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UBI no. I don’t think the federal government would ever mandate a four day work week but more companies will start to adopt it. The government doesn’t tell companies what their hours are and what their employee’s schedules should be.
I don’t see it happening in the next 10 years. After that who knows. Forever is a long time.
On a local level yes. UBI is being tested in Chicago.
Four day work week will be a company policy versus regulation. Some companies already offer it.
I am on a 4 day work week (4/10)
It can’t be required. Some jobs have to be done 5, 6, 7 days a week. I’m fine if companies make it optional.
The issue is that regular 10 hour days plus commute time means that I am regularly working at night to ensure I’m getting done everything I need to do (even though I’m salary, I charge to accounts by the hour), because if I didn’t take a break in the evening I’d never see my family.
There are real advantages, but it’s not a flawless alternative.
UBI is a load of bullshit. No one outside Reddit and some fringe political candidates take it seriously. Pilot programs in cities that claim to implement UBI cannot model the full effects by definition. What they’re actually doing is trialing a different way of providing transfer benefits. Which is fine. But the social media crowd clamoring for free money? Fuck no. It would be absolutely catastrophic.
4 day work week already is gaining traction, I doubt UBI will happen in the near future. Out of all the social safety nets in existence I don’t think UBI is what’ll be on the forefront when we’re still trying to work out health insurance.
The 4-day work week is very popular already but it’s 10 hour days, kind of defeats the purpose.
Of course we have work from home now which give us another option instead of the 4-day week. But of course work from home is only available for specific office type jobs. (I know somebody who’s working from home and has three 40 hour a week jobs, none of his employers are the wiser lol.)
Overall I think any kind of reduction in hours or basic income is going to require huge tariffs on Imports because we will no longer be able to compete with countries that don’t have these policies.
For UBI, it will depend on how it plays out in other countries before the United States might consider it.
Four-day work weeks are already a thing in some businesses. I don’t expect the Federal or State governments to regulate it though.
UBI: Not a chance in hell
4 day work week: It’s only really possible for certain industries.
Some of us already have 4 day work weeks, they are called 4-10’s
I don’t see UBI ever happening. If we can’t even get universal healthcare passed in this country; there’s no chance of a program that *literally* gives people free, no-strings-attached money being enacted. It just isn’t possible unless this country goes through a massive cultural change.
The 4 day workweek is more likely imo but still far off. Just look at the resistance to WFH, which arguably saves companies money.
I can’t answer on UBI. I can’t really see it on a national level. Maybe more regionally though.
As for a 4 day week, it depends on how you define it. My husband works a 4 day week, but his shifts are 10 hours long, so it’s still 40 hours. Or do you mean reducing the standard workweek to 32 hours. Those are very different scenarios.
A lot of employment law is a blend of state & federal legislation. For hourly, non-exempt roles, 40 hours is the max hours a week before overtime pay is required. That’s federal. Some states base it on 8 hours per day. Trying to change these laws at the federal level is difficult. Very difficult.
What I do see happening is an expansion of part time work with more companies looking at job sharing or part time roles to be competitive in the labor market.
One of my biggest questions about a 4 day work week is would it be 4 10 hour days or 4 8 hour days. I’d be making less working 4 8 hours days and I don’t see companies giving people raises to match a 5 day work week
For UBI – if you think inflation was bad these past few years, wait until that program kicks in! Just in the housing market alone, this would supercharge the cost of living. It seems to me like a great way to just make everything that is already unaffordable even more unaffordable.
Too many conservatives and right wings to fight it right now. I don’t see it plausible for at least 30 years
A 4 day work week just isn’t viable for me. I live by myself with a dog. A 10- hour shift means that my dog is in his crate for literally 11-12 hours a day.
UBI is a Reddit fantasy that will never be successful. Someone has to pay for that money
UBI: no
4 day work week: Yes
UBI, yes, depending on how automation goes.
The four-day work week is already here in some industries. I think we’ll see even more move from a “be here or be fired” model to a “get your work done on time and you’re golden” model.
The problem with a 4 day workweek is it would likely be 10hrs a day. That doesn’t work very well for families with kids in school
Sadly, I think one day we’ll all be on welfare, yes. The government is going to allow skynet to take all of our jobs and we’ll have to tax the crap out of the companies using it to feed everyone else.
Long term, I think one or the other is inevitable, if not both. In the past every job we replaced with automation has created new manufacturing or repair jobs of the new machines. But all of that is getting more complicated every year. My experience as an engineer working hands on with technicians is that we are surpassing the capabilities of much of the workforce regardless of training. That’s only at the high end (machines costing millions) for the moment, but it will spread.
Not until Reaganism is out of living memory.
4 day week, yes.
UBI, absolutely not.
My company did a trial offer for a 4 day week with working 10 hour days and no one (but me) was interested. They just didn’t want to have such a long day. Plus, there needs to be coverage all 5 days of the week, so one coworker gets Monday off, one gets Tuesday, etc. it wouldn’t be an automatic 3 day weekend all the time.
I work in a 24/7 365 industry that can’t really run on a typical 4 day week. Officers, sure why not.
A lot of people fail to forget that the country (or world) is basically ran by industry that doesn’t, or can’t, shut down.
UBI is something that will have to be tackled when AI starts eliminating jobs by the hundreds of millions over the next century.
UBI has been trialed in places. The problem is how to pay for it. There have been discussions of taxing robots as a form of transfer (for displacement of jobs).
But the results have been inconclusive.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income
The four day work week is more likely. It’s already being trialed by some companies. The challenge is that for it to work, everyone needs to do it. Company A wants to meet with Company B on a Friday, but Company B works a four day week. So you’ll have partial adoption.
Honestly… I’m Early Gen-X, and I don’t expect to see either implemented in my lifetime.
The four-day workweek runs into some of the problems of our hypercapitalist mindset. We adore and idolize our hardworking forebears, so people will turn that against us by saying that anything that lightens the load is being soft by comparison. (Let’s ignore that our actual forebears, if given the chance, would have jumped at easier work conditions and more time to pursue their own goals). Or that, because someone in a third-world country can be convinced to work in a puddle of toxic waste and get paid 5c a day, it’s “Americans not wanting to work as hard” to not agree to the worst conditions possible. (Or, to go the other direction, somehow discriminatory that we “think we’re better than that” or something.)
Hell, just producing the same amount of work, but from home, has really chapped a lot of corporate asses over the last couple of years. At some point, you have to wonder if the discomfort is the point to them.
Of course, all the actual *companies* want is to make more profits this quarter than last quarter, world without end- so as long as they can push those buttons, they will.
The UBI thing runs into a similar roadblock, but there’s a different bunch of ideological and political roadblocks thrown in for a bonus. We’re running out of people for whom “But that’s *socialism*” is an instant dealbreaker, but we still have a ton of people who would want to weigh it by needs-testing or some sort of abstract sense of privilege, rather than truly make it “Universal” by applying it to everyone. And of course there’s the theory that nobody would work if basic needs were covered. Which is, tbh, more like “people wouldn’t settle for the cheapest, harshest possible working conditions if that were the case.”
(Seeing as there’s a not-insignificant segment of the population who idealize the Good Old Days when people worked for *free*, there’s really no way to make those people happy by lowering that bar.)
For the tiniest example of what I mean, there are people still thinking that the stimulus checks from two years ago are why you’re seeing people quit jobs whose wages haven’t kept up with the Cost of Living.
Of course, on a practical level, neither party takes UBI seriously, so don’t expect it.
Ever? Sure. Soon? No.
Yes but it’ll take the baby boomers dying out
I am sure some companies probably already follow the 4 day work week (flexing on their hours).
Seriously doubt UBI would ever become a thing in the US though. And to me, it is a bit unclear on how UBI would even be meaningful economically. Starting from where the funds get generated, to how impactful it would actually be.
UBI is not going to ever be a thing because there’s no way to prop such a system up. The taxes needed to support such a program would be far more than we pay now and it would essentially turn into a system of the productive funding the lifestyles of the lazy. I just don’t even see such a thing happening. We’d be better off looking to train people in the lower rungs of society in skills and trades so they can make their own money and lifestyles.
The four day work week could be a thing as long as people work the same amount of hours. Is extending the work day worth having a shorter week? Perhaps for some. I don’t know if I would want my work day extended.
Instead of UBI why doesn’t our government just use our tax money to help its citizens instead of buying more weapons to drop on middle easterners
We already pay a pretty hefty amount in taxes, yet see none of the benefit. If our taxes were used to alleviate things like healthcare and school debt our money could go much further
Obviously not a simple fix, but our govenrment is piss poor with managing our taxes
Eventually
Could? Absolutely.
Would? Absolutely not.
Honestly, yes. UBI or a drastic change in laws forcing companies to hire people will need to happen at some point in the not-so-distant future. The commercial advancements of AI only actually scratch the surface of the technology’s capabilities. Some people will say I’m being dramatic, which to an extent I am, but there is not a single job that AI couldn’t do more efficiently than a human. If you’ve ever played the game Detroit, that isn’t a totally unrealistic scenario if we don’t implement some sort of hiring safety net or UBI. I’ve always said that us programmers are the dumbest profession because we’re actively working ourselves out of a job. It may not happen in the next 5 years, but I’d be genuinely surprised to see it happen *after* my lifetime (I’m 27)
It’ll be fought by old fogies stuck in the past, much like the 5-day 40-hour work week, but both of these things will happen out of economic necessity whether we support them or not.
The issue I have is that “Ever” is a very long time. If I live good long life, I hope to see the 2070s. I think that between now and then, we could see a lot more people have 4 day jobs, or even 3 day jobs if this technology can bring the cost of living down.
I think it would be really great if we can make it to where someone working 30 hours per week lives a middle class lifestyle. Perhaps a modified version of it (such as living in a building vs owning a quarter acre of land). But this idea that somehow, someone who works near full time, or full time, is somehow in poverty needs to die. We don’t need job protection, we need huge reductions in living costs. That studio apartment that is $2200 per month, it needs to be $500 per month (50 years ago, it was cheap). Maybe it uses robots to build it and maintain it.
But beyond my lifetime. I have no idea. I do think that a fully automated world will have an extremely low cost of living. Food could be ultra cheap. Clothing and other consumer items could be 3D printed/Automated for a cost of a few dollars per pound. I think right now people have this mentality that the cost of living in an automated world will be exactly the same, infact, life will be totally the same, but people will just not have jobs. We have all these robots doing all the work but somehow the product of their work, their super abundant and free work, is still really expensive…
That just strikes me as odd.
Four day work week? Absolutely. Nurses often work 2-3 day work weeks. I only work 182 days a year on average. I know a few people that work four 10 hour days Monday through Thursday and have Friday off.
UBI: No way or at least not without ending up with Argentina levels of inflation that would make any UBI worthless in a matter of months. Don’t believe me? We gave people money to stay home in 2020 and we ended up with 10% inflation as the result
4 day work week: may be possible
4-day work week, yes.
For UBI, if automation and AI continue to replace job opportunities, we’ll probably have to do *something* along those lines. Not even white collar jobs will be safe.
I could see UBI if and only if it replaced all other forms of welfare. But the people who propose it are horrified by acknowledging things like reality and the fininte amount of money in the world, so that’s probably not happening.
I certainly hope so, it’ll be a necessary balance to automation. Job Automation will continue whether we like it or not. Productivity will increase while labor demand decreases. Business managers will always choose the cheaper option when it comes to labor, and that Automation option grows bigger and bigger every year. We need to stop focusing on jobs as a whole number and start planning ahead
I already work a 4 day work week. Best thing ever.
If automation literally makes a huge section of the populace unemployable, and some sort of UBI becomes theoretically necessary to keep people from becoming homeless or starving, then there will be a few decades of mass homelessness and suffering before the wheels start turning on that.
EDIT: Oops, I think this has already started, but we’re only at the beginning.
If that doesn’t happen, and the people are broadly OK, then UBI will not happen, at least not federally.
4-day work week has started being implemented as a 4×10 in some limited jobs, and a few even 4×8, but that’s going to stay a very niche thing for the vast majority of Americans. I think it’s more likely that we lose the 40 hour per week standard first, and people go back to working 60-80 hours without overtime first.
Ever? Sure. Maybe not soon but ever is quite a long time. People in this post arguing using todays political climate are missing the big picture, sure maybe not in the next 20 years, but todays politics won’t be the politics of 200 years in the future.