Yeah, but I think that would be a good think. A lot of the people you mention, are underpaid strained workers that do jobs with high level of responsibility (The bus driver that pick up your kids, the nurses) and the ones in services industries that, are straight exhausted and overloaded.

BUT while I think that the 4-day week would be awesome, more days to rest, more consumption and other stuff. This measure, by itself would have a minimal impact. Needs to be in conjunction with others, like Universal income, taxes to the corporations and wealthy.

We are in a world where AI is here to stay and it will only get better. Self-driving cars, Store free-clerks, hell AI can now co-write code. A lot of jobs will be reduced within a few short years, and I think that we are not prepared to absorb all that people and inequalities are going to explode all around the world.

> Wouldn't a switch to four-day working week just mean a 25% pay increase for those employees?

Would that be a bad thing?

As we've discovered over the past year, a lot of those people play a crucial role in society today - why do they get paid so little for that?

> why do they get paid so little for that?

What follows isn't necessarily right, but I believe It's why they're paid little.

Because they're all easily replaceable, companies doesn't have to invest more than maybe a week of salary into replacing them if they ask for higher pay. At my company we're having a hard time finding people, so sometimes even questionable talent gets hired and trained because we need people. But in low-skill work people will always be paid what is regulated. If we increase their salary enough, then I wouldn't want my job, even though I enjoy what I do, because of the mental burden of never having my head to myself.

The best job I've ever had was when backpacking Australia, was taking care of gardens, hedges and stairwells. It paid shit, but every day I felt gratification because I worked with my body and actually finished something (even though It had to be done again in a week or 2 since things grow like crazy in Brisbane).

What I do now is an endless struggle of never being finished, so my brain keeps computing solutions to these problems even once I'm off the clock, so if a bus driver all of a sudden has my salary, why on earth would I want a job that requires more of me. As in, I'm not just the current meatbag at this place.

I bet we could even stretch this into that it would reduce output of society greatly, since people that otherwise would pursue "high skill" work (Idk, somehow i feel like anyone could be taught my job in a week, but this is more Imposter Syndrome than anything i guess) could be just as happy or happier doing something that doesn't increase human efficency.

I will argue for this "to death" (since It's really one of my core beliefs), but i would also love someone to be able to change my mind as it could potentially increase my mental well-being. I'm sadly looking "down" on "simple work", I think as a means to justify wtf I'm doing.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

It sounds like you hate your job, and you are doing it only for money. That's totally okay!

It also means, that given a good trade-off, you would do something else.

But a lot of people care less about money, and more about other things in life: work-life balance, mental health, closeness to family, whatever.

Given that working is a must, why wouldn't we try to make it suck less for everybody? At the end of the day, life is complicated enough without having other people trying to make it harder for you.

It sounds like you want the other to be paid less, since you are having a hard time. The solution IMO is not paying other people less, it is finding a better place for yourself!

> I bet we could even stretch this into that it would reduce output of society greatly, since people that otherwise would pursue "high skill" work

As you can imagine, I disagree - I like my job (not position! I like it as well, but I could change it), and I wouldn't do any other job for the same amount of money. I like not being dead tired at the end of the day, I like being challenged, I like being able to deliver something to millions of people.

Unwanted suggestion: focus less on other people, and a bit more on your own well-being.

Edit: I have also to disclose, I wouldn't mind a 20% tax increase if this means bus drivers and nurses are paid more: we don't do anything special, I really don't understand why we should be paid 3x what other people are making. I understand the _mechanism_ behind it, but at the end of the week my SO does much more work than me, and she's paid 1/3.

> It sounds like you hate your job, and you are doing it only for money. That's totally okay!

I do like the challenge, It's just a bit much. I'll be honest, I haven't been at many other places (26 years of age) so this might be 100% true and I just didn't know it until now.

If I'm also entirely honest, if I were given the option to never "work" a single day of my life again I would take it any time. Would pick up opensource development of whatever I find interesting again as I did a bit when i was younger.

> Unwanted suggestion: focus less on other people, and a bit more on your own well-being.

My previous comment might've been interpreted as if I would actively argue against a suck-less change for others in my country, I would not. On HN I like to express what I otherwise wouldn't since I get thought-out replies like your own to challenge my own beliefs (If i were to do the same in a Facebook discussion/Reddit the pie throwing contest would start)

That's not to say you don't have a point though.

> I have also to disclose, I wouldn't mind a 20% tax increase if this means bus drivers and nurses are paid more: we don't do anything special, I really don't understand why we should be paid 3x what other people are making. I understand the _mechanism_ behind it, but at the end of the week my SO does much more work than me, and she's paid 1/3.

I don't make nearly enough to be comfortable losing 20% of my salary, not as in that it'd make be poor, but it would put me closer to the average.

Should mention, I manage a small datacenter (I don't own it) in Sweden, Swedens IT job salaries aren't as "inflated" as the US ones.

Thanks for your reply :)

I'm not sure what your SO is doing. Still I would bet that she is not doing more work than you. The effects of your work is probably not as obvious to a layman. This is like saying that a horse with a cart is doing more work than a truck, just because it is more inefficient and crude.

Another comparison would be of the president of the US and a coal miner. The coal miner might use more physical energy, but the effects of the work that the president is performing is so much larger it is ridiculous.

I probably worded this wrongly, but it is exactly what I mean: I totally understand that _the output_ of my job has 10x impact, so I understand why I am paid more.

But, just because I am lucky enough to work in a field where my work could potentially impact the entire world, it doesn't mean I deserve to be paid 3x the others.

The amount of energy, passion, and dedication can be the same if you are a kindergarten teacher, a nurse, or a web developer.

I believe this was meant to be a reply to rpadovani (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27781497)

> If I'm also entirely honest, if I were given the option to never "work" a single day of my life again I would take it any time

Me too :-) This is why I included "Given that working is a must", otherwise I would pick up something else to do (and slack a lot).

> I don't make nearly enough to be comfortable losing 20% of my salary, not as in that it'd make be poor, but it would put me closer to the average.

It would definitely do the same for me: I am in Germany, so kind of similar situation (however, AFAIU from Swedish friends, here IT is a bit better paid, and taxes are a bit lower).

Don't get me wrong: I definitely enjoy having money and being able to travel and have a nice life, I would also like having childhood friends being able to enjoy a good life as well - the only difference between me and them is that I "understand" IT, while they are better at other things.

I think all this rambling goes down to: "life is unfair, let's try to make it easier for everyone, without focusing much on the output of what you are doing, and more on the person you are".

It's hard to compare the meaning of a wage change across two countries with what I understand to be very different social programs.

One of the biggest reasons that I would like to be wealthy is so that if I or someone I love gets sick, I can avoid going bankrupt to get treatment or forego treatment because I can't afford it.

That's a fairly realistic concern for large swaths of the US population.

Fair enough, I guess in a way we already have the extra taxes you're mentioning, If anyone needs medical assistance they get it (Mostly, they refuse to fix my grandmothers knees because she's still able to walk (in pain)). But anything lethal will always be treated, or young people with fixable issues.

I'm curious. Do you think that if your grandmother had more wealth, then she'd be able to walk with less pain? Or is it a case where the treatment/cure might be worse than the disease?

It's very immoral to allow (force) people to die, when they otherwise could live if they have more money.

It's less egregious, but still immoral to allow (force) people to live in pain.

I think it is a much more complicated issue to balance medical "expertise" with patient desires. If your grandmother wants a treatment and her healthcare providers believe she should not have it, not because it affects their profits, but because it's medically ill-advised, then what?

Many non-office jobs have a results-oriented aspect to them that should result in employers and customers preferring shorter, more effective workweeks in the long run. Programming had to go through this transition and is still not there yet in many companies.

It may seem strange to think of a nurse or driver being more useful when contributing 30 hours a week instead of 40, but that’s because we don’t appreciate the potential range of their decision making quality, error rate, and so on.

In the long run, too, any job we don’t want to see become higher paid and more effective, we will want to see be eliminated or automated. So the effective pay increase would not uniformly drag on GDP across many industries.

As someone who is always doing side projects or at least thinking about them I do wonder if for certain part of the population having more free time would also mean more creativity and a net improvement for all of society. I know I'm biased and it's wishful thinking but it could be true.

You nailed. True, less work means more time for side gigs, ideas and self-improvement, you are not the only one that hopes for a future like this. Every day more I think Star-Trek predicted the future with a degree of precision quite impressive.

This is the basis for Marx' infamous "hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic" quote from The German Ideology - the notion that wage work alienates people from the work they do and end up controlling them.

I wasn't familiar with the quote:

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.

He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

Now that we are quoting, of course:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

-- Robert Heinlein

> It may seem strange to think of a nurse or driver being more useful when contributing 30 hours a week instead of 40, but that’s because we don’t appreciate the potential range of their decision making quality, error rate, and so on.

Improved decision making quality or not, wards with a nurse on call still need 20% more nurses. And there's absolutely no way a driver is delivering 20% more stuff in four 8 hour days to make up for being absent for the fifth. And most of the "place needs a person to be on call for this shift" type jobs are the hardest to automate

Right, this would be a preference change for nurses whose attention is more valuable and who don’t burn out (decrease quality of care over time.) Same for more attentive drivers. This is consistent with how the perspective changed of jobs we consider compatible with shorter workweeks.

In addition to automation for jobs where attention and reason doesn’t contribute to success (which is how you’re describing nursing and driving; I of course disagree), there will still be a market for hourly pay and people who really enjoy and are suited to overtime, as well as other factors. The transition is complex.

It's not about "where attention and reason doesn't contribute to success", it's about the simple reality that if someone commits to having something staffed "5 days a week" or "24/7", then either their costs have risen 20% or the salaries have to fall 20% when the working shifts fall by 20%. That might be acceptable to some business and staff (part time employment is already a thing) but magical productivity improvements aren't always as achievable as certain knowledge work fields. More attentive drivers don't go 20% faster or have 20% more space in their lorries, and for that matter I'm extremely sceptical people would pay 20% more attention to the roads working a four day week than a five day one.

Well, you are right that if we continue to want butts-in-seats commitments without thinking about what we are looking to get from them, then nothing will change.

20% pay decrease. Employers would figure out that they are producing 20% less and scale pay accordingly.

> It seems obvious that a lot of "HN jobs" probably could have the same output while working less.

It's actually a good tactic you can use to negotiate working less hours: "You will get my best hours". Working 36 or 40 hours a week doesn't make much of a difference in terms of productivity, but the former can get you an extra afternoon off once a week (or a day if you save it up) if you keep working 9-5.

> Wouldn't a switch to four-day working week just mean a 25% pay increase for those employees?

No, those are the same industries and jobs in which people are paid by the hour. And even if they weren't, it's naive to assume that employers wouldn't adjust compensation down when hours go down by 20%.

Personally, I'd rather work 5 days a week than work 4 and get my pay decreased.

Why give them a 25% raise? This seems like an opportunity for employers to take back 20% of their workers’ salaries.

they d also work less because businesses would be closed for 1 extra day etc (like they are now). They d be probably paid the same, but perhaps a 'presence premium' would be required to lure them.