4-Day Work week great for Business and the Community.. ICELAND Experiment

[Bofferbrauer2]

Flilix said:

I've been hearing mixed things about these 4-day work weeks. It was proposed here in Belgium by the PS (socialist party), but an expert in labour economics said that it's absolutely unrealistic (unless people are willing to get lower wages and consume less). According to him, the academic world is almost unanimously opposed to it. He says that on the long term there would be a disastorous rise in wage costs and unemployment, because employers will either try to automate more or move to other countries. He also says that the number of burn-outs might stay the same anyways.

https://www.tijd.be/opinie/algemeen/minder-werken-voor-zelfde-loon-is-sciencefiction/9981673.html

That's only true if the total hours also drop down. Otherwise, if you make 4x10 hours instead of 5x8 hours for instance, there's no change to your weekly work hours, just the fact that you have one more day off per week to relax and recover.

The opposition mostly stems from people who simply remove a day and end up with 4x8 instead of 4x10 yet keep the same monthly salary in mind. of course this would be like a 20% salary increase and not sustainable in such a big jump. But those who calculate like that just show off their failure to do math.

Also less time spent commuting between home and work, which as far as I understand would be a big change in the US as long-distance commutes are relatively normal there. So the only ones really losing out on a 4-days-week would be gas stations due to less commute.