[Stultis]

Visit this page on the website for links to other articles by de Jasay, including an online edition of his book The State.

[ReadMyMind]

With all the productivity gains from technology, why don't we get more time off? Do we want more stuff or more time?

Why is working 35 hours a week as opposed to 39 seen as a bad thing? I think the mandatory nature of it is irrational, but they must be thinking that it won't happen otherwise. Ideally, we'd all work about 24 hours a week with 12 weeks of total vacation.

[Stultis]

Who's got the ping list for articles on economics?

Here's another article I recently posted that might be worthy of a ping:

Economic Classics (Bastiat, von Mises & Ropke rule this Joint Economic Committee webpage)

[babble-on]

Someone asked the finance minister at the time, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, what the impact of the transition to 35 hours for the public sector workers would be. He responded, "Well it will be something of a shock, so we plan on phasing the move in gradually for the public sector, first going to 31 hours and only when they are used to that bumping it up to 32."

[DainBramage]

Seems almost a Socialism-lite. The masses work however the system dictates

and some of their income is spread to others that don't work via the government

through taxation.

Oh wait... thats only a hop, skip, and a jump from what we have now.

[WindMinstrel]

Why don't the socialist surrendermonkeys see what they're doing to their economy I wonder? The French are turning into a footnote in history.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

That shorter hours would increase employment was an evident logical consequence of the quantity theory of labour, which tells us, plausibly enough, that a given task will be performed either by fewer workers putting in longer hours or more workers putting in shorter ones.

If they truly believed this, then it was inhumane to merely lower the legal work week to 35 hours. They should have lowered it to zero. That would have produced 100% unemployment and a productivity factor of infinity.

What could be better than that?

[Rodney King]

The mechanism must be as foolproof as the Laffer curve, which tells you that as you reduce tax rates, the tax yield increases and approaches a maximum.

A great article except for this sentence. The Laffer curve says no such thing.

[A. Pole]

In contrast to her great strengths in mathematics and engineering, France has produced few economists of note

Comparing the unemployment rates is tricky since they are calculated differently in different countries. The rate for USA discounts many of those who exhausted their benefits.

Same with taxes. In Europe the equivalents of Social Security, federal, state, local taxes are added up.