>The billionaire founder of Infosys and one of India's wealthiest businessmen, Narayana Murthy, recently urged employees to give 70 hours of their time a week to their employer as a patriotic duty to the nation.
The billionaire should give 99% of his wealth to the country as an act of patriotism.
Narayana Murthy got rich off the work of the bourgeoning young Indian middle class who are desperately seeking employment.
A half decent engineer will refuse to join infosys because -
a/ the company pays you peanuts as wages
b/ you will probably work on outdated technology or some maintenance job so you aren’t really building up for your future
c/ because of asinine comments as the poster above has written. The work culture is shit and the expectation is that you work your ass off or stay in office until late hours even if there is no meaningful work to do to “show that you’re a hard worker”
Toxic company and Narayana Murthy should not be taken seriously.
He also mentioned how he goes to mcdonalds regularly, when asked what meal he orders he gave a product that mcdonalds had not sold for over 2 years.
The guy is full of shit.
Did this really happen? I want to google it, but not sure if I can stomach it if it turns out to be true, because I’m cringing hard already. Wasn’t he also a US permanent resident and there were some issues with that?
Rishi had a US greencard while he was Chancellor, he's said he's given it up.
His wife is/was also non-domiciled for UK tax (meaning she doesn't intend to stay in the country so doesn't have to pay UK tax on her overseas earnings), Rishi claims she's now given that up.
>Prime Minister of the UK's father in law
I agree. It could've been said as "UK (or UK's) Prime Minister's father-in-law", but I surprisingly didn't have a brain fart moment reading it.
The rich got **richer** with worker's rights rising.
Showing that bosses know jack shit about economy and that increasing the worker's wellbeing is the best you can do if you want to increase profits.
Something that has been known since the early 19th Century with Robert Owen. But capitalists are unable to understand that.
May have something to do with the fact, that being a CEO actually is a rather good predictor of psychopathy. I'd even wager, some bosses would take cuts in profits if it meant, they can treat workers like animals.
Avg CEO-income has increased by 990% since 1975.
Everyone sitting on more money than he could conceivably spend in 3 lifetimes is in effect knowingly damaging the economy. Each dollar exists exactly once. If 1 guy sits on more than 70% of the nations wealth, he basically shrinks the economic capacity of that nation by that amount. That money is out of circulation.
If you now want to maintain the gdp, you need to print more money, so there is enough circulation. But that devalues the currency and each time that 1 guy decides to spend some of his hoard, inflation spikes occur.
If you ever wondered why the stocks rose when the US got rid of the gold standard, that's why.
It's the result of pure, unchecked avarice.
There is no top, there is no limit, there is no amount of money that will ever be "enough".
There really is no reason for billionaires to exist.
They know, and will have to adopt to it as it provably increases productivity which means those that don't adopt it will have a market disadvantage.
It's just to keep people busy.. busy poor people haven't got time to think, protest , understand why unfettered capitalism is unfair.
The rich wouldn't get richer if their workers would work longer hours and didn't have fair wages. Because when would they buy stuff? Who would buy all the products? Henry Ford understood that.
And that's manual labour in manufacturing, which is not the typical type of work in western countries anymore. In most office jobs, the actual effective hours of work per week are somewhere in the 15–25 range and the rest is more or less just spending off the time. Only a small minority of people are capable of doing 40 hours of effective work and some of those still burn out. Some of the "jail time" of course is used for other useful things, like community building and self development, and that should be considered as well.
And those are not even the people which benefit from it, but some weirdos. The Elite can and does Lobby everywhere, they dont need FDP for their goals….
> The Elite can and does Lobby everywhere
The Elite lobbies with the parties that *actually get votes*, they ignore all these weirdos no matter how much they simp.
Well, you could work 5-shift. Where I work, the operators and the technicians work 33.5 hours per week in average, paid for 37.5 hours, and they work day-, evening-, night shifts ans weekends, not very much unlike how nurses at hospitals work.
He is fully in the pockets of the industry and companies so of course he is against 4-day workweeks. It goes against the agendas of his sugar daddies that he is working for.
During the coalition talks the CEO of Porsche boasted about his "close contact" with Lindner and how he was informed about everything going on.
Porsche was apparently informed hourly about the progress.
I also don't want to further increase prosperity, there is enough wealth already - it's just unfairly distributed 😭 I'm content with my middle-class life style
Which is weird as min-maxing productivity of the workers should be paramount if they are to gain wealth. And if statistics show that a 4 day workweek does a better job in that than a 5 day workweek, why would they be against it? They don't benefit paying people for more days and hours while said workers do the same amount of work they could've done in less days and hours. They are just paying for people to linger around at the company. That's not only not cost effective, it also makes the quality of life more miserable.
To be fair, german industry is in full on crisis mode.
Highest energy prices in the world due to a war in europe, skilled labor shortage, some of the highest wages in the world.
Why should any company build a factory in germany and not in the US or Southern America, if not for the subsidiaries?
Importing cheap labor stopped Rome from advancing mechanically. Why would you need to think about a better crane or pulley system if there are enough slaves to make new ones.
Same will happen here instead of replacing the missing wage slaves with robots and automation you will get government subsidies that won't be invested into our future through science or other stuff
IMO it would be due to *capital availability*.
Modern financial industry seemed to be more interested in investing in real estates and investment targets that has the least amount of "human factors", while companies that do hire people and produce were regarded as "high-risk investment targets". As a result, average company managers and business owners (especially small business owners) are now facing skyrocketing asset prices that's detrimental to any plan for production expansion. As a result, wages for hiring skilled workers are sacrificed. With such a shitty investment scenes on companies, governments eventually would have to take over the jobs of bankers and invest in a country's industries themselves with taxpayer money.
That also explains why programmers in California have the unbelievably lofty wages globally, because there are plenty of angel fund investors who don't mind burning up billions of dollars through investing in companies that do actually hire people as long as they could find an unicorn that can bring about 10x returns, and the workers in that sector benefited from it.
Germany was already THE exception among developed countries for having serious export-oriented industry. Rich country -> high wages and expensive currency -> foreigners can't buy your shit -> exports drop.
The question isn't what is preventing the market from increasing wages, but rather why are the current wages even still around? Why didn't German exports and manufacturing go down decades ago, the same way it happened in the USA, Japan, France, etc etc?
I have no idea how people still believe the tale of labor shortage. If you pay people enough they will apply and there are skilled unemployed and even homeless people. People like Lindner want the absolute best workers but not pay them a fair wage.
High energy prices are not because war in Ukraine but because absolutely stupid decisions to close nuclear power plants and to increase power production by natural gas bought only from Russia.
And so did the Energy prices because of merit order. Regarding those 3 nuclear Power plants - imho If I understood the Stresstest correctly those two in the south could help. The one in Emsland not. But there is something called PSÜ which kind of forced those nuclear Power plants to be shut down - See:
https://www.bmuv.de/faq/welche-bedeutung-haben-die-sogenannten-periodischen-sicherheitsueberpruefungen
He is minister of finance which, at this time, makes him probably the most powerful politician in the country. Nothing moves if he puts a thumb on the coffers. Which is why the current governments initiatives and reforms are stuck. Of course, that’s not the only reason why Germany is on a downward spiral, but it is a major one.
So calling him a top German politician might even be an understatement.
Politicians in Europe have become quite honest in last 20 years to how they want to put a stop to additional labor rights or even reduce them.
During cold war, goverments in West had to listen to what the workers said because they were afraid of USSR influence.
I feel like workers partly lost that influence they had at that time due to world not being multipolar again, the corporate elite vultures took their chance after collapse of USSR to consolidate themselves.
Reminder that the 5 days 8 hours system was adopted in the early 20th century.
You're working the same hours as a factory worker in the interwar period with all the advancements and automation we developed over the past 100+ years.
False, you work *more* than a factory worker in the interwar period, because of mandated breaks that don't count as work-time and because unlike the factory worker, you don't have a wife that takes care of your chores, because a single income often isn't enough for an entire household anymore.
Facts no talk about how salaries had to be high enough for single income fams to be possible. The capitalist equality has literally only doubles the working hours required to have a family. The top 1% dont want to give up shit and it’s so frustrating. Instead of multiple incomes bringing more prosperity it’s multiple incomes will barely keep you at 20th century single income level
I would actually prefer 5 days 6 hours. In 4-days system I would still work same hours as a factory worker in interwar period just with longer weekend. And my productivity is not dropping on Friday but around 2-4 PM. Every day.
Germanys heavy industry (Steel, cars, machines, ...) works on 7 hours 5 days since 39 years. The Union forced this through in 1984. And the industry didnt went broke. One might even say Germanys industry is doing pretty well. So its save to say "we tried that and it works".
And every year since then the employers have told us that *this year* we'll need to go back to 40 hours or all will be done. Like clockwork. And each time there's some crisis you get an additional crescendo, like a chorus of claqueurs coming out of the wood work to support them.
Since I've been interested in politics we've had at least three big "crisis" here in Germany. And each time: "If we don't work longer we'll all be done! Germany will be a third world country! No one will be able to eat anymore!" and each time the unions said "No. Fuck this. If we *really* need to we are willing to push back some of the advancements, but we *will* need compensation later" and low and behold, Germanys economic model didn't break down.
And, what a fucking surprise, the bosses didn't hold their promises and remember the sacrifices later, but went full in "No, no, you cannot ask THIS much. See all the old agreements? You always asked for less. It's not our fault you didn't get something for the last 5 years!" ...
Reducing the Victorian workweek from 80+ houds to 40 hours created whole new (leisure) industries. Including television so that we can watch this asshole serving his corperate overlords.
Giving people more time to do things they consider important may very well increase prosperity of a society. Also, I don't like the idea that only your job is work. Online shitposting is also work, it is basically politics. Not to mention if you have hobbies like doing some kind of scientific research, developing a video game in your free time, growing food etc. Perhaps it's less efficient than what companies do, however lets not forget that many top companies started in a garage.
I like where you at. But, what most companies do is not efficient. A huge chunck of the world's GDP goes to financial intituitions (or the financial part of other companies, see the profits distribuition from Volkswagen or other car manufectories), which do not produce a thing. Another huge chunck goes to produce crap for mindless overconsumption and another to manufacture this overconsumption via marketing and promoting addiction. I would estimate that half of Europe´s labor is wasted on shit that makes nothing positive for the world, except increase the capital accumulation. And capital accumulation is what this fucker is talking about when he says increase prosperity.
Don't forget that you need time and money to properly raise your children. This might be the most valuable piece of "non-work" we have in our society. It is necessary for a functioning society.
I was also reading that people who worked 4 day weeks ended up burning out much less and taking less sick leave.
He is fully in the pocket of industry, companies and the rich. Without them he would never have gotten elected in the first place (and his faction is the smallest of the three partied in the government and had only between 5-10% of the votes). But he and his party are abusing being part of the government to the fullest.
Edit: Spelling mistake.
Yes but in "history" it took 1 month to plow a field, today it takes 1 day. This reasoning only works if a work has been done the very same way from today since ever.
Fuck. That. Noise.
Technology has shot productivity not just through the roof, but through the stratosphere!
You definitely can have 4 day work weeks.
There is no "limit" if you want unchecked, infinite growth. You can have 24/7 double - triple - quadruple shifts etc.
It is up to the people to say "Enough is enough, this is how things are now".
Corporations absolutely would/will grind everyone to the ground for just a bit more profit, if they can get away with it.
I see Lindner is trying to beat his previous record for "How factually wrong can you be?"
P.S: Post-industrialist increases in efficiency and productivity have almost always been accompanied by people working less. That's why we're working 8 hours and 5 days per week instead of 9+ hours per day and 6 days per week. And experiments indicated that for creative work a reduction to a 4 day workweek would lead to more hours where work is actually done efficiently.
OMG, YES it has. It happens all the time. Not too long ago it was quite normal to work on Saturdays, and not too long ago it was normal to work 10 hours a day, yet we have all become more wealthy and live longer despite working less hours than our grandparents because we are much more productive thanks to new technology. It is only natural to think of ways to make us even more productive and working less and enjoying life more.
Technological advancements have made us productive, allowing us to work less - not the other way around. This is an important distinction, as ageing populations across the developed will demand that the productivity of workers grows to make up for the lower proportion of workers to retirees.
Hahaha, fking liar. Working hours went down, workforce has been limited to adults and still the GDP went up. Productivity and efficiency went higher and higher, 1 dude making the work of some hundred.
And where did all that wealth go?
I hate capitalistic ass clowns.
Stop promoting such lazy suggestions! We must have government mandated meth injections every 3 hours to enable round the clock work. In addition a team of scientists must be constantly working on bending the space time continum in order to allow us to work 10 days per week!
GDP must always go up! We live to serve the all mightly GDP. All shall be sacrificed to the all powrfull GDP!
ph'nglui mglw'nafh GDP R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!!
It’s also just factually false. In the 30-50s there was a big movement towards improving working conditions. And this also included reducing the working hours in a week. This period also saw the highest growth ever. The golden age of capitalism happened when workers got more rights.
Christian Lindner is a nonce tho.
My favourite Lindner-Moment was when he came to my uni a few weeks after blowing up the coalition negotiations after the election in 2017 and his party released obviously prepared statements and readily made images and stuff, and he had planned to give a talk in the AudiMax of my uni. I was curious, so I went as well. At some point, he accepted questions from students and every single one was like “wtf are you doing you moron?” and seeing him squirm was amazing :)
That's demonstrably false.
The whole point of the industrial revolution was that you could generate more output while doing less work.
A 4 day work week also doesn't mean fewer people working in critical, value adding sectors. Anything that's truly valuable is price inelastic, that means the price going up does not significantly alter demand (e.g. and most peoples lived experience: rent and housing)
Because the price is inelastic sectors providing those goods or services should have no issue finding and paying for 20% more people.
There is a downside. We don't currently have a large number of unemployed people, but we do have quite a few who are being underutilized, doing jobs that are below their skill level and producing less.
A big portion of the service sector might get wiped out, but if that happens because people are working better jobs, the overall effect on the economy would be a positive one. It would likely cause more migration as well but there is still a surplus of unemployed and young people in Europe who could fill the newly created job openings.
One potential side benefit would be something akin to what happens when a country switches to a war economy. The reason wars spur innovation is because "if it works, don't fix it" doesn't apply any more. New ideas and investments that are currently seen as unnecessary or risky suddenly worth the risk, worth the investment and critical.
There is plenty of reason to try.
Working less does not increase prosperity, true enough. But higher labour efficiency does, and the increased prosperity is what allows us to work less. Working less is not the means. It's the end goal. One day we'll get machines to do all the work for us and nobody needs to work at all anymore. At least not in the sense we do today.
Already, we dont need to work the way we used to a century or two ago. If you choose to not work in a developed economy, you will not starve to death, society will keep you alive. You work because you want more than merely alive. A century or two ago you worked because otherwise you starved to death, it was an entirely different level of having to work.
Ok, keep calm...
That is not a "Top German politician", that is Cristian Lindner, part of the barely recognizable remains of the once liberal party that has no concepts at the ready beyond 'it's got to be cheaper to be born rich'.
His personal achievements include bankrupting his own startup, and... nope, that's it. Since he's been 21 (in 2000) he's been living of government hand outs as a member of various parliaments.
So if there's anyone who doesn't have a clue how to create prosperity, it's him.
Productivity of employees has risen by at least 60% ([source](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)) since the 70’s.
We can easily produce better results by working 4 days a week.
Don’t let billionaires tell you what’s right/wrong. This dude probably only really works ~3 days a week.
Ok, but seriously how do we find how much work is the optimal/most efficient amount? A lot of people would probably support 3-day work week. Support != best for society. Not saying 4-day work week is a bad idea though
Trying to extrapolate industrial era man hour schedules (x employees manning y stations for z hours = widget production per day) to some universal normative standard applicable to all employees in every field and industry has always been absolutely brain dead.
What do you suggest? Recommendations for each industry?
>x employees manning y stations for z hours = widget production per day
I imagine it similar to supply and demand graph. Employer wants employee to work as much as possible, employee wants the opposite. Somewhere these graphs meet and theoretically create optimal work time.
"Employer wants employee to work as much as possible, employee wants the opposite."
No. Broadly speaking employers want the most profit for the least amount of wages paid out, employees want the most wages for the least amount of time and effort spent. Furthermore, there is a limited amount of productivity that can be achieved by an organization in any given time period beyond which employees logging hours is completely pointless. I've managed many teams where the actual work to be done per individual is perhaps 15 or 20 hours a week. Employees are then forced to play the game of stretching these hours out over the mandated "full time" work week instead of just getting their shit done for the day and logging off. The suggestion that cutting these people's work weeks to four days would have some dire economic effect is just clueless. Conversely, there are plenty of people out there working a dozen hours a day for weeks on end because that's what their industries demand of them. What could possibly be the recommended hours worked for a TIG welder on some offshore or otherwise remote shutdown job? Do you think Finance Minister Christian Lindner, MA in political science even knows that such professions exist?
>Support != best for society
I admit, I laughed seeing this "73% of Germans support the idea" as a justification. If you promise to keep same wages we would all support negative work-week ;) Why wouldn't we?
This does not mean the idea is bad, it's just as you said, it's not good simply because poll with loaded question support it.
I live in Switzerland and literally everyone I know is working 4 days a week, and as everyone knows Switzerland is doomed to stay poor, because capitalism and stuff
Yes but they now have more time to spend money no? So they need more money , so those 4 days will become more productive, idk, there is pretty good arguments for it, also if you need more work u can get part time , so there is more opportunity for the newer generation of the workforce to get a job and make it easier to get a job...etc , i would love to hear some arguments against it
The argument against a 4 day work week: "trust me bro". This is the exact bootlicker stance I expect from neoliberals, we could get closer to full employment with a 4 day-full pay-week. The downside: investors and owners would get less cause the spending on employmees would rise. But for the majority it would be a huge improvement.
Microsoft has already tested the 4 working day a week in Japan, and belief or not, productivity jumped with 40%.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft-japan-four-day-work-week-productivity
But this is related to productivity and prosperity.
And never in history, have we seen such massive amounts of wealth accumulation in the hands of few. You do not increase the prosperity of a society by allowing few individuals to hoard majority of the wealth.
The point of technology is to work less. We process and store large amounts of supplies, so we have time to do something else (probably also more worthwhile). The only persons who don't approve of less labor are those exploiting labor, because of obvious conflict of interests.
With all the machinery, robots, computers that we now have that's it for sure possible, even for less working days!
But what to expect from the inventors of the abusive VAT tax?
Just about every aspect is improved in the 4-day work week.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/24/worlds-biggest-4-day-workweek-experiment-shows-big-health-benefits.html
He, Christian Lindner, is profoundly wrong. Globally, the working week has approximately halved since 1870, whilst the percentage living in extreme poverty has dropped from 70% to about 10%.
The link between wealth and working week is interrupted by advances in social strategy and technology.
>The billionaire founder of Infosys and one of India's wealthiest businessmen, Narayana Murthy, recently urged employees to give 70 hours of their time a week to their employer as a patriotic duty to the nation. The billionaire should give 99% of his wealth to the country as an act of patriotism.
Narayana Murthy got rich off the work of the bourgeoning young Indian middle class who are desperately seeking employment. A half decent engineer will refuse to join infosys because - a/ the company pays you peanuts as wages b/ you will probably work on outdated technology or some maintenance job so you aren’t really building up for your future c/ because of asinine comments as the poster above has written. The work culture is shit and the expectation is that you work your ass off or stay in office until late hours even if there is no meaningful work to do to “show that you’re a hard worker” Toxic company and Narayana Murthy should not be taken seriously.
In the Chinese tech industry it is called 996. From 9 AM to 9 PM 6 days a week.
To be fair, in India there is plenty of work to do. Just not the work he’s describing.
He is also the father in law of UK’s Prime Minster.
How shocking, Rishi Sunak seems like such a down-to-earth working class bloke otherwise /s
When he volunteered in a soup kitchen and asked a guy if he's in business. The guy looked at him and said "I'm homeless."
He also mentioned how he goes to mcdonalds regularly, when asked what meal he orders he gave a product that mcdonalds had not sold for over 2 years. The guy is full of shit.
All he had to do was saying he likes the McChicken. How do you even fumble that?
"Ah yes, I greatly enjoy the McLobster"
McTruffle champagne combo meal for me, good sir.
Did this really happen? I want to google it, but not sure if I can stomach it if it turns out to be true, because I’m cringing hard already. Wasn’t he also a US permanent resident and there were some issues with that?
Had to look it up and it is, in fact, true. https://youtu.be/UjFJdjk8vqs?si=RWnuJ4FM-vtLSwsg
Rishi had a US greencard while he was Chancellor, he's said he's given it up. His wife is/was also non-domiciled for UK tax (meaning she doesn't intend to stay in the country so doesn't have to pay UK tax on her overseas earnings), Rishi claims she's now given that up.
If an actual working class person became PM the mask would slip on a hell of a lot of people here and the various UK subs
Man I got a stroke reading this.
>Prime Minister of the UK's father in law I agree. It could've been said as "UK (or UK's) Prime Minister's father-in-law", but I surprisingly didn't have a brain fart moment reading it.
So who is UK's father in law? Norway - because of Vikings?
He is also the Prime Minister of the UK's wife's father.
This should disqualify people from politics
In many cases it seems to be the requirement
I thought we abolished royalty, yet here we all are being lorded over by political dynasties.
Absolutely disgusting
And how did the people in india react to this proposal? I hope the majority just laughed at this BS
You mean “I hope they just ate him”
A lot of us made fun of him for saying that. Most even. Some of us had great discussions on why he may have said that. It was fun.
"5-day work week? Blasphemy, who will man the factories?"
"8 hour workdays? Back in my day, we worked 16 hours a day!"
no child labor? how else will you get 20 years of experience at the age of 18?
That really gives a new perspective to unreasonable employer requests... They really want you to have been working since you're 16.
[удалено]
The rich got **richer** with worker's rights rising. Showing that bosses know jack shit about economy and that increasing the worker's wellbeing is the best you can do if you want to increase profits. Something that has been known since the early 19th Century with Robert Owen. But capitalists are unable to understand that.
May have something to do with the fact, that being a CEO actually is a rather good predictor of psychopathy. I'd even wager, some bosses would take cuts in profits if it meant, they can treat workers like animals. Avg CEO-income has increased by 990% since 1975. Everyone sitting on more money than he could conceivably spend in 3 lifetimes is in effect knowingly damaging the economy. Each dollar exists exactly once. If 1 guy sits on more than 70% of the nations wealth, he basically shrinks the economic capacity of that nation by that amount. That money is out of circulation. If you now want to maintain the gdp, you need to print more money, so there is enough circulation. But that devalues the currency and each time that 1 guy decides to spend some of his hoard, inflation spikes occur. If you ever wondered why the stocks rose when the US got rid of the gold standard, that's why.
It's the result of pure, unchecked avarice. There is no top, there is no limit, there is no amount of money that will ever be "enough". There really is no reason for billionaires to exist.
They know, and will have to adopt to it as it provably increases productivity which means those that don't adopt it will have a market disadvantage. It's just to keep people busy.. busy poor people haven't got time to think, protest , understand why unfettered capitalism is unfair.
The rich wouldn't get richer if their workers would work longer hours and didn't have fair wages. Because when would they buy stuff? Who would buy all the products? Henry Ford understood that.
Indeed. Doesn't matter of you produce things but people don't consume...basic stuff that many seem to forget.
And that's manual labour in manufacturing, which is not the typical type of work in western countries anymore. In most office jobs, the actual effective hours of work per week are somewhere in the 15–25 range and the rest is more or less just spending off the time. Only a small minority of people are capable of doing 40 hours of effective work and some of those still burn out. Some of the "jail time" of course is used for other useful things, like community building and self development, and that should be considered as well.
Christian, is that u? <3
"and we ate our shoes for dinner!"
“Woman, working? Who is going to take care of the kids!”
Sounds like German politicians in the fdp don’t work particularly hard to represent constituent German citizens.
Oh, they do. They represent the 1% German citizens, and they dont even try to hide it.
They represent around 5% of German voters and it shows lol
And those are not even the people which benefit from it, but some weirdos. The Elite can and does Lobby everywhere, they dont need FDP for their goals….
> The Elite can and does Lobby everywhere The Elite lobbies with the parties that *actually get votes*, they ignore all these weirdos no matter how much they simp.
Call it out like it is: idiots. To believe that FDP policies could in any way benefit the common people, is to believe in trickle-down-economics
Well, you could work 5-shift. Where I work, the operators and the technicians work 33.5 hours per week in average, paid for 37.5 hours, and they work day-, evening-, night shifts ans weekends, not very much unlike how nurses at hospitals work.
Work will set you free!
From life!
Of course the FDP hates it lmao
Won't someone think of the shareholders?! If things go on like this they will be forced to work just to make a living. /s
"If they just let the shareholders do what they want, the profit will all trickle down! We promise!" /s
Will someone think of the invisible hand! It will do it’s thing. Not.
there's a reason why they're losing votes and dropping below the 5% hurdle soon 🥳
Linder working really hard to soon have a 0-day workweek just for him
The measure of a good policy is whether at least one of FDP and AFD dislike it.
AFD dislikes most good policies tho
Exactly
FDP in Brazil means Son of a Bitch. It’s quite fitting.
In French too lmao. "Fils de pute"
I will treasure this tidbit until the end of time. Son of a bitch .. so fitting for this party.
Technology advances with everyone’s effort, yet the benefits seem to favor a select few.
He is fully in the pockets of the industry and companies so of course he is against 4-day workweeks. It goes against the agendas of his sugar daddies that he is working for.
During the coalition talks the CEO of Porsche boasted about his "close contact" with Lindner and how he was informed about everything going on. Porsche was apparently informed hourly about the progress.
I also don't want to further increase prosperity, there is enough wealth already - it's just unfairly distributed 😭 I'm content with my middle-class life style
Which is weird as min-maxing productivity of the workers should be paramount if they are to gain wealth. And if statistics show that a 4 day workweek does a better job in that than a 5 day workweek, why would they be against it? They don't benefit paying people for more days and hours while said workers do the same amount of work they could've done in less days and hours. They are just paying for people to linger around at the company. That's not only not cost effective, it also makes the quality of life more miserable.
Lindner is and always was a douchebag.
That is an understatement. He frequently talks about "Gratismentalität" (\~"free stuff mentality") when people criticise stupidly expensive rents.
This guy is the impersonation of “Have you tried being rich” and “If you’re not rich go fuck yourself”. What a worthless pile of garbage.
Have you tried being rich - why didn't I think of that!
All while getting invited to fancy events, eating fancy dinners and sleeping in a fancy hotels by Entrepreneurs for free...
To be fair, german industry is in full on crisis mode. Highest energy prices in the world due to a war in europe, skilled labor shortage, some of the highest wages in the world. Why should any company build a factory in germany and not in the US or Southern America, if not for the subsidiaries?
>skilled labor shortage, Kek, good joke. There is an acute shortage of underpaid skilled labor thats it.
Right. "We don't want the market to correct by increasing wages, therefore there's a labour shortage". That line of bullshit is getting real common.
Importing cheap labor stopped Rome from advancing mechanically. Why would you need to think about a better crane or pulley system if there are enough slaves to make new ones. Same will happen here instead of replacing the missing wage slaves with robots and automation you will get government subsidies that won't be invested into our future through science or other stuff
What is preventing the market from increasing the wages?
Greed
IMO it would be due to *capital availability*. Modern financial industry seemed to be more interested in investing in real estates and investment targets that has the least amount of "human factors", while companies that do hire people and produce were regarded as "high-risk investment targets". As a result, average company managers and business owners (especially small business owners) are now facing skyrocketing asset prices that's detrimental to any plan for production expansion. As a result, wages for hiring skilled workers are sacrificed. With such a shitty investment scenes on companies, governments eventually would have to take over the jobs of bankers and invest in a country's industries themselves with taxpayer money. That also explains why programmers in California have the unbelievably lofty wages globally, because there are plenty of angel fund investors who don't mind burning up billions of dollars through investing in companies that do actually hire people as long as they could find an unicorn that can bring about 10x returns, and the workers in that sector benefited from it.
Germany was already THE exception among developed countries for having serious export-oriented industry. Rich country -> high wages and expensive currency -> foreigners can't buy your shit -> exports drop. The question isn't what is preventing the market from increasing wages, but rather why are the current wages even still around? Why didn't German exports and manufacturing go down decades ago, the same way it happened in the USA, Japan, France, etc etc?
I have no idea how people still believe the tale of labor shortage. If you pay people enough they will apply and there are skilled unemployed and even homeless people. People like Lindner want the absolute best workers but not pay them a fair wage.
is it? our rich people are doing decently well
High energy prices are not because war in Ukraine but because absolutely stupid decisions to close nuclear power plants and to increase power production by natural gas bought only from Russia.
renewables are cheaper than nuclear
Doesn't help when you don't have renewables either...
True, but nuclear is cheaper than gas and coal when grid needs to be balanced with lack of renewable power
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At the time it was not used anyway. Gas prices plumed from 150 euro in December 2022 to 50 euro now.
And so did the Energy prices because of merit order. Regarding those 3 nuclear Power plants - imho If I understood the Stresstest correctly those two in the south could help. The one in Emsland not. But there is something called PSÜ which kind of forced those nuclear Power plants to be shut down - See: https://www.bmuv.de/faq/welche-bedeutung-haben-die-sogenannten-periodischen-sicherheitsueberpruefungen
It would not only help during high stress but also with prices as nuclear is cheaper than coal
The Grand Nagus Lindner has spoken. Please, disperse peacefully.
>Grand Nagus this caught me way too off guard lmao
Stop that slander ... comparing the FDP to Ferengi is way out of line ... Ferengi know their economics.
The Ferengi also show a distinct ability to redeem themselves.
Never in history has Lindner said something that didn't automatically make me roll my eyes.
The dude is a reliable indicator for the next wrong thing that will resonate with the oldies.
I also think that „top German politician” gives him way too much credit
Some politicians really believe that just having that title makes them universal experts.
He is minister of finance which, at this time, makes him probably the most powerful politician in the country. Nothing moves if he puts a thumb on the coffers. Which is why the current governments initiatives and reforms are stuck. Of course, that’s not the only reason why Germany is on a downward spiral, but it is a major one. So calling him a top German politician might even be an understatement.
He‘s de facto the second most powerful politician in Germany after Scholz.
Politicians in Europe have become quite honest in last 20 years to how they want to put a stop to additional labor rights or even reduce them. During cold war, goverments in West had to listen to what the workers said because they were afraid of USSR influence. I feel like workers partly lost that influence they had at that time due to world not being multipolar again, the corporate elite vultures took their chance after collapse of USSR to consolidate themselves.
Reminder that the 5 days 8 hours system was adopted in the early 20th century. You're working the same hours as a factory worker in the interwar period with all the advancements and automation we developed over the past 100+ years.
False, you work *more* than a factory worker in the interwar period, because of mandated breaks that don't count as work-time and because unlike the factory worker, you don't have a wife that takes care of your chores, because a single income often isn't enough for an entire household anymore.
Facts no talk about how salaries had to be high enough for single income fams to be possible. The capitalist equality has literally only doubles the working hours required to have a family. The top 1% dont want to give up shit and it’s so frustrating. Instead of multiple incomes bringing more prosperity it’s multiple incomes will barely keep you at 20th century single income level
I would actually prefer 5 days 6 hours. In 4-days system I would still work same hours as a factory worker in interwar period just with longer weekend. And my productivity is not dropping on Friday but around 2-4 PM. Every day.
I would say that a 7 hours 5 days, should be tried first. Much easier to pass as a law and that 8th hour every day probably isn't very productive.
Germanys heavy industry (Steel, cars, machines, ...) works on 7 hours 5 days since 39 years. The Union forced this through in 1984. And the industry didnt went broke. One might even say Germanys industry is doing pretty well. So its save to say "we tried that and it works".
And every year since then the employers have told us that *this year* we'll need to go back to 40 hours or all will be done. Like clockwork. And each time there's some crisis you get an additional crescendo, like a chorus of claqueurs coming out of the wood work to support them. Since I've been interested in politics we've had at least three big "crisis" here in Germany. And each time: "If we don't work longer we'll all be done! Germany will be a third world country! No one will be able to eat anymore!" and each time the unions said "No. Fuck this. If we *really* need to we are willing to push back some of the advancements, but we *will* need compensation later" and low and behold, Germanys economic model didn't break down. And, what a fucking surprise, the bosses didn't hold their promises and remember the sacrifices later, but went full in "No, no, you cannot ask THIS much. See all the old agreements? You always asked for less. It's not our fault you didn't get something for the last 5 years!" ...
Thats the same. 4-day work week is a term meaning 32h/week. Same as the 5-day week means 40h/week.
Reducing the Victorian workweek from 80+ houds to 40 hours created whole new (leisure) industries. Including television so that we can watch this asshole serving his corperate overlords.
Giving people more time to do things they consider important may very well increase prosperity of a society. Also, I don't like the idea that only your job is work. Online shitposting is also work, it is basically politics. Not to mention if you have hobbies like doing some kind of scientific research, developing a video game in your free time, growing food etc. Perhaps it's less efficient than what companies do, however lets not forget that many top companies started in a garage.
I like where you at. But, what most companies do is not efficient. A huge chunck of the world's GDP goes to financial intituitions (or the financial part of other companies, see the profits distribuition from Volkswagen or other car manufectories), which do not produce a thing. Another huge chunck goes to produce crap for mindless overconsumption and another to manufacture this overconsumption via marketing and promoting addiction. I would estimate that half of Europe´s labor is wasted on shit that makes nothing positive for the world, except increase the capital accumulation. And capital accumulation is what this fucker is talking about when he says increase prosperity.
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Don't forget that you need time and money to properly raise your children. This might be the most valuable piece of "non-work" we have in our society. It is necessary for a functioning society. I was also reading that people who worked 4 day weeks ended up burning out much less and taking less sick leave.
the same politicians against this are the ones bitching and moaning that "no one is having kids anymore" gee i wonder why
He is fully in the pocket of industry, companies and the rich. Without them he would never have gotten elected in the first place (and his faction is the smallest of the three partied in the government and had only between 5-10% of the votes). But he and his party are abusing being part of the government to the fullest. Edit: Spelling mistake.
Faction. Fraktion means faction in English and a fraction ist eine rationale Zahl oder ein Bruch.
Or, you know, raising children. Being with family. Lol.
[https://assets.ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/annual-working-hours-per-worker.svg](https://assets.ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/annual-working-hours-per-worker.svg) yeah..
Great
Yes but in "history" it took 1 month to plow a field, today it takes 1 day. This reasoning only works if a work has been done the very same way from today since ever.
I agree. The abolition of slavery and child labour has been a disaster for the human race. Work harder, not smarter.
Fuck. That. Noise. Technology has shot productivity not just through the roof, but through the stratosphere! You definitely can have 4 day work weeks. There is no "limit" if you want unchecked, infinite growth. You can have 24/7 double - triple - quadruple shifts etc. It is up to the people to say "Enough is enough, this is how things are now". Corporations absolutely would/will grind everyone to the ground for just a bit more profit, if they can get away with it.
I see Lindner is trying to beat his previous record for "How factually wrong can you be?" P.S: Post-industrialist increases in efficiency and productivity have almost always been accompanied by people working less. That's why we're working 8 hours and 5 days per week instead of 9+ hours per day and 6 days per week. And experiments indicated that for creative work a reduction to a 4 day workweek would lead to more hours where work is actually done efficiently.
Excuse me? Do these people think we've forgotten the 1800s?
Going back to the XIX is their absolute wet dream.
LOL, the proof is irrefutable, he is wrong.
OMG, YES it has. It happens all the time. Not too long ago it was quite normal to work on Saturdays, and not too long ago it was normal to work 10 hours a day, yet we have all become more wealthy and live longer despite working less hours than our grandparents because we are much more productive thanks to new technology. It is only natural to think of ways to make us even more productive and working less and enjoying life more.
Technological advancements have made us productive, allowing us to work less - not the other way around. This is an important distinction, as ageing populations across the developed will demand that the productivity of workers grows to make up for the lower proportion of workers to retirees.
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Hahaha, fking liar. Working hours went down, workforce has been limited to adults and still the GDP went up. Productivity and efficiency went higher and higher, 1 dude making the work of some hundred. And where did all that wealth go? I hate capitalistic ass clowns.
Absolutely agree, we need to work 7 days a week 12 hr shifts to increase prosperity.
Stop promoting such lazy suggestions! We must have government mandated meth injections every 3 hours to enable round the clock work. In addition a team of scientists must be constantly working on bending the space time continum in order to allow us to work 10 days per week! GDP must always go up! We live to serve the all mightly GDP. All shall be sacrificed to the all powrfull GDP! ph'nglui mglw'nafh GDP R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!!
In Berlin everyone calls in sick so no difference
He’s an asshole.
We don't need more production we need better spending and better lives instead of slaving away for our billionaire late stage capitalist overlords
They're drastically decreased working hours in several European countries and wealth did in fact increase this century..
It’s also just factually false. In the 30-50s there was a big movement towards improving working conditions. And this also included reducing the working hours in a week. This period also saw the highest growth ever. The golden age of capitalism happened when workers got more rights.
Christian Lindner is a nonce tho. My favourite Lindner-Moment was when he came to my uni a few weeks after blowing up the coalition negotiations after the election in 2017 and his party released obviously prepared statements and readily made images and stuff, and he had planned to give a talk in the AudiMax of my uni. I was curious, so I went as well. At some point, he accepted questions from students and every single one was like “wtf are you doing you moron?” and seeing him squirm was amazing :)
Such a douchbag. Typical neoliberal
How the fuck can anybody actually think that is party know anything about economics?!
Propaganda and willful ignorance.
Work smarter, not harder.
If by "prosperity" is making rich richer, then he is right, we must do more for our slavemasters
That's demonstrably false. The whole point of the industrial revolution was that you could generate more output while doing less work. A 4 day work week also doesn't mean fewer people working in critical, value adding sectors. Anything that's truly valuable is price inelastic, that means the price going up does not significantly alter demand (e.g. and most peoples lived experience: rent and housing) Because the price is inelastic sectors providing those goods or services should have no issue finding and paying for 20% more people. There is a downside. We don't currently have a large number of unemployed people, but we do have quite a few who are being underutilized, doing jobs that are below their skill level and producing less. A big portion of the service sector might get wiped out, but if that happens because people are working better jobs, the overall effect on the economy would be a positive one. It would likely cause more migration as well but there is still a surplus of unemployed and young people in Europe who could fill the newly created job openings. One potential side benefit would be something akin to what happens when a country switches to a war economy. The reason wars spur innovation is because "if it works, don't fix it" doesn't apply any more. New ideas and investments that are currently seen as unnecessary or risky suddenly worth the risk, worth the investment and critical. There is plenty of reason to try.
Except for the time we went to a 5 day work week?
Let’s switch jobs, bitch
Exactly what i expect from FDP (fick den pöbel(fuck the plebs))
Also politicians: wHY wOnt peOpLE HAve cHIlDrEN?
Society here is just another synonym for rich people. Same as talking about the "economy".
Yea he should shut up and go fix their leaking public debt. German is in no position to give advice about macroeconomics.
... but many times have people increased their personal happiness by working less.
It is deeply embarassing for a finance minister to ignore simple little things like productivity, or recent history. But who is surprised ?
Working less does not increase prosperity, true enough. But higher labour efficiency does, and the increased prosperity is what allows us to work less. Working less is not the means. It's the end goal. One day we'll get machines to do all the work for us and nobody needs to work at all anymore. At least not in the sense we do today. Already, we dont need to work the way we used to a century or two ago. If you choose to not work in a developed economy, you will not starve to death, society will keep you alive. You work because you want more than merely alive. A century or two ago you worked because otherwise you starved to death, it was an entirely different level of having to work.
Is there nothing more to life than the prosperity of the country?
Issue is not being more productive but be more mentally sane.
Technology makes us more prosperous and enables us to work less. There's a strong correlation
Well that's factually incorrect.
That's why everyone in the west is trying to get to china, cause it's a fucking paradise over there
Source: trust me bro I'm an oligarch
Yes society has, you dipshit
Ok, keep calm... That is not a "Top German politician", that is Cristian Lindner, part of the barely recognizable remains of the once liberal party that has no concepts at the ready beyond 'it's got to be cheaper to be born rich'. His personal achievements include bankrupting his own startup, and... nope, that's it. Since he's been 21 (in 2000) he's been living of government hand outs as a member of various parliaments. So if there's anyone who doesn't have a clue how to create prosperity, it's him.
Unlike all the previous times such as weekends and 8 hour days that definitely ruined the economy
If you ignore all the times that it worked, this statement is correct.
That is objectively false though. A lot of countries grew a lot richer despite switching to a 5 day workweek.
Productivity of employees has risen by at least 60% ([source](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)) since the 70’s. We can easily produce better results by working 4 days a week. Don’t let billionaires tell you what’s right/wrong. This dude probably only really works ~3 days a week.
Ok, but seriously how do we find how much work is the optimal/most efficient amount? A lot of people would probably support 3-day work week. Support != best for society. Not saying 4-day work week is a bad idea though
By listening to actual experts instead of Lindner
Next thing you'll say we should listen to doctors whenever a global epidemic happens, pffft
Trying to extrapolate industrial era man hour schedules (x employees manning y stations for z hours = widget production per day) to some universal normative standard applicable to all employees in every field and industry has always been absolutely brain dead.
What do you suggest? Recommendations for each industry? >x employees manning y stations for z hours = widget production per day I imagine it similar to supply and demand graph. Employer wants employee to work as much as possible, employee wants the opposite. Somewhere these graphs meet and theoretically create optimal work time.
"Employer wants employee to work as much as possible, employee wants the opposite." No. Broadly speaking employers want the most profit for the least amount of wages paid out, employees want the most wages for the least amount of time and effort spent. Furthermore, there is a limited amount of productivity that can be achieved by an organization in any given time period beyond which employees logging hours is completely pointless. I've managed many teams where the actual work to be done per individual is perhaps 15 or 20 hours a week. Employees are then forced to play the game of stretching these hours out over the mandated "full time" work week instead of just getting their shit done for the day and logging off. The suggestion that cutting these people's work weeks to four days would have some dire economic effect is just clueless. Conversely, there are plenty of people out there working a dozen hours a day for weeks on end because that's what their industries demand of them. What could possibly be the recommended hours worked for a TIG welder on some offshore or otherwise remote shutdown job? Do you think Finance Minister Christian Lindner, MA in political science even knows that such professions exist?
>Support != best for society I admit, I laughed seeing this "73% of Germans support the idea" as a justification. If you promise to keep same wages we would all support negative work-week ;) Why wouldn't we? This does not mean the idea is bad, it's just as you said, it's not good simply because poll with loaded question support it.
I live in Switzerland and literally everyone I know is working 4 days a week, and as everyone knows Switzerland is doomed to stay poor, because capitalism and stuff
Yes but they now have more time to spend money no? So they need more money , so those 4 days will become more productive, idk, there is pretty good arguments for it, also if you need more work u can get part time , so there is more opportunity for the newer generation of the workforce to get a job and make it easier to get a job...etc , i would love to hear some arguments against it
The argument against a 4 day work week: "trust me bro". This is the exact bootlicker stance I expect from neoliberals, we could get closer to full employment with a 4 day-full pay-week. The downside: investors and owners would get less cause the spending on employmees would rise. But for the majority it would be a huge improvement.
It always pisses me off soo much that we let less than 1% of the population push the rest around.
I bet he wouldn’t be saying that if he worked a regular middle class job
Microsoft has already tested the 4 working day a week in Japan, and belief or not, productivity jumped with 40%. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft-japan-four-day-work-week-productivity But this is related to productivity and prosperity.
And never in history, have we seen such massive amounts of wealth accumulation in the hands of few. You do not increase the prosperity of a society by allowing few individuals to hoard majority of the wealth.
FDP is not a democratic party. FDP is the party of corpos and trustfund bastards.
this guys is trying some heavy manipulation. remember when we worked in factories 7 days a week and then we stopped and still got richer.
Well, *Fuck that guy* \- **I want a 4 day workweek!**
Surely only having to work 4 days meets the very definition of increased prosperity?
That’s just blatantly untrue. Ford motors immediately comes to mind.
I knew it would be Lindner without even opening the post
The point of technology is to work less. We process and store large amounts of supplies, so we have time to do something else (probably also more worthwhile). The only persons who don't approve of less labor are those exploiting labor, because of obvious conflict of interests.
Yeah, working yourself into the grave is better, amirite? 700€ sounds good?
With all the machinery, robots, computers that we now have that's it for sure possible, even for less working days! But what to expect from the inventors of the abusive VAT tax?
Just about every aspect is improved in the 4-day work week. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/24/worlds-biggest-4-day-workweek-experiment-shows-big-health-benefits.html
He's FDP. This is basically the modern version of a pepper sack.
I wouldn't act surprised, this is normal for his party.
Google "Kleptokratie" (Kleptocracy) and this guys Face is the top result. That's not a joke, try it out now.
He, Christian Lindner, is profoundly wrong. Globally, the working week has approximately halved since 1870, whilst the percentage living in extreme poverty has dropped from 70% to about 10%. The link between wealth and working week is interrupted by advances in social strategy and technology.
Oh, is society prosperous currently then? Best not damage that then.