It works both ways, Europe adopts a lot of policies after they've been tried and failed in America, too.

I predict we will be seeing school shootings in the next couple decades here, too.

But if America's contenders want to beat President Trump next year, . . .

They won't. Never in the history of the country has an incumbent failed to win reelection in a robust economy.

Elizabeth Warren's fanciful ideas remind me of Bernie's during the last election cycle, when he insisted that college could be made free. Implementing this depended on a completely unrealistic and unprecedented five consecutive years of economic growth like the U.S. had never experienced in its entire existence.

Or on a very selective college application process.

"The Dutch, for one, want to shorten the workweek to four days to raise productivity. These ideas are yet to be tested."

Yes it has. It's been tried multiple times. It doesn't work. In fact it does the opposite and reduces productivity. It also reduces GDP growth.

The economy in the US is still in an odd place for us. GDP growth is up, but can't quite get up to historical norms for the US. Obama's roughly 1% growth rate has doubled to 2% and it has become much more stable. But 3-5% was normal in the US. Until Obamacare and Dodd-Frank are repealed we may not see those growth rates again.

The US does appear to be slipping into recession territory. But for voters it looks like a technical recession only. Job growth is stable and doesn't look to fall. So the impact of a recession on voting trends should be minimal.

The Dutch, for one, want to shorten the workweek to four days to raise productivity.

If you want to do that in the US, you'd have to change a few laws. For instance, California requires overtime be paid for any and all hours over 8 in one workday - so no 4/10s or 9/80s for California workers.

In addition, claims of increased productivity are a bit spurious. Currently, workers in an 8-hour day get approximately 4-6 hours of actual work done in an 8-hour day for a total of 20-30 hours of actual work in every 40-hour week.

The advocates of a shorter work week assume workers would get the same 20-30 hours of work done in the shorter time frame, instead of a proportionate amount of work - i.e., 16-24 hours in a 32-hour work week. In their calculations, the production per hour increases. Ergo, the increased productivity rates. In some cases, that assumption worked. In others, it did not.

Part of the problem is that American workers spend a great deal of their productive time in meetings and in training seminars (HR needs to have something to do, doesn't it?). Some workplace behavior and time management would have to change for that shorter work week to result in the Holy Grail of higher productivity.

Furthermore, some jobs are simply not compatible with shorter work weeks producing higher productivity rates. Assembly line work will still be so many widgets produced per hour, no matter how many hours are spent producing widgets.

Some jobs require a 24/7 presence, like medical or customer services. For some jobs, productivity is determined by need, such as emergency services. For those jobs, a shortened standard work week with no pay decrease will require more workers - an increase in labor costs.

Finally, what problem is shortening the standard work week trying to solve? What are we hoping to get out of it?

I predict we will be seeing school shootings in the next couple decades here, too.

I was assured that with the draconian gun control policies in most of Europe these sorts of incidents were unpossible.

Oh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Thalys_train_attack#Possible_source_of_weapons

Comparing the "failing" US healthcare system to other countries is nothing sort of stupid.

Politicians (and the voters too) who compare other healthcare system as being superior to the US fail to mention one major difference.

That difference is that no one even comes close to innovation like the US; other countries benefit from the US system in that if it weren't for the US most of the major medical advances made around the world would disappear if the US stopped coming up with new ideas.

This isn't to say other countries don't come up with new ideas. They do; but, it is miniscule compared to what the US comes up with.

Shut down the current US healthcare system by converting it over to a one-size fits all model will shut done innovation.

Just where will countries like India and China, who reverse-engineer pharmaceuticals, get their new medicines to copy from without the US?

I am quite frankly, getting tired of this crap from politicians who just don't "get it."

The blowback against trans-activists will be epic once it reaches the tipping point. But they're just a subset of #CancelCulture.

Sorry, women, you had a good run. But now men are taking over everything that used to be yours. It’s a man’s world again, baby.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/347205/

> for voters it looks like
> a technical recession only.

"For voters"! Technical only!

Such *learnedness*...

It's like a kid playing TV Newsman by stumbling around the kitchen in Dad's wingtips, barking cliches into a toilet paper roll. $165K of potential technical wealth for Dallas voters in a centralized clearinghouse!

What's next? Batman in the bond market?

Tune in next week! Mises & Rothbard were gay!!!

> blowback against trans-activists
> will be epic once it reaches
> the tipping point

Is there any reason to think this is true, except that it would be a lot of fun? Who said anything about a "tipping point"? What tips, and by what metric? What unseen forces you imagined to be at work, and why are they unseen?

That's the kind of rhetoric that has let people down enormously in the past few yours.

Crid, you do know your local community college should offer classes on basic economics. Educating yourself is a good option no matter how old you are. Or you can continue to rail against the existence of the accounting profession and cost of living calculators. Old man yells at cloud is a meme for a reason.

New week underway! What will you say next?

IRA, there's a gun in almost every house here.

For productivity, most people work a bit, and then take a break on FB or smoking or a coffee or water cooler or whatever. It's not like they work 6 hours and then goof off for two. The two are spread out throughout the day.

"The Dutch, for one, want to shorten the workweek to four days to raise productivity. "

AKA work rationing. They've been doing the same thing in France for several years now.

Crap.

Productivity connected to hours? Is this one of those fools who doesn't understand they cannot change the definition of one hour of work?

The job determines how much time you must spend there. No refinery, power plant, factory or radioactive waste processing plant is going to magically be more productive by shortening worker hours.

Abut the healthcare issue: more lies. Lies that depend on calling this "insurance", to imply that a magical "someone else" will be paying you, not doctors, to bring about rosy-cheeked health!
No. Unless YOU pay, you will NOT get to say what treatment you receive. Use a credit model, and quit lying!

Radwaste,

There is nothing so unusual about a possible connection between work schedule and work hours.

As an extreme example, you don't believe we would see a difference in work output between the following to scenarios?

1 - Typical 40hr 5 day work week
2 - Start at 9am on Monday and work 40 hours straight through with no meals or sleep

If all you are concerned with in your analysis is the total hours worked then the output between scenarios 1 and 2 should be the same.

Unfortunately human beings are not robots with a 40+ hour maintenance schedule.

You're failure to account for the fact that it is human beings doing that "one hour of work" and that human beings operate optimally when they are well-fed, well-rested, and free from mental distraction is just one of the reasons why your favorite model that you keep quoting over and over is too simplistic of be of any real value.

Productivity is a function of more than just one variable.

Two quick corrections:

"between work schedule and productivity"

"your failure"

Another waste of bandwidth, Artie. Conan has already covered this point. Glad you want to pay me more for exactly the same job!

Radwaste,

Being skeptical of the current state of the claims and outright declaring that there is no relationship between the two at all are completely different things.

Conan remains skeptical of the relationship, which is a valid stance at this stage.

You on the other hand are disregarding the relationship entirely based on your own home grown nonsense economic theory.

Productivity remains a function of more than just one variable despite your insistence that it depends on time and time alone.