December 9, 2008 • 24 mins
What if Congress passed a law mandating a two-day week work? The Friends of the Five Day Weekend want Congress to do just that -- sort of. Check out this podcast to find out if their proposal is feasible or just plain farfetched.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
stuff you should know. It's Josh and Chuck. You're waiting
(00:21):
on me. I was, I was. I was staring right
at you, Chuck. I didn't notice. I should have given
you a yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, Chuck, I don't
know if you've checked out the editorial department calendar recently
of our editorial calendar. Sure, yeah, yeah, sure, not not
the not the the articles slated, but our actual calendar calendar.
(00:41):
Oh no, no, no, I know you haven't. Well, you
will be pleasantly surprised to find that if you go
into the week of Christmas this coming December, we work
two days. That's not and you know I'm not working
any Are you taking those days off? Oh yeah, I'm
taking off a couple of weeks. Wow, you know, I
used up almost all my big catient time. I'm very
(01:01):
grateful for this, But do you realize what that gives us? Uh? Less,
what it gives me? Well, it sounds like a two
day work week. It sounds also like a five day weekend. Right,
one man's two day work week is another man's five
day week. Yeah, it definitely depends on how you look
at if your workaholic two day work week, if you're
you know, a slacker five day weekend, right, that sounds great?
(01:22):
It does. And actually, um our HR department is isn't
the first to ever come up with this concept. It
is so there's actually a movement of foot chuck called
the Friends of the Five Day Weekend. There's actually a
constitutional amendment, a proposal for one, which last time I
(01:42):
counted had about signatures on it. I wasn't too impressed
with that number. By the way, it could be better, um,
basically petitioning Congress to say, all right, you know, we're
we're going to have a two day work week from
now on and the rest is the weekend. Legally, you
if you work more than this, you have to pay.
You have to be paid over time. Right. I love
(02:03):
that this group really went for it there. They didn't
go with a three day weekend or even a fourth
They just said, screw it, five days off, two days
a week will work. Yeah, And we should probably give
a little background on this group. I gotta tell you,
um it sounds very tongue in cheek. It sounds um,
almost satirical and a joke, and it almost completely is.
(02:24):
It's um. The group behind it is the Asheville Convention
and Visitors Bureau, I Brave Asheville, North North Carolina, and um,
this is uh an ad campaign of marketing campaign to
get people to Asheville to you know, create this five
day weekends so everybody could come to Asheville and spend
their five day weekends there. Now, Gina, how it was
(02:44):
the idea just to get press, I think so. I
think that was part of it, but I think it
was kind of like a whole campaign, and then the
press aspect wrote itself, especially once they floated a constitutional amendment,
So it was kind of a tongue in cheek thing.
But actually, um, people reacted to it. They responded to it.
You know, Hey, that sounds great kind of thing. Especially
(03:06):
I imagine when there's like you know, they they had
they held rallies at festivals and stuff like that, and
I imagine the more beer there was there, the more
of a response there was. You know, yeah, were five
day weekend kind of thing. So, um, well, we found
out about it here at how stuff works, and of course,
as is our way, um, we took a tongue in
(03:29):
cheek idea to the nth degree. It's extreme conclusion, and
wanted to find out. I mean, like, what what the
deal is? Could this even work? What would happen if
it did? So it's like you'd be careful making a
joke around us, because we'll we'll we'll investigate it and
publish it and if if it's a stupid idea, we'll
we'll say so. But frankly, these people, I think they
(03:51):
have a good idea. I think the friends of the
Five Day Weekend they have a a good idea. And
they're they're actually pointing something out. What's that they're pointing
out that Americans work way too hard and have become far,
far too serious. Well, Donald Trump doesn't agree with you, No,
he doesn't. But that's the Donald. You know. He said
he said the idea was ridiculous. He did he actually
(04:11):
he said it in his blog, right. I got to
him in the first place. I'm impressed that he knows
how to blog. So, um, yeah, he he didn't. He
didn't like that. But there's plenty of people who agree
with the concept um and actually this this this idea
that Americans are overworked is We've got yards of figures here, Chuck, Chuck,
(04:32):
how about some figures. I'm the statmn UH in two
thousand seven survey was performed by the Conference Board, and
they found that a fewer than fifty percent of Americans
were happy with their jobs, which is, yeah, that's pretty sad.
Though UH in seven had job satisfaction. That's a sharp decline.
And you will know note that I think in nineteen
(04:55):
eight seven, that was the year that the Michael Keaton
pro America movie Gung Ho came out and really kicked
the American worker into overdrive. We're not gonna get beaten
by the Japanese. Let's get to work, you know, be
the lovable Michael Keaton led the charge. Well, I think
that's it centered exclusively around the movie Gung Ho. Yeah,
(05:16):
pre batman, Michael Keaton. Uh. And then there was another
study in two thousand four that um, one third of
all Americans feel overworked, which I thought it might be
a little higher than that. To be honest, I would too,
But I think we we've also developed an endurance over time,
Tom and fat lazy pre gung Ho days to like,
you know, kind of a lean, trim workforce. Yeah, and
(05:38):
we have now that's slightly evidenced by and I know
something else. You mentioned the article that, uh, a lot
of Americans don't use all their vacation days No. Ten
of fourteen. Yeah, that's just that was in three thousand
and six. That added to five hundred and seventy four
million unused vacation days. Yeah, that is one thing you
will never catch me with unused vacation That's great. Hats
(05:59):
off to you, buddy. I just I don't I don't
get it. Time off is good. I'm not lazy. No,
you definitely aren't lazy, but you know, you know how
to live, you know how to take care of yourself,
and the value of time off, it's a value at
treasure it. But I think there's a lot of people.
I think you could even say a majority of American
workers don't know. They don't know how to do that.
So that's kind of the point of this five day weekend.
(06:19):
It's like, wake up, man, settle down, let's all just
kind of chill out here there, learn to live like
chuck that kind of right. Well, I think I don't
have any stats for this but I bet a lot
of these types are the men and women that are
after the dollar and that you know, they figure if
they're snoozing, they're losing on money. And um, you know
(06:39):
people use acidine rhymes to describe their motivations, right, and
we're not really like that. We're meager livers and uh yeah,
we we know how to be happy and content. Yeah
without you know, making three hundred thousand dollars a year,
you're not making three Maybe I should renegotiation. So, um,
if you'll notice, chuck the end of the five day weekend,
(07:01):
Like I said, they proposed a constitutional amendment. Now, if Congress,
for some weird reason took this up, championed it, and
passed it, it actually wouldn't be the first time that
they've done this. Did you know that there wasn't any
such thing as a weekend in the United States until
nine that's weird. And the weekend was actually created by
(07:21):
a congressional act. That's so cool. Yeah, I bet no
one that that's that's the your takeaway today, folks. If
you want to amaze around the water cooler, that's a
good fact. The weekend was created by Congress, right, and
it was called the Fair Labor Standards Act. Yeah, we
talked about, um, we talked about the the Labor Department
in Free Market Regulation podcast if we'll remember um, and
(07:44):
you know, they shouldn't exist in this free market. But really,
the Fair Labor and Standards Act is one of these
shining acts that really protects people. You know. It established
a forty four hour work week, you know, Monday through Friday,
about eight hours a day. Um. It also established a
minimum wage, I got rid of child labor across the board.
(08:07):
It was a good act and it's still the test
of time, clearly because the forty hour work week is
still kind of between forty and still the standard exactly. Okay,
So so what would happen if we did go to
a two day a week work week? Um? Well, you
tell me, you know, you tell me, Well, it depends
on are you talking about economically speaking? Yeah, I know,
(08:31):
people be a lot happier. Well supposedly, it depends. I mean,
can you can you really say that? Well, that's just
my feeling. Okay, let me let me tell you about
an unnatural law that you might be interested in. Right,
here's the first problem with with the two day work week.
How are you going to do five days worth of
work in two days? Is it possible? Well, stay off
(08:52):
Facebook exactly a good start. There's this guy named I
believe Alan Parkinson. No, that's Alan Parsons project. I think
you know, uh see Northcote Parkinson. He created Parkinson's law.
It's like Murphy's law. Um, it's an unnatural law, right,
kind of a Rye observation um. And Parkinson's law says
(09:15):
that UM work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion. So if you have, you know,
a one day job to you know, to do, but
you're given a week to do it, it's gonna take
you pretty much all week to do that job, no
matter how hard you try. So I guess if you
put Parkinson's law up to the you know, five day weekend,
(09:38):
you could you could probably trim several days off of
your work week if you just went all out for
those two days. Probably not going to be able to
finish everything in two days, but it is possible, right,
I would agree? Okay, So, um, So that's that's number one, UM,
and then number two as far as the five the
(10:00):
friends of the five day weekend see it basically, Um,
we're not taking any time for ourselves as it is
even on the weekends, because there's a lot of times,
so much time spent working that the weekends are often
spent doing chores, housework, that kind of thing. And in
a strict economic sense and as strict economic definition, actually, UM,
(10:23):
leisure time is activities that give direct enjoyment. So just
because you have time off doesn't mean you're engaging in
leisure time, which is the whole point behind the five
day weekend thing. We need more time to have leisure
time because, like you said, we're vacuuming, we're running errands,
that kind of thing. That's not leisure time. That's working
but not being paid for it, you know. UM, So
(10:44):
that's another aspect of the whole thing, and there's also
a physical aspect to it. Our health could actually improve,
UM if we adopted a five day weekend case. In
point a two thousand study UM from the University of
Pittsburgh and the State University of New York Oswego, they
(11:05):
found that there was a there is a direct correlation
between middle aged men who are at risk for heart disease,
suffering heart attacks, and a lack of vacation time. Right
I did a lot of articles recently on the heart
and stress, as you know, and it's there. It's not
supposed you know, it's those are direct links. Yeah, there's
definitely a mind body link, and it appears to be
(11:27):
stresses is the most clear um example of it, right right,
So okay, so we would technically be able to to
do most of our work in two days that we're
now taking five days to do. Um, we would uh,
we would be able to actually engage in actual leisure time.
Our health would benefit. And even more, there's a model
(11:50):
already in place for lots of time off and that's
in Europe. Correct. I went, I went to Malta. Remember
this summer. There's this guy who's a diplomat over in
crow Geatia. He's an English diplomat and he had like
eighties six paid days off per year. You're kidding. No,
I'm not kidding at all. He hardly knew what to
do with all the time off that he had, and
(12:11):
it was fairly fairly common, fairly standard, and I'm like, wow,
I get two weeks off, you know. So yeah, it
was kind of um, it was a rough thing to
come you know, face to face with, right I'm jealous
of your We often talk about our weekend activities and
I'm all, you really do do it right at your house. Yeah,
but you you you have very you have a very
(12:33):
improved house. Well, I'm renovating a house. Some of you
may know this, some of you may not. So there's
a lot of work to be done on the weekends. Um.
I do get pleasure out of that, though, So I
guess technically that still counsels leisure time as long as
you're driving. Pleasure is a direct pleasure. So, Chuck, let's
look at it from an economic aspect. Now we know
what the friends of the five day weekend. You're saying
(12:54):
that it could be beneficial to us, but you know,
would it be beneficial of the economy. Well, this is
where you need to school meet, because I know economics
is your your one true love in life. I love economics.
Actually it's so weird and nerdy, but I've become fascinated
by it as I've grown older. And there's this guy
who pertains to what we're talking about, um named John
(13:16):
Maynard Keynes, and uh he appropriately enough came up with
Keensian economics, and um, he wrote a paper basically Keensie
and economics is a form of macro economics. So before
people would say, okay, um, there's this much much wealth
in the world, or you know, people sold this many
goods and um, you know there was this gross profit
(13:39):
and then you know, minus expenditures, and now you have
net profit. And there's economics. And keens is like, well, well, whoa,
we're missing like a lot of aspects here, so like
our are really um, I guess granular uh view of economics.
Now we're we're keeping track of office supply indexes or indicaes. Um,
(14:01):
that's all KINSI. And he said we need to take
into account debt and taxes and all this other stuff. Right,
makes sense. So by the time he writes this paper,
UM called um economic go Ahead, go ahead, Economic possibilities
for our grandchildren. Right, And he writes that in ninety
and he'd already established himself as like the the economic
(14:22):
genius of his age. So he writes this thing. Everybody's listening, right,
and in it he says, okay, he took a very
conservative growth rate of um of the economy and wealth,
which he called capital um equipment. Yeah, thank you, um.
He said two percent growth per year and seven and
(14:43):
a half percent growth of the capital equipment, which is,
I believe all the money available in the world, um,
and within a hundred years we're going to basically be
living in this leisure society. The friends of the Five
Day Weekend came up with, Yeah, I love this theory
right now. He actually took a his estimates were pretty
(15:04):
much spot on, and they were actually slightly more concerned.
We've grown more than that, and I believe like our
capital equipment has grown much more than seven and a half.
I think it's like a hundred or two hundred times
or some some really enormous amount, and yet we're still
not in this leisure society that Keene's envision within a
(15:24):
hundred years. Even though we far exceeded his his predictions
for growth, he was off the mark there for sure.
He was though, why well, I think you actually didn't
interview him, correct, I did two interviews, Uh, And I've
always kind of had this idea that if you want
to know a question, go to Harvard. It's they They
have some really really good interview subjects. And actually I
(15:47):
also called a guy from Cornell too, and both of
them just turned out to be spot on and um, yeah,
from Cornell Robert Frank, and from Harvard Richard Freeman. And
the thing is is I call both of them out
of the blue. Neither one of them had ever heard
of the five day weekend before, and both of them
just right off the cuff talked just perfectly, gave me
(16:09):
all the information I needed. And as if that weren't enough,
both of them had just submitted chapters for a book
called Revisiting kens On the very question I called them about,
and I had no idea that book was even coming out,
So it was all just kind of going, like, you know,
we're operating on all cylinders here. I'm kind of I
can't sit down while I'm interviewing. I'm very excited. It's
economics and all that. Um So Robert Frank from Cornell.
(16:33):
His his theory was that we haven't reached this Keynsian
leisure society because Keenes grossly underestimated relative needs. So you've
got basic needs, right, which are like food and water
and say clothing, right, and then there's relative needs as well,
which can also be basic needs, like, for example, clothing
(16:55):
but instead of you know, tattered rags that keep you warm,
relative need would be a nice suit. And what Frank
was saying was that, um, in our modern society, it's
not enough to just have tattered rags that keep you warm.
If you want to have a better life, if you
want to provide for your children, you have to throw
(17:16):
more into relative needs. So your suit has to be
nicer so you can get a better job at an
interview and then pay for your children. And it's become
much more important. You can't walk into a place in
an interview and in rags, this basic need that's been
recovered and expect to advance in life. So he it
was his opinion that that's why Kenes missed the Mark
(17:37):
Freeman and now you interviewed and this was from Harvard, correct,
and uh, he just kind of flatly said that Keenes
overestimated our desire for leisure and that it's a five
day work week is pretty optimal. Yeah, he said that that, Um,
that labor and management came to a perfect agreement pretty
much to the five day, five day work week, eight
(17:58):
hour day. What do you think? I gotta tell you, you
you know, I I had sent before that that's I
don't like too much time off. It's weird. I feel weird.
I feel like I have to do something, I have
to produce something, and um yeah, too much time off
actually makes me a little edgy. I think a four
day work week would be just about right for me.
I think it'd be good to pepper it here there.
(18:20):
I don't think it has to be standard every time,
but maybe like twice a month you get a day
or two off or something like that. And we're not
talking about telecommuting. It's a different deal. It totally is.
It's actually a day off, right, yeah, a day off
where you're just not expected to do any work. Um. Okay,
So so now we we the friends of the five
day week, they five day weekend. They don't, um they
(18:41):
they're not the first to come up with it. Keynes did. Um.
But I asked Freeman and Frank uh, you know what, really,
what would happen to the economy? Epogetically? What would happen? Yeah,
but you got well, I know the first thing that, um,
you would have to do is to convince your employers
to pay you a full wage for two day his work,
so paying on production rather than time, right, which makes sense.
(19:04):
But I don't think either of them assume that employers
would be willing to do that. So right there, you
you've got two fifths of the wages we have now,
which is fine for domestic products. Right, so anything that's
produced domestically, Um, it's going to fall down and step
eventually to reflect these two fifths of wages that Americans
are making. In theory es okay, But also houses would
(19:26):
get substantially smaller, cars would get substantially smaller, but we'd
be able to survive. Basically, America would take a gigantic
step backward out of the rat race as one collective whole.
But then it would all kind of catch up with
itself and adjust itself. It would, and and everything would
be fine. I would be much like it is now,
except two fifths is valuable. But for and produced goods
(19:50):
in comparison to our lowered wages, the prices of those
would skyrocket. Right, So so long Sony plasma TV, because
if you would be so, it be is out of
out of bounds. Is as you know, a five million
dollar home is to the average person. Um, so you'd
have that, but again we'd still be fine. Our our
relative needs would with lower to to reflect that two
(20:13):
fifth wage. But I think it was a Freeman, who
predicted sadly that we would still compete with one another, like,
we'd still want to get the best TV we could
for two fifths of the wages we were getting, and
it we'd want it to be better than someone else. Yeah,
which is kind of sad that, you know, even after
taking a gigantic step backward, we would still compete with
(20:34):
one another. There's an interesting article. It'll clearly never happen,
but it's interesting to kind of think about what the
what if? I think so too. So there's actually quite
a bit more to this article, right, Uh, you tell
me you wrote it. Well, let's let's let's just advise
people to go on to our handy site, look into
our handy search bar. Just type five day weekend into
(20:56):
the search bar, how stuff works dot com and stick
around because it is uh. Listener mail time right, listener
mail time, listener mail time? Okay, so, Chuck, who is
our listener? Mail from? Our listener is David and we
have the last name. We don't know where David's from.
But David did not take kindly to our Delta Force podcast,
(21:17):
but he was very constructive in his criticism. Didn't just
slam us David says, Hi, Chuck and Josh, I usually
enjoy your podcast quite a bit, but your recent podcast
on Delta Force was way over the line. While I
appreciate the bone you threw human human rights activists at
the end before suggesting that they may be killed for
a policy disagreement, you're over the top adulation for all
(21:39):
things military was disturbing. You seem to suggest that any
action they took was justifiable, saying how happy you were
that they were taking care of business, not every policy
decision made by our government, particularly when using shadowy military
groups for the best. I'm not going to read it
because it's too long, but basically he thinks our opinion
of special forces might change if some European Arabian country
(22:01):
special forces two tapped their way through the White House
to arrest our president. So he was kind of just
disagreeing with a little bit. And at the end there
David's referring to the colonel of Delta Force back with
two tap methods, with two shots to the head of
every terror, which I have to say, can we play
a clip because we actually warned David and all the
(22:23):
other listeners that it could evolve into something like this right, Sure,
let's listen. Okay it is Yeah, there's We should probably
warn the listeners right now, Chuck and I will most
likely devolve into some sort of weird boyhood admiration of
all the sick, sick stuff Delta Forces done over the years.
So just before warn if we start tittering or really
(22:44):
excited or one of us takes our shirt off, don't
be offended. Okay, so David actually shamed us a debt.
We did feel bad after this one, if I wereall correctly,
because we're not big workouts. No we're not. It's just
this weird power the Delts Force has over us. Yes
we are odd, Yes we got a little a little juvenile,
(23:05):
but yeah, David, generally we we would agree with you.
We believe in in human rights and UM, diplomacy not
military direction is as much. But I think one point
that we tried to make it. I don't know if
he made it clear enough, is that if there is
action to be taken, we would much prefer a small
operation UM, rather than some day and thirty thousand troops.
(23:27):
And yeah, and just quickly before we go, we gotta
a message from another Dave about the same podcast. Hi,
I listened to your podcast from the UK and really
like the one about Delta Force. Would it be possible
for you to do one on European special forces like
in Germany and France. Cheers yes and sears to you Dave. Um.
We were not aware that France had a special forefront.
(23:49):
So some guys like that, some guys didn't. That's great.
Oh and don't forget our girlfriend in Sudan who started
listening to it through her speakers and and it's an
email saying that she felt uncomfortable doing so, so press pause,
but she hit was happy with it as well. Great.
So thank you to all three of you guys for
sending email. Um and David, thank you very much for
letting us know how you feel. We appreciate it. If
(24:11):
you guys want to send us an email, let us
know what's on your mind, whether you like what we said,
whether you didn't. Either way, we're cool with it. Uh.
Send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it how stuff works dot com brought to you
(24:31):
by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
stuff you should know. It's Josh and Chuck. You're waiting
(00:21):
on me. I was, I was. I was staring right
at you, Chuck. I didn't notice. I should have given
you a yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, Chuck, I don't
know if you've checked out the editorial department calendar recently
of our editorial calendar. Sure, yeah, yeah, sure, not not
the not the the articles slated, but our actual calendar calendar.
(00:41):
Oh no, no, no, I know you haven't. Well, you
will be pleasantly surprised to find that if you go
into the week of Christmas this coming December, we work
two days. That's not and you know I'm not working
any Are you taking those days off? Oh yeah, I'm
taking off a couple of weeks. Wow, you know, I
used up almost all my big catient time. I'm very
(01:01):
grateful for this, But do you realize what that gives us? Uh? Less,
what it gives me? Well, it sounds like a two
day work week. It sounds also like a five day weekend. Right,
one man's two day work week is another man's five
day week. Yeah, it definitely depends on how you look
at if your workaholic two day work week, if you're
you know, a slacker five day weekend, right, that sounds great?
(01:22):
It does. And actually, um our HR department is isn't
the first to ever come up with this concept. It
is so there's actually a movement of foot chuck called
the Friends of the Five Day Weekend. There's actually a
constitutional amendment, a proposal for one, which last time I
(01:42):
counted had about signatures on it. I wasn't too impressed
with that number. By the way, it could be better, um,
basically petitioning Congress to say, all right, you know, we're
we're going to have a two day work week from
now on and the rest is the weekend. Legally, you
if you work more than this, you have to pay.
You have to be paid over time. Right. I love
(02:03):
that this group really went for it there. They didn't
go with a three day weekend or even a fourth
They just said, screw it, five days off, two days
a week will work. Yeah, And we should probably give
a little background on this group. I gotta tell you,
um it sounds very tongue in cheek. It sounds um,
almost satirical and a joke, and it almost completely is.
(02:24):
It's um. The group behind it is the Asheville Convention
and Visitors Bureau, I Brave Asheville, North North Carolina, and um,
this is uh an ad campaign of marketing campaign to
get people to Asheville to you know, create this five
day weekends so everybody could come to Asheville and spend
their five day weekends there. Now, Gina, how it was
(02:44):
the idea just to get press, I think so. I
think that was part of it, but I think it
was kind of like a whole campaign, and then the
press aspect wrote itself, especially once they floated a constitutional amendment,
So it was kind of a tongue in cheek thing.
But actually, um, people reacted to it. They responded to it.
You know, Hey, that sounds great kind of thing. Especially
(03:06):
I imagine when there's like you know, they they had
they held rallies at festivals and stuff like that, and
I imagine the more beer there was there, the more
of a response there was. You know, yeah, were five
day weekend kind of thing. So, um, well, we found
out about it here at how stuff works, and of course,
as is our way, um, we took a tongue in
(03:29):
cheek idea to the nth degree. It's extreme conclusion, and
wanted to find out. I mean, like, what what the
deal is? Could this even work? What would happen if
it did? So it's like you'd be careful making a
joke around us, because we'll we'll we'll investigate it and
publish it and if if it's a stupid idea, we'll
we'll say so. But frankly, these people, I think they
(03:51):
have a good idea. I think the friends of the
Five Day Weekend they have a a good idea. And
they're they're actually pointing something out. What's that they're pointing
out that Americans work way too hard and have become far,
far too serious. Well, Donald Trump doesn't agree with you, No,
he doesn't. But that's the Donald. You know. He said
he said the idea was ridiculous. He did he actually
(04:11):
he said it in his blog, right. I got to
him in the first place. I'm impressed that he knows
how to blog. So, um, yeah, he he didn't. He
didn't like that. But there's plenty of people who agree
with the concept um and actually this this this idea
that Americans are overworked is We've got yards of figures here, Chuck, Chuck,
(04:32):
how about some figures. I'm the statmn UH in two
thousand seven survey was performed by the Conference Board, and
they found that a fewer than fifty percent of Americans
were happy with their jobs, which is, yeah, that's pretty sad.
Though UH in seven had job satisfaction. That's a sharp decline.
And you will know note that I think in nineteen
(04:55):
eight seven, that was the year that the Michael Keaton
pro America movie Gung Ho came out and really kicked
the American worker into overdrive. We're not gonna get beaten
by the Japanese. Let's get to work, you know, be
the lovable Michael Keaton led the charge. Well, I think
that's it centered exclusively around the movie Gung Ho. Yeah,
(05:16):
pre batman, Michael Keaton. Uh. And then there was another
study in two thousand four that um, one third of
all Americans feel overworked, which I thought it might be
a little higher than that. To be honest, I would too,
But I think we we've also developed an endurance over time,
Tom and fat lazy pre gung Ho days to like,
you know, kind of a lean, trim workforce. Yeah, and
(05:38):
we have now that's slightly evidenced by and I know
something else. You mentioned the article that, uh, a lot
of Americans don't use all their vacation days No. Ten
of fourteen. Yeah, that's just that was in three thousand
and six. That added to five hundred and seventy four
million unused vacation days. Yeah, that is one thing you
will never catch me with unused vacation That's great. Hats
(05:59):
off to you, buddy. I just I don't I don't
get it. Time off is good. I'm not lazy. No,
you definitely aren't lazy, but you know, you know how
to live, you know how to take care of yourself,
and the value of time off, it's a value at
treasure it. But I think there's a lot of people.
I think you could even say a majority of American
workers don't know. They don't know how to do that.
So that's kind of the point of this five day weekend.
(06:19):
It's like, wake up, man, settle down, let's all just
kind of chill out here there, learn to live like
chuck that kind of right. Well, I think I don't
have any stats for this but I bet a lot
of these types are the men and women that are
after the dollar and that you know, they figure if
they're snoozing, they're losing on money. And um, you know
(06:39):
people use acidine rhymes to describe their motivations, right, and
we're not really like that. We're meager livers and uh yeah,
we we know how to be happy and content. Yeah
without you know, making three hundred thousand dollars a year,
you're not making three Maybe I should renegotiation. So, um,
if you'll notice, chuck the end of the five day weekend,
(07:01):
Like I said, they proposed a constitutional amendment. Now, if Congress,
for some weird reason took this up, championed it, and
passed it, it actually wouldn't be the first time that
they've done this. Did you know that there wasn't any
such thing as a weekend in the United States until
nine that's weird. And the weekend was actually created by
(07:21):
a congressional act. That's so cool. Yeah, I bet no
one that that's that's the your takeaway today, folks. If
you want to amaze around the water cooler, that's a
good fact. The weekend was created by Congress, right, and
it was called the Fair Labor Standards Act. Yeah, we
talked about, um, we talked about the the Labor Department
in Free Market Regulation podcast if we'll remember um, and
(07:44):
you know, they shouldn't exist in this free market. But really,
the Fair Labor and Standards Act is one of these
shining acts that really protects people. You know. It established
a forty four hour work week, you know, Monday through Friday,
about eight hours a day. Um. It also established a
minimum wage, I got rid of child labor across the board.
(08:07):
It was a good act and it's still the test
of time, clearly because the forty hour work week is
still kind of between forty and still the standard exactly. Okay,
So so what would happen if we did go to
a two day a week work week? Um? Well, you
tell me, you know, you tell me, Well, it depends
on are you talking about economically speaking? Yeah, I know,
(08:31):
people be a lot happier. Well supposedly, it depends. I mean,
can you can you really say that? Well, that's just
my feeling. Okay, let me let me tell you about
an unnatural law that you might be interested in. Right,
here's the first problem with with the two day work week.
How are you going to do five days worth of
work in two days? Is it possible? Well, stay off
(08:52):
Facebook exactly a good start. There's this guy named I
believe Alan Parkinson. No, that's Alan Parsons project. I think
you know, uh see Northcote Parkinson. He created Parkinson's law.
It's like Murphy's law. Um, it's an unnatural law, right,
kind of a Rye observation um. And Parkinson's law says
(09:15):
that UM work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion. So if you have, you know,
a one day job to you know, to do, but
you're given a week to do it, it's gonna take
you pretty much all week to do that job, no
matter how hard you try. So I guess if you
put Parkinson's law up to the you know, five day weekend,
(09:38):
you could you could probably trim several days off of
your work week if you just went all out for
those two days. Probably not going to be able to
finish everything in two days, but it is possible, right,
I would agree? Okay, So, um, So that's that's number one, UM,
and then number two as far as the five the
(10:00):
friends of the five day weekend see it basically, Um,
we're not taking any time for ourselves as it is
even on the weekends, because there's a lot of times,
so much time spent working that the weekends are often
spent doing chores, housework, that kind of thing. And in
a strict economic sense and as strict economic definition, actually, UM,
(10:23):
leisure time is activities that give direct enjoyment. So just
because you have time off doesn't mean you're engaging in
leisure time, which is the whole point behind the five
day weekend thing. We need more time to have leisure
time because, like you said, we're vacuuming, we're running errands,
that kind of thing. That's not leisure time. That's working
but not being paid for it, you know. UM, So
(10:44):
that's another aspect of the whole thing, and there's also
a physical aspect to it. Our health could actually improve,
UM if we adopted a five day weekend case. In
point a two thousand study UM from the University of
Pittsburgh and the State University of New York Oswego, they
(11:05):
found that there was a there is a direct correlation
between middle aged men who are at risk for heart disease,
suffering heart attacks, and a lack of vacation time. Right
I did a lot of articles recently on the heart
and stress, as you know, and it's there. It's not
supposed you know, it's those are direct links. Yeah, there's
definitely a mind body link, and it appears to be
(11:27):
stresses is the most clear um example of it, right right,
So okay, so we would technically be able to to
do most of our work in two days that we're
now taking five days to do. Um, we would uh,
we would be able to actually engage in actual leisure time.
Our health would benefit. And even more, there's a model
(11:50):
already in place for lots of time off and that's
in Europe. Correct. I went, I went to Malta. Remember
this summer. There's this guy who's a diplomat over in
crow Geatia. He's an English diplomat and he had like
eighties six paid days off per year. You're kidding. No,
I'm not kidding at all. He hardly knew what to
do with all the time off that he had, and
(12:11):
it was fairly fairly common, fairly standard, and I'm like, wow,
I get two weeks off, you know. So yeah, it
was kind of um, it was a rough thing to
come you know, face to face with, right I'm jealous
of your We often talk about our weekend activities and
I'm all, you really do do it right at your house. Yeah,
but you you you have very you have a very
(12:33):
improved house. Well, I'm renovating a house. Some of you
may know this, some of you may not. So there's
a lot of work to be done on the weekends. Um.
I do get pleasure out of that, though, So I
guess technically that still counsels leisure time as long as
you're driving. Pleasure is a direct pleasure. So, Chuck, let's
look at it from an economic aspect. Now we know
what the friends of the five day weekend. You're saying
(12:54):
that it could be beneficial to us, but you know,
would it be beneficial of the economy. Well, this is
where you need to school meet, because I know economics
is your your one true love in life. I love economics.
Actually it's so weird and nerdy, but I've become fascinated
by it as I've grown older. And there's this guy
who pertains to what we're talking about, um named John
(13:16):
Maynard Keynes, and uh he appropriately enough came up with
Keensian economics, and um, he wrote a paper basically Keensie
and economics is a form of macro economics. So before
people would say, okay, um, there's this much much wealth
in the world, or you know, people sold this many
goods and um, you know there was this gross profit
(13:39):
and then you know, minus expenditures, and now you have
net profit. And there's economics. And keens is like, well, well, whoa,
we're missing like a lot of aspects here, so like
our are really um, I guess granular uh view of economics.
Now we're we're keeping track of office supply indexes or indicaes. Um,
(14:01):
that's all KINSI. And he said we need to take
into account debt and taxes and all this other stuff. Right,
makes sense. So by the time he writes this paper,
UM called um economic go Ahead, go ahead, Economic possibilities
for our grandchildren. Right, And he writes that in ninety
and he'd already established himself as like the the economic
(14:22):
genius of his age. So he writes this thing. Everybody's listening, right,
and in it he says, okay, he took a very
conservative growth rate of um of the economy and wealth,
which he called capital um equipment. Yeah, thank you, um.
He said two percent growth per year and seven and
(14:43):
a half percent growth of the capital equipment, which is,
I believe all the money available in the world, um,
and within a hundred years we're going to basically be
living in this leisure society. The friends of the Five
Day Weekend came up with, Yeah, I love this theory
right now. He actually took a his estimates were pretty
(15:04):
much spot on, and they were actually slightly more concerned.
We've grown more than that, and I believe like our
capital equipment has grown much more than seven and a half.
I think it's like a hundred or two hundred times
or some some really enormous amount, and yet we're still
not in this leisure society that Keene's envision within a
(15:24):
hundred years. Even though we far exceeded his his predictions
for growth, he was off the mark there for sure.
He was though, why well, I think you actually didn't
interview him, correct, I did two interviews, Uh, And I've
always kind of had this idea that if you want
to know a question, go to Harvard. It's they They
have some really really good interview subjects. And actually I
(15:47):
also called a guy from Cornell too, and both of
them just turned out to be spot on and um, yeah,
from Cornell Robert Frank, and from Harvard Richard Freeman. And
the thing is is I call both of them out
of the blue. Neither one of them had ever heard
of the five day weekend before, and both of them
just right off the cuff talked just perfectly, gave me
(16:09):
all the information I needed. And as if that weren't enough,
both of them had just submitted chapters for a book
called Revisiting kens On the very question I called them about,
and I had no idea that book was even coming out,
So it was all just kind of going, like, you know,
we're operating on all cylinders here. I'm kind of I
can't sit down while I'm interviewing. I'm very excited. It's
economics and all that. Um So Robert Frank from Cornell.
(16:33):
His his theory was that we haven't reached this Keynsian
leisure society because Keenes grossly underestimated relative needs. So you've
got basic needs, right, which are like food and water
and say clothing, right, and then there's relative needs as well,
which can also be basic needs, like, for example, clothing
(16:55):
but instead of you know, tattered rags that keep you warm,
relative need would be a nice suit. And what Frank
was saying was that, um, in our modern society, it's
not enough to just have tattered rags that keep you warm.
If you want to have a better life, if you
want to provide for your children, you have to throw
(17:16):
more into relative needs. So your suit has to be
nicer so you can get a better job at an
interview and then pay for your children. And it's become
much more important. You can't walk into a place in
an interview and in rags, this basic need that's been
recovered and expect to advance in life. So he it
was his opinion that that's why Kenes missed the Mark
(17:37):
Freeman and now you interviewed and this was from Harvard, correct,
and uh, he just kind of flatly said that Keenes
overestimated our desire for leisure and that it's a five
day work week is pretty optimal. Yeah, he said that that, Um,
that labor and management came to a perfect agreement pretty
much to the five day, five day work week, eight
(17:58):
hour day. What do you think? I gotta tell you, you
you know, I I had sent before that that's I
don't like too much time off. It's weird. I feel weird.
I feel like I have to do something, I have
to produce something, and um yeah, too much time off
actually makes me a little edgy. I think a four
day work week would be just about right for me.
I think it'd be good to pepper it here there.
(18:20):
I don't think it has to be standard every time,
but maybe like twice a month you get a day
or two off or something like that. And we're not
talking about telecommuting. It's a different deal. It totally is.
It's actually a day off, right, yeah, a day off
where you're just not expected to do any work. Um. Okay,
So so now we we the friends of the five
day week, they five day weekend. They don't, um they
(18:41):
they're not the first to come up with it. Keynes did. Um.
But I asked Freeman and Frank uh, you know what, really,
what would happen to the economy? Epogetically? What would happen? Yeah,
but you got well, I know the first thing that, um,
you would have to do is to convince your employers
to pay you a full wage for two day his work,
so paying on production rather than time, right, which makes sense.
(19:04):
But I don't think either of them assume that employers
would be willing to do that. So right there, you
you've got two fifths of the wages we have now,
which is fine for domestic products. Right, so anything that's
produced domestically, Um, it's going to fall down and step
eventually to reflect these two fifths of wages that Americans
are making. In theory es okay, But also houses would
(19:26):
get substantially smaller, cars would get substantially smaller, but we'd
be able to survive. Basically, America would take a gigantic
step backward out of the rat race as one collective whole.
But then it would all kind of catch up with
itself and adjust itself. It would, and and everything would
be fine. I would be much like it is now,
except two fifths is valuable. But for and produced goods
(19:50):
in comparison to our lowered wages, the prices of those
would skyrocket. Right, So so long Sony plasma TV, because
if you would be so, it be is out of
out of bounds. Is as you know, a five million
dollar home is to the average person. Um, so you'd
have that, but again we'd still be fine. Our our
relative needs would with lower to to reflect that two
(20:13):
fifth wage. But I think it was a Freeman, who
predicted sadly that we would still compete with one another, like,
we'd still want to get the best TV we could
for two fifths of the wages we were getting, and
it we'd want it to be better than someone else. Yeah,
which is kind of sad that, you know, even after
taking a gigantic step backward, we would still compete with
(20:34):
one another. There's an interesting article. It'll clearly never happen,
but it's interesting to kind of think about what the
what if? I think so too. So there's actually quite
a bit more to this article, right, Uh, you tell
me you wrote it. Well, let's let's let's just advise
people to go on to our handy site, look into
our handy search bar. Just type five day weekend into
(20:56):
the search bar, how stuff works dot com and stick
around because it is uh. Listener mail time right, listener
mail time, listener mail time? Okay, so, Chuck, who is
our listener? Mail from? Our listener is David and we
have the last name. We don't know where David's from.
But David did not take kindly to our Delta Force podcast,
(21:17):
but he was very constructive in his criticism. Didn't just
slam us David says, Hi, Chuck and Josh, I usually
enjoy your podcast quite a bit, but your recent podcast
on Delta Force was way over the line. While I
appreciate the bone you threw human human rights activists at
the end before suggesting that they may be killed for
a policy disagreement, you're over the top adulation for all
(21:39):
things military was disturbing. You seem to suggest that any
action they took was justifiable, saying how happy you were
that they were taking care of business, not every policy
decision made by our government, particularly when using shadowy military
groups for the best. I'm not going to read it
because it's too long, but basically he thinks our opinion
of special forces might change if some European Arabian country
(22:01):
special forces two tapped their way through the White House
to arrest our president. So he was kind of just
disagreeing with a little bit. And at the end there
David's referring to the colonel of Delta Force back with
two tap methods, with two shots to the head of
every terror, which I have to say, can we play
a clip because we actually warned David and all the
(22:23):
other listeners that it could evolve into something like this right, Sure,
let's listen. Okay it is Yeah, there's We should probably
warn the listeners right now, Chuck and I will most
likely devolve into some sort of weird boyhood admiration of
all the sick, sick stuff Delta Forces done over the years.
So just before warn if we start tittering or really
(22:44):
excited or one of us takes our shirt off, don't
be offended. Okay, so David actually shamed us a debt.
We did feel bad after this one, if I wereall correctly,
because we're not big workouts. No we're not. It's just
this weird power the Delts Force has over us. Yes
we are odd, Yes we got a little a little juvenile,
(23:05):
but yeah, David, generally we we would agree with you.
We believe in in human rights and UM, diplomacy not
military direction is as much. But I think one point
that we tried to make it. I don't know if
he made it clear enough, is that if there is
action to be taken, we would much prefer a small
operation UM, rather than some day and thirty thousand troops.
(23:27):
And yeah, and just quickly before we go, we gotta
a message from another Dave about the same podcast. Hi,
I listened to your podcast from the UK and really
like the one about Delta Force. Would it be possible
for you to do one on European special forces like
in Germany and France. Cheers yes and sears to you Dave. Um.
We were not aware that France had a special forefront.
(23:49):
So some guys like that, some guys didn't. That's great.
Oh and don't forget our girlfriend in Sudan who started
listening to it through her speakers and and it's an
email saying that she felt uncomfortable doing so, so press pause,
but she hit was happy with it as well. Great.
So thank you to all three of you guys for
sending email. Um and David, thank you very much for
letting us know how you feel. We appreciate it. If
(24:11):
you guys want to send us an email, let us
know what's on your mind, whether you like what we said,
whether you didn't. Either way, we're cool with it. Uh.
Send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it how stuff works dot com brought to you
(24:31):
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