Many people want to work from home and many want to work less, so why not have more job sharing? This would align with the drive for "four day weeks" also, where for every four people who choose to do four day weeks, another one could be employed. And perhaps when there is the possibility of a three-day weekend every week, the will for working from home exclusively reduces somewhat. And while the employee count might increase for the company, it would also mean that there is less "wasted" space on premises, but it also means that the businesses who service offices would still have enough clientele from employees.
People talk about work-life balance, but perhaps one of the reasons that this is hard to accomplish is because of expectations on what one should have. The more people earn, the more people spend, and the more they spend, the more accustomed they get to having more items, or higher priced items.
The consumer profile of household expenditures today is quite different than it was a couple decades ago. Homes are now filled with a myriad entertainment products, not to mention the many subscriptions required to facilitate their usage. There is little point to have a large screen TV, without at least one streaming service, and once there is one, it isn't hard to have three or four. The types of foods many eat has also changed, with far more dining out or takeaway bought, and a lot more processed food that is increasingly further from the base form. A lot is packaged, ready or close to ready to go.
Essentially, the more people earn, the more they demand of everything, which means the cost of everything goes up, and the cost of living goes up with it. Schooling is more expensive, transportation is more expensive, healthcare and childcare are more expensive - everything is relatively more expensive than it was. Which means, in order to meet our own demands of life, we are forced to work more to earn more.
The approach to close the gap between earnings and consumer demands is to invest into wealth generation investments like stocks, but this in itself causes a problem, because it is going to benefit a few more than the many, and the wealth gap will grow between. Instead of making things cheaper to meet the financial capabilities of the masses, it ends up pushing prices up further, to decrease purchasing power, and pulling more into a a cycle of debt slavery.
It is the law of supply and demand in action, the more that is demanded, the more that is supplied and prices go up, as do profits. However, as prices increase and competition increases in the market, demand drops and profit margins decrease. However, I think that because of the setup of SaaS models, there is a lot more lag in the system, so demand remains steady, especially since we are pretty addicted to what we are demanding. Like addicts, we will spend our last dollar, go into debt and even steal in order to maintain our high.
For many years there has been talk about a universal basic income as if that is some kind of saviour for the economic downturn amongst the masses with less people able to afford their own wellbeing. However, it is a stop-gap measure that will lead to more problems in the long-term than it solves in the short-term. However, perhaps a hybrid approach with a four-day work week and a supplemented income would be able to get more people into the workforce, as well as give the time and space to retrain into something that is either more value adding than the current role for the future, or for something that a person would like to do on the side.
Something that enhances personal wellbeing.
Whatever the eventual solution, it is absolutely clear that the current practices in the economy around the way governments, corporations, education, employment and society as a whole function, is outdated to the point of being harmful for humanity. It is also unrealistic to expect that global society will just change the way it demands in ways that would be seen by many as a degradation of wellbeing, even though that is what is happening now anyway - just more slowly.
Instead, whatever the solution profile is, it has to take into account human nature, in a world that is increasingly being automated and enhanced with artificial intelligence in ways that will soon outperform 90% of humans in the majority of the tasks in their current roles. Many don't believe that this is the case, but it is going to happen far quicker in many industries than people realise. And the area that provides the most profit for corporations to automate, are the knowledge worker tasks in the highest paid jobs in the organisation. Cutting one high paid job is far more profitable than cutting ten low-paid jobs in a poor nation. This means that a lot of highly educated, professional workers who are used to the lifestyle afforded by high-paying employment, will find themselves unemployable. And this will ultimately impact on the richer nations ability to provide also.
New jobs will be created, but not as many that are lost.
To me at least, it seems that there are a couple of basic outcomes for the next 20-50 years. One is that most people will lose their job and become increasingly reliant on a state that is dealing with an aging population in an environment where conglomerates are taking wealth outside of the country, leaving a shrinking pool of resources with which to provide. This is happening now, and will only get worse unchecked.
Another alternative is that there will be a reshuffling of the way employment works, where more people get employed, but they are expected to provide a little less on average, to be a little less efficient. This sounds silly, but corporate efficiency leads to social degradation over time. While "busy work" might not add value, most of what we do for jobs don't actually add value, once you realise that most of them in some way are just there to provide the resources to sell more entertainment products and services in some way. This is a way that would combine four-day weeks and universal incomes in order to give a better standard of living on average, but lower peaks in extreme wealth.
Another approach would be to change society at the core again, as we have done over the last thousand years and redefine what should be valued. Ultimately, if human wellbeing is the thing that we are looking to maximise, it all becomes pretty easy to manage the economy, because the most effective way to wealth, is to help others improve their life. Not only this, it also allows for a doubling-down on the desire for entertainment, because automation won't be developed for wealth creation, it will be there for wellbeing creation instead. Profit takes a backseat, and health comes to the fore.
Socialism of course doesn't work in a capitalist world where the driving incentive is wealth creation for the maximisation of power, but would it work in one where the driving incentive is wellbeing creation for the maximisation of health? Of course, the problem is that when humans are involved, so is desire and greed, but perhaps in the not too distant future, the artificial intelligences will take over the governance structures and build mechanisms that can't be hijacked by individuals, no matter how greedy.
Sounds like a dystopia candidate ripe for failure?
Sure does. However, the way we are headed is also toward a dystopian future of mass proportions, that are going to see billions of people increasingly suffer at all levels of their lives, and it will impact negatively on the majority of countries and communities on earth, no matter how safe they think they are economically and socially today.
It is clear that things have to change somehow.
Taraz
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So are you talking like "shift work" for salary jobs? That's the way I read it. It's interesting for sure. I mean in the field I work in you often see stuff like that. Data centers where they need to have 100% uptime will often have coverage through the night in case something happens.
Kind of like shift work. But if you think that a normal 5 day week is Monday to Friday and 4 people do 20 days collectively. Instead, 5 people can do do a four day week and still cover the 20 hours. If then for instance, education systems could then offer courses that fit into Monday, Fridays and possibly Wednesday or something, so the on the "day off" people can learn.
I'd be so happy if we moved to a four day work week. I've actually worked at schools where they do something like that for the students. It's called block scheduling and you still go all five days, but Friday is more for studying, catching up, and getting one on one attention from the teacher. Kind of like office hours at university.
I think it would be good to have that kind of schooling here too, though the school schedules are pretty strange here - more like university scheduling for the students. .
However, I wish they would have more support for how to learn.
Yeah, I think there are a lot of positives and negatives. I think a lot of things would actually be different if the government didn't have so much say and the unions didn't basically control everything else.
I think this whole topic about worklife in general feels like it will change so much in the upcoming time. The funny thing is that from all my friends that I see that literally no one is a stay home parent for instance, because they say it is impossible to make ends meet. (Now here in the Netherlands we are kings and queens of working part time so this already different than in a lot of other countries), but the funny this is indeed also in our spending patterns. Most people I know want to be able to have a vacay or two cars, while I guess we were all brought up with the idea if that if vacay is even possible at all, then it is max 1 times per year for instance.
I agree with you how AI is changing the concept of work already. As I see how for instance the HR department at my workplace has changed over the last couple of years, I can only guess that in a couple of years of time this will even change a lot more with just 1 human checking all of the HR AI bots in there.
Most of all I am wondering what will happen when people stop spending how that will make the economy tip over.. because it feels like that may be closer than anything
Same here in Finland and many people take multiple holidays per year, even if they aren't all "large" holidays. It is like a week here, a few days there, three or four times a year is normal. Plus, they don't want to go without any other of life's daily comforts. I feel it is unsustainable for most, but it drives a "work more" mentality.
My wife works in HR and yeah, it is changing a lot also. I was reading about psychologists getting replaced in many ways too, because the AIs are better listeners and can take in far more data points and process them. Might be the same kind of thing, with a couple people monitoring the bots.
Yes. But, for the real owners, like Blackrock, they are fine in boom or bust.
Yeah, I teach a lot of young professionals in healthcare, and nearly all of them don't start working fulltime immediately after. I get that...work-life balance. BUT....they do want that vacay lifestyle and want to buy a grande house immediately after graduation.
That doesn't work like that anymore. I don't know about you, but I started with roomies and living in studios and so untill the pay got better. It feels like these new kinds are skipping that phase, but they cant afford to do so... hmmm
I think they are skipping it too. The younger people I know are renting places far nicer than I would have, even when I was in a better position than they were at that age. And when they buy, many aren't getting the "fixerupper" and doing it themselves, they are getting something ready, or paying top dollar for tradies to do even the simple jobs.
If YOLO, the more we have free or off days the more we can live our life as the working life takes away the most of our time which is limited.
But to really maximise that "free" time, we need to be able to utilise it well, which means having resources available. If the economy was set up for maximising wellbeing, we would have more free time, and the resources.
Not working at all is very boring, but I also get tired from work - I would like to go to work when I feel like it ))
Would be nice - kind of like on Hive ;)
It would be really great) - even ideal!
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BEER.The idea of reducing workdays and increasing employment opportunities may be a good one for economic stability and improving quality of life.
But Taraz I believes that the bigger challenge is changing the mindset of overconsumption that drives people to work more to spend more.
The overconsumption is a big problem, because it feels so good. We have been told that feeling good now is the most important thing, even if it isn't what is best for our wellbeing. This is why there are obesity epidemics in many countries. In the US, obesity kills 500K people a year.
Wow this is an interesting thought. The 5 day work week seemed to be so entrenched in the current norm and not many are challenging this status quo. I thought there would definitely be employees interested in working 4 days (for a lower pay and benefits on a pro rata basis). Thanks for the insightful post, definitely food for thought.
I think it will head that way naturally, as the educated will increasingly struggle to find 5-day work, so will be looking for anything and willing to sacrifice for it. Not great for the future as an employee!
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Wow how deep. I work from home more hours than if I was working in a regular nine to five job. The uncertainty of the income is awful the majority of the time, and a blessing other times. I have been wondering to myself if this way of life will be affordable for my future.
The point is the more you a person works the more he needs more. For me, job or no job, cost of living or non, the idea is just be contented, that way you wont border about the inflation happening in the world
The 4 day work week would be very much beneficial specially to working mothers and I think it it a great idea but as to the spending it takes discipline. Financial education is a challenge because that has been declined by if not all but to some because this is showing your reality and the so called PRIDE will make you denial. So I guess for this to work, it has to start in modifying the mindset.
oh cool. I luv to watch movies where there is a dystopian setting. 👊😎🤙
That is a very interesting insight, I think what is happening now would be just a cycle that would continue to go on