Sweden's 23-hour work week
According to a new study by the Swedish Ministry of Finance (couldn't locate the original study or any English sources to cite), the Swedish work week is only 23 hours long. Unused work potential amounts to 15 million hours, which translates to 383,000 full-time jobs. Especially young people and immigrants suffer from this.

Add to this the aging population and the rise in associated costs and it becomes clear this needs to be addressed. But social democracies aren't well known for their ability to change employment policies. Expect things to get worse before they get better.

Posted: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 1:38 PM by Libertas est Veritas with 1 comment(s)

Comments

# re: Sweden's 23-hour work week @Wednesday, May 28, 2008 12:36 PM

Hi All,

Here in Brazil we have a 44-hour work week, and the country's economic potential is grossly underdeveloped.

I work downtown Rio de Janeiro, and today during lunchtime I stumbled upon politicians with loudspeakers, calling upon the people to sign up a petition, in order to pass a new law reducing the work week to 40 hours but keeping the wages unchanged.

This weird arrangement, according to their crazy logic, would create "x" hundred thousand new jobs...

If I had time, it would be quite funny to stop by them and ask how this economic miracle could be implemented, i.e., for instance I run a shop with 10 employees, and suddenly I'd be forced to have each one of them work 4 hours less per week, but I couldn't reduce their wages, AND still I'd push my magic wand à la Harry Potter and hire one more employee to compensate for the 40 man-hours lost???

As you see, we haven't yet arrived to the Swedish degree of perfection, but with the help of our socialist do-gooders, the populace believes the country will reach unprecedented prosperity - by working less!!!

Do you get it? See the equation below:

 Less hours worked

+ more employees hired

-----------------------

Wealth increase for all

Q.E.D.: SOCIALISTS CANNOT CALCULATE !!!!

Kindest regards from Rio,

R. Halevy.

R. Halevy

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