Every controversy with that woman continues to be basically this meme.
My entire working life (multiple decades) it’s been a pretty common thing to hear co-workers say some variation of
“I feel like my life is on fast forward”
Because they aren’t absorbing their own lives because they spend most of it away from the things that matter, solving problems for other people, in order to benefit a small percentage of people more than they benefit from their own labor.
Everyone has different beliefs. I don’t believe we’re going anywhere after this. This is it. One shot. One blip in a vast universe, then nothing.
That makes me very tired of this bullshit.
I understand the value of work. I understand we wouldn’t have roads or homes or grocery stores without it. But I’ve always advocated for exactly what’s being advocated for here. 4 days. 6 hours a piece. 4 days is still the majority of your week and 6 hours is perfect because studies show productivity tanks after that anyways and those extra 2 hours means actually having dinner with your family or helping them with homework, or mowing the lawn, or whatever.
It’s a solid balance and we should be demanding it, not asking for it.
This is what I did at my company. Just better. Come and go as you please, no matter what. As long as the agreed upon work is somehow done. Come at 3am leave at 4am? Whatever. That plus profit-sharing made fucking happy employees who actually enjoyed working.
Why should anyone care if you’re here 8hrs? Most people just waste probably half of it with procrastination or just strategic incompetence.
That rule was for everyone of course, janitor “upwards”.
Also everyone got double market-average, free food and beverages.
Could’ve made a lot more money, but who needs that? Why me 99% and everyone else shares the 1%? That is an unsustainable model (for people, not for companies though), extremely unfair and unjust. How could I look into a mirror with dignity when ripping off everyone else?
Sadly I seems to be the exception, not the rule 😐
Hiring?
Sorry, no. That’s why i said “I did”, I retired a long while ago.
I go with the social contract thing. I am nixe to people until they breach the contract, then it is open bar.
Suprisingly I never had problems or people exploiting my simple system. Maybe because noone felt exploited either? Or maybe it was just luck.
Luck I think, or I look like I am easily attackable.
Is this the person whose big “scandal” was being photographed at a club?
I think that was the one where she was unreachable by the government (this was still the covid times, 2021) which is a no-no and was seen as dancing with/maybe kissing another man (a celebrity) while her husband was at home with their daughter. (They separated some time after) That soured a lot of people’s view on her. Of course her being a young woman was further incrimination to many of her opponents.
Another similar scandal was the house party video where she was allegedly doing coke. I don’t think anything was proven there. Someone on the video was yelling “powder gang” which is weird but not exactly solid evidence, but it became a huge meme and just solidified her reputation as a “party girl”, something beneath the position of a PM.
I think those were the bigger non-politics scandals.
I wish my leader were only an adulterer and cocaine user.
At least her extramarital affairs are with adults.
We have a different sort of bar here I suppose hah. Then again, she was judged extra hard for being a young woman in that position.
But it also genuinely wasn’t appropriate behaviour (to be videotaped doing) for a PM.
Nah the appropriateness or lack of it was invented. Worst she’s done is join the Tony Blair Institute, just another capitalist
Okay, well think about this statement
This is what we should be fighting for. That and 25 dollars minimum wage. Even fucking Bernie Sanders misses the boat on this. He fights for the minimum wage but 40 hour work week and the "return of overtime " fucking hate it when mentions that. No one should have to or want to work longer hours. Bullshit!
6 hour 4 day work week is the way and the fight that unfortunately America will never adopt.
Yeah, I’m literally unable to focus on code for a full workday anyway. If everyone was honest, work times could just half without any actual productivity loss.
I said this elsewhere in this thread I believe, but this only works for some jobs. If people at factories get a 40% cut in hours, that just means the factories produce roughly 40% less, etc (a lot of things you just can’t do faster even if more motivated). Farms will produce 40% less food, etc.
I’ve billed out 40 or 50 hours on 20 hours or less of actual work time too, and it was glorious, but I don’t think for a second that this would work for most non-office jobs.
FORMER…always nice when they come up with great ideas AFTER they’ve left office.
Achually she had this idea before she was PM.
Had this idea before, has this idea after, it seems the “during” part is the problem somehow.
You do realize that outside of a literal dictatorship, a prime minister can’t enact such a change on her own, right?
Sure. So what did she do to make it happen?
Finland’s debt to GDP ratio is pretty high, they probably couldn’t actually afford this anymore without increasing taxes. 10 years ago maybe. At 86% debt to GDP they’re the 7th highest in the EU and I read a while ago that it it was projected to surpass 100% soon.
Now that 100% is an arbitrary number because GDP is an annual number and debt is not, but overall the ratio is still an useful number because it essentially measures how big a % of the entire GDP needs to be paid as interest on bonds and whatnot (multiply debt to GDP ratio by average bond interest)
The catch is that less work time actually INCREASES productivity.
Depends on the situation. Suddenly going to 60% of the work load isn’t suddenly going to make the country or it’s people more productive. You’d need to hire more people to get the work done and Finland’s unemployment rate is already at 13%. So this would be a pretty poor solution when it comes to economics for everyone, unless you pay people less because they are working less hours.
I am quite curious on what the science will say on this.
We need another experiment.
What exeriment would you propose then?
60% work hours for ALL jobs in a small town, to measure how it actually affects productivity.
But this includes things like healthcare, opinions of the people working there, opinions of the business workers, etc.
See where it helps and where it makes things worse.
I have a feeling that many people would choose time ober money though.
I have thought of this. Paying people less could work out alright if you bring down their living costs. Housing is most of that and a lot of that cost goes to profit for banks.
Bring the cost of housing down and a lot of people will probably be happy to reduce hours worked. If you have a high unemployment rate there should be plenty of people to cover those extra hours too.
Bring down the costs of housing, food, oh, and entertainment as well. Guess you could bring down restaurant costs if you pay people less, but then you have the same exact problem being asked here.
Food is pocket change compared to housing.
Having a house: £1300/month Food: £40/month if I eat a lot of cheese
At least in the US, food expenditures are roughly 15-20% of income. Housing is 30%.
Erm, this will either cut profits for the sellers, or the pay will go down way more than the housing price.
But I also see there being hidden economic benefits to having more free time.
More time to stitch, repair, learn, take care of yourself.
Less medical costs and damages.
Its not that simple
Even if people are more productive in less time, that doesn’t mean you can earn the same money. Many businesses operate on “hours spend” per task. As an example, let’s take hairdressers. If your hairdresser is now working only 6 hours instead of 8, that’s a potential 25% loss in revenue. And they won’t be magically faster now just because they work less. So if salary reduction is not an option, the only option is increasing prices.
What you’re saying is fine for office jobs, but just not an option for most service jobs. Waiters aren’t magically going to serve tables faster, cashiers won’t make customers move faster, etc.
You don’t see the long-term effects on Health, Education, and so on. Less mistakes are made. Yes, I understand that it’s harder for a small business to make up for the lost hours, but for a big business, the cost of an extra employee is nothing compared to the gains of extra productivity.
You don’t see health care outcomes improve when you remove 40% of hours. Come on now.
Yeah just continue to overwork doctors and nurses, I am sure its fine.
Then perhaps figure out ways to train and teach them quicker, better, and pay them all less, because that’s what you are suggesting.
former
The People Have Spoken
Double their hours, halve the pay, murder their parents, and castrate them before they have any kids.
Im sorry but how will this increase shareholder value? hmm? Will anybody think of the shareholders?
Plenty of jobs let you grab those hours.
Problem is the pay is dogshit
This comment misses the point entirely. The goal of society is to raise the quality and/or lower the cost of living. The goal of these “less than 40 hour work week” proposals is to lower hours and keep the net pay the same (effectively raising the per hour pay) at nearly every job .This would be an advancement as a society as the quality of life would go up for it’s citizens.
This is explicitly not suggesting people take different jobs with identical hours for less pay.
You seemed to miss the point entirely as well. The PM’s suggestion represents a 40% decrease in the labor market. You wouldn’t be able to make up that loss without hiring a whole lot more people, which would put most places out of business. Thinking gains would come from productivity increases, that’s simply not going to happen, as inflation has far outpaced labor productivity for the last 60 years. Finland’s Unemployment rate is roughly 13% currently, so even hiring all of those people to make up for missed labor will not come close to solving the gap.
As normal, great aspirational idea that has zero basis in reality.
That’s not what missing the point means but I understand where you’re coming from. You’re worried about the feasibility of this proposal, which is entirely separate from my comment and the comment I was responding to. So to be clear, you’re not actually talking to me or the original commenter, you’re talking at me. Which is fine, we can have this conversation - which is different than what I was discussing - at the same time if you’d like.
Yes, reduction of hours could theoretically means a larger volume of people are needed to cover those positions. That is likely true in some fields and likely not true in others. As an example, waiters or nurses or teachers would likely need more staff to cover those lost hours as those are services that are often open most days of the week at most hours. We can’t have hospitals closed on Fridays, for instance. So in that case your suggestion is correct.
The element you’re not considering past the simple math of the problem is whether or not we need 40 hours to stay profitable. The counter example to the nurse would be most white collar jobs who reportedly don’t need 40 hours a week to complete their work and be successful. These people are forced to work 40 hours because of cultural expectations but, because of the “productivity” boom of the last century, don’t actually need to work 40 hours. This is the situation that the PM’s suggestion would be most feasible.
If someone can complete their work in 32 hours but is paid to be at their desk for 40, 1 of 2 things happen. (Reminder, this is the expected amount of work to keep the business profitable.) They either notify their boss that they can do more work, and thus increase their responsibilities until it hits 40 hours, which nearly always results in neither higher pay nor higher recognition long term. Or they don’t, and they make what use they can of those 8 hours, which is always less efficient than if they had “free time”. This is where the government, unions, or any regulatory body is necessary for the improvement of society. Businesses of a certain size or profession grow inefficient in using their employees time as their productivity goes up, which again can be converted either into more work and higher sales or more free time and better benefits. (This is ignoring what happens too often which is that extra time gets converted to meaningless meetings and micromanagement and time around the water cooler etc).
So I disagree with you in saying, as a blanket statement derived from napkin math, that the PM’s proposal (which I imagine both of us have just read the title comments on instead of an actual, ready to implement policy proposal) is not based in reality.
Why you seem excited to defend the forced labor hours of the working class is beyond me. Surely you’re not rich, and surely you’d prefer to work less than you do and have the same quality of life. So I have to assume you’re either afraid of someone messing up “the economy” by being too progressive or you’ve taken the conservative propaganda to heart and believe things must only get worse for the working class if the rich are to get richer and therefore through market magic improve everyone else’s lives maybe (trickling down or some other illogical and indirect process). Tell me, if you can be so introspective, why you decided to talk at me. Why do you think something that several studies have shown, at least to my knowledge, to not only be feasible but also beneficial? Why are you against the topic at first mention of societal progress?
Boy, you seem to think you know a lot of things, and yet know very little. For someone like me who is working on cures for blindness, no I don’t want to work less hours. I actually want to help cure blindness.
Those nurses? No they don’t want to work less when there aren’t others trained to do their job.
Perhaps you work a job that’s has no use to society and if you worked less it wouldn’t matter, but that’s not a lot of jobs.
Buddy, imagine getting paid more to do your job. That’s what we’re talking about. Imagine there being more nurses and more demand for all jobs and more effective nurses because they’re less tired and overworked and underpaid.
Like this isn’t rocket science. You could get the same money for less mandatory hours. You wanna work more, go for it. I want to get you more money for those hours and I want the hospitals to have to hire more people instead of overworking them. Again, idk why you’re acting like this wouldn’t be a better system for everyone. The service would only improve. The pay would only improve. The profits would be the only thing that takes a hit.
Like buddy, imagine in a world where that works. Where are these extra nurses coming from? It’s not even demand for nurses, it’s time to teach and educate them. It’s like you believe people cable, educated, certified to do jobs can be spun up with a snap of the finger. Doctors are already say in the US highly paid positions. And you can’t get enough of them because it takes too long to educate them, outstripping demand.
So you entire premise fails. You want to reduce the working hours of the population by 40% and expect those people to simply exist. The UE rate is what again? Certainly not 40%. So you have to do more with far far less.
And no, profits wouldn’t take a hit, you simply raise prices, and now for those hours you are working, you can’t afford anything. Since you can’t afford anything, those businesses go out of business and now you don’t have a job.
That’s the problem. Small companies, niche companies can do this pretty easily and move the costs onto customers. Most industries cannot. Know how we went from a 60-80 hour work week to a 40 hour work week? We sent the jobs overseas, where they still fork 80+ hours a week, for far less money.
Great concept, until you look anything deeper than the surface.
That’s not how we went from 80 to 40 hours. We got there through productivity increases and strong unions, you’re not speaking from a historically accurate position.
The US pays more for healthcare than nearly every other country for equivalent results and far less coverage. In this singular example, hospitals (and health insurance companies) could absolutely be made to be cheaper while maintaining quality. That means a reduction in profit. ANOTHER way to say that is the existing hospitals (and health insurance companies) could maintain prices and productivity AND INSTEAD pay their workers more.
You’re correct in saying we can’t materialize educated and trained people out of thin air, but in nearly everything else you’re just dead wrong. We would not need to materialize “40% more workforce” we could, under the same proposal, just pay the existing staff overtime starting at 32 hours instead of 40. It’s really not this hard of a concept.
Most large companies, think publicly traded companies, make more profit year after year. Those companies can and should pay their workers more. They won’t unless forced so we have to force them.
That means Walmart has to raise their wages and hire more people. That means hospitals have to pay nurses more (which absolutely will increase the rate at which people study to become nurses). That means fortune 500 companies, which are inefficient as hell, let their well paid employees work 8 hours less and notice nearly no difference in output (according to the studies that have been conducted on this that I’m aware of).
Again, you’re not actually engaging with the whole concept and you’re arguing against one made up scenario with an incomplete understanding of the argument. The new standard work week should be 32 hours at equal hourly rate as it is today. Businesses do 1 of 3 things: keep their current staff and accept the lower hours (studies show some businesses can do this without issue, just a win-win), increase their staff and keep their pay (lowering their hours, this would eat into profits and likely raise prices in some mixed percentage), keep their staff and raise their pay (keeping their hours, this would eat into profits and likely raise prices in some mixed percentages). Not every industry (or even most) could afford to raise prices and survive, they would have to be okay with less profits. But in a functioning society cost of living should be going down or quality of life should be going up, and the US (and most of the world) are long over due for one of those things. We need a correction, likely starting with addressing wealth inequality and then something like a new standard work week.
So uh…what is the citizenship application process? Finland is worth dying for rn.
Former pm, this wouldn’t actually happen.
Former PM and future wifey for lifey
Is there, like, Grindr for PMs?
Why is it that the right ideas only happen before or after holding useful positions?
She did push for such during her time holding the position from what I have seen thus far. She came into office in 2019 and was voted out in 2023 because the economy suffered around the world after COVID, and that was enough to sink many countries into believing they needed change.
Note Finland had the lowest death percentages in the EU, the GDP didn’t collapse hard like some, she pushed for work from home and minimal contact.
Oh and she apparently was focused on getting Ukraine into the EU. Which one could say was hobbled by a couple people, but one of those was recently taken from power. So only time will tell
GOP: she’s basically Stalin.
Politicians can’t just pass laws to give us shorter workweeks. We actually get more free time when businesses & voluntary associations invest in better tools & technology. This increases efficiency, making goods and services cheaper to produce & allowing prices to drop.
However, big government programs drain the resources needed to develop an economy. When the government pays for massive spending by printing money & running up debt, it shrinks the value of your dollars and distorts the economy. Add in high taxes, government promises it can’t afford (like public pensions with runaway obligations), & red tape that makes it hard to produce goods, and society ends up poorer.
Instead of making life more affordable, printing money & discouraging investment force you to work longer and harder just to stay where you are.
When, WHEN did we actually see these efficiency gains translate in real life? They usually use it as leverage to force us to work MORE hours, not less.
They just take the difference as profit, then spend it lobbying anti-human laws again!
We actually get more free time when businesses & voluntary associations invest in better tools & technology. This increases efficiency,
This is the same stupid train of thought every second manager has. Your tool can be amazing, als long as your processes are shit nothing will improve.
I do believe that if there aren’t artificial barriers to production or the supply of goods, humans will end up producing more. As more goods are produced and compete in the marketplace, prices will fall. Democratic socialists, however, tend to micromanage or take over production, which will slow the creation of goods and cause prices to rise.
An interesting digression/aside would be the Jevons paradox: when technological improvements increase the efficiency of a resource’s use, this can lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource. This is often used as a critique of capitalism by environmentalists.
P.S. I don’t think I’ve talked to a single right-winger on this website yet. Maybe right-wingers are a dying breed, at least in the Fediverse. I don’t know. I’m so alone.
We actually get more free time when businesses & voluntary associations invest in better tools & technology. This increases efficiency, making goods and services cheaper to produce & allowing prices to drop.
The problem we have in late-stage-capitalism is that instead of passing the time and money savings onto employees and consumers, the owning class passes these savings onto themselves instead and tell us to work twice as hard for half the pay.
I think your boogeyman, “the owning class,” is very similar to my boogeyman, “the borrower class.” Both are critiques of groups that benefit from particular economic structures. Although we think about economics in totally different ways, there is an interesting parallel between the two ideas.
I’m probably a handmaiden to the fascist class in your eyes, while I think you’re economically illiterate.
My borrower class - Refers to those who gain privileged access to newly created credit or monetary expansion.
Your owning class - Usually refers to capital owners (bourgeoisie) who own productive assets & employ labor.
That’s cool but, what is she doing as a former politician to further this goal?
Using the power of celebrity which is probably the most useful thing to do in that situation.
Nothing, she does not even live in NZ any more.
Why would a Finnish politician live in New Zealand?
I mean… technically they are not wrong…
