> You need to use a one way policy ratchet to ratchet down the hours per week worked as productivity has increased, otherwise workers will never see productivity gains and society will be stuck on the 40 hour labor work week forever.
The feasibility of this (in the US) is strongly dependent on health insurance not being tied to having a full-time job (often defined as just under 40 hours a week).
Plenty of employers have demonstrated that they can be organized to use mostly part-time labor, but their incentive to do this has been avoiding the obligation and expense of contributing to health insurance and other benefits, rather than giving employees a productivity dividend.
Re:MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations
by toomuchtodo on Thursday June 11, 2020 @02:37PM
(#23491945)
I agree. Healthcare must no longer be tied to employment.
If people's basic needs were met, I think you'd see a lot of labor shift to work that is valuable, but currently not compensated for.
Also, you have to adjust constraints to deal with legacy systems: the Federal Reserve works to maximize employment through monetary policy. This is suboptimal, when work will expand to consume the time allowed for it [1]. You need to use a one way policy ratchet to ratchet down the hours per week worked as productivity has increased, otherwise workers will never see productivity gains and society will be stuck on the 40 hour labor work week forever.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law