I would read this but i'm too busy trying to one-up all the other martyrs I work with.

White, black and red posters! The Socialist Alternative may have found their keystone issue!

Four hour work day? I'd go nuts.
Four hours is barely enough time to get anything done. Give me a six or eight hour shift and the opportunity to have lunch halfway through and I'm a happy camper. A week or two ago I pulled a ten-hour shift, mostly manual labor, without even flinching. Why? Because I was getting paid by the hour and my boss was happy to give me the hours, and because I take pride in my work and don't like to leave a job half-done.

OK, from now on, I'm just going to make a list to copy-paste of links to all the commenters and pundits who said you could never legalize pot, and that gay marriage was unthinkable, and that you could never, never, never have a $15 minimum wage in Seattle. Never happen! Dream on, crazy pants.

Because it's crazy! Unpossible! We can't do it because it's never been done and I'm afraid. I'm afraid! Hold me.

Hold me....

It's unbelievable that no politicians are working on getting 1 day of paid leave, 1 day of paid parental leave.

I would love for socialist alternative to take this on. A reasonable goal -- not even leading the world! -- should be 5 weeks paid time off a year, all holidays paid off or double time if working, and 18 months parental leave split evenly between parents.

Per Parkinson's Law: "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." But the inverse is also true, work condenses to fit within the time allowed. You probably get more done in the last hour of your shift than you do in the first three. You can definitely get "8 hours of work" done in 6 hours, because you don't dilly-dally for those two hours, effectively liberating your time in drips and drabs during the entire day.

I'd rather have my liberated time in larger chunks, thank you very much, as I have plenty of other things to do than merely holding a job.

Four Hours a day, Four Days a week, and no reduction in pay. Yes, we can.

@3: So have your job work on 3 8 hour shifts. The point is that we have enough productivity to have far more leisure time, but instead we are distributing wealth vastly unfairly, allowing a small percentage to have lots of leisure time, and then having another much larger percent (6.2 for June?) who are unemployed, but unable to enjoy leisure time because they cannot afford it.

We need to stop allowing the labor market to be so unregulated, and we can achieve the dreams of our forefathers that we would not have to work as hard as they did, much less harder. The goal of civilization has been to improve the lot of all involved, but that dream has never been more achievable than now, and less achieved.

I love technology and I'm a bit of a gadget geek, but it really has been horrible for our working lives. We always talk about how technology saves us time and makes us more efficient. The reality, it lowers the hurdles to entry, it increaes competition, and it increases customer expectations. So basically we all end up working twice as hard for the same monies, because technology "allows" us to do so.

In Franklin's day, the country was a lot smaller, cities were a lot smaller, technology and culture were a lot simpler, and you simply didn't need as much in resources and labor to keep things alive. Four hours a day was practical back then.

Not as much now.

I would really really like to see the data that shows a six hour day in a Kellogg plant was less productive than an eight hour day.

I would really really like to see the data that supports a six hour day in a Kellogg plant being more productive than an eight hour day. That's the problem with some of these "blog" type articles, something can be thrown out there and no eyebrows are raised if they are preaching to the choir. The good news is with Obamacare, the hope of a thirty hour work week is fast becoming a reality. Then productivity goes up right?

I work 24 hours a day, every day.

Because I think.

@10,

You're funny. Our society requires less human labor input to function than ever before. Have you noticed how much completely useless bullshit gets manufactured and how many completely useless jobs there are out there? And then meanwhile there are millions of people unemployed/underemployed.

The company I work for doesn't even need to exist. Our publication exists to sell advertising, and, according to our own internal data, the advertising we sell doesn't actually help our clients' business.

@13 "Because I think." Really? Since when?

This post is catnp for underachievers.

@16: Maybe you are mistaking efficiency for underachievement? Only those who can't succeed if measured by their results need to point to all the many hours they have worked as proof that they have accomplished something.