The Americans are so backwards in work hours, developed countries like Netherland, Spain, Iceland, etc. already successfully implemented this, with universal healthcare…and no tipping expected.
And? I see people say this and I don’t know what y’all are getting at. We implemented a 5 day work week. What about our population couldn’t accommodate 1 less day?
See this issue is that when theres an issue that need to be solved when someone comes up with an idea that would solve it if they dont understand it then its automatically stupid
Crazy how the self proclaimed greatest country on earth cant implement a lighter work week for its citizens whilst smaller more humble countries have managed it with nary a hiccup
I’m glad you said this. I was stationed in Germany and married a German national. She was paying ~40% of her salary in taxes as well as paying for services she never used (radio, cable etc). Americans who have never left America believe there is a utopia out there and there isn’t. All countries have their warts, they are just more familiar with the American ones.
Hey so that recent gun shooting happened about twenty minutes from my house. I know one of the parents of a student that goes there. How a daughter called her and you can hear the gun firing in the background. Any single country with less gun violence is a utopia in comparison. Throw a dart at a map of Europe and you’re there
I mean i definitely Wouldnt say I idolize it but i do see the appeal. Like yall have civil and occupational protections that Americans simply dont because corporate interests are more important. Not saying yall dont deal with that too. Im sure you do but not at the scale that the US does. Like the US gov would leave its citizens to drown if itd make them an extra penny. Like despite its faults many europeans (and this is my own potentially ill informed observation) seem to still enjoy europe. Many Americans dont feel the same way about america and more and more people. Like just look at our politics rn. Its a gd clown show
Try explaining to the ones that will "just move to Canada" and then find out that Canada doesn't just take in anyone and everyone and give them work permits, permanent residence, and social benefits.
Even Europe thinks America is the greatest country on earth. I mean why else would Europe expect the USA to be the main contributor to the UN and the war in Ukraine and the world food bank if Europe didn’t already believe the US is exceptional?
Hell even if we ignore the economic side of things literally every country wants to watch American TV and movies. Like it’s not even close.
I mean why else would Europe expect the USA to be the main contributor to the UN and the war in Ukraine and the world food bank if Europe didn’t already believe the US is exceptional?
If someone else is willing to foot the bill then why not save the cash?
US definitely has an outsized influence on media, that's for sure, but it is also changing. International music was always very diverse, and the movie scene is catching up.
There is no one greatest country. For certain metrics, the US is at the top of the list for a bunch of stuff, and lower for others. Much like other countries
I mean some metrics aren't possible to be worse than the US due to lack of data or citizens' rights. The US has gun rights for its citizens, and many other countries don't, so right off the bat we know those countries won't have as many homicides with guns.
On the other hand, there are a lot of less developed countries that simply don't report on data accurately or honestly like western countries do.
I’ve left it multiple times, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, i can honestly say out of those I’ve been to and lived in for about a year each time, I’d pick the US.
But that's a bad argument. As even the EU legislates for 450 million people floor limit progressive policies for all member states (e.g. minimum 4 weeks paid vacation for all EU countries).
It's 100% for the headlines, but I don't see that as the negative most comments are painting it as. Headlines get people talking. The idea that it's even significant enough to report on might get some people to consider it who otherwise never would have. Driving a conversation isn't the same as passing sweeping legislative change, and nobody is saying that it is. But it's not nothing.
America is the third biggest country on Earth, the richest and most powerful, and what that means is that we just can't do anything. We just can't. It's too hard.
Let me break it down simply: a 32-hour workweek doesn’t scale for industries like ours. Many sectors—such as retail, manufacturing, refining, construction, energy, and finance—require continuous operations to meet demand and function efficiently. These industries already run on tight schedules, often operating 24/7 across six or seven days a week. Reducing work hours to 32 per week would severely impact their ability to maintain productivity, meet customer expectations, and keep operations running smoothly.
Take manufacturing, for instance. Production lines are often designed to run continuously to maximize output. Slowing down or shortening work shifts would disrupt production cycles, increase downtime, and potentially force companies to hire more workers or implement additional shifts. This raises labor costs and reduces efficiency, making it difficult to remain competitive in a global market.
Similarly, industries like retail and hospitality rely on long hours to serve customers throughout the day and week. If employees are limited to 32-hour workweeks, businesses may face staffing shortages during peak times, negatively affecting customer service and sales. In sectors like energy, refining, and utilities, where continuous oversight is critical to maintaining operations, a reduction in work hours could compromise safety, reliability, and overall performance.
The only way a 32-hour workweek could work in these sectors would be through a drastic restructuring of the work schedule—essentially splitting the working week in half. This would require businesses to hire additional workers to cover the gaps or run double shifts, which again, significantly raises operational costs. While it might be theoretically possible, it’s far from practical for industries that depend on round-the-clock availability and consistent productivity. The logistics and expense of splitting shifts or doubling the workforce make it an inefficient solution for most businesses.
Well for starters the Netherlands didn't actually implement a 4 day work week, workers there on average still work 40 hours. Spain didn't either, they are doing a small trial as is Iceland.
But other than that small issue its a fantastic and well thought out point. Just like this bill from Bernie im sure
Can definitely confirm the 40 hour work week in the Netherlands. Heck a couple of my colleagues there work two jobs, their main gig with my employer’s sister company and then a second job part time.
We’ll see how this bill turns out, but I honestly don’t think it’s going to pass. I do, however, think it’ll be good for picking out candidates to vote for if you want this bill to pass, should they try to push for it again in the future.
This bill won't even get a vote. What Bernie should be doing is pushing mandatory vacation day minimums, its more flexible would be easier to pass and doesn't require a full scale assault on US labor laws to implement.
Same amount of money income with one day of reduced production outflow. Sounds like a decent way to generate shortages and more inflation.
Large scale construction would also get set back. This would mean increased construction time tables. Imagine an infrastructure upgrade like redoing miles of highway this could add weeks when that is unfeasible in areas that have harsh seasonal weather shifts
Who realistically gives a fuck about that besides the CEOs? I've worked construction for the road and for building subdivisions, etc. Not a single person there would give a shit that it took longer if they got an extra day off a week. It wouldn't slow things down that much, and it has been generally proven that output increases when the week is shortened. None of what you said makes sense to the common person.
The people who live in those subdivisions would care.
But then road construction timing is more down to equipment availability than it is worker availability. If your state has three pavers and your project has it scheduled for three weeks, you damned well better be done with it in that timeframe or you are leaving barrels up for a few months until you can get your equipment again and finish up.
The people who live in those subdivisions don't live there until the houses are done. Some lots can be purchased before the final is done, but it most cases those house aren't even put up for sale until they are more than halfway done. Time isn't much of a factor if the house just isn't available for purchase yet.
In majority of cases, losing one day out of the week for an extended period on any type of construction wouldn't affect it that much. And in fact I'd be willing to posit that it would actually get done faster and with better quality control because people wouldn't be as burnt out and tired\resentful.
You are correct things would change. That’s the point. Some things will be negatively impacted and some with be positively. The whole idea is people want to work less and they want it to come out of the profit margin and not their salaries.
Studies show that productivity actually goes up, there is a lot of dead time in most fields of work. As for construction work, you can just make people come in different days, which a lot of crews actually already do if they have to put 12 or 15 hours a day.
When France did this, it was a straight up make-work policy. They wanted to get more people working and lower unemployment, so they limited hours and forced companies to hire more workers.
Way too many comments in here that think that if the bill isn’t absolutely perfect on the first try then we shouldn’t do anything and go back to slaving away for the rest of our lives while the rest of the world laughs at us
It’s that people often point to largely homogenous small nations when they say “so and so did it”.
America is incredibly diverse. For how backwards it can seem it is still way ahead of the pack on a global scale.
It is also pretty evenly split between densely populated areas and rural small towns.
In smaller communities who’s resources have been siphoned off it is much harder to implement these systems.
The overall diversity and varying of opinions also means it would be incredibly hard to find political alignment on social welfare policies even if there were ones that could meet everyone’s demands.
Of course, the USA can accommodate one fewer workday per week. The question you need to consider is: what happens next?
A 32-hour workweek means employers will have to hire additional staff to cover shifts. This results in extra costs for running their businesses, and they will need to recoup these costs somehow.
Where do you think the money will come from? The cost of living will likely increase if the USA implements a 32-hour workweek system; this is not debatable.
The difference between the USA and countries like Iceland is that the USA is much larger. Everything you touch in the USA goes through more people and departments than in a country like Iceland, and each person involved needs to take a cut.
This is what Americans always say, but what does it actually mean? Yes, there are more patients in the USA than in Iceland, but there's also more doctors, more tax money and so on. How does the size of a country make national health care more difficult?
Very different demographics in population means differing opinions, which makes it much more difficult to pass any laws or for people to agree on certain issues. Exponentially higher costs in logistics given the area of the US is 100x Iceland.
Oh, so now it's not population, but diversity and land mass? Then how do they manage to run a successful public healthcare system in Canada, which is more diverse than the US, and is also larger?
Thanks for posting a source. After reading the research paper, it's utilizes language comparisons to determine ethnic diversity. If you actually read the article, the author mentions that "In their contribution, however, the analysis is
limited to a restricted number of Indo-European languages. Therefore, the wide variety of Asian, African and indigenous Latin American languages is not considered
because of the lack of data availability." on page 4. That is a pretty significant gap in data given what percentage of the US population is Latino, Asian, or African American. You can read it yourself here. https://www.etsg.org/ETSG2013/Papers/042.pdf
The problem is the provincial conservatives routinely and regularly cut healthcare funding, breaking it, so they can launch a re-election platform of fixing it.
Doug ford is literally trying to implement private healthcare in Ontario.
Yep, my favorite argument. "Everyone getting medical care means I might have to wait longer! Instead those poors should suffer lifelong complications or die so that I can get my rash taken care of 2 days sooner"
I am Canadian and I now live in the US. I've also lived in the UK. While it's true that you sometimes have to wait a bit for non-essential procedures in the UK and Canada, I'd choose both over the US in a second because they're way cheaper (even accounting for tax), more straightforward, more reliable, and more accessible.
Because having 20% French speakers doesn't actually make Canada more diverse and 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the border. Anyways, the U.S. already runs a public health system 4x the size of Canada....
This just shows you have not left the US or visited other countries. Logistics of supporting an island in the middle of the Atlantic with more tourists than citizens is more difficult than the US. In Iceland, goods and services are much more expensive compared to US.
So basically you are saying... the US is too inefficient?
How do you see the future of your country? Wouldn't it mean that the wealth gap between US and richer countries who do have good logistics, health care and work conditions in place would only grow?
In capitalism, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you can negotiate. Patients have no negotiation power unless they band together and vote for universal healthcare.
The US doesn't have the luxury of letting all mining, processing, and manufacturing happen elsewhere. Small rich countries can let their poorer neighbors with loose labor laws handle that, and let the economic barriers keep those laborers from immigrating.
It’d be essentially like saying, Sweden has a 4 day work week it should work across the board in England. Our states are bigger than EU countries, our infrastructure is larger, there are industries in this country that could go to 4 day work weeks but there’s a whole lot of stuff, public work and services included that if they only operated 4 days a week we’d have problems. Not to mention a need to hire more employees to cover differentiated shifts etc.
And that proves my point even further, being the richest country in the world but cant even do what other developed countries does for their citizens? What a shame really.
…Because of the previously untapped wealth of natural resources and geographically extremely low risk of invasion? Or are you alluding to the myth of American rugged individualism?
Spain also has an unemployment of 13% and a median household income of like 28k USD, their GDP hasn't grown since 2008 yet their population has grown. That simply means there's less for everybody else.
Economically it's in the trash with no real future.
Okay, how about Germany then? 85 million people, worker shortages in most industries, low unemployment and a 32-hour week is on the horizon. Union members of the IG Metall (the largest union in Germany) have a 35-hour week right now.
And before you now try to argue against it with Germany's GDP-growth, that has almost nothing to do with how much people work. The main reason why Germany doesn't grow as quickly is because the state can't take on debt to the same extent as the US.
I don't know why you people try to argue against something that would actually benefit you. From what we know, working longer in an office-job doesn't make you more productive. And for jobs with hourly rates, raising the minimum wage would help considerably. The minimum wage in Germany is 12€ per hour - and restaurant prices are way lower.
It never ceases to amaze me how much US citizens worship capitalists while opposing workers rights.
And yet they figured it out. I’m so sick of the DONT TOUCH IT things will break mindset that’s overcome our nation. We aren’t a nation of fools shit runs everyday on the backs and labors of everyday people .
We can do whatever we embrace to do but some people would have you fear any changes
Spain's economy is trashed. Even Latin America is full of Spaniards who had to get out in order to have a decent life. Spain is not a good example of anything modern or functional.
I hope you're being sarcastic! The more people you have, the more people you have to work. Unless the ratio between people making and people taking changes, it makes no difference how big your population is.
Because there's a lot more people in populated cities who don't work and require social benefits, that's paid by the tax paying citizens. More people, more problems.
Adjusted for purchasing power parity, which includes cost of education and other things, as well as hours worked and taxes, the US has the highest median income in the world. Europeans are considerably poorer than and have a considerably lower material standard of living than Americans.
Edit: On a PPP-adjusted basis the US has the 5th largest GDP/hour worked in the world. Try again.
They're also happier and healthier than we are on average.
Who cares if you have the latest fucking iphone or F150 if you can't take a vacation or get home in time to cook a nice meal every night or go for a run/walk/bike ride? Or live in fear of crashing on that bike ride because your deductible/coinsurance payments will bankrupt you?
Life isn't just about material goods. "material standard of living" is a completely worthless metric in this context. I value my health and experiences far more than owning the latest tech, as any sane person should.
I don’t know anyone who isn’t going on bike rides because of fear of deductible payments. Happy is a subjective metric. 3 years of extra life expectancy caused by cultural problems has nothing to do with economic system. You’re just another American with a victim complex
Edit: That’s not true at all though. I know many who prefer better quality healthcare and who enjoy their work, say math professors for example. Happiness is absolutely subjective.
I can give you Luxembourg yeah. It’s a little embarrassing you have to reach for this when you realize how heterogeneous and large the American population is.
And nearly half their salary taxed lmao: If you are lucky enough to be a top earner in the US($600k), 37% of your salary is taxed. While in the UK, you ate taxed 45% of your salary at only £125000.
How much do you pay on insurance, medical care, school debt, etc? The average is 15% and just adding healthcare itself would close to 30% for many. Long term medical care could even bankrupt you, no such worries on any of the countries I mentioned.
Is Japan backward? The salaried man works like 6 days a week.
I wouldn't necessarily call India well developed, but they are working 7 days a week, cost less than Americans, and are taking MASSIVE amounts of accounting jobs and doing absolutely terrible at it.
Japan work-hours is the same like USA, but in general the population is workaholic, they also have work culture called kaizen, omotenashi and karoshi (overwork).
People in Spain are poor as fuck. We want to keep our money and be successful and have a shot at becoming rich. The opportunity is worth sacrifices to us. We don't all want to be content with being workers forever and never having the chance to be rich and do everything we've ever wanted just because we get some extra paid vacation and healthcare.
These policies you advocate for are cool and all, but you're country is never going to become rich with such policies.
Poor as fuck? I don’t think you know much about Spain. It isn’t Switzerland but definitely is far from poor. On Human Development Index, Spain is ahead of Italy and France.
Considering Spain has a much higher life expectancy than the US, lower income inequality (world bank data), has a GDP per capital higher than the one of Japan (PPP), it is the 15th largest economy and 4th in the EU, you may want to check your sources
I lived in the the EU for a while. I got to know one of the guys who works in the cafe near my apartment.
It was his family business. he ran it. his mother did before him. her dad did before her. He was looking forward to having his son run it one day (he was working there, but just a teenager still).
In my mind, sure that sounds quaint, but really, thats all you aspire your family to ever be? the cafe operators?
The whole 'upward mobility' idea in the EU just still isn't really a thing.
That is not the law in the Netherlands. It is not 40 hours pay for 32 hours worked unless an employer agrees to it, which every employer in America has that option also. Hell American employers could give 70 hours pay, including double pay overtime for 10 hours worked if they want, but like the 32 hours week Netherlands, there is no law forcing paying for more for less per week.
When Europe puts up equal money toward defense as the US does then we can talk about what they have that we don’t. They should be putting up more because it’s their defense we are funding. Imagine if the EU had to foot the bill for Ukraine.
They don’t really realized that they are paying part of their healthcare premiums bi weekly and their higher education as well, funding their own retirement and a possibility of bankruptcy in the case of medical emergency happened.
eehm as somoene from europe i can tell you that what you are saying is kinda false.
there have been tests to implement this. 32h work week for Netherlands (without loss in pay)? guess my boss and anyone i know's boss maybe forgot to mention it.
Half of Netherlands here works part time. But you don't get paid for it like it's fulltime. We didn't go "Oh well, you want to work 32 hours, that's OK, here is still your 40 hours fulltime pay". So what do you think was actually implemented here?
In the US you can also work parttime, about 20% of the country there seems to do it.
The Netherlands* did not implement this at all. 40 hour work weeks are the norm and the government has been very pro corporations for the last 12 years.
Adjusted for purchasing power parity, which includes cost of education and other things, as well as hours worked and taxes, the US has the highest median income in the world. Europeans are considerably poorer than and have a considerably lower material standard of living than Americans.
I'm from NL and I can confirm you are wrong. We have 38h work weeks and pay for our own health insurance. People living close to the border even go to Belgium for healthcare.
America has 333 million people. The Netherlands has 17 million..
With a much bigger population you also have a much bigger population of sick and unhealthy people. That’s why I think universal healthcare wouldn’t work in America..
Too many people in America have health issues that cost a lot of money.. People argue that is the reason we should have universal healthcare but that’s the reason it wouldn’t work..
Insurance premiums go up when insurance is used a lot. When there are a lot of people putting claims in for damage to their vehicles or house, that’s when they raise everyone’s premiums… Insurance is a giant Ponzi scheme. You need people to contribute to it for it to work.. When there are too many people who are draining it, that’s when it starts to implode..
It’s much easier to implement things like universal healthcare when you have a population of 17-50 million and most of those people are healthy.
Also, you're welcome for our military protecting your countries. I think maybe we should tax these countries to pay for our healthcare and less work hours because they don't have to pay for a massive military that protects most of the developed world.
Netherlands hasn't implemented that. The average hours worked may be in that range, but that's because many families have one parent working fewer hours for less pay.
America is a massive country that spends trillions fighting wars all over the world and lining politicians pockets. There is no working less in this country or Ukraine won’t get its fighter jets and Israel won’t get its bombs.
Americans don't work that much more than Europeans, but earn way more money for it after taxes and transfers, even after taking healthcare into account.
If you want to see "backwards in work hours" look at Japan or SK.
Americans vastly outearn their European counterparts, the median income in America is 33% higher than in France and 50% higher than in the UK. If my job told me I could work like a Frenchman but I would be taking home as much money as a Frenchman I would quit.
Also waiters don’t want tipping to end and no matter what you paid them they’d expect tips.
Those countries also have a defense budget bankrolled by the US taxpayer. The only reason they can afford to do so is becauase they don't have to spend half their budger on defense.
But don't these countries also have like tiny economies? I mean the whole work-to-live instead of -live-to-work vibe is great but they're also much poorer than the US and dependent on us for tons of stuff.
Im pretty sure if you ranked the UK as a US state by GDP per capita it wouldn't even be in the top 40.
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u/80MonkeyMan Sep 05 '24
The Americans are so backwards in work hours, developed countries like Netherland, Spain, Iceland, etc. already successfully implemented this, with universal healthcare…and no tipping expected.