The goal of a functioning society is improving things for it’s people. That means people working less, owning more, and generally having better lives.
Germany, and the world, needs to stop voting for people telling you that they want to make your life worse.
You know, not even a third of people voted for this guy.
He basically only became Bundeskanzler because 13,8, or over 1/8, of the votes didn’t get any say at all. Also in first try, the Bundestag rejected to inaugurate him.
Basically noone wants him. But thats who we got now.
And yet he’s in power. A system that promotes people who want nothing more than to enrich themselves and devastate their country and neighbors is not a functional system.
I only say this with the fear of Germany turning into the US over the next couple of decades. I would like this place to be my final home.
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
Also these guys: why nobody wants children anymore?
Merz is personified ragebait.
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.
Outsider but I remember people being unhappy with the Ampel coalition. I can’t imagine anyone is preferring this really though are they?
I haven’t seen any polling numbers lately though compared.
I work 30h a week and Merz can fuck off. I would be getting a similar amount of work done, not more, but have a lot less free time to do what I really want and is probably just as productive in many ways, but not in their too limited economic indicators. Sports, cleaning the house, meeting people, growing tomatoes, sleeping enough etc etc
Exactly. Truth is, most people have maybe 2-3 hours effective work hours a day.
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You are wrong. Plain and simple. Economic growth does not go hand in hand with more working hours. In fact productivity decreases with more working hours, potentially having even a negative impact.
There are enough studies that show that a 4 day working week increases productivity and mental health, leading to an overall better quality of life.
More working hours has the opposite effect.
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What do you mean „stop hoping“? We have not even tried to make it happen.
Forcing people to work more hours will not help.
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Think about it. What will longer working hours really do? They will create frustration, stress, more illness because of these two. It will lead to a reduction in productivity, reduction in worker motivation, overall reduced worker satisfaction.
How can you be so confident that this is a positive direction?
I’m confident that a larger volume of labor, assuming that investments in assets are made, will lead to economic growth, because that has been observed many times over in Economics research.
The development (working longer hours) is not positive. I would much rather prefer a productivity boom due to some general purpose technology. And that that raises economic growth.
But for me personally, going from working parttime to fulltime is not the worst thing ever either. I’ve done it before.
I hope you (and Emopunker who removed my comments, grrr) can see that the link between economic growth and the volume of labor is quite solid, and it should not engage people. There are only four levers to raise economic growth that are known in the literature (investments in assets, volume of labor, total factor productivity, education).
Dear Chancellor Merz,
Go fuck yourself.
Sincerely, everyone
Get your lazy 42 working hour ass up and get a second job till you’re 72. You lazy parasite.
Sincerely, Christoph Maria Merz
The legal maximum in Germany is 40 h, and a lot (the most?) sectors have union contracts with 35 - 37.5 h maximum work hours per week.
Just in case some reader doesn’t know about German working hours. I don’t know whether Merz knows, though.
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.
Even that is just a one time boost. If the automation is done there is nothing to be done better. So to grow further people have to be fired or other sources of revenue have to be unlocked.
I still think, sustained growth is impossible in the long run.I still think, sustained growth is impossible in the long run.
Oh yeah, for sure. All production consumes natural resources at some point in the chain, even services. And natural resources are finite. Even if we recycle everything, we’d still have a finite amount we have to work with beyond which we can’t expand. If the driving force behind the production expansion is primarily profit growth, then there’s no satisfying that. That’s an inherent problem with the capitalist system. If however the driving force is the need for making something that doesn’t exist - e.g. more tanks, more wind turbines, more scientific researchers, more musicians, then automation can help a lot. But even for purely profit-driven growth, automation would provide a lot more runway than making people work more hours. I know you’re not disagreeing, I’m just saying this for completeness. :D
I have to thank you for pointing out, that you wanted to say that automation would help more than let people work more. That is a fact that I lost sight of. :)
Exactly. There cannot be infinite growth on a finite planet.
And we have reached the planetary limits a while ago, as evidenced by the environmental collapse we are all witnessing.
This is fake news. This is not a party decision yet, but a push from some individuals which created controversy inside of the union and broad outrage in the other parties.
Sounds like some “work will set you free” type shit
No. Much different tone really. Weird association from you.
Leaking this proposal to the media on the day when Auschwitz was liberated is a bit on the nose.
Merz is famous for his sense of subtlety and decency.
„If we whip them harder surely they will generate more profit for us masters!“
Kind reminder the Christ Democrats always hated human beings.
Not always.
Das kapitalistische Wirtschaftssystem ist den staatlichen und sozialen Lebensinteressen des deutschen Volkes nicht gerecht geworden.
Inhalt und Ziel dieser sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Neuordnung kann nicht mehr das kapitalistische Gewinn- und Machtstreben, sondern nur das Wohlergehen unseres Volkes sein.
CDU, 1947.
But yeah, that was some time ago.
Translation:
The capitalist economic system has not sufficed w.r.t. the state and social interests of the German people.
The content and the objective of this social and economic restructuring can no longer be the capitalistic seeking of power and profit, but the wellbeing of our people.
Fun fact about Germany: There is no fun, get back to Work!
As an American dealing with elderly parents and work. It’s not lifestyle. I burned myself out.
CDU/CSU is so brain rot, encapsulating the boomer capitalist favouritism in a crystal form.
And still they win by large in elections.
He has 22% approval in current polls I wonder how it is so high.
Retirees.
Sorry guys, but if you have to answer retorical questions at least do it right. The right answer is: rich people
It’s always the fault of the workers and not the leeches at the top taking every gain for themselves.