Although I am a proponent the free market, I am having trouble logically assessing the 40 hour work week. Thinking about it, it seems to be an employment law. It discourages employers to allow their workers who are paid on a hourly rate to work more then 40 hours during a week, due to current regulation of time and a half. As a result, more individuals are hired, so that more hours are worked for fewer dollars an hour.
The 40 hour work week, perhaps could be taking away from other employment opportunities because there would be more individuals to hire if the average work week were to be longer.
This may seem somewhat incoherent as I am unsure myself with what the a truly free market work week would look like, but I appreciate any thoughts on this issue.
The 40 hour work week means that less is produced, resulting in higher prices. It also means there is probably less employment. Do you ever wonder why there are so few businesses open during holidays, at night, or on the weekends? My guess, is that it is because of the 40-hour work week. “Employees” are not really working for the employer, they are really working for the customer. But the government only let’s us work for the customer 40 hours a week! Or we have to force the customer to pay 1.5 times the market wage. Why would they want to do that, when they can just wait and pay us the market rate during the other 40 hours we work a week?
The 40 hour week is Galbraith’s fault. The absurdity that working less can improve economic conditions is just that. Galbraith’s idea of favouring austerity over prosperity in the interests of attending to what he regarded as higher values directly influenced policy-makers.
Next time an interventionist rambles about the benefits of government making labor laws (our labor history, gilded age! yada yada yada)- Particularly the maximum 40 hr work week per job qua wage labor, then overtime. Keep in mind this is nonsense. Think of the amazing high standard of living in capitalism we can enjoy, working no more that 40 hrs a week, no it is not because the government has prevented us from slaving away for 100 hours 7 days a week, so we can enjoy leisure time—
The government does nothing to stop you from working more than 40 hours a week on wages. You can work 2, 3, 5 jobs, and 120 hours a week for wages if you desired. Its a myth that because of labor laws we don’t work ourselves to death, because there never was intervention stopping laborers from interminable work. The leisure and surplus in capitalism for the average person, is not a product of government’s benevolent intervention.
The 40hr work week just like minimum wage, workers compensation, safety regulation, etc are simply feel good scams that make people poorer. These scams come under the heading of “Feel Good Economics”. That is: I feel good about the intention of a program so it is a success regardless of the damage it does to people.
The 40hr work week like the minimum wage are just about the worst of these. These programs seem to maximize the feelings: I am creating an artificial scarcity of labor so that means an employer must want to hire more people. (It could also mean that an employer may decide to forgo production which is more often than not the case.) So there are two results to the 40hr work week: 1. People are poorer because employers have to hire more folks which decreases labor productivity thus increasing costs and increasing prices, or 2. People are poorer because employers have to cut back production so there is an artifical scarcity of goods that leads to increasing prices.
The worst is when there are foreign competitors that do not have these hidden costs, then the employer simply ceases business as price increases are now impossible.
Think about the poorest folks, these people may desperately need that wage time above 40 hours. But when an employer has to charge time and a half that employee worth $10 per hour getting paid $8 is not worth employing at $12.