Finnish PM Marin calls for 4-day-week and 6-hours working day in the country

Keynes conjectured reduced workload (or the equivalent: ever rising compensation) would be the natural consequence of increased productivity. What went wrong seems to come from at least two things he did not expect.<p>Firstly, rather than continuing the trend of increasing political power in the early post war period, the productive classes, including employees, have lost political power relative to the ownership classes and thus control of resource allocation decisions.<p>Secondly, outside tech and a few other vibrant sectors, capital sits idles or is used unproductively (for example in real-estate speculation) or even to destroy wealth (for example through expanded rent seeking). This is relevant because in these cases the increased wealth from increased productivity is just wasted rather than being used productively or at least spent on quality of life.<p>It&#x27;s nice to see that somewhere, a few people are trying to address that first issue.

&gt; In neighbouring Sweden, where the 6-hour-day has already been applied since 2015, results showed that employees were happier, wealthier and more productive, as they were still fully paid and customers were more satisfied.<p>I am Swedish and am puzzled by this. What is it refering to?

I care less about workday length than the number of work days. 4 day workweeks make much more sense. At least in the workplaces I&#x27;ve been in Friday is already this no man&#x27;s land of a day where people phone it in or work from home as is.

No, she or her coalition has not demanded for a test run.<p>That &quot;utopia&quot; was introduced in August (four months before Marin became PM) as a proposal for the future.

Whenever this sort of policy comes up I wonder about the effects at the extreme ends of the spectrum.<p>If you&#x27;re in a position to opt-out of this sort of policy and become more competitive as a result, then this can be great for you because you improve your position relative to the others.<p>A bit like how people talk about capping incomes, seeminly not realising that this cements pre-existing owners of wealth further.<p>Right now I&#x27;m sort of in an OK position, but ten years ago I would have told you - I don&#x27;t want a 4-day week, because you&#x27;re ahead of me, and I want to catch up with you.<p>I mean, ultimately there&#x27;s nothing stopping most people negotiating a 4 day week. It just seems to be the case that &quot;most&quot; people accept whatever job is thrown at them, so if you&#x27;re unskilled, it&#x27;s difficult to convince an employer of anything even slightly unusual. Fixing _that_ situation (e.g. giving people leverage of some sort) is the way to go, IMO.

I think it makes sense to work less for many reasons. But some politicians propose it like it would cost nothing, or that the costs would be eaten by the employers. To the voters it is proposed as &quot;work less and get paid the same&quot;. I think that is dishonest.

I would love to see different industries use different business hours.<p>I&#x27;d like a dentist to be able to go to the bank, a banker to visit the dentist, without automatically having to take time off of work to do so.

Most productive time of my life I worked 3x13s each week covering the weekends for a 24&#x2F;7 team, and had 4 days a week to myself. I was able to do so much in my life, improve my skills and really be more productive at work and a better person just from having the free time to explore. I don&#x27;t know that working more&#x2F;less hours each day has ever really mattered to me, but working less days per week can be life changing in a very positive way. It&#x27;d be great if we could all do 4x10 or 3x13s.

I can only hope this catches on in the US!<p>&gt; In neighbouring Sweden, where the 6-hour-day has already been applied since 2015, results showed that employees were happier, wealthier and more productive, as they were still fully paid and customers were more satisfied.<p>Whoa! I did not know that this was already a thing. Well, here&#x27;s hoping more orgs in the US take notice.

While we&#x27;re at it, let&#x27;s close most offices for the entire month of December. Nobody&#x27;s really working anyway.

This or (especially) 3x8 is what I&#x27;ve thought is about the &quot;right&quot; amount of work to count as full-time when you&#x27;re selling your labor, for some time now. It&#x27;s past the tipping point where your employer stops dominating your entire week, but still enough to remain good at whatever you do at work, with enough multi-hour time blocks to still get plenty accomplished.

regulated work hours are not the solution. the change of paradigm should be - people being paid for outcomes, not for hours sitting in a chair. To do that, govts would have to create (or allow creation of) the infrastructure for freelancing to become the most viable lifestyle choice.

I think these sorts of pushes can only gain traction in a country with a very extensive welfare system. Hard to imagine this working in the US, for example. People would simply figure out a way to work more in order to get ahead and compete with others. Seems to me that a more socialist form of government is a required backdrop for this to mean anything.