When the 40 hour workweek was invented, most workers had a wife at home to do chores. Now that women are working, we should all be working 20 hours a week.
That’s absolute bullshit. When the 40 hour workweek was “invented”, men were working 12 hour days in factories and their wives also worked. The wives sometimes worked in factories, often worked as domestic servants for richer people, or did home-based work. Home based work was often laundry or cooking for other people, not just their family. They’d sometimes also finish goods that were produced in a factory. Both partners were working 12+ days. And, while women did most of the home cooking and cleaning, it wasn’t as though that’s all they did.
This system ended because the workers used their power and went on strike. The result was the Haymarket Affair and is the reason that most countries, other than the US, celebrate a worker’s day on May 1st. The striking workers were attacked and beaten by the cops, and then because a bomb was thrown at a cop, the leaders of an anarchist group were rounded up and hanged after show trials.
Eventually the striking workers got what they were working for: an 8 hour day. But, it took decades after the Haymarket Affair for it to happen, and it wasn’t something that happened because everyone agreed it made sense. It was a long and bloody fight where that was the compromise that reduced the bloodshed.
If you want a 20 hour work week, join a union, prepare to go on strike and prepare to be beaten by the cops.
The capitalist economy did fine in the 1950s when the women were so bored they had to put random things in gelatin. Nothing bad would happen if we switched to a 20 hour workweek.
The US’s incredible levels of prosperity back then was essentially a unique period of time created by extremely specific circumstances (i.e. the US was THE superpower, and the primary economic force on the planet for decades). There’s a reason the ‘baby boom’ happened then. It was literally a unique slice of world history.
It is unrealistic to expect to ever return to that level. Comparisons between now and then are all disingenuous for that reason.
Instead of framing the changes we want to make in terms of ‘but we had X back then’, they should simply be framed in terms of what improvements are beneficial, feasible, and sustainable, in the present.
A world war which destroyed the infrastructure of every developed economy except for the US.
The New Deal was only possible because of the Great Depression. Only that level of chaos was enough so that left-wing politicians could push through radical reforms that moved power from the elite to the workers. The reforms of the New Deal remained in place after the war, at least for a while.
The second world war saw the destruction of the industrial capacity of the UK, Germany, France and the USSR. Meanwhile the only attack on the US was an attack on military targets at a Navy base in a distant territory.
So, if you want an economy similar to the 1950s, arrange for a world war which somehow leaves the US unscathed but destroys every other similarly developed economy, then arrange for a great depression which destroys the economy to such an extent that radical reforms can be enacted to hand power to the average worker.
Yes, of course nothing bad would happen if we switched to a 20 hour work week. But, the people with the power aren’t going to just allow that to happen. The 40 hour work week only happened with a massive series of strikes that were brutally put down by the cops. The change to a 20 hour week isn’t just going to happen because some workers think it would be cool.
When the 40 hour workweek was invented, most workers had a wife at home to do chores. Now that women are working, we should all be working 20 hours a week.
That’s absolute bullshit. When the 40 hour workweek was “invented”, men were working 12 hour days in factories and their wives also worked. The wives sometimes worked in factories, often worked as domestic servants for richer people, or did home-based work. Home based work was often laundry or cooking for other people, not just their family. They’d sometimes also finish goods that were produced in a factory. Both partners were working 12+ days. And, while women did most of the home cooking and cleaning, it wasn’t as though that’s all they did.
This system ended because the workers used their power and went on strike. The result was the Haymarket Affair and is the reason that most countries, other than the US, celebrate a worker’s day on May 1st. The striking workers were attacked and beaten by the cops, and then because a bomb was thrown at a cop, the leaders of an anarchist group were rounded up and hanged after show trials.
Eventually the striking workers got what they were working for: an 8 hour day. But, it took decades after the Haymarket Affair for it to happen, and it wasn’t something that happened because everyone agreed it made sense. It was a long and bloody fight where that was the compromise that reduced the bloodshed.
If you want a 20 hour work week, join a union, prepare to go on strike and prepare to be beaten by the cops.
The capitalist economy did fine in the 1950s when the women were so bored they had to put random things in gelatin. Nothing bad would happen if we switched to a 20 hour workweek.
The US’s incredible levels of prosperity back then was essentially a unique period of time created by extremely specific circumstances (i.e. the US was THE superpower, and the primary economic force on the planet for decades). There’s a reason the ‘baby boom’ happened then. It was literally a unique slice of world history.
It is unrealistic to expect to ever return to that level. Comparisons between now and then are all disingenuous for that reason.
Instead of framing the changes we want to make in terms of ‘but we had X back then’, they should simply be framed in terms of what improvements are beneficial, feasible, and sustainable, in the present.
Drag thinks the economy would get more like that if the average person worked less like they did back then.
The 1950s economy was the result of:
The New Deal was only possible because of the Great Depression. Only that level of chaos was enough so that left-wing politicians could push through radical reforms that moved power from the elite to the workers. The reforms of the New Deal remained in place after the war, at least for a while.
The second world war saw the destruction of the industrial capacity of the UK, Germany, France and the USSR. Meanwhile the only attack on the US was an attack on military targets at a Navy base in a distant territory.
So, if you want an economy similar to the 1950s, arrange for a world war which somehow leaves the US unscathed but destroys every other similarly developed economy, then arrange for a great depression which destroys the economy to such an extent that radical reforms can be enacted to hand power to the average worker.
Yes, of course nothing bad would happen if we switched to a 20 hour work week. But, the people with the power aren’t going to just allow that to happen. The 40 hour work week only happened with a massive series of strikes that were brutally put down by the cops. The change to a 20 hour week isn’t just going to happen because some workers think it would be cool.
But making the workers think it would be cool is the first step to getting them to die for it.
Nope. 40 each minimum to pay the mortgage.
Fucking kill me.