The question is, do we need to work even 40 hours per week? If Keynes predicted humans would only need to work 15 hours by this point in time, and there has been an explosion of technological advancements in the last 30 years unimaginable to him from computers to robotics to the internet and advancements in every type of engineering and medical field, then why are we still 40-hour slaves, particularly when the Basecamp example has demonstrated that 32 hours per week is equally or perhaps more productive?
Next is the question of whether even 32 hours, as at Basecamp, are necessary. David Graeber is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. His 2018 book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory describes jobs that appear to have no useful purpose. These are far more common that one might expect. In a poll of British citizens, 37% considered their jobs meaningless. In the Netherlands, 40% of respondents believed their job had no reason to exist. Graeber defines bullshit jobs as "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."
In many of these jobs, employees sit at a desk five days a week with nothing to do. In other jobs, higher management invents tasks for subordinates to complete solely to fill their time. Some jobs exist merely for appearances. He splits them into categories, encompassing jobs with which we are all too familiar. "Flunkies" serve the purpose of making others feel superior (these include doormen, assistants, etc.). "Goons" encompass those such as the public-relations professional whose job is to show the public that Oxford is a top school! "Duct tapers" are people in an organization who have to deal with its incompetence; for example, the person who handles lost luggage at an airport or addresses complaints on the phone. "Box tickers" are designed to look busy and push paper work forward. "Taskmasters" are split into two types - those that assign more bullshit work to subordinates-"bullshit generators", and those who supervise people who do not need supervision.
For
the 60% of people who do not have "bullshit jobs", studies have shown
that fewer work days increase productivity and efficiency, not to
mention mental well being. Companies will be more efficient, workers
will work better and will be rested and refreshed, and employees will be
more likely to stay in their jobs. It's a plus-sum game if the work
week is cut to 30 hours/ 4 days forthwith. Anything beyond 30 hours
would be overtime, at time-and-a-half rates. The proposal is still
twice John Maynard Keynes' 15-hour expectation.
There is another very good reason for this proposal: Real wages in the US have been stagnant since the 1960s while the GDP is up over four-fold and the stock market Dow is up about ten times, also in real terms; i.e. after allowing for inflation. It means stock and asset holders have been getting much, much richer while the working sucker is getting nowhere. Cutting the work week down is a fair way to get part way (a very small part) even. It is 25 percent less work and a one-third real increase in wages, making a minor dent in the horrendous inequality in the US, which happens to be way ahead in this dubious honor among all developed countries.
It is a long time since the hunter gatherers of Scotland or the Babylonians. Their week remains ingrained, and the weekend created thousands of years later expanded from the Biblical single day of rest to one-and-a-half days in England, and then finally to two in New England at the beginning of the 20th century. A hundred years later, is it not high time we advanced to three days? Or perhaps to diminish the chances of worse Monday-morning blues, it might be better to work two days, have a day off, then two more days of work before the regular weekend. Humans were not designed for undue stress; we were designed for leisure, to be gathering food as we need it, and occasionally hunting, as the Scots mentioned earlier, and others of our ancestors did happily for generations.
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