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Comment by minimuffins

We should absolutely kill the 40 hour week and replace it with a 30 hour week.

> the 40-hour work week doesn’t work anymore

Doesn’t work for who? What does “works” mean anyway? Maximizes efficiency for our employers? Why is that the question? What works for you? Why not ask what works to maximize your happiness and flourishing? What works for me is fewer working hours in the week (doesn’t matter what time of day it was that I logged them) and more time to do whatever I want, whether that's coding, walking a dog, reading or doing absolutely nothing. We went from 80 hour to 40 hour weeks 100 years ago, why is 40 to 30 such a stretch today?

> During the Industrial Revolution, factories needed to be running around the clock so employees during this era frequently worked between 10-16 hour days. In the 1920s however, Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, decided to try something different: His workers would only work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

That is completely ahistorical! The 8 hour day was carved out from the 16 hour day and paid for in blood by a militant labor movement over several decades, not granted magnanimously by Henry Ford. You don’t have to consult obscure labor history to find that out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

parent minimuffins 9 years ago

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