this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
1125 points (99.1% liked)
Political Memes
10319 readers
2722 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Of course people want a four-day workweek. That part is obvious and frankly irrelevant.
The real question is: who actually benefits without losing income? The answer is: a minority. Roughly 25–35% of workers, mostly salaried, white-collar, outcome-based roles, can compress or rearrange work without taking a pay hit. For them, four days is mostly a scheduling change.
The other 65–70% of workers, trades, service, healthcare, retail, logistics, commission, flat-rate, piece-work, are paid by volume, not vibes. Fewer days means fewer billable units, fewer closes, fewer shifts, or longer days just to break even.
I work flat-rate. I close work orders. If I work four days, I make less money. There is no efficiency fairy that replaces raw volume.
The four-day workweek isn’t a universal labor reform. It’s a white-collar benefit marketed as moral progress, and it collapses the moment you apply it to people who actually produce, fix, transport, or serve things.
This is not true at all. No one calling for the reduced hours is calling for reduced pay.
Of course no one is doing that. I work on throughput, not salary. A lot of people are in the same position, whether they are flat-rate or hourly. If I cut my schedule down to four days, I simply will not make enough money to sustain myself. There is a hard limit to how much work I can complete in a single day, and I cannot compress six days of output into four. That is the point I was making, a four-day workweek does not benefit workers whose income is tied to throughput or hours worked. It primarily benefits salaried employees whose pay is disconnected from daily output
Did you actually read what I wrote?
the point here is that you shouldn't need to work 6 days to be able to afford a life.
you are literally fighting for people stealing from you.
https://media.theunderstatement.com/005_B_us_wealth_distribution.png
That is the work I do. I am paid per job completion because I am in the repair industry. My income is entirely self-generated; I make my own salary based on output. That is how this business functions, and there is no alternative model that actually works. To remain competitive, I have to work six days a week. We cannot raise prices beyond a minimum threshold without losing work.
It sounds great to say people should work less and live more. Unfortunately, in certain sectors of the economy, that idea is completely disconnected from reality. In industries driven by throughput and competition, working less directly means earning less, and for many of us, that is simply not an option
You're not charging enough. You need to reevaluate your costs with your own labor cost included. Don't ignore yourself just because you're doing gig work.
Does anybody read anything that I actually write?
We have competition in the business. We have to offer lower prices to stay in business to be competitive. You can't just charge more... People are going to use cheaper services than expensive ones. That's basic economics.
yes, we do. you are talking about how it works now, and we are talking about how it needs to change.
if no one will provide the kind of cheap labour that can only provide living for you if you do it 6 days per week, then your customers will not run away from you, because the others will do the same. also, your customers also work somewhere, and they will be in the same position.
the solution is not to work seven days a week, the solution is to take back the wealth they are stealing from us.
Wealth inequality is single-handedly one of the worst and most pressing issues on the planet. We are in desperate need of a wealth tax and a wealth cap. We have done this before, and it was demonstrably successful.
However, there is a critical detail that is consistently ignored: competition, the cornerstone of capitalism. If my company demands higher pay, another company will undercut us. I lose work. That is the reality of the market.
You are not the first person I have had this discussion with. The problem is an overfocus on an idealized, single facet of a far more complex system. It is easy to say “we should work less and get paid more,” but we live in reality. There are many types of work and compensation structures that do not scale to a four-day workweek.
Moreover, what is being proposed are massive, systemic, sweeping change, an attempt to fundamentally reshape the entire system “for the greater good.” History shows that “the greater good” is a dangerous concept and is rarely good for the majority.
no, the problem are people trying to mud the issue with "it's a complex one, so lets do nothing, not even talk about it".
and that is why we have laws and enforce them. (or it should be). because we have learned that unchecked and uncontrolled capitalism is, in fact, not working towards peace, liberty and justice for all, but towards putting everything into the hand of few billionaires and enslaving all other people.
yes, it is a complex topic that is not going to be solved with one minor rule. no one is saying it will be easy, but something has to be done.
nice billionaire talking points you have there. you are literally admitting you live in an oppressive economic regime and yet you try to defend it.
Yes. The pattern continues. You cherry-pick a few choice quotes from my response and then claim I’m some kind of pro-billionaire, despite the fact that my statement opened with a clear denunciation of billionaires.
Are you going to gloss over that, or is it simply more convenient to pretend I didn’t say it? Of course it is. That part directly contradicts the narrative you are trying to push. It also offers actual solutions, something you have failed to do, opting instead for ad hominem. Let me be perfectly clear. I do not like billionaires. They should not exist. Their wealth needs to be forcibly reclaimed, leaving them with enough money to feel rich but without any functional power. Large corporations must be aggressively monitored and regulated.
Achieving this requires sweeping reforms: outlawing lobbying, instituting term limits for politicians, abolishing the Electoral College, implementing wage taxes and caps, and redistributing wealth to the bottom 80 percent.
So I’ll ask again: are you capable of contributing anything substantive to this discussion, or is performative outrage the extent of your engagement?
and you accuse me of ad hominem attacks? lol
and you will still fight for your 6 days work-week? why o why?
that 4-day week is not a solution in itself. it is part of the big debate about wage theft and the big solution needs to have laws and regulation so you don't have to work 6 days to being afford a life. i have already said that, but you continue to ignore it, because it doesn't fit your narrative, which is something you accuse me of.
I suppose we are both guilty of ad hominem.
I would like you to show me, in our exchange or anywhere under my original comment, where I supported billionaires. My position is straightforward. I am explaining why a four-day workweek, in my business, would not generate sufficient revenue. Other companies would undercut me by working more than four days a week and charging less per closed work order. That is not ideology; it is how competition functions in a capitalist system.
This leads to the central question: what reforms, legislation, or structural changes could realistically curtail this basic economic condition? Corporations should absolutely be more heavily regulated to prevent abuse. However, their autonomy cannot be eliminated entirely. They must retain some capacity to operate independently and generate profit, or the system collapses. What you are ultimately describing resembles a non-monetary or post-scarcity economy, which cannot exist until scarcity itself is eliminated.
The four-day workweek is an excellent idea, and I fully support it where it is viable. What you are proposing, however, is not a minor reform. It is a fundamental change to the philosophical and economic foundations of our society. Such a transformation cannot be achieved through legislation alone.
Why are you demanding something you refuse to do yourself?
Ok.
I agree that billionaires hoarding wealth like a dragon under a mountain is terrible.
A four day work week is a great idea and should be implemented where it can work.
We need over arching sweeping reforms to solve our wealth equality issues.
Agree or disagree?