The Case for a 21-Hour Work Week (More socialist agenda blow?)

Yahoo News ^ | 1/11/12 | Michael Coren

[AngelesCrestHighway]

To save the world -- or really to even just make our personal lives better -- we will need to work less. Time, like work, has become commodified, a recent legacy of industrial capitalism, where a controlled, 40-hour week in factories was necessary. Our behavior is totally out of step with human priorities and today’s economy. To lay the foundations for a "steady-state" economy -- one that can continue running sustainably forever -- a recent paper argues that it’s time for advanced developed countries transition to a normal 21-hour work week. This does not mean a mandatory work week or leisure-time police. People can choose to work as long, or short, as they please. It’s more about resetting social and political norms. That is, the day when 1,092 hours of paid work per year becomes the "standard that is generally expected by government, employers, trade unions, employees, and everyone else."

[AngelesCrestHighway]

"To save the world?"...WTF?...By putting us all in poverty on a 2 and 1/2 day work week?....Where in hell do these idiots grow up?

[Personal Responsibility]

I refuse to read any further than the word “commodified”.

[null and void]

Still, it looks a lot better than my current 0 hour work week...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I don’t think there was a single week in my working life that was less than 50 hours.

[The Pack Knight]

I refuse to read any further than “To save the world”.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

I’m sure it will be said, The yellow brick road to “Save the World” was paved with the best intentions of idiots...

[Marathoner]

Geez, I know this is neanderthal thinking, but I seem to recall a Bible verse where God dictates working six days a week.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“The challenges are great, none more so than figuring out how to make most of society be able to live on half of their current income. And no doubt, many will seize on this as socialism or worse.”

Gee. Ya THINK? And then it goes on to quote Keynes...*Rolleyes*

[DonaldC]

“Geez, I know this is neanderthal thinking, but I seem to recall a Bible verse where God dictates working six days a week.”

Be careful about the bible, it is not pro-capitalism as we have it today.

[Navy Patriot]

It’s more about resetting social and political norms.

Yeah, down to zero work from government employees as the norm.

All government employees are economically non producers as it is now, this just will allow them to continue to get their government check but they won't have to show up for "work" anymore.

Ahh, the good life of a government job.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

This strong, strapping young man is clearly EXHAUSTED and deserving of a nap in the sun after his GRUELING 21-hour workweek. *ROLLEYES*

[andy58-in-nh]

Source: the New Economics Foundation.

NEF is a project of the New Economics Institute, funded by the E. F. Schumacher Society, which promotes the "Eco-Socialism" of its namesake.

It does not, however appear to be related (as far as I can see) to the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which was co-founded by George Soros and Drummond Pike of the Tides Foundation.

[CodeToad]

I find that people are not productive past 6 hours a day at most. A 24 hour work week has been productive with additional hours as needed. The vast majority of employees fill their 40 hour work week with things other than work just to say they were there. I actually had someone proclaim that even though someone had gotten all the expected work done for the week the employee “needed to get all their hours in.” We have been brainwashed into thinking 40 hours is a magical number.

[Maine Mariner]

I am all in favor of a 21 hour work week perhaps even 15 hours per week for most government employees, but especially legislators and their staffs.

[albie]

Anyone putting in 40 hours or less in a week doesn’t make real money.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

make most of society be able to live on half of their current income? Liberalism is a mental disorder for sure.... Cuckoo!...Cuckoo!...Cuckoo!

[Avid Coug]

“...a 2 and 1/2 day work week?....Where in hell do these idiots grow up?”

Greece.

[logitech]

...if any should not work, neither shall he eat. Thes. 3v10

Sounds good to me.

[The Pack Knight]

Okay, I broke down and did read the whole article, where I came across this gem:

The NEF argues we need to achieve truly happy lives, we need to challenge social norms and reset the industrial clock ticking in our heads. It sees the 21-hour week as integral to this for two reasons: it will redistribute paid work, offering the hope of a more equal society (right now too many are overworked, or underemployed).

On what does he base the assumption that the "underemployed" is even capable of doing the work of the "overworked"? Does he really think that an "underemployed" literature major can take work off the hands of an "overworked" neurosurgeon? Who is "commodifying" now?

The very idea that all work is the same and that you can essentially plug any work, with a little training, into any job is a relic of the very Industrial Age the author claims to be moving past. It was a key concept of that other relic of the Industrial Age, communism. We saw it in the Soviet Union, where the labor of doctors was valued the same as the labor of unskilled factory workers - with predictable results. The fact that this author seems to harbor the same assumption says a lot.

[gdani]

With the amount of time some people spend at their workplace posting on FR & on the Internet as a whole, I think they are proving a 40-hour work week is not a necessity for at least some of us.