Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "What If We Just...Stopped Working?" video.

  1. The question is, not if we stop working but how far can we reduce hours whiles not really harming productivity. It's not hard to understand why productivity can stay the same even with shorter hours, I suspect a lot of workers that work longer hours just laze around and are just clocking up the hours before they can go home whereas working shorter hours, more workers are more likely to get stuck into their work and probably have more respect for the job they are in. Thing is, how far can you push that without harming productivity? well I do remember when my brother worked at Safeway, he could work about 50-60% more than he had to do in a 40-hour week and that was night shift, makes you wonder if 20 hours away is possible whiles doing as much work. I do know one thing, I feel the fewer hours I work, the harder I would work in the fewer hours, with no fluff, time-wasting and all that, same pay, less stress and you would likely feel better about the job you are in and in life that whiles it's fewer hours, you would focus a lot more on doing the job at hand whereas now, a lot of us waste time because most companies don't care about our well-being. Beside, let's be honest, working hard is never the smartest thing to do, working smart is a lot more productive and I think that's what the real focus in today's world should be, not throwing more hours at a problem but being smarting in doing a given workload. Anyway, I think in the EU, there are signs of improving work hours, many countries are testing the waters on that and we'll have to see how that goes, as for the US, there is little chance of lower hours there with how things are, also, the US feels it can't afford to lower hours at work because of China rising as a power, the EU countries I think are being a bit smarter on this, keeping the competitive advantage whiles improving the quality of life for people, but how far they can go on work hours without losing competitiveness is anyone's guess. I also think that if there was an incentive from a lot of jobs, either more pay for more productivity or same pay for the same productivity but we do the same workload in shorter hours, a lot of us would pick shorter hours and I feel I could reduce my workload by about half, basically, doing the same job in 20 hours and not 40, as the video points out, most of us feel we are in jobs that are meaningless and because of that, our productivity goes down a lot, now imagine this, you work for yourself in any field of work, I bet your productivity would go through the roof because there is a big incentive, likely more money for yourself and because it's your passion project and that's the problem with business today, they seem to think throwing more hours at it is the solution but it doesn't seem to be. I also have to wonder, how society would cope with the revolution we are heading into over the next 50-100 years with robotics, automation and A.I., some will say that it can't take over all our jobs but I don't buy that for a second, I suspect it's going to take over pretty much any job we can do, do it a lot cheaper and a lot faster that we humans won't be able to compeat in the work market, that's a massive problem for the way the market works with capitalism, especially in the US that has pretty weak social safety net, the notion of putting everyone to work when for businesses, it's cheaper and more productive to use robotics doesn't go well with the Conservative mindset of getting everyone into work, the system would fall apart and I think we would need a new system which would likely have some kind of universal basic income and a lot more social benefits, something the US would find difficult to pull off compared to other modern countries, and especially EU countries which are already half way there with it's social policies. Anyway, the way I see the job market, it's one step away from slave labour, for the main part, you need a job for the basics in life like food, a house and other utilities and a big chunk of your wage goes on those basic needs, for me, there is a massive flaw in the system for basic needs to be so expensive, especially with the level of advancement we have today and it really boils down to the big flaw in capitalism, basically, it doesn't matter how much wealth you have, the cost of buying something will go up to wipe out a big chunk of your wage, so if everyone was a millionaire today, the cost of buying everything would shoot up a lot to wipe out the benefits of that wealth and you would be back to how you are now, the sad reality in capitalism, the only way to get ahead seems to be stomping down on others to get there, basically self-employed, you get most of the wealth whiles others do the donkey work, pretty much how it is with most businesses today, most do the donkey work, get paid peanuts for it whiles the ones that own the company are laughing all the way to the bank and the irony is, if you was to do the exact same job for yourself, you would probably ear, 5, 10 or 20 times more money depending on scale.
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