Under pressure to make changes to boost sluggish economic growth, the conservative has told voters their country’s prosperity will not be maintained “with a four-day week and work-life balance”. He recently effectively accused them of skiving by falsely calling in sick, criticising the relative ease with which sicknotes could be obtained from GPs over the phone.
Someone does not understand what productivity means and how it's meaningfully improved.
If you (you being the proverbial CDU brain here) need people to marginally increase their working hours, in order to achieve higher economic output, you're in deep trouble. The increased output is also marginal and a one time boost. If you want meaningfully higher economic output, with sustained growth, you have to use machines and automation to achieve more with the same work hours. In other words you gotta do productive capital investment. Unfortunately conservative brains can only think of the cheapest solution (for businesses) first, at the expense of workers quality and quantity of life.
I'm technically one of these "lifestyle" part-timers, at 35 instead of 40 hours a week. This reduction has had a noticeable impact on my mental health, to the point where I'd dare say my productivity hasn't changed one bit.
But let's be real: I cannot imagine that even Blackrockfritze believes that economic growth is determined by having longer working hours. This is a deliberate attempt to create another group of "lazy people" to lay the blame for the utter incompetence of his government.
wtf, why would you need a permission to work however long, wait a minute
the conservative has told voters their country’s prosperity will not be maintained “with a four-day week and work-life balance”. He recently effectively accused them of skiving
I love being told to work more by people that don't work at all i mean private jets all over the world, private chauffeur to wherever they need, a nice retirement and all the while getting paid probably 10 times more than me that will most likely die of hunger in a cold shitty house with no power after working constantly for the next 30-40 years...
He does not even für one second consider utilising technology for efficiency and growth. There is so much potential in not sending people to work. Yes, even AI can automate processes very well if done right.
At some point countries will send machines to war and Merz will still send meat to the grinder.
Makes me want to grab and shake this old man in hopes there is still some problem solving capacity left in his >70 year old brain.
I think working time is the wrong place for politicians to regulate.
Sure, there's a huge imbalance. Some people work a lot and some very little.
The key is that the the people who do work more than mandatory minimum hours, are also the people who enjoy working. Self employed or not, doesn't matter. If people like working, they'll work more. It's really that simple.
Politicians ought to focus on regulation of how enjoyable work is. Then the working time would increase by itself, if that's the ultimate goal for whatever reason.
I don't think it is though. Productivity ought to be the end goal.
This won't happen. It's a deeply unpopular policy and the German Institute for Economics just told them in a friendly town to kill the idea before they choke on it. It was just a dumb suggestion with little bearing in reality
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