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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
46493168 wrote 1 hour 48 min ago:
I havenât had a solid schedule since Covid, work just happens
whenever and I weave my personal life into it. Sometimes itâs late
nights and a weekend, sometimes I take off a random Wednesday and do
errands.
thegrim33 wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
An AI-generated article which summaries a pre-print release which
surveyed 15 people at 15 companies about their thoughts on whether the
arrangement was working for them. Of those 15, a grand total of 6
(unidentified) people at 6 (unidentified) companies (all in the same
country), said they "thought" productivity had increased. Not a single
data point was taken about whether it actually increased. The questions
that these 15 people were asked was not disclosed.
An informal survey, of unknown content, of 15 unidentified people, with
6 of those people being in the "boosts productivity" camp. Cool beans.
I guess that settles the matter once and for all.
jkldotio wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
It's 15 companies that adopted a technique and it's part of a broader
constellation of experiments in this area which have been confounding
the traditional logic that productivity would decrease. [1] The
people representing the businesses in the preprint hold titles like
co-founder, CEO/founder, COO, General Manager, and CEO. The size of
the business and sector are also noted. I think your framing of them
as "unidentified people" is therefore off, it is certainly not the
same as a journalist conveniently using "unnamed sources", this is
standard academic practice.
Different companies measure different things, but they do measure and
that is addressed in the paper. "revenue (DM10), profit (DM4), other
financial targets (DM2, DM6), customer/client satisfaction ( DM8,
DM6), story points (DM14), sprint goals (DM7), billable hours (DM12),
capacity ( DM4), response rates (DM10), standard operating procedure
metrics (DM9), sick leave (DM1, D M 4. DM9, DM15), lodgements (DM12),
employee happiness (DM6, DM15), projects delivered on time (DM15),
and net promoter score ( DM4)". There were also other benefits like
hiring and retention.
So this is not what "unidentified people" "thought" about
productivity, this was founders and the c-suite using their existing
favoured metrics. On those metrics a large number of them reported an
increase in productivity, and a larger group reported no deleterious
effects on productivity. This is broadly consistent with the trends
in the wider research into this area globally, which continually go
against the predictions that productivity will drop. Is it
universally applicable? I don't think anyone is claiming that.
I've followed this area for a while and, sorry to be impolite, it is
your summary that is less accurate than the the one you accuse of
being AI-generated.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.4dayweek.com/research
farhanhubble wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
If you look at Australian IT companies they're management and
consultant heavy. Roles like architects, review boards, program
managers etc., exceed actual engineering roles. In such a set up it
takes forever to get any real work done.
Then Australian real wages have also declined. So there is already low
motivation to work beyond the minimum expectation.
Australia also has strong social security, at least until now, and
there are plenty of odd jobs due to the real estate and tourism
industries, so there is little pressure to survive unless you owe too
much credit.
Automation and technology adoption also lags behind. For example,
people still wait thirty minutes on a call to get an appointment with a
doctor instead of making an online booking.
For all of these reasons productivity has been low and declining. An
extra day off work is a strong stimulus for squeezing what gets done
into the rest of the days.
In my opinion this is an extreme, just as the work yourself to death
culture in India and China is. On a scale of a few decades economies
where people worked agressively harder have grown tremendously but at
the expense of the long-term wellbeing of the people. Places like
Australia that were well off and felt little pressure to compete have
sustained good quality of life but at the expense of having no
competetitve edge anymore.
declan_roberts wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
I was contacted this week for a position that was openly 6 days a week.
We need to end H1B in this country as soon as possible and keep the 996
schedule firmly out of the United States.
They call you lazy for not wanting to compete against the entire world
in your own country.
akomtu wrote 1 hour 18 min ago:
6 am, 6 pm, 6 days a week. Why is it called 996?
rcxdude wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
9AM to 9PM
nouveaux wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
9a-9p 6 days a week
rented_mule wrote 1 hour 48 min ago:
Chinese tech companies' 996 policies, and large Chinese tech
companies in general, are newer than that ethic in the US. What I
hear about 995.5 (every other Saturday off) from my friend at
Xiaohongshu in Beijing sounds remarkably consistent with what I heard
from my Google friends 20-25 years ago, from working hours to on-site
amenities that kept you at work. You're spotting a correlation, but I
think causality probably goes in the US -> China direction on this.
In the early to mid 90s, I worked at a Silicon Valley based software
startup. We had something called "The Century Club". You made the
club if you'd done 3 consecutive months in the last year without
working less than 100 hours in any week of those months (averaging
100 hours was not good enough). More engineers were in the club than
not. We were told that making the club was not mandatory, but nobody
in the club was ever fired and most not in the club were eventually
fired.
The next startup I was at had a similar culture without the cute
name. I remember my most exhausting stretch there was coming in on a
Saturday morning, for a database migration that had to happen outside
business hours, and working straight through without sleep (other
than nodding off at the keyboard) until Monday afternoon. Our CEO was
kind enough to bring us food. Even in regular times there, I would go
exercise from 10-11 PM, and more often than not I'd go back to the
office after.
A decade later I was at Amazon. Our entire group of ~100 engineers
was required by our VP to work weekends, in the office, for months at
a time when approaching ship dates. The VP would send an email every
Friday during this period to remind us to be there. Of course he
wasn't there.
Those were all pretty counterproductive, but didn't seem that
unusual. The difference in the US back then was that even asking
about such things during an interview would often result in no offer
because the candidate didn't have a "good" work ethic. Things have
gotten a lot better in the US in the last 10-15 years, but a lot of
that came from competition for talent. The more that competition
eases, the more likely it is that we'll go backwards on this.
Relating back to the article... For the last 3 years of my career (I
retired a few years ago), I worked 4-day weeks, and it was all
remote. This is just as anecdotal as the article, but I felt I got
far more done, with higher quality, than at any point in my career.
It was such a revelation.
skybrian wrote 1 hour 0 min ago:
I guess you had bad luck working for teams that worked long hours.
But as another datapoint, I worked at Google for more than a decade
around that time period, for several different teams. Google did
have a lot of amenities and people would say that it was to keep
you at work, but I didn't see much evidence of that. It didn't keep
anyone I knew from going home when they wanted. Being single, I'd
stay for dinner or even come in on a weekend to do my laundry. But
some weekdays I'd either work from home or get in around 11. Or
maybe go for a bike ride at lunch. Nobody kept track. I have little
idea how many hours I worked, but there was plenty of time while
waiting on compiles to check Memegen and Hacker News. It wasn't a
high-stress job.
It's a big company, though, so other teams might be different.
randycupertino wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
My company currently has roles open for "5-6 days per week in the
office" - we used to be 100% remote! It's awful.
archagon wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
Quite a leap to attribute corporate greed to H1B.
Think again: this is entirely homegrown.
genxy wrote 2 hours 42 min ago:
You give away your bias when it is the other way around.
The H1B is a byproduct and a tool of corporate greed.
ycombinator_acc wrote 54 min ago:
Or itâs a way for the less fortunate (geographically) to seek a
better future.
They more or less got rid of it last September, yet the job
market has only worsened. Scapegoating minorities, whether it be
trans people, brown people, Muslims or immigrants, doesnât
work. All it does is destroy lives.
> You give away your bias when it is the other way around.
How so?
shermantanktop wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
Is there not a connection between the two?
You'll have to spell out what you're suggesting here. "Think again"
only works on LLMs, and then only sometimes.
Tadpole9181 wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
The top comment seems to insinuate the 996 (or any overwork
scheme) is being brought over because of H1B visa workers.
The responder is saying that domestic American capitalists do not
need foreign influence to abuse or exploit labor. The H1B visa
program has absolutely nothing to do, for example, with Walmart
telling their full time employees how to apply for government
assistance programs because they refuse to pay a livable wage.
brokenmachine wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
What a huge surprise. Every one of these studies shows the same thing.
Same as every study of open-plan offices shows that they suck.
The psychopaths in charge do not care.
meander_water wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
Not the first study, and they all largely report the same results: [1]
[2]
(HTM) [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02259-6
(HTM) [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/19/four-day-week-tr...
(HTM) [3]: https://www.4dayweek.com/research
mmooss wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
Here's the paper, with no paywall. [1] Hopkins, J., Bardoel, E.A. &
Djurkovic, N. The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early
adopters of the 100:80:100 model. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026).
(HTM) [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x
(HTM) [2]: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-07536-x
optiWorker wrote 3 hours 59 min ago:
I believe these results, as my experience of Australian workplaces has
been ubiquity of people whose presence is net negative to the
workplace, even after discounting their salary.
Most Australian companies would be better off simply paying (10~90% of)
its employees to stay at home.
I do wonder to what extent this is due to the Great Feminization - it
is now routine to find workplaces that have "upgraded" their wokeness
from reminders that sexual and physical violence is not OK, to policies
like "disparaging remarks are not tolerated" or "you must respect your
colleagues at all times".
dools wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
Sounds like your employer would definitely be better off paying you
to stay home â¦
jpollock wrote 3 hours 59 min ago:
Glancing through the study, I'm curious about both sample bias, and the
lack of formal measurement. I'm not an expert in this type of thing,
not even an amateur. I'm poking holes to see what's left.
"Participants were identified via media reports featuring Australian
firms trialling the 100:80:100 model, in addition to companies listed
on recruitment sites that specialise in 4DWW jobs. In other instances,
eligible organisations were recommended by the participants
themselves."
I'd expect organisations with positive results will be the ones
recommended by other participants - "talk to these people, it worked
for them too!"
I'm also interested in whether or not organisations converted all staff
to 100:80:100, or if it was optional. Is the performance driven by peer
pressure?
Finally, the participants' measures of productivity will have
significant lag time in them, so it depends on trial's length, e.g.
"revenue", "profit", "csat", "projects delivered on time", "net
promoter score".
Table 1 has "Duration", but the units are unlabelled, if it's weeks,
it's less than a year, months is probably better for seeing performance
changes.
It's an interesting qualitative study, I'd certainly like a four day
work week with no change in comp.
sensanaty wrote 4 hours 2 min ago:
Here in NL lots of people do 32 hour weeks (legally your employer
cannot deny you this if you ask for it), and I've literally never seen
it be an issue productivity/team-wise, and people's QoL raises
dramatically having an entire extra day free to themselves.
stego-tech wrote 4 hours 11 min ago:
Given the gargantuan amount of data showing productivity relative to
wage gains, or productivity relative to time worked, or productivity
relative to physical office proximity, and the absolute staunch refusal
of business to listen to any of it, I can only assume one thing:
The point was never productivity, it was about humiliation and control.
If it were about productivity, workers would be paid substantially more
to reflect the immense productivity gains weâve created through
automation; we are not.
If it were about effective time management or efficiency, we would be
on four-day, 32 hour work weeks to reflect the real productive output
of labor; we are not.
Just like how RTO excuses of âmentoring Juniorsâ and âimproving
team cohesionâ went out the door for mass layoffs, despite data
showing that a flexible schedule adapting to the needs of the team
rather than whims of leadership have better outcomes and higher
productivity; we now pay higher commute costs, fuel costs, energy
costs, and opportunity costs so real estate investments donât invert.
Itâs all bullshit and lies, and this is one more study to add to the
Alexandria-esque library of research proving that there is no single
good way of working, and the insistence of refusing to change how we
work is ultimately costing us more than if we just learned to adapt.
Pacers31Colts18 wrote 4 hours 25 min ago:
Corporations really dont care about productivity. Wfh has shown we are
more productive
rr808 wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
As someone working on a Sunday on a rainy memorial day weekend. Bring
back the 5 day week!
passive wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
Four-day work weeks are for cowards.
Take all that AI productivity and found a one-day work week company.
One day of focused collaboration each week, let bots and brains chew on
stuff in the interim.
pinkmuffinere wrote 4 hours 34 min ago:
Oh no, I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, lol
passive wrote 4 hours 27 min ago:
It's a little bit snark, but I do think it would be an interesting
experiment. Wish I had lots of money to try it out.
gsinclair wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
If I had the âlots of moneyâ required, Iâd try out a
zero-day work week instead!
passive wrote 8 min ago:
Oh, I don't want mean for myself, I mean as an experiment at
the other end of the four-day work week spectrum.
Though for myself, I like having time to think about ideas in
between when I collaborate with folk on them, so I have a lot
of optimism about the success of the experiment. :)
tedk-42 wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
a lot of AI is just wasteful like this.
there are a lot of parallels with crypto 'mining' a transaction
and AI slopping a functional output.
pizzly wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
Working based on time i.e. 5 days a week is already problematic. We all
see the pay by the hour workers like pool cleaners, vendor machine
stocking people etc spending lots of time dragging out their work as
they get paid by the hour. It makes perfect sense from their
perspective and yes not everyone drags the work.
Fixing the work week to just 5 days have similar issues. Some weeks
will be less work and other weeks more work but you spend the same five
days there. So the what you learn that matters is to spend 5 days
physically there and perform a minimum workload so you don't get fired.
You drag the weeks with less work and pick up inefficient habits as a
result. That is what a 5 day working week teaches. Again there will be
exceptions.
Now assuming this study is correct I am not surprised with the results.
You just incentivized workers to get the same amount of output done
with the condition that you gain 1 day off. Off course workers will
find better and quicker ways of working to get that day off.
Even if we did a 4 working day week the problem of working based on
time either fixed or paid by the hour remains. The incentivisation is
the problem.
goda90 wrote 5 hours 12 min ago:
What's the actual problem? Most people don't live for work.
pizzly wrote 4 hours 12 min ago:
Agree. The problem is the incentivization. If a painter paints a
roof in 5 hours but could do it in 1 hour just to get paid for the
5 hours its not the worker at fault but the system. If the painter
got paid for the 5 hours but only did 1 hour of work then everyone
wins. The painter can have more time off work or work more for more
money, their choice.
Likewise the office worker working 40 hours per week, five days a
week. If on some days the worker can come home early because they
completed what actually needs to be done then that is better for
the worker. But instead companies have a fixed 40 hours + overtime
expectation. On the weeks with less work, people do busy work but
instead could be using that time doing what they want.
Again the problem is the incentivization.
ukuina wrote 50 min ago:
This is the definition of slack.
recursive-call wrote 4 hours 27 min ago:
The actual problem is that workers want to make the most money
possible with the least effort possible. Until we have a system
where people do work that they want to do, perverse incentives will
always be an issue.
userbinator wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
Now do 3, 2, 1, and perhaps 0 days... but seriously, this probably just
resulted in employees squeezing out some of the slack time they would
otherwise have with an extra day.
goda90 wrote 5 hours 8 min ago:
3 days off is infinitely better than moments of stress induced
slacking spread throughout the week, so I don't see the downside.
sublinear wrote 5 hours 34 min ago:
> What success looks like differs by industry, and a rigid,
one-size-fits-all measurement would have made the findings less
applicable to the real world [...] Burnout emerged as a major theme in
the findings.
This is the actual problem to discuss, not the days per week.
Stressors vary a lot by industry and experience level. A senior manager
in IT may do more than 40 hours a week plus be on-call with almost no
stress as long as their projects are doing well. Meanwhile, there may
be no sane amount of overtime pay that will convince a young guy doing
roofing in his first year, and he's highly stressed out either way.
Anyone spinning this as a political issue is plain ignorant.
claudiug wrote 5 hours 36 min ago:
USA: So what I hear, is we need to work 6 days per week + AI? Correct?
paulryanrogers wrote 2 hours 19 min ago:
With all these comparisons to the industrial revolution, I do wonder
if employers are salivating at the thought of getting 12x6, per
human. Perhaps more if one sees the AI as a productivity boast.
oompydoompy74 wrote 6 hours 4 min ago:
Speaking as an American, I donât give a shit if it increases
productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with
technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We,
as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with
equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting
an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to
pay hefty overtime. This is a compromise because really and truly
corporations should be illegal. Employee owned co-ops are more humane.
xnx wrote 2 hours 1 min ago:
We need mutual disarmament
tomhow wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
Grandiose, ideological declarations like this are antithetical to
HNâs ethos of curiosity. Please read the guidelines and make an
effort to observe them if you want to participate here.
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
senectus1 wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
Speaking as an exhausted Australian...
I would love a three day weekend every weekend. in fact I'd even
"pay" for that (My father used his LSL one day a week every week.. a
genius idea imho).
But I dont see it happening any time soon.
MattDamonSpace wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
Someone doesnât understand why we have nice things. âIncreased
productivityâ, the thing you donât give a shit about, is the only
reason youâre not living in the dirt and dying of a tooth infection
before 35.
If you wanted to live with a QoL of the 1940s you could do so today
working 2 days a week. Of course youâd have no air conditioning,
shitty food, no running water, etc etc.
You donât have to LIKE corps but you should at least understand
your world before calling for the guys with guns to get involved.
Marsymars wrote 2 hours 43 min ago:
I'd pretty happily work e.g. a 4-day work week for the QoL of 20
years ago - but I can't actually do so, it's not a option with most
employers.
schappim wrote 4 hours 2 min ago:
Speaking as an Australian, our productivity has been lagging[1]
compared to the US, largely due to the availability of cheap labour
(attributed by economists to foreign students)[2].
I heard one economist on the ABC give the example of carwashes[2].
From the 1990s to the early 2000s, car washes in Australia were
largely automated and hand-wash car washes were relatively uncommon.
However, the abundance of cheap labour has since led to a
proliferation of hand-wash car washes.
1. [1] 2.
(HTM) [1]: https://files.littlebird.com.au/SCR-20260525-ietj.png
(HTM) [2]: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/abc-news-daily/the-pr...
testing22321 wrote 3 hours 10 min ago:
> Speaking as an Australian, our productivity has been lagging[1]
compared to the US
Good.
Developed countries should not aim to emulate the US. To get the
same productivity youâd have to lower the standard of living of
all the employees to the same level as those in the US.
No. Donât do it.
Quality of life matters much more than profits.
anakaine wrote 3 hours 12 min ago:
As a fellow Australian, this is likely an early window on what the
next 5 to 10 years will yield with our recent mass immigration.
Economically speaking we could well see a race to the bottom in
wages whilst we continue to experience exceptional housing
pressure.
gsinclair wrote 3 hours 35 min ago:
The car wash example is interesting, as something Iâve seen and
experienced but never thought about in that way.
I wonder how it truly factors into productivity, though. How is
productivity measured, and does that measurement capture what is
true?
You mention automated car washes as a baseline. I never used those
in the past because I figured theyâd be rubbish or would scratch
the car or whatever. So Iâd occasionally wash the car myself, and
thatâs it. Now that we have manual car washes available, I use
them from time to time. They clearly (I assert) do a better job
than anything automated. And they do it inside and out.
So I find the comparison interesting, but in need of elaboration.
card_zero wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
It's a tautology, if productivity is measured as GDP per worker.
Productivity, so defined, is down because each worker is moving
money around less, although there may be more workers. Which is
the same thing as them being paid less. Question is, if they
accept that, and cars still get washed, does it matter?
losvedir wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
Lot of shoulds, oughts, etc. How about this: do whatever you want.
Nothing is stopping you from setting up a 3 day workweek co-op. More
power to any group that wants to. There are a number out there
already. But it's worth considering why it hasn't totally taken over
"naturally".
jedimastert wrote 25 min ago:
> it's worth considering why it hasn't totally taken over
"naturally".
Because is advantageous for employers to keep workers as close to
the brink of burnout as possible as a method of control
xg15 wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
You can ask that question in the opposite way too: Why does the
weekend still exist? Why aren't people working 24/7?
throwaway-11-1 wrote 4 hours 18 min ago:
Labor has been completely defeated in the US. Capital sets the
terms and has captured the political class. You know this but are
using deflection to put blame on individuals who donât actually
hold power. Management can offshore anytime workers present a
challenge.
azan_ wrote 2 hours 48 min ago:
What are you talking about? Minimum wage has nowadays a lot wider
coverage and many unions have absurd privileges and compensations
(e.g. docking unions) for which entire society has to pay. Even
recently NYC hotel keepers have managed to negotiate 6 figure
salary. There's lots of doomerism that doesn't really hold up
when confronted with actual evidence lately.
tsimionescu wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
This is absurdly ahistorical. Corporations take as much as they
can. If there were no law limiting work to 40 hours / week, they
would demand far more - as they had before massive workers'
protests forced the current limits.
losvedir wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
All the more reason people would prefer to work for a co-op, no?
I really don't know why there aren't more co-ops, and am
inferring they just don't work all that well. But if there are
any regulations or something preventing them from succeeding, I'd
love to know about it.
Also, I guess it's worth noting I've been "exempt" all my life
(not subject to 40 hours a week), so that particular labor win I
guess didn't really cross my mind.
card_zero wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
They can't strategize and adapt very quickly, because of all
the cooperating.
squibonpig wrote 3 hours 34 min ago:
If everyone has 40 hours a week + overtime and you have a coop
that pays competitively for 24 hours a week and no overtime you
won't get as much market share, can be outcompeted. It has to
be done on a large scale, historically as a matter of policy.
This was true for tons of different reductions in the workday
and other labor rights improvements in the past.
anonymars wrote 4 hours 28 min ago:
How did the 40-hour workweek come about?
(Certainly not "naturally")
farnell wrote 4 hours 15 min ago:
Labor unions and henry ford
bigiain wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
Unions.
antisthenes wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
More specifically than Unions, it was the threat of violence
(in extreme cases) and work stoppage by workers against the
ownership class.
E.g. the Russian Revolution (one of the main workers' requests
in the events leading up to the Revolution was the 40 hour work
week and fair treatment).
The unions were just a symptom to mediate the threat of
violence in exchange for a larger share of the added value
generated by the worker.
baylisscg wrote 4 hours 8 min ago:
More completely the 8 hour work day movement. Loosely, 8hrs
each for work, sleep, and everything else with everything else
often being called recreation. Add in a 5 day work week and
40hrs. There's monument in Melbourne commemorating stonemasons
winning an 8 hour work day in 1856 but they were working 6 days
a week.
stanac wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
> Employee owned co-ops are more humane
Speaking as someone born in Yugoslavia.
That's almost how it was in Yugoslavia. Companies where "owned by
society", but workers had voting rights. Whenever there was a vote to
decide whether extra profit should be used for capital investments
and/or operational improvements or assigned to salaries budget,
everyone voted to increase their salaries.
Not every employ should be a co-owner, or at least not everyone
should have voting rights.
coredog64 wrote 3 hours 1 min ago:
An employee-owned co-op results in extremely high risk
concentration. If your co-op experiences a downturn, you are
likely to lose your job and see the value of your share of the
co-op decrease.
There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
- Thomas Sowell
teaearlgraycold wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
You still need free market economics. If consumers have enough
choices then the company with comfortable employees that refuse to
invest profits into their operation will lose to the better
organized competitor prioritizing a balance between the two.
mohamedkoubaa wrote 4 hours 22 min ago:
Did you know that public market shareholders almost always vote for
stock buybacks
azan_ wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
People should realise that they will be the ones paying for it.
Prices will increase a lot. People need to be aware of that.
Personally I'm okay with that trade-off. Also corporations - when
checks and balances work properly, which is frequently not the case
unfortunately - are great and net benefit for humanity.
FridgeSeal wrote 3 hours 4 min ago:
Prices are already obscene, and weâre all being ripped off.
Iâd much rather pay the prices
corrected-for-supporting-livelihoods, than the artificially
inflated prices used to line the pockets of the rich.
azan_ wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
> Iâd much rather pay the prices
corrected-for-supporting-livelihoods, than the artificially
inflated prices used to line the pockets of the rich.
But unless you do central planning (which doesn't work) you can't
really separate these two, can you?
runtime_terror wrote 4 hours 34 min ago:
I wonder what would happen to costs if we had a 90%+ tax rate on
the ultra wealthy... maybe if all these record profits were instead
funneled back into society everyone would be better off AND prices
would drop... a system like this would be good for society it
seems... we should come up with a good name for that system, tho...
quantummagic wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
You would get some version of the Soviet Union. Where all the
rich people would be connected to government rather than
industry. And industry would become enfeebled and unable to
produce efficiently, and the average person would be much poorer
than people currently are in the USA.
azan_ wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
I think its pretty naive to thing that it'd work this way. It's
really bad idea. If someone has company that debuts on stock
market, and stock price increases let's say 100x times, who is he
funneling the funds from? I'd say it's not funneling but creation
of wealth, economy is not zero-sum game.
paulryanrogers wrote 2 hours 27 min ago:
US had tax brackets in the 90%s for decades. It was part of a
golden era for workers, for that and a variety of other reasons
like strong unions.
Of course the rich tried to work around it. But culturally they
also understood that paying a lot of taxes was considered their
duty to society, especially in times of crisis.
quantummagic wrote 21 min ago:
This is a lazy idea that keeps getting trotted out. The 90%
tax bracket only existed on paper, with an effective rate
closer to 40%. Economists have shown that tax revenue
remained remarkably unchanged, while having negative
consequences for investment and productive use of capital.
Instead, the relative prosperity of workers during that time
came from a lack of global industrial competition and a
massive post-war manufacturing monopoly. Without a
completely sealed, loophole-free tax system and total global
compliance, implementing a 90% tax rate today would simply
result in widespread tax avoidance, capital flight, and a
reduction in domestic investment. The rich do not make the
bulk of their wealth through a salary (many taking $0 / year)
like they did back then, but rather through stock options,
etc.
thfuran wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
If someone has a company doing an IPO, itâs extremely
unlikely that the company was so small that one person did all
the work. Why is it a given that one person should retain
nearly all of the proceeds of the sale? To answer your
question, that person is funneling funds from investors who are
expecting returns derived from the labor provided by the
undercompensated employees.
azan_ wrote 3 hours 3 min ago:
Ok, let's follow that logic. If IPO makes CEO much, much
richer but generally also makes company and workers better
off (but to smaller degree), does IPO make workers more
undercompensated? Nobody lost anything for the CEO to gain.
Also is "funneling" (that's an interesting choice of word)
investors money into company stock a bad thing? Why would it
be? I'd say it's a very, very good thing and it's in almost
always 100% voluntary to buy stocks.
thfuran wrote 2 hours 10 min ago:
>If IPO makes CEO much, much richer but generally also
makes company and workers better off (but to smaller
degree), does IPO make workers more undercompensated?
Yes, obviously. The bulk of work of the company is done by
the workers. That is to say, most of the value is generated
by the labor of the workers. If a commensurate share of the
profit is not returned to the employees, theyâve clearly
been undercompensated.
Marsymars wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
Presumably there's some level of progressive taxation where
the top rate is between 0% and 100% that most helps the
median person.
The problem is that people with power are largely
incentivized to push this rate lower than the
optimal-for-the-median-person rate in order to benefit the
wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
nonfamous wrote 4 hours 51 min ago:
>> Prices will increase a lot.
Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are
commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of
production â and even then labor costs are rarely the most
significant cost.
Most things we buy are priced according to what the consumer is
willing to pay for it, and the balance sheet of the companies that
sell most of the things we buy show thereâs a lot of wiggle room
there.
azan_ wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
> Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer
are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost
of production â and even then labor costs are rarely the most
significant cost.
Services and goods where lots of human labor is required get much
more expensive with larger cost of labor. E.g. fast-food, food
delivery. And there's nothing wrong with that of course - I'd
rather pay 2x more for delivery than have people working on wages
that are not enough to even feed them.
paulryanrogers wrote 2 hours 24 min ago:
If labor costs are so high and such a large portion of
production then how can companies afford to funnel so much
money to executives? Hundreds and even thousands of times more
than their cheapest workers? Often to the tune of millions and
now billions?
Surely there is more slack in the system than the Epstein class
wants to openly admit.
abcde666777 wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
This all sounds great until you've actually had your own small
business and experienced things from the other side.
Employees are expensive, good employees are hard to find, and
sometimes things need to be fixed outside 9-5 to avoid having an
angry client on your hands.
sensanaty wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
You should hire people to cover those hours outside of the 9-5
then. Or do you expect your employees to slave away for your
benefit without getting anything but the bare minimum from you?
amazingamazing wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
This will never happen for the simple reason that there are some
countries whose members are poor and so they are rightfully ready to
work harder and longer for opportunities.
A more important point is why is it that Americans objectively are
richer yet feel poorer?
xg15 wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
Depends what your comparison is. Are you comparing with the EU,
China or Ethiopia?
Seems to me, the question is more why all that supposed prosperity
doesn't translate to the living quality improvements one would
expect.
HDBaseT wrote 4 hours 13 min ago:
Trillions of dollars spend on wars which don't need to exist
doesn't help.
stavros wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
But, if there exist poorer countries, why is there a five-day work
week instead of a seven-day one? Why aren't we all just working
24/7?
phyzix5761 wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
In most poor countries workers are doing 10 hours per day 6 days
a week. With a significant number of them doing 7 days a week.
stavros wrote 4 hours 4 min ago:
The argument (maybe in a sibling comment) was that, if the US
switched to a 4-day workweek, companies would simply offshore
their work to poorer countries who work 5 days, so my question
is, then why isn't the current workweek 7 days?
amazingamazing wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
There are Americans working 24/7, though. Surely you have heard
of people working multiple menial full time jobs? Jobs are being
offshored and cheaper immigrants are being imported who can be
paid less. What more evidence do you need?
micromacrofoot wrote 4 hours 54 min ago:
on the whole, most americans are not being compensated for the
amount of value their work produces
pixelatedindex wrote 5 hours 8 min ago:
> A more important point is why is it that Americans objectively
are richer yet feel poorer?
I thought about this a lot. Some of it is expectation wrapped up in
the American Dream. You work hard, and get those rewards. But that
isnât true because life isnât fair and capitalism isnât
particularly humane or ethical.
Some of it is perceived. The people who strike gold without hard
work expect to keep striking more gold, and when the yield shrinks
youâre appalled because thatâs not how things should be.
US is a deeply individualistic society, now more so than ever. We
donât always sacrifice for the common good, because theyâre
supposed to work hard just like me.
Anyway if you read all that, thank you.
FpUser wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
>"You work hard, and get those rewards."
For a relatively short period it was true. Now majority works
hard, lives from paycheck to paycheck and can not even own a
house. Most results of what they produce goes to feed ever
growing appetites of Musks
han1 wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
Do workers really care about productivity? As long as I get paid
that's what matters.
FpUser wrote 3 hours 40 min ago:
As long as they feel growth of productivity results to increase in
their standard of living then why not?
micromacrofoot wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
a good number do, I've been surprised by how many low level fast
food managers actually care about how well the store's performing
due to owner pressure despite seeing little to no wage improvement
regardless
idle_zealot wrote 5 hours 40 min ago:
I like to feel that I'm spending my time productively, yeah. Not
all of my time, mind you. People generally like to feel their work
impacting their environment. Many consider it the most fulfilling
part of their lives. Working purely for compensation is a great way
to kill most positive energy for a solid half of your waking hours
most days. People react differently, of course. For some the
knowledge that they're making money alone provides the
psychological reward, others find enjoyment in the moment-to-moment
of things, even if they're not part of a meaningful goal, and yet
others offset the meaninglessness of their work with a fulfilling
home life or hobbies.
On the whole though, I'd say yes, people do care about productivity
so long as they feel it's connected to their world and oriented in
the right-ish direction.
han1 wrote 5 hours 22 min ago:
I work remotely at companies until they fire me for doing the
minimum. I still get paid for the two to three weeks, so I
couldn't care less because the money goes towards my hobbies.
losvedir wrote 4 hours 27 min ago:
This is why we can't have nice things.
idle_zealot wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
Do you feel like maybe we could do a better job of constructing
a world where people don't feel they need to do this
objectively worthless activity?
christophilus wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
That would be ok in a non-globalized world. In our world, any country
that implements those laws will see a lot more offshoring.
jmyeet wrote 3 hours 59 min ago:
This has the same energy as "if we tax the billionaires, they'll
leave". That statement and yours are wrong. Why? Because if it was
profitable, they would've done it already. Pretty much any employer
would use you as fertilizer if there was an uptick in the stock
price.
But let's say it's true. Great. Punish them with tariffs. They also
have diminished political power because they're no longer a local
employer.
We are colletively at a breaking point as a society where people
legitimately can't afford to exist in a society that will soon mint
its first trillionaire. This is beyond even French revolution
levels of wealth inequality.
azan_ wrote 2 hours 54 min ago:
> We are colletively at a breaking point as a society where
people legitimately can't afford to exist in a society
Aren't poverty rates being reduced basically everywhere and
people getting richer across all deciles? The truth is that even
if 90% tax rate was enforceable it would not change much - many
problems plaguing societies right now are due to bad legislation
and NIMBYs, with housing being the prime example. Somehow people
want at same time: more houses, cheaper housing and as little new
housing development as possible.
FridgeSeal wrote 3 hours 22 min ago:
Fully agreed.
âOh but businesses will leaveâ
Yeah so what, if they do, we either didnât want them, or they
_actually wonât_ despite the squealing, or they will go, and if
their segment of the market is useful, will get snapped up by
new/local versions which do respect local constraints from the
get-go.
All of these are better outcomes than not doing anything because
âwhat ifâ.
eudamoniac wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
That only works with tariffs, which are widely considered evil
apparently.
xg15 wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
So then all the productivity improvements are nothing more than
boosting the hashrate of your crypto miner? You have to do it to
not fall behind, but once everyone has done it, we all end up back
in the same spot where we started?
archagon wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
Normal people, yes. The oligarchic class gets more and more
bloated as you can plainly see.
amazingamazing wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
Unironically, yes. One saving grace is in some ways, such as
medicine and technology, more will be available to you, but not
for less effort.
xg15 wrote 3 hours 55 min ago:
It's kind of understandable then that parts of the younger
generations aren't motivated to continue that system? (Not just
in the West, also in China, see "lying flat")
danaris wrote 5 hours 37 min ago:
Not if that country also legislates heavy penalties for companies
that produce their goods in countries with worse labor laws.
xg15 wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
Almost like we needed some international worker's organization to
put pressure on all relevant countries at the same time...
AndrewKemendo wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
Hey donât go talking crazy about some kind of global labor
solidarity and collective bargaining
anomaly_ wrote 4 hours 24 min ago:
You're just going to Galapagos your economy. Consumers won't put
up with high prices and inferior goods. Unless you want to
restrict internet/information access so your consumers don't know
what they are missing out on.
youngNed wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
Nah, I live in the UK, prices are higher than eu, public
service is much worse, but public are voting for the party
with members that brought this about.
Humans are weird.
jfengel wrote 3 hours 8 min ago:
Voting for someone else would mean admitting you were wrong.
Paying high prices and losing your job are bad, but not as
bad as changing your mind.
amanaplanacanal wrote 4 hours 13 min ago:
I dunno. Consumers put up with a lot. Why can't I buy a cheap
Chinese EV again?
Avicebron wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
Well the short version is that Robert Rubin and company sold
our industries for parts years and years ago. And now we have
to rebuild the industrial base from scratch
jfengel wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
That should make it possible to buy a cheap Chinese EV.
You can't because they didn't sell out completely. In fact
they still have some power to protect the companies from
foreign products.
The result is a mishmash of protectionism and
globalization.
nickff wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
The economic motive for offshoring would remain (though slightly
mitigated), unless that countryâs demand (in each regulated
sector) was much more than rest of the worldâs. I personally
doubt that most places are even willing to implement such
legislation, given that theyâre not even willing to protest
PRoCâs use of slave labor and prison camps.
idle_zealot wrote 5 hours 47 min ago:
Hey, if fuel gets expensive enough this will be much less of a
problem! Let's all thank Trump and Iran for their great work on
bringing the four day work week closer to fruition. This isn't how
I would've imagined bringing industry back to the States, but it's
a promise made, promise kept.
paulryanrogers wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
Has the promise been kept? Is industry on-shoring in any
significant sense? Or just making photo ops for Trump and fam,
then slow walking the implementation until it's quietly canceled
or scaled back to a token effort?
panny wrote 6 hours 13 min ago:
>scienceaim
>!!
Junk science slop blog. Nice.
87.3%
AI GPT
zerogpt.com
(HTM) [1]: https://i.imgur.com/9lT1VSp.jpeg
ENGNR wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
Australia also has a 60 year productivity low and a government that is
boosting taxes on capital gains on shares/business to basically a
worldwide high. So take our experiments with a grain of salt!
bjt12345 wrote 3 hours 26 min ago:
How is the recently announced 2026 Australian Government budget
relevant to this study done in 2023-2024? There is a whole bunch of
other factors to Australia's productivity, not at least the drop in
GDP per capita and fall in Total Factor Productivity.
runtime_terror wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
What's your point about increased capital gains? Taxing income based
on ownership should be higher than income via actual labor. It's
insane that's not the case in most places.
mianos wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
If you start a business and grow it from hard work, you will now be
taxed more. It's not just passive gains, it's all gain.
BLKNSLVR wrote 56 min ago:
My understanding is that the difference is in the Capital Gains
Tax, which doesn't apply to the day-to-day running of the
business or its profitability or the salaries it pays.
Again, my understanding is that the (only) difference is when the
business is sold, and the 50% discount to CGT is no longer
applied and instead there is an inflation adjustment instead
(what I don't understand here is how to get an initial valuation,
and would it be essentially $0, so the entire amount is capital
gains? which feels somewhat unfair)
So it will be a hit at the time the business is sold, not at any
point during the running of the business. My (potentially naive)
take is that the hard work that goes into running and growing a
business is about the provision of the goods or services, but if
it's about maximising "the exit", then that feels to me like not
the kind of incentive that it should be. The 'running' of the
business being more important than the selling of it.
The 50% CGT discount has set a bad precedent. It should have been
lower, or should have scaled over time. It has deformed the
expected reward structure.
Can a business agree to be sold in tranches over time? If such a
thing helps minimise tax then I can see that becoming the norm. I
know that selling a house is a big, singular chunk of money that
generally needs to be 'managed' in order to pay the minimum
amount of tax. Maybe fractional selling is going to become a
thing.
Wouldn't paying yourself a higher salary (since it's your own
business) and/or putting more into superannuation offset the
'retirement' hit of not getting a golden exit parachute?
BLKNSLVR wrote 5 hours 28 min ago:
Tax changes that have been overdue for twenty-odd years to address
house prices and attempt to level the playing field between labour
and capital.
Pity they didn't also change the gas tax.
shell0x wrote 4 hours 17 min ago:
The tax is already bad here, even without it. I paid $89,000 taxes
just for the last financial year because stock gains are added up
on top of the income and my partner doesnât work and thereâs no
family support allowance here.
I can apply Australian citizenship next year but I will leave ASAP
after becoming a citizen for Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong where
the tax is < 20%
HerbManic wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
I'm sorry but you pay more in tax than I make in income! This
sounds like your lifestyle creep has chewed up your money stream.
Despite my significantly lower income, I manage to own my house
in Melbourne. With your income I could have it paid down in a few
years at most.
shell0x wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
Good job paying that off. Iâm sure Australia has benefits for
some but without kids, not having grown up here, paying my own
insurance and not driving I donât really see it.
BLKNSLVR wrote 2 hours 10 min ago:
Well done, good planning, good self-discipline!
I'm in a similar boat, and can relate to the on-going
management and suppression of lifestyle creep in order to reach
worthwhile goals. It feels like a never-ending battle, even
after 20 years.
gsinclair wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
If you made income, and enough gain in stocks to pay that much in
tax, you should be happy.
I want to know why you are keen to become an Australian citizen
if youâre not enthusiastic about contributing your share.
Constructive discussion about appropriate levels of taxation is
important, but letâs at least agree that the things we rely on
(roads, hospitals, schools, defence, â¦) cost something.
shell0x wrote 1 hour 21 min ago:
I lived in Singapore and Hk before, donât drive, work from
home and countries are pretty much interchangeable. I left
Germany for high taxes for a reason.
I pay private medical so donât benefit much from tax anyway.
No kids, no car, paid off my apartment. I can get much better
value elsewhere right?
If I tell you you can pick 3 dishes
a) singapore: safe, low crime, low tax, efficient, excellent
public transportation, better roads
b) hk: safe, low crime, low tax, politically getting worse,
excellent public transport, better airport
c) australia: higher crime compared to the other too, high tax
but bad services
I basically pay for an overpriced dish with bland taste, so why
would I keep doing that?
HerbManic wrote 2 hours 29 min ago:
I don't think they realize that they are in the top 1% of
earners on the planet with numbers like that.
It is always funny to see how many think they are hard done
even though by the numbers they are the winners by a wide
margin.
dools wrote 3 hours 23 min ago:
Donât let the door hit you on the way out!
BLKNSLVR wrote 3 hours 40 min ago:
You're breaking my heart.
To pay $89,000 in taxes you'd have to be earning in the range of
$350k. Do you think you're hard done by? I'd be rather annoyed if
you were eligible for family support allowance in that earning
range? (partially because I'd be missing out on a decent chunk of
government support myself)
What am I missing about your situation that makes it remotely
sympathetic?
tedk-42 wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
they are greedy and don't want to pay their fair share.
people that count their tax dollars are usually very selfish to
begin with.
i generally think the gov can do better with how money is spent
though.
shell0x wrote 3 hours 24 min ago:
If you live in inner Sydney, the rent alone is $1350 pw and tax
is ridiculous. I basically sold my stocks to have a down
payment but then that got added on top of income. If iâd have
stayed in HK, iâd have paid 0% for that.
I just treat it as paying for Australian citizenship to
make me feel better and it still comes out cheaper than buying
a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport. Australian passport also
opens up the E3 visa to go to the USA
HDBaseT wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
You don't "have" to live in Sydney though. This is something
immigrants like yourself fail to understand.
It's a privilege to come into this country, its a privilege
to live in Sydney. If you don't like it, you can leave.
I make less (even before tax) than you PAID in tax, yet you
still want handouts.
HerbManic wrote 2 hours 37 min ago:
Alas for some people, their lifestyle will expand to fill
their income. They could earn 10x as much, and it probably
still wouldn't be enough.
mgh95 wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
> It's a privilege to come into this country, its a
privilege to live in Sydney. If you don't like it, you can
leave.
I hate to put it like this, but that's exactly what the
poster is doing.
N_Lens wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
He doesn't like and he does say he will leave, after
getting the Australian passport first for opening doors.
shitloadofbooks wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
As an Australian with a family and 2 high-paying salaries paying
a LOT of tax, none of those countries are remotely comparable to
Australia.
If you hate taxes and fees, Singapore has a 60% Additional
Buyer's Stamp Duty on residential property applied to foreign
buyers, on top of an already insane property market. There's huge
fines and government intervention into _everything_ and a
massive high-stress culture.
Hong Kong is equally absurd for property and has a sword hanging
over its head, that falls if China ever makes a move on Taiwan;
the inevitable US and global sanctions would decimate HK.
Dubai is just a comical option.
shell0x wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
I can get PR in Singapore through my partner, so no 60%.
Company paid medical and everything so expat life and no
responsibilities. And if I were ever have to have kids, you
canât hire a maid here sleeping at your apartment and you
have to clean yourself which is ridiculous. In Hk, SG, Dubai
you can get domestic helpers cheaply and they take care of
everything
BLKNSLVR wrote 3 hours 1 min ago:
> And if I were ever have to have kids, you canât hire a
maid here sleeping at your apartment and you have to clean
yourself which is ridiculous.
Not sure if serious.
If serious: This is a really weird and almost sociopathic
thing to say. I really don't get where you're coming from.
It's certainly not the cultural direction I'd like to see
Australia moving in.
shell0x wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
You realize this is the standard in Asia right? They only
cost like 2.5k a month which is pretty good value [1]
(HTM) [1]: https://www.life.gov.sg/guides/domestic-helper
(HTM) [2]: https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/visas/foreign...
Loocid wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
Its too close to slavery for my liking. Yes they are paid
but 2.5k per month is very low for Singapore, they work
massive hours, they rely on you for shelter, and are very
likely from much poorer neighbouring countries that are
trying to support family back home.
The whole power dynamic is extremely exploitable which
results in a lot of abuse cases.
shell0x wrote 1 hour 11 min ago:
They would be much worse off if they stay in their own
country and they even get 1 day rest per week.
Loocid wrote 37 min ago:
Yes exactly, which is why the system is so ripe for
abuse. A third of live in maids in Singapore report
abuse by the employers.
I don't consider taking someone out of a shit
situation into a slightly less shit situation for
your huge benefit all that benevolent personally.
The way you talk about them its like they lesser to
you. They are just "good value" and "even have 1 day
off a week".
BLKNSLVR wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
OK, just seems weird from my cultural experience, and the
way I was reading your comment it sounded 'entitled'
(likely due to the cultural difference).
Describing it as "pretty good value" bothers me in a
number of contexts.
I'm also fine with this never becoming a thing in
Australia. Not sure how out-of-touch or in-touch that
makes me, but that's how I feel nonetheless.
@Loocid, thanks for saying what I was dancing around.
sumedh wrote 4 hours 2 min ago:
Why are you not leaving right now?
shell0x wrote 3 hours 26 min ago:
I could as a German but my partner has a weaker passport so
Iâm just waiting till she got her australian passport
sumedh wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
Australian govt needs to tighten the rules to discourage
people who want to take advantage of Australia but don't want
to contribute in return.
tedk-42 wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
so you take but you don't want to give?
perhaps try a different perspective of, "it's good i live in
a place where we contribute for a common good"
shell0x wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
Taxes are a financial loss.
I preferred living in Hong Kong and Singapore and do not
enjoy living here honestly, but if you treat it as payment
for my+partnerâs backup citizenship, it seems more
justifiable.
c23gooey wrote 57 min ago:
> Taxes are a financial loss.
What a miserable, selfish view of the world you have
mianos wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
I'd assume, as an Australian, who works for a HK company and
has travelled for work all their life, the long term lifestyle
in Australia is probably better than those countries. I love HK
and Singo but I am not sure I'd want to live there. But for
working, most people here would not work in an iron lung and
the socialist government pretty much supports the idea that, if
you don't like to work, you shouldn't have to as long as there
are a few who will work. And, that number is fewer and fewer.
ENGNR wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
House tax changes... strong yes
Share tax changes... ugh
My hope was cashed up bogans would start betting on shares instead
of housing/crypto. At least it could be funnelled into something
productive
HDBaseT wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
You shouldn't have to rely on shares investments to make a living
or retire though.
Just because someone doesn't invest in shares, doesn't mean they
are a bogan.
I'm sick of this term being thrown around at people you look down
upon...
BLKNSLVR wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
My limited-research understanding is that there shouldn't be a
difference between capital gains from housing versus shares,
otherwise it's 'picking winners' or encouraging investment in
specific directions. Having said that, the 'winner' they've
picked is new house builds, which retain some tax benefits. I'm
OK with that, without having skin in that game now or likely into
the future.
In regards to other comments further down regarding Australia's
tax rates being high, internationally Australia is on the lower
end.
I believe the (seemingly very loud) naysayers about these tax
changes are those who receive much more of their income via
'capital' than via 'effort', and so my sympathies are minimal to
non-existent. Sure, I have capital investments that will yield
lower returns, but I believe the changes make "the way it works"
overall more fair to those who don't have the means to earn means
passively.
Cashed up bogans may funnel more of their money into new house
builds, which is productive...?
Semi-unrelated addition:
To some extent I think that 'owning ones own house' is a
motivator to work harder, so as home ownership has grown
increasingly out of reach, so has some amount of motivation to
actually work dried up. There's an inherent 'participation in
society' to owning a home that has an intangible but high value.
Whether this has anything to do with Australia's decreasing
productivity, I don't know.
sysworld wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
Yeah, housing tax changes were needed, but seems weird to also do
Shares.
NZ, like always is lagging behind AU, and also needs house tax
changes. The housing situation in NZ dire.
erentz wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
NZ is even worse than Australia on the housing tax vs shares
tax front. No housing taxes. Yet they have what is effectively
an annual wealth tax on shares (FIF) even on their pitiful
retirement savings schemes. This discourages saving in shares
and encourages putting money in real estate.
Mordisquitos wrote 6 hours 3 min ago:
So you're saying that four-day-workweek companies saw no decline in
their productivity, in contrast to the Australian average
productivity which went down overallâ½
That means the four-day-workweek is even better than we thought it
was!
_kulang wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
As an Australian, I am not sure that most work done in this country
adds to productivity
HerbManic wrote 2 hours 26 min ago:
The ghost of David Graeber would agree.
cluckindan wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
But how will a consulting company bill for the 20%?
micromacrofoot wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
what consulting company on earth pays 100% of their revenue to
employee salary â I've worked at a number of them and it's not
unusual for my pay to be half of the hourly rate charged
umpalumpaaa wrote 6 hours 11 min ago:
You increase prices by 20%
rhplus wrote 6 hours 8 min ago:
Billable hour rates would need to increase by 25%.
dwattttt wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
You really missed the opportunity here. You were meant to bill
for the review, assessment, report production, and risks judged
when coming up with that 25%.
yshamrei wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
Wonât we face an economic decline if we continue reducing the work
week even further?
B1FF_PSUVM wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
I remember one business class anecdote, where the conclusion of
changing workplace conditions (light, music, etc. both ways) was that
productivity studies increase productivity ...
miohtama wrote 6 hours 18 min ago:
It's Hawthorne effect [1] Related to it we have novelty effect and
bunch of other psychological effects that are hard to isolate in
human science. In this sector, a lot of studies cannot be repeated.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
gchamonlive wrote 6 hours 25 min ago:
Only if you do bad science experiments without a control group,
otherwise you'd see the control group productivity boost as they'd
also be under the same scrutiny. I didn't read the study methodology,
so I'm not comparing to that, only responding to your comment in
isolation.
aeternum wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
Papers like this should be called opinion surveys.
Calling it a study is a disservice to science. As Feynman said,
anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not
science.
kibibu wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
> As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a
suffix is usually not science.
This is such an absurd thought-terminating cliche. Science
suffixation seems more an indicator of the age of the field, not its
scientific rigour. Are "climate science" and "computer science" not
science?
On the flip side, just because it says "ology" at the end of a word
does not mean it's a science.
Mordisquitos wrote 6 hours 7 min ago:
What a hollow dismissal of based on acrobatic leaps of semantics.
The word 'study' is no sacred possession exclusive to the natural
sciences, and there is nothing wrong with properly conducted surveys
as a method in sociology, economics or psychology.
If surveys targeting the very people responsible for optimising their
businesses' productivity, with no incentive to falsify their
conclusions, is good evidence. Without any other way to
systematically measure the change in productivity across a plethora
of different businesses implementing a four-day workweek, it is as
good as it gets â much better than purely theoretical assumptions
that productivity must have dropped.
You can find the study here if you wish to critique its methods:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x
aeternum wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
I did read it, thus my comment. Did you actually read the methods?
This is what you're defending:
"Methods
This study took a qualitative approach, using semi-structured
interviews with n=15 industry leaders" .. "Participants were
identified via media reports " .. "A total of n=15 key informants
participated in this study" .. "Recent research into appropriate
sample sizes for qualitative research found saturation typically
occurs between 9 and 17 interviews and the researchers agreed that
no fresh insights or themes
arose after the twelfth interview in this study (Hennink & Kaiser,
2022)"
The interviews contain invaluable insights such as: âadopting the
4DWW takes workâ âProductivity up, waste removedâ
âManagement
-led/employee
-driven,â âTrain for leisure,â
I stand by my statement.
latexr wrote 6 hours 8 min ago:
Edit: Itâs becoming ever more increasingly common on HN to get
downvotes for innocuous respectful posts. If youâre downvoting,
Iâd genuinely appreciate if you explained what is it that you find
offensive about this post. Youâre not going to hurt my feelings, I
sincerely want to understand what it is that you see as transgressive
so I can learn from it. Thank you. Another example which baffled me:
[1] > As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a
suffix is usually not science.
I appreciate Feynmanâs contributionsâand in fact have been
recently revisiting the Messenger lecturesâbut that seems like an
unnecessary jab. The use of âusuallyâ is also a convenient
cop-out which makes the remark meaningless because the speaker can
pick and choose in any conversation so they always win.¹
I thought about it and picked the first thing which came to mind:
Natural science. From Wikipedia²:
> Natural science or empirical science is a branch of science
concerned with the description, understanding, and prediction of
natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and
experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility
of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific
advances.
Seems pretty scientific to me. But alright, letâs check the article
to give it a fair shot in context. The only time the word
âscienceâ comes up is âSocial Sciencesâ. Again from
Wikipedia³:
> Social science (or the social sciences) is one of the branches of
science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships
among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to
refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society",
established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of
additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology,
economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication
studies, psychology, sociology, culturology, and political science.
Thatâs a wide range. Are all of those ânot scienceâ?
¹ Assuming your rephrasing is accurate and not missing important
context.
² [2] ³
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48222383#48227701
(HTM) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science
(HTM) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science
aeternum wrote 4 hours 13 min ago:
I'm the one that said usually, Feynman didn't have that cop-out and
he was specifically talking about social science: [1] Worth
watching the clip so you can hear the argument directly. IMO his
point is that peer review is not what makes something science. Nor
are studies, publishing papers nor p-values, even gathering and
reproducing data is not what makes science science.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo
ktallett wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
Basically every study shows a four day week works best. The issue is
why we never go with what the study shows.
zurfer wrote 6 hours 6 min ago:
Naive question but if it works best wouldn't companies that have a
four day work week outperform theirs peers and because of that grow
faster, and become more common?
I see the opposite in most startups that have a 6 day work week to
get ahead of the "slowly moving" 5 day work week competition.
lmm wrote 4 hours 33 min ago:
> Naive question but if it works best wouldn't companies that have
a four day work week outperform theirs peers and because of that
grow faster, and become more common?
Eventually, but what's the typical lifecycle of a company? And if
e.g. Treehouse succeeds or fails, was that because of their 4 day
work week or because of any of the hundreds of other reasons a
company might succeed or fail?
dbetteridge wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
In a perfect free market, like a spherical chicken in a vacuum.
Maybe.
Problem is there's no such thing, monopoly powers, government
subsidies, inter-company issues, contracts.
All these things can mean that a less functional, more wasteful and
less productive organisation performs (in the sense of the metric
that companies care about , line go up) better than a 4 day week
startup.
latexr wrote 5 hours 44 min ago:
Think of it like a sprint versus a marathon. If you run at full
speed you can get farther than someone keeping a steady pace in the
same amount of time, but youâre going to tire yourself out and
become slower. Youâll lose in the long run despite looking very
âproductiveâ at the start.
Similarly, have you ever been âin the zoneâ and worked non-stop
on a fun project, being super-productive for a full week or even
multiple weeks, but then âcrashedâ (or even burned out) and
your output got worse?
New companies are on a race against the clock. At the beginning
everything is a cost, youâre constantly losing money. So you
plough through to survive until you become stable. Then you need to
scale back and take it slower to allow yourself to recuperate and
keep going.
Also, keep in mind that small companies can often be very
productive simply by having fewer employees and âred tapeâ. You
can have an idea, send a message to someone else, get an immediate
OK and get going. When a company gets too big and has lots of
processes to keep things running, a lot of effort is wasted on even
getting started.
ktallett wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
In what metric do they get ahead? I think this is the key. What
many visualise as getting ahead primarily seems to be fund raising
or having a higher monetary value. Especially in startups where the
largest mouth, the biggest blagger, or the quickest to mention a
buzz word gets you more funding. Being closer to your end goal,
with an adoptable product that improves society, is really the only
metric that matters.
danielmarkbruce wrote 6 hours 10 min ago:
"study"... The replication crises in science has shown that most
studies are total bs. So we probably don't want to go with them.
ktallett wrote 5 hours 47 min ago:
How does that differentiate from a boss or a company philosophy
stating a 5 or 6 day week is better? With no reliable metric on
better, other than ancedotal evidence. It's not as if it's
repeatable experimentation.
danielmarkbruce wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
It doesn't, but in the case where a boss or company say it, at
least we know it's bs. Do you believe something because your
company or boss says so?
cluckindan wrote 6 hours 15 min ago:
By inductive logic, a zero day week works best.
t-writescode wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
Because if we did weâd have universal healthcare, 4 day work weeks,
WFH where possible, walkable cities, and a lot more housing, and
every single one of those things makes it harder for abusive jobs to
control their employees.
latexr wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
> universal healthcare, 4 day work weeks, WFH where possible,
walkable cities, and a lot more housing
My my, seems like we gots ourselves a socialist oâer here. We
donât take kindly to your kind âround these parts. Whatâs yer
idea? Improve folks lives? Treat others with respect and dignity
and give eâryone meaning? Are ya cuckoo in tha head? Git him,
boys.
toomuchtodo wrote 6 hours 6 min ago:
Progress is a functioning of effort, time, and luck. Itâs a
marathon. Keep grinding. Success is proven possible.
amelius wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
We're all in competition with each other. One person works 4
days, another person still working 5 days puts them out of
business. Reality is more complicated but in the end there is no
way around this basic fact.
toomuchtodo wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
Labor law changes reduce the work week, as was done previously.
How many people work six days a week for no additional pay
beyond five days today?
With population declines locked in almost globally (About 71%
of the worldâs population now lives in countries with birth
rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population
size), working age population decline, reducing labor supply,
is also locked in. Reduced go forward labor supply reduction
means labor power. [1] [2] The demographic future of humanity:
facts and consequences [pdf] - [3] - August 2025 (400 comments)
[4] (US specific citations)
(HTM) [1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/fertility-rate-of-wor...
(HTM) [2]: https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa9...
(HTM) [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621
(HTM) [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794
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