Believe it or not a 4 day work week would boost the economy. What do you think people do on their day off? SPEND MONEY. Chores, lunch, home/car repairs, you name it.
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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It's fantastic for local economies. It's HORRIBLE for big capital though.
The average American drives up to 3000 miles a year just commuting back and forth to and from work. That's tires and gasoline and oil changes and engine work. It's also new cars every few years so the vehicle stays reliable. It's a massive chunk of corporate revenue.
And that worker also needs to eat out, usually settling on fast food, that worker also needs work clothes and supplies, and the offices they work in require massive investment in cleaning, upkeep, computer networking, air conditioning, and so on.
Most of this is done through major corporate companies and that money goes overseas or into huge mega-companies which send it all to some central financial institution that doesn't pay taxes.
Meanwhile, in Work From home environments, you save money and put that money back into your immediate surroundings, which are usually nearby stores. You drive less, and less cars on the road mean less pollution, less wear on the roads and less expenditures from the state. Lower insurance premiums with less driving, and people are generally healthier because they have more time to do things like daily walks before the sun goes down, or cook healthier meals from local markets, leading to healthier people less medical expenses in the long run.
Why won't anyone think of the capital?
Want to fix all this?
Make one simple change to capitalism: put in. A constitutional hard cap on personal wealth. Anything income or gift or whatever over 1 million goes 100% to taxes
Nobody has some inherent right to be rich or powerful. Nobody got extremely rich by themselves or through hard work, it's just sheer fucking luck and standing on the backs of others
Nobody should have to be poor either
So without changing and overhauling the entire world, just set a hard cap on personal wealth.
May e also company sizes. Any networth over 1 billion? 100% to tax. Companies shouldn't be able to have over, say 1000 employees either.
I don't want a trillion dollar company with 200.000 employees. Give me 10.000 companies worth 100 million dollar companies that each employ a hundred or so workers.
Two simple rules that would change the world. Nobody would be sicher more powerful than anyone else.
All it requires is that everyone in the world says ENOUGH. Enough with the abuses from the rich and powerful
Alright, let's run a quick model.
Let's say the upper cap is $1000k.
You are a CEO and you get a salary of, say, $10k, plus 1000 shares, each worth $1. So, in total, that year your worth is $120k + $1000 = $121k.
Now, you're incredibly successful as a CEO, you make your shareholders drool for your company's shares. Which makes their price skyrocket. Each share is now worth $1000! Such success!
But wait! No! Catastrophe!
Your worth has just gone up to $120k + $1000k! The share's value on their own hits the upper limit of wealth!
They're not your money, mind you, you can't do anything with them unless you cash them in, sell them.
So, you have two choices - you stop getting any salary and have $0 for spending (hopefully the office cafeteria is well stocked!), or you sell some shares, give the money to charity, and pray the stock price doesn't go up. And if it does, you have to sell again, lose the money, and... oh, but now you no longer hold a controlling interest in your own company - some three dudes who work together bought up the shares, spread them around evenly (so neither of them goes above the $1000k), and they effectively control your own company, telling you what to do with it.
Companies shouldn’t be able to have over, say 1000 employees either.
So, instead of having some large companies, you end up with chains of "totally not the same" companies that just work together. "Oh, we've outsourced our HR to company X, which is Totally Not The Same as our company, they just don't work with anybody else and we have full data transparency with them."
Yes, they'll find loopholes. Close those, too.
I am pretty sure than between the current model that is slowly but inexorably going towards: "2 kinds of people in the world: trillionaires and people depending on trillionaire's charity to survive", and the model decribed above, we can find a middle ground.
Not so long ago, the ratio between CEOs pay and median worker pay was 20. Today it's 280. There were successful and motivated CEO at the time.
The US had a period during which the highest tax bracket was 90%. There were CEO, there were rich folks and there were entrepreneurs.
Enough with all the "impossible". The current situation is the anomaly. The current situation is the not sustainable approach. It's not just the US, neo-liberalism has spread over the decades with the very very very exact same results absolutely everywhere it was tried:
-impoverished population overall -reduction of services to the population -increased public deficit -ultra-rich getting immensely richer
Either we keep saying "it's complicated" and keep course. Its end is already known: a collapse of the economy on itself: there is not enough people left making a decent enough living to buy what is produced, and everything belong to the ultra-rich.
Or we change course. It's almost a matter of survival for the poor.
I agree! I'm only saying that often the "simple solutions" aren't really solutions when you stop for a moment to really think about the consequences.
There are several countries that have a wealth tax and they still have rich CEOs, so there is a way to address the problems that you're describing.
Of course! It's just never as easy as people think.
When share prices drive someone above the wealth limit, the excess shares are distributed equally among everyone involved in the companies
So, what you're writing is in good faith, I can tell, but shows a fundamental lack of understanding how shares work.
If the value of a company goes up, the number of shares doesn't change, the price per share increases. So, if a company emitted 100 shares, and they were valued at $10 each, for the worth of the company being $1,000.
Now, stuff happens, and the company is now worth $10,000. It doesn't mean that there are now 1000 shares, it means that each share is now worth $100.
Which means that there are no "excess shares".
What a company could do is something called "stock dilution". For example, you have that company from before, worth $10,000, with 100 shares, $100 per share, right? They dilute the shares and emit another 100 shares, bringing the total to 200. But the value of the company is still $10,000, it just means that the value per share is now $50.
Seems like a good idea? Here's the problem - control over a company is still determined by the percentage of owned shares. You had 100 shares? You need 51 to independently control the company. You now have 200? You now need 101 shares for the exact same level of control.
Which means: either the CEO of that company loses control of the company (effectively "gives it away", potentially to malicious actors from the competition who just want to shut him down), or he still needs to own 50%+1 shares (so from 51 to 101 shares), meaning his wealth doesn't change at all.
Huey Long campaigned on a wealth cap back in the 30's on his 'Share our wealth' platform. The excess wealth taxed at 100% was to be used for essentially a universal basic income (Each person to receive the equivalent of $38k yearly).
He was assassinated. The rich elite of Louisiana and the Oil companies he massively increased state taxes on to fund his public programs rejoiced.
Ken Burn's first documentary was on Huey Long, highly worth a watch.
Putting a hard cap on the ratio between the highest and the lowest paid workers in any organisation would help as well.
THIS might be a better solution, although it still doesn't fix the "CEO is only earning $1 a year" situations like with Bezos or Zuckerberg.
Make one simple change to capitalism: put in. A constitutional hard cap on personal wealth. Anything income or gift or whatever over 1 million goes 100% to taxes
You don't understand where the vast majority of the wealthiest's wealth comes from. There's no "income" or "gift" at that level, it's just the fact that they own things that are becoming more valuable over time. The vast majority of the increase in these people's wealth over time is newly-created; it's value that literally didn't exist before, not an amount of cash money taken away from anyone else.
Speaking of value: net worth is just a valuation, a price tag. It's the market saying "I would pay you $X for a share of this if you sold it". If I buy a rookie baseball card for $5 and the player becomes famous for whatever reason and my card is now worth $100 because the demand significantly increased, my net worth increased by $95, but no one was deprived of $95 to make that so.
A hard cap on wealth is effectively legislating that if something you already own becomes too valuable, you're not allowed to continue owning it anymore. And any sensible person should understand why that makes zero sense.
The vast majority of the increase in these people’s wealth over time is newly-created; it’s value that literally didn’t exist before, not an amount of cash money taken away from anyone else.
A wealth tax will go after that, and that will absolutely make sense. They can sell the shares they have in the companies, and that will make them think twice before cheating the system to grossely exagerate the value of their companies.
And if we talk about start-ups or other special cases where the CEOs can't sell shares and/or we don't really know their worth, we can have them give shares as payment. The gov will sit on them until they have actual value and sell them, or relesase them back if said value was lower than estimated at the time.
A wealth tax will go after that, and that will absolutely make sense.
It absolutely doesn't make sense to charge a tax of real/actual money on a value that's theoretical.
They can sell the shares they have in the companies, and that will make them think twice before cheating the system to grossely exagerate the value of their companies.
It's irrational to assume "cheating the system to grossely [sic] exagerate [sic] the value of their companies" of every entity valued at more than an arbitrary $X.
For example, Costco is a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and yet it's famous for how generous it is both to its customers and to its workforce. Its founder left the company a billionaire himself.
we can have them give shares as payment
"The stuff you own is now too valuable, so we get to steal it from you."
No.
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8 malignant narcissist pedofiles who we’ve allowed to destroy the world.
Of course people want a four-day workweek. That part is obvious and frankly irrelevant.
The real question is: who actually benefits without losing income? The answer is: a minority. Roughly 25–35% of workers, mostly salaried, white-collar, outcome-based roles, can compress or rearrange work without taking a pay hit. For them, four days is mostly a scheduling change.
The other 65–70% of workers, trades, service, healthcare, retail, logistics, commission, flat-rate, piece-work, are paid by volume, not vibes. Fewer days means fewer billable units, fewer closes, fewer shifts, or longer days just to break even.
I work flat-rate. I close work orders. If I work four days, I make less money. There is no efficiency fairy that replaces raw volume.
The four-day workweek isn’t a universal labor reform. It’s a white-collar benefit marketed as moral progress, and it collapses the moment you apply it to people who actually produce, fix, transport, or serve things.
This is not true at all. No one calling for the reduced hours is calling for reduced pay.
Of course no one is doing that. I work on throughput, not salary. A lot of people are in the same position, whether they are flat-rate or hourly. If I cut my schedule down to four days, I simply will not make enough money to sustain myself. There is a hard limit to how much work I can complete in a single day, and I cannot compress six days of output into four. That is the point I was making, a four-day workweek does not benefit workers whose income is tied to throughput or hours worked. It primarily benefits salaried employees whose pay is disconnected from daily output
Did you actually read what I wrote?
The real question is: who actually benefits without losing income? The answer is: a minority. Roughly 25-35% of workers, mostly salaried, white-collar, outcome-based roles, can compress or rearrange work without taking a pay hit. For them, four days is mostly a scheduling change.
and I cannot compress six days of output into four
the point here is that you shouldn't need to work 6 days to be able to afford a life.
you are literally fighting for people stealing from you.
https://media.theunderstatement.com/005_B_us_wealth_distribution.png
That is the work I do. I am paid per job completion because I am in the repair industry. My income is entirely self-generated; I make my own salary based on output. That is how this business functions, and there is no alternative model that actually works. To remain competitive, I have to work six days a week. We cannot raise prices beyond a minimum threshold without losing work.
It sounds great to say people should work less and live more. Unfortunately, in certain sectors of the economy, that idea is completely disconnected from reality. In industries driven by throughput and competition, working less directly means earning less, and for many of us, that is simply not an option
You're not charging enough. You need to reevaluate your costs with your own labor cost included. Don't ignore yourself just because you're doing gig work.
Does anybody read anything that I actually write?
We have competition in the business. We have to offer lower prices to stay in business to be competitive. You can't just charge more... People are going to use cheaper services than expensive ones. That's basic economics.
Does anybody read anything that I actually write?
yes, we do. you are talking about how it works now, and we are talking about how it needs to change.
if no one will provide cheap labour, that can only provide living for you if you do it 6 days per week, than your customers will not run away from you, because the others will do the same. also, your customers also work somewhere, and they will be in the same position.
the solution is not to work seven days a week, the solution is to take back the wealth they are stealing from us.
8 really rich guys who, collectively, work 2-3 days a week? 🤔
Hours.
No no no, when you ask them, they work 200 hours a week. Each of them. At the very least!
"work"
Hey, they might do some extremely cushy paperwork related labor on 2 different days in a week. You know, for like half an hour at a time.
collectively. so i'd give them that.
Work being asking a bunch of people for ideas, and pointing a finger and saying "Do that."
I can handle that gig. Make me a Billionaire.
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cant have well rested workers with more time to think, question, and organise.
Also more economically productive. But the ultra-wealthy are aristocrats cosplaying as managers, and reducing the workweek of the filthy poors reduces how entertaining their cosplay is to them.
It also gives people more time to organize, work a side gig to pull themselves out of poverty, or go to school for the same reason. Can’t have any of that
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As the world evolves (supposedly), productivity rockets skywards.
And we have gone from a...
- 3 hour work day... to a...
- 6 hour work day... to a....
- 12 hour work day... to a...
- 7 hour work day... (or 8 or 9 or more if you're in the US or China or a factory- or fascist country)
And of course this is pitiful. We should be working a couple days a week at most.
The very idea that we have to work when we have so much automation is ludicrous. Why do we have to make our owners richer? Why can't we turn them into fertiliser instead? And why can't we make them really, and I mean really aware of the possibility.
That cartoon "there's so many of them, why don't they just eat the lesser class?" (ok, I don't remember how it was formulated), is something the billionaires (and politicians) ought to have pinned in each of their rooms.
Still, right now we should be at two days or 2 hour work days.
But thanks to AI, work days ought to be longer. You'll have to catch up for all the people that got laid off/
I've got a job where I work 4 one week and 3 the other. It's 12 hour shifts though.
Unfortunately I still need a part time job to cover bills.... But if I didn't it would be amazing
I have a 35-hour week with flexible hours so I could put it in 3 days if I wished. That seems awful to me though, I can't really focus on my work anymore after 6 hours. All a matter of perspective I guess.
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Same thing with that proposed billionaire tax in CA.
Bunch of assholes.
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Wondering how much would 8 guillotine cost
They are reusable.
But you never know where the really rich guys might go. We may have to camp out beside a number of bunkers across the world. Like a spare key, it's better to have an extra one and not use it than to not have one when you need it.
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