science studies contorting themselves to come to a child-aspiring default that couples are somehow failing to reach
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/well/family/grandparent-g...
And honestly I agree with the "if you are single you should pay more taxes" as a motivator to either get you to have your own kids or to simply ease the burden of those who are actually making humanity move forward but as a parent I am a bit biased here. It should be a significant amount.
You don't owe your children much more than food, love and a roof over their head. Sure, you might want to give them the world, but don't listen to anyone telling you that's the expectation - that's a fast track to resentment.
While this isn’t strictly impossible, it’s well beyond the reach of most, and so I suspect that this group mostly ends up never having kids.
I find it surprising this is somehow difficult for governments to grok.
The reasoning behind this is even with the best quality of life, many women will have 2 children, but insufficient women will have 3 or more children such that it offsets the number of women who have 0 or 1 child.
Those with zero children really drag the average down, and if it is because partnering with a certain portion of the population is simply not worth it, then government efforts on improving quality of life via work and benefit policies are not going to bump TFR to replacement rate.
A significant part of the decrease in fertility rates comes from the sharp decline in teen pregnancy (counted as live births) over the past 30 years.
That's what I mean when I say they should try making life better. Make it so that with kids I can have a house and family vacations and all the other things that my parents had access to. It's logically equivalent to say "life is harder with kids" or "life is easier without kids".
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The demographic problems during a decline are only temporary.
If the world had only 1 billion people it would be a lot easier. The whole idea that humanity would go extinct is ridiculous. And humanity is still growing anyway due to the many countries that don't have falling birth rates.
There's always people wanting to have kids. This is just society adjusting itself to the current overpopulation.
I'm not going to idly sit by and let people who have children take my hard earned money from me. If you think increasing taxes on those without children won't cause a massive retaliation by the men who are not able to find female mates to have children with, you are in for a massive surprise.
The people I've seen doing this are also just exhausted, as they've said directly.
It comes down to... the rent is too damn high.
Young people without children willing to spend 1/3 to 1/2 of their total income servicing mortgages or rent drives the cost of living to ridiculous levels. People can't afford child care either by having family live close to high earners to help, or to hire child care. So it's unaffordable. There's nowhere to live for families in high density places (apartment buildings optimize for the highest rent tennants, 1,2 BR single people)
Lots of people want children but can't engineer a life for themselves to have them without moving somewhere really far out and boring or being in the top 5% of earners, or living in squalor despite high incomes.
Won't happen explicitly, The masses are short sighted. Might happen implicitly through a series of co-incidental events but never by design.
They still are seen as a way to increase quality of life but in a more vibey sort of way.
not sure which "past" you're referring to, but in agricultural societies, more kids was important to survival and quality of life, as you needed hands on the farm; also, the child mortality rate was much higher so you had to have more kids to start with; that was also pre-birth control -- as soon as that was introduced the birth rate started to fall tremendously
Why do poorer people have more kids? Sex is free, birth control and netflix is not
Look at Europe which has significant maternity and paternity leave, subsidized daycare and free college. Lots and lots of support for young parents.
Yet birth rates haven't really budged.
I think it has more to do with the expectation of how much effort to raise a kid has drastically increased.
75 years ago, you'd pump out 5 kids and they'd be independent quite young. By 4-5 years old it was "go find something to do". As long as the kid wasn't failing school, grades didn't matter. If the kid was involved in school sports, they made their own way to events. Parents didn't attend regularly. By the time they were 7-8, they could help with the younger kids.
By the time your kids was a 8-10, it was pretty much "keep em fed and out of trouble".
Today, expectations are way, way higher. Parents worry about what elementary school their kids get into. After school academic and sports activities start super young. Parents want to attend the big events. Then high school and it time to grind. Tutors, SAT prep, college tours, etc, etc. Minimal chores because that would interfere with school and sports.
One kid today is equal to the effort of 3-4 kids 75 years ago.
Financial incentives for giving birth have been around in some countries for decades. In France it's called "prime à la naissance". This is on top of delivery being almost free.
Here are just a few reasons to not have children that may not have to do purely with selfishness. Many of these may not come up in casual conversation. It is easier to look selfish and say you prefer to keep the money and spend it on yourself for fun than going in the details of things like:
- "not wanting to do that to your body" can be more than concerns about appearance. Even if survival rates for mothers is much better, there are still plenty severe injuries and side effects to deal with. Plus among my relatives, I have yet to find a woman who didn't suffer from medical violence during her pregnancy or when giving birth. This wasn't talked about among women until they were pregnant not so long ago, understandably knowing what to expect can make it much less appealing.
- same thing with expectations about what parenting is like. Parents are more open about struggles, or regret. Even if they don't regret their kids a good number I know said if they could go back, though wouldn't have their kids even if they love them. Add to this social pressure to parent a certain way, non parents being quick to judge etc.
- some folks dont want kids because they don't think they can afford it despite having two incomes, or consider that their income would severely drop if one parent has to stop working to care for the kids, making it unaffordable. They want to give the best to their kids, so they delay forever or accept they won't ever be in a good enough place.
- some people wouldn't be good parents and know it. I've talked to enough childfree women, and many felt obliged to have kids but didn't because their own mothers were resentful parents, which resulted in a traumatic childhood.
- some want kids to care for them when they're old but see elders being left to fend for themselves or forgotten in abusive retirement homes - they may decide even with kids there's no guarantee so why bother?
- some maybe tried and couldn't conceive until they found it was too late, or couldn't afford medical assistance, or lost a child during pregnancy and couldn't bear to try again.
- some may not think their genes are something they should pass on, or don't feel the need to pass on their own genes.
- Some may have cared for sibling/cousins/nephews and know they wouldn't make good full time parents but would be ok helping others as part of "the village".
Being a DINK also has disadvantages, like constantly being expected to pick up colleagues workload when they have parenting demands during work hours, not getting nearly as many benefits (at least where i work), feeling like your free time is a free for all for anyone to take outside work because you don't have kids, so it's assumed that you have nothing going on in life. Like, feel free to ask and I can help but you don't have to be so callous about it.
I see it can be hard to have compassion for each other, if each thing the other should just deal with the consequences of their decisions. I read several posts pitching DINKs against parents over income distribution. If anything, it should be all of us parents and non parents against a system that favours a handful of extremely wealthy people.
ps: also let's try to make parent's lives better instead of saying DINK have it too good. Surely we can work to make everyone equally happy instead of making everyone equally miserable...
"Nobody really wants more people except certain religious sects, and that is only because it allows them to use sexuality to control people. Most modern capitalists would favor automation precisely because it takes unreliable people out of the capitalistic equation and makes conversion of real property to wealth and power easier. The only reason why we're hearing about fertility and birth rate in the last few years is because certain religious organizations are scared they're going to end up losing their tax-free status and leveraging current social crises to make sure they stay relevant by any means necessary. I'm betting they have armies of incels ensnared in their fundamentalist ideologies getting tax-free money to shitpost on the various social networks."
I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem.
Anyway I disagree with his premise because COVID-19 did really expose weaknesses in the supply chain and global world order and showed that depending completely on foreign entities can make you non-resilient in the face of disaster. So we do need strong families and all that stuff that's being talked about, it's a real actual need. And I do think making life better for people is the way to go, but we need to fix whatever decided that landlords should be getting most of the non-rich people's money first.
No one is going to commit him over that grandpa, seriously.
So arrogant.
Someone should have you committed for your personal opinions, which are also wrong, and see how you like it.
By your own suggestion, I think they should start with you.
You sound like a terrible person for him to have in his life & I hope he cuts you out of it.
Not everything, but many more companies will allow for flexible hours for instance, full remote has stayed in many places, and more traditional place usually allow one or two days or remoting every week.
There is a communal sense that growth is basically gone and better conditions are negotiable. Newer companies have been offering better conditions and older companies are having to compete and follow up to some point.
This initiative is following that trend. Schools are facing the same "adapt or get shunned" situation where just nobody wants to be a teacher and family/friends will actively try to stop someone from going there.
So things are changing.
I don't think it's an easy job in most countries, but in Japan in particular the pay is low, hours are long and the expected work load is super heavy as it includes endless meetings, paperwork, watching extracurricular activities often including on weekends, seasonal events etc.
Some still enjoy it as a vocation, but on paper it's just mind crushing.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/3580/
According to the data below, there's anywhere from 33k to 161k metropolitan employees depending on where you draw the line.
https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/tosei/hodohappyo/press/2024/01...
Sounds like office workers only.
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32 hours, 4 days a week seems better to me. But if all you do is take 40 hours and make it 10 hour days I’m not that much happier.
But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.
That extra hour those four days felt torturous, so it meant four days of feeling awful just so I could leave a few hours early on a day in which most people (and myself) already weren't working too hard anyway.
I hated it.
This was at a very low output insurance company, btw, so there often wasn't huge pressure to get things done quickly (new software releases were once a quarter, and IT would complain that two months lead time wasn't enough time to provision a single new server that was a clone of an existing server, as an example of how slow things moved), and the days dragged on way long.
I worked more high pressure startups before where I was often there for 9 or more hours by necessity to meet deadlines that didn't feel so bad.
Many people took the 4x10 but then discovered they couldn't handle 10 hour days every day. Like you said, the last 1-2 hours were so unproductive they might as well have been not working.
So some people didn't even try to work those last 2 hours. They'd sit at their desks and watch things or play games, pretending to work when anyone came in. Kind of ruined it for everyone.
> But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.
This is SOP at my work in Spain. It's fine for me, they're very flexible anyway. And I work from home so much that it doesn't really exhaust me.
We actually work 9hs here in Argentina (1h is for lunch, although you're probably still at the office and discussing work-related things anyways so...)
Is the common thing in the US to work 9-5 (8hs) with lunch included? Or do you guys just not take lunch?
One fewer day of needing to context-switch would be a major life improvement.
Tasks expand to take up the available time, even if usefulness doesn’t.
I suspect you’d see little loss in cutting down to 32/hr/week, and I suspect it would be more than made up for by the gains of giving people that extra day. So it may be a net positive.
I guess my main concern is that a lot of companies (not speaking about Japan here, just the US) might decide to use four days a week as a way to make people crunch four days thinking that having three days off would make up for that. And things wouldn’t really be any better.
but if you've got a project, and you can just put your head down and work, then 10s are really nice.
Things improve, jobs take less time to do, so they give us more. But it’s the same number of hours so pay doesn’t go up.
We all get screwed.
It was so much easier since then.
I'd much much rather work 4 x 10 than 5 x 8. Having a whole day without work makes a huge difference. Also, I find myself working 10 hrs a day anyway, so 5 x 10 (or more like 5 x 12).
Most of these four-day workweeks are almost always bullshit, because they insist on keeping the same hours. I hope that's not the case here. Some companies have been experimenting with just slashing a day a week completely and it always increase productivity, retention and happiness.
We've just implemented it for the winter and, while kind of good, the expectation is that you'll just get your work done with no conversation about capacity or differences between employees and departments and workloads.
I've actually said it ... I'd prefer 5 days with hybrid than a 4 day week
Who thought everyone wants a 4 day week? ... I just want the freedom to choose a balanced life and get a job done ... effectively giving the employer a day back!
I feel like we've learned nothing from Covid.
Having ranted that. For those implementing this properly. Kudos.
Source: https://www.jcer.or.jp/english/new-population-projection-how...
Japan has now fewer productive workers per elderly person than most developed countries.
Maybe, over the long run, we could change the expectation that elderly people can't be productive. Perhaps eliminating 20% of the workweek will allow people to maintain careers that are longer? The need to race towards retirement may lessen if we ease the burden of our weekly work schedule.
It's less about fear and more about economic realities.
The transition to much lower deficit spending certainly won't be popular and might go catastrophically poorly. I actually think there's a pretty good chance that things will go quite poorly, but there's no reason it has to be so.
If they are looking at a large aged population (lots of retirement savings) and lots of debt, inflation seems like an obvious solution, right? People not working will take a QoL hit due to their savings being worth less. But that is… what it is, I guess.
Fewer working hands have to support more elderly retirees.
Less spending means less development, less maintenance, things break down and nobody can afford to fix them. Entire towns and villages slowly wither into nothing. It’s a long, slow, grinding, painful process with no other way around it.
And it’s easy to say “maybe that village should disappear” when it’s not your village.
Otherwise I don't think there's a single unique solution. No having a miserable life is probably a good firth step that enables more advanced and varied measures.
Since there is confusion here, I'll pose this as a different thought experiment to make my points more clear: If it isn't good for the economy to reduce the average hours per worker then does that mean it is good for the economy to increase them? If we reduce the free-time of people then they will have even less time to spend their money and consume goods. Arguably they would also have less incentive to care about free-time activities that they can only, at best, sample.
The basic question I am raising is why is 5 days of 8 hours magically the right number. I'd argue that the more free time people have the more chance to consume they have. We balance that with the need to produce though. So an optimum point is actually driven by efficiency. The more efficient we are the more we should be diverting to free-time in order to drive more demand for the the. efficient goods we are producing. In a world where we are infinitely efficient then 100% of time should be spent in free-time in order to consume the most goods produced by that infinite efficiency. We aren't there yet so we still need to balance production against free-time but we are more efficient than we were 20 years ago so we should be finding ways to give back free-time to drive up demand.
(It’s a fallacy, but I’m too lazy to face the criticism if I explain it in full. In summary, please inform yourself on why both breaking windows and working less don’t create jobs).