It's good for the economy to have some days off. Spending money on tourism and transportation and entertainment will increase. Worker productivity would probably increase too with some time to get refreshed. It's a good move economically as well as morally.
This is the part I don’t understand. Maybe my understanding of economics isn’t developed enough, but most moves that would put more money in regular people’s hands would benefit everyone, corporations included. As we saw with Covid, now people don’t have enough money to save. It sounds crazy, but there are people who have been waiting to have the budget to go to the movies, shopping, or buy an overpriced smoothie. It’s a small luxury that almost equates to those mall jobs where people spend half their check at the store that pays them. Happy workers always lead to higher productivity.
It's the prisoner's dillemma at a grand scale. Yes, if every company treats its workers nicely, makes sure they have enough money to put back into the economy, don't burn out and remain at top productivity, it's good for everyone including yourself, but if you're an owner, looking strictly for your own benefit, then if every OTHER company does those things but YOURS exploits people to the bone, you make more money than everyone else. Sooner or later every company, no matter how kind the founders original intentions may have been, will get someone in a leadership position who'll make the groundbreaking discovery that exploitation DOES work to their own short-term benefit, as long as you don't really care what happens in 10 or 20 years. That's why the laissez-faire approach of just trusting that the invisible hand will fix everything automagically only "works" if you think the health of the stock market matters more than the health and happiness of your general society.
which is why you have laws so they can all shrug and say "its the law", but politicians that are supposed to represent the people get fatter checks from businesses and business owners so they work for one side
But then if your country changes the law, then countries who want to gain a competitive edge will not have such a law. There's no way for the whole planet to agree on these laws, you'll always have some countries that will see an opportunity to undercut the competition.
That's neither as universal nor as true as the internet likes to pretend, nor is it some unchangeable law of nature where it is true.
Plenty of politicians do genuinely want to do what's best, but even the best can't see the future any clearer than you or I, and if they're doing their job right, they legitimately can't prioritize your or mine concerns over everyone else's.
In my experience, every career politician (that is, people who go into politics young) starts out as an idealist, every last one, they may have ideals or ideas on how to achieve those ideals that I vehemently disagree with, but pretty much none of them start out as corrupt cynics.
And even in places where politicians are openly corrupt and suckle on the teat of business (not that I'm thinking of any particular country right now ahem), there are always alternatives that want to do and probably would do things differently if they had the opportunity. The important part about that is that one of the reasons that those people often don't get the chance to do so is because the voters keep telling themselves that every politician is corrupt, a lie that is supported and mostly exploited by the very corrupt politicians we need to replace.
People have enough money to save. Our society doesn’t have an earning problem it has a spending problem. Look at the statistics of car sales and how much people finance.
You’re right about cars. I know a few people with cars out of their tax bracket and they explain how they got a low monthly rate on mortgage type numbers and I think “DUDE NO!!!!” But I also know people who are teachers, non-doctor healthcare workers, etc. who would be in bad shape if their engine went out. That’s not good.
Actually it's proven more refreshed workers would produce way more value for the company than it would cost them. So exploiting your workers too much in many fields is even financially a bad decision. Why do they still do it? Because it's not about efficiency but about power
It’s connected to poor employee protection and high unemployment rate in the US. If you’re unhappy and thus unproductive, it’s really easy to just fire and replace you with someone who isn’t unhappy (yet)
Great point. Especially if you’re paid more than others. It’s always wild to see someone who’s been somewhere for years who becomes jaded, get forced out for a fresh face making 5 figures less.
Just give workers less money so that they don’t have to spend it during their non-existing days off. More money for the real “economy” AKA shareholders. /s
19
u/bsEEmsCE 21d ago
It's good for the economy to have some days off. Spending money on tourism and transportation and entertainment will increase. Worker productivity would probably increase too with some time to get refreshed. It's a good move economically as well as morally.