Recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., socialist gadfly, proposed that the U.S. federal government should mandate a four-day, 32-hour work week. Before we conservative free marketeers recoil, let’s consider the merits of his idea.
Sanders says that U.S. workers work considerably more hours every year than their counterparts in other developed countries. He’s right. To make matters worse, as anyone in the private sector knows, employers are finding new and creative ways of squeezing even more productive labor out of their workers, even when, and maybe especially when, the theoretical “workday” is done. All these extra hours worked mean less time with our families, less leisure and more stress – and it’s not clear, based on numerous studies, that more hours of work necessarily even yield enhanced productivity or greater overall production.
The concept of a four-day, 32-hour work week may seem fanciful, but readers should recall that, before the institution of the five-day, 40-hour work week under President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, there was equally vociferous opposition to that idea, and equally extravagant claims that such a provision would be fatal to the engine of capitalism. Indeed, it was not so very long ago that average workdays were more like 10, 12 and even 14 hours. Did the curbing of such excesses eliminate competition, obliterate the incentive to work, or dent the standard of living? If they did, people seem pretty happy with the results!
In addition, consider that the accelerating pace of automation, the outsourcing of many economic functions and the vast potential of artificial intelligence to diminish the demand for, or even render obsolete, many categories of work, all point to a future in which fewer employees will be able to accomplish much, much more – and the U.S. economy will hum along very nicely even with a relatively small percentage of the population engaged, in general and at any given time, in productive work. Indeed, this is already the case. The labor force participation rate has been trending down since the mid ’90s, and with no discernible ill effects, in terms of productivity or the rate of economic growth.
Conservatives will argue that massive changes to the structure of the economy and the nature of work, enforced by government fiat, are always bad. That being said, few conservatives are demanding the repeal of the five-day, 40-hour work week, and, as it turns out, the leisure and the quality of life that those federal regulations have engendered are the prerequisite for whole thriving industries in modern America, like tourism, gaming, entertainment and so many more. Would Americans really be better off if they went back to working 10, 12, or 14 hour days? No? Then why is it so hard to imagine that our collective well-being might not be similarly enhanced by the phasing in of a four-day, 32-hour work week?
Concerns about excessive government micromanagement of private enterprise are valid, but, compared to the thousands of petty rules and regulations that the government enforces – selectively – every day, a mandate for a four-day, 32-hour work week would be a very blunt instrument of federal policy, and it would apply equally to every business, giving none of them an artificial competitive advantage. Much like the minimum wage, it would be a simple, straightforward regulatory measure that would change the lives of tens of millions of people, for the better, without inserting new layers of bureaucratic oversight and interference in the capitalist system. Indeed, the federal agencies and mechanisms needed to enforce limits on the numbers of hours workers may work already exist, and there is no particular reason why the institution of a four-day work week should require the expansion of any agency’s budget, the hiring of a single new federal worker, or even the passage of a new law, since the amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act would suffice.
In short, the movement to a four-day, 32-hour work week would bring the U.S. more into line with the labor practices of other developed countries – countries in which people seem, broadly speaking, to be happier than they are here. It would enhance the quality of life for almost every American. And it would do all this in a streamlined, elegant way that would empower workers themselves, rather than politicians or government functionaries.
“Work hard, play hard” has long been a popular axiom in America. Maybe it’s time we did a little less of the former, and a little more of the latter … in the national interest, of course!
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