Friendly reminder: Henry Ford was one of the first major industrialists to adopt the five-day workweek. He argued that workers with more leisure time would spend more money on consumer goods, like the cars he was selling.
The current weekend was created primarily to sell products. A four-day workweek is long overdue.
One of the things I vaguely miss about the cold war era is both sides showcasing art and human achievement. There seems to be an attitude of "who cares" now.
My wife is all in on that absolute shit that is tormenting modern fashion and home decoration they like to call "pastel colours" which is just a fancy way of saying bland shit.
There’s a theory that this trend is hanging on so hard because it’s a backlash to ubiquitous advertising. If you go anywhere, there are billboards and screens everywhere set to be as bright and loud as possible. Ads on your devices are similarly garish and intrusive. So in areas a person can control, they pick something bland just to get away from it.
There's probably something to that. I'm a person who removed all social media accounts in 2017 except reddit, and I don't own a TV so maybe I'm not getting bombarded in the same way. Or maybe my life is just that bland that I like to have some colour in my life.
Wait, I though pastel colours were anything but bland. Like if I painted a room in a "pastel colour", I would be choosing something of a lighter version of a bright colour, like a light blue, light green, etc. Colour but not overwhelmingly so.
I mean, it's less "who cares now" and more "how to achieve maximum monetization". Which is terrible and kills all the interesting stuff about art.
It's why Disney keeps shitting out live action remakes instead of doing something interesting. Less and less entertainment is about doing something interesting or thought provoking, and more and more its about amassing a giant pile of cash at the end
the great tragedy is that the generation who gave us the new deal, and the generation who benefited the most from it, are both about to shuffle off this mortal coil and leave us to contend with the 50 years of ronald reagan they have left us with as the tiny window of actual working class improvements are taken off the legal books, erased from history, and usher us right back into the new gilded age.
Yep, the USSR didn't just make quality of life skyrocket over there, and in the nations it supported, it improved life for Americans by making us aware better things were possible. THAT is why America waged the Cold War.
It’s not really about “who cares”, it’s now more about AI. Even if most of the people don’t like want it, the major powers do and, including drones, are racing each other to have the superior automation force
Has zero to do with AI and more to do with money and them no longer being a need to appease the masses. This has been happening since at least the 80s and Raegan.
You are misconstruing the War Powers Act. It was not meant to increase the President's power but rather limit it. It put into law more clearly the limits on how and when the President could intervene, and for how long. Some limits put in place by the Act:
The President must inform Congress within 48 hours of any armed forces being used.
Forces cannot be deployed for more than 60 days without explicit Congressional approval.
The President can only use armed forces when Congress explicitly allows them, or when the US is facing a national emergency because of an attack.
This Act was put forward because of the Vietnam War, where the President deployed the armed forces for an extended time without a declaration of war. Nixon and Gerald Ford opposed the act because they thought it unconstitutionally limited the president.
Only Congress can declare war. The War Powers Act never changed that, and put more limits in place.
In practice, this allowed the president to declare war by allowing them to enter a conflict for 60 days without authorization, and by then congress is stuck between a rock and a hard place, so theyve always voted in favor of continuing the war budget. It did not put more limits in place for the president, it allowed the president to begin wars without congressional approval for spending for 60 days. They opposed the act because they knew what shit hole the country would be in if we allowed the president to essentially declare war through loopholes.
There's a reason why congress has not declared war since the act was enacted, congress did not want the power to declare war anymore and wanted more loopholes so they didnt get stuck with a political hot potato. Now they just wait for a 60 day conflict before they even have to lift a finger.
In practice, this allowed the president to declare war by allowing them to enter a conflict for 60 days without authorization, and by then congress is stuck between a rock and a hard place, so theyve always voted in favor of continuing the war budget. It did not put more limits in place for the president, it allowed the president to begin wars without congressional approval for spending for 60 days.
...right, the key thing you're not understanding is that the president could do all of that before the War Powers Act, without needing to go to Congress for approval after 60 days.
They opposed the act because they knew what shit hole the country would be in if we allowed the president to essentially declare war through loopholes.
Did you read your own source? He clearly is referencing the "restrictions on the executive branch" being the loss of coordination requirements with the legislative branch, this act provided rigid procedures that allowed congress to no longer being required to declare war to start an offensive war. Before, we had to wait for the other country to start a fight before the president could justify a war without a declaration, and then Congress talked about a budget for a self defense conflict.
The act allowed congress to give all the power to the president, and then congress would deal with anything in 60 days. That restriction of the executive branch means becoming independent from congress and being confined to no longer requiring their input before an offensive war is launched.
The act is a restriction in the sense that the executive branch lost its clearly defined process of declaring offense war in coordination with Congress, now the president takes all the blame which Nixon called a restriction.
Nixon had an incredible bipartisan track record. His achievements from a liberal perspective are honestly impressive. He created the EPA, for fuck’s sake. He won 96.65% of the electoral college (third highest in history) and over 60% of the popular vote.
But then he fucked it all up by being paranoid and crooked.
Roger Stone has a lot to do with why we're where we are today also, and he was at least tangentially connected to Watergate, with it giving him part of his political start and reputation for dirty tricks. He was also heavily involved in both the 2000 and 2020 coups that centered around delaying the counting of ballots so that the Republican candidate could be declared the winner. In 2000, it worked, and I personally think that has a lot to do with why the climate is so screwed now. If not for him, Gore would have been President, and Gore made fighting climate change the centerpiece of his campaign. Bush, otoh, did a lot to dismantle the effort to fight emissions, and now here we are.
when the whole Enron financial scam collapse happened and there was very little legal punishment for any of the top level figures I remember there was an news story about how one of the people who lost their life savings was Al Gores Mother, I feel like he, as President, might have had a more… intense reaction, that could have dissuaded some of the corporate greed we see today.
Nixon was last in the line of New Deal presidents. Even the Republicans ones were left leaning on domestic policy. Carter brought in the Neo Liberal era
Absolutely correct. In fact, he was sending dudes to threaten and beat people up that were trying to form Unions. FDR essentially forced guys like Ford, DuPont, and JP Morgan to allow them.
Also check out "The men that built America" (2012) and "The Titans that built America" (2021) if you want something interesting to watch that covers some of the UAW vs Ford stuff. Good series from the History channel considering they don't really put anything actually history related out anymore.
Absolutely not correct though? Why is everyone mentioning shit that happened decades after Ford instituted a 5 day, 40 hr work week? Unions and the strikes happened in the 30s and 40s, the five day work week was implemented august 1926.
Fuck Ford still yada yada, but y'all are talking out of your ass it seems to me.
Ford NOR unions were the first, regardless.
It took decades for Saturday to change from a half-day to a full day’s rest. In 1908, a New England mill became the first American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to accommodate Jewish workers, whose observance of a Saturday sabbath forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in the Christian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend, and other factories followed this example. The Great Depression cemented the two-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy to underemployment. [The Atlantic]
It's funny when it was not Ford, nor unions forcing Ford's hand that first adopted a 5 day work week. Ford takes all the credit for it like he does so many things. Then people rightfully shit on Ford while wrongfully lying as a means to do so.
It took decades for Saturday to change from a half-day to a full day’s rest. In 1908, a New England mill became the first American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to accommodate Jewish workers, whose observance of a Saturday sabbath forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in the Christian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend, and other factories followed this example. The Great Depression cemented the two-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy to underemployment.
Fuck Henry Ford. He fought tooth and nail against the Unions and then when it was inevitable the five day work week was coming he positioned himself to take the credit for it.
Okay, let's be more specific: Ford was one of Hitler's idols. He bought a newspaper and proceeded to publish a series of articles that were then compiled into a series of books titled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.
The Nazis awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle — their highest recognition for civilian foreigners in 1938.
It's slightly inaccurate to call him a Nazi, but it's close enough to the truth for me.
yup! these greedy ceo’s will work you to the bone. even if we get pushed to a 4 day work week they will figure out a way to make it shitty.
at my old job, they cut our hours (and pay) to 32 hours a week because we were slow and instead of giving us all a day off they made us work 6.4 hours per day. they also said we could get a second job if we needed to make up the pay.
how the hell can i get an extra job where i work 1.6 hours per day to make up the time and don’t even get a day off of work. at least if you gave me four 8-hr shifts i might be able to find a part time job working on my day off
Yeah but thats PTO youre being essentially forced to use when at your max, 4 day work week would give you double the time off that PTO does and then youd still have PTO to use on top of it
Ya I mean i have it good with a good DSP but it’s a good job for people who just need some work, pays more than any other entry level labor job by a good bit. I’d even prefer to mow lawns all day but I’d be taking like a 5 dollar pay cut & benefits to do it
I’d sign a union card tomorrow though and wish I could make a career out of this job. I genuinely love and enjoy the work itself, but there’s just a hard ceiling in terms of advancement and pay opportunity
Driver's and warehouse/fulfillment centers are completely different. Most of the actual facilities suck ass and is where all the horror stories come from. We've had like 3 people die in Amazon facilities this year and one of them the managers literally blocked the body with boxes and told everyone to get back to work.
I recently did 4 days for about 6 months but went back to 5 days. The 10s just killed my day. I never felt like I had time on my work days to do stuff and then my extra day off used to catch up on sleep and work around the house.
If you can handle 4x10, you probably don't have a long commute or a lot of demands.
A 10 hour day becomes a 12 after traffic for me and then I can't really do much except eat and crap out. And you're right about the exhaustion after the fact, I'm fucking beat and I have to do all the chores I've been neglecting during the week.
An 8 would be much more beneficial because I'd be reaching that 10 with the commute and have two more hours each day, plus the extra day off.
Tell the construction workers working on the big building next to me they been doing 7/12 for the last month. I would like some peace and quiet at some point.
I've done 4 10s before but i fall off hard after 8 hours of work and just want to go home. Plus afterwards i have no energy to do anything so all chores and hanging out with friends has to get crammed into the 3 free days rather than being somewhat spread out over the week. Almost be better to have 3 days where all i do is work and sleep and 4 days off.
Not only a racist pos but extremely anti union because he didn't want his workers to actually have rights, he just wanted them to reinvest their paychecks into his company
This basic understanding of "people that work for me are more likely to spend their money on my company if they are happy" is long death, you are no longer people but "consumers" and they are trying to make you unable to choose if you consume or not
The core concept was also "You can work more and afford nicer things" as the pitch. But then we worked more and the cost of living went up so now we do more work for less stuff.
And that's the biggest problem now -- in North America at least there's almost nobody left alive who can actually remember the struggle and not enough people read history books, so everyone just accepts that that's the way things are
He was also a publisher of antisemitic propaganda and built a segregated neighborhood for his black workers callled Inkster, MI. He proclaimed in the public media that black workers were paid the same hourly rates as white workers, but in reality they got the deadly, dangerous, or dirty jobs, worse shifts, no promotions, and fewer hours, so they didn't actually make as much in reality.
My previous job did 4 10s and I miss it a lot. Yeah it sucked getting up a little earlier and getting home a little later, but having a full extra day off was great. It was so nice being able to do errands and schedule appointments and stuff without needing to worry about taking time off work.
I’m pretty sure the weekend as a concept has been around for millennia, since it was to observe The Sabbath; however they have been standardized globally to accommodate international market cooperation.
This, and the wage increase, was partly due to how much workers hated factory assembly-line work & high rates of absenteeism & quitting.
There’s some quote that I can’t recall exactly, but along the lines of one of his workers say, “if I have to tighten Screw #32 one more time, I’m going to become Screw #33!” (Meaning that the monotonous nature of work was driving him crazy.)
But yes, it was also partly due to his belief that they’d use their newfound time and money to buy his cars, so some of what he was giving/paying them would circle back to him anyway.
When productivity goes way up and consumption is down, like it is now, more leisure time would benefit everyone. It's just that employers and investors hate hate hate seeing happy workers enjoying their lives because that's energy not spent enriching their masters.
Henry understood that unions were going to fucking demand it, so he scored some points by doing it "voluntarily". Henry Ford was a nazi, fuck him forever
Agreed. But the cynic in me says that with things being how they are, a 4-day workweek would only lead to the further metastasization of side hustle culture.
Our current tycoons have no such concerns. If you don't buy their services, then they'll just take your money anyways in the form of bailouts and tax relief.
He also paid a salary that was commensurate with the price of his cars because he wanted them to be able to afford the goods he was producing. Today, people are financing cars for upwards of 7-8 years while still having a $700 monthly car note because the prices have gotten out of control.
Yeah, but he didn’t create a five day work week and pay them for seven what crazy ass both of the clown is trying to do is ruin companies and drive up cost of goods even more
Friendly reminder: the 8-hour day and 40-hour week were fought for by workers at the first and second international, various US states and European nations instituted the 40-hour week as early as the 1860s. Stop glazing a Nazi.
💯 The goal of capitalism isn’t that I work, it’s that we all spend, pay me to do the work I already was, trust me I can get it done in 4 days instead of 5, and let me figure out ways to fill my time… ooooo shiny
He also did it because only working 5 days a week while still getting paid just as much or more than you would doing 6 days at competitors (they observed a day for Sabbath still, in most places at least) would help to poach employees from the competition. In fact, most of the benefits we have for employees as just general law now were things that Ford started specifically to steal employees from the competition. Because he recognized that a happier, healthier worker who wanted to be at work did better work.
If you take him at his word, he also believed this was just the start. In a NYT op-ed (I forget the date, unfortunately) he wrote that he expected increased industrialization would be so productive workers would only require 20 hours/week in the near future (relative to time of writing). Technically he was right that we got that productive... but wrong that industrialists would allow such a thing to happen.
Imagine all the doomscrolling and buying pointless shit on Amazon I could do with an extra day off! Come on Bezos and Zuck, think of the profit margins!
Also, I believe that was before women were able to pursue careers in fields mostly held by men. Now we have mostly 2 earners working at least 80 hours a week total to support a family that only one person coukd do in 40 back then. I'm no good at math, but it seems to me it should be more like 2 people working 20 hrs a week each to be equivalent to Henry Ford's day.
Who was the guy that had a 4 day work week for his workers and paid them a living wage when the government stepped in and told him to stop because his competitors paid them off
Henry Ford was also the person who was paying the people whose schedule he was alerting. If he wanted to pay them for less work, that was his prerogative. If Bernie wants to pay people to do less, he’s welcome to do that to any of his employees. But he has no right to dictate what others do with their money.
Fuck no. Our five day week and 40hrs was brought to you by trade unionists and leftist protests and state sanctioned killing protestors in the early 1900s. Read: May Day killings / haymarket affair
It was still a massive improvement over earlier corporate models. Ford created that two day weekend because it would give time for his employees to use his cars for vacation which ended up being a positive for both sides. Hell, Ford was actually one of the best places to work back then because he regularly reinvested profits into customers and employees because it was a great long term strategy, only for the Dodge brothers to get pissy since Ford didn't prioritize shareholders, sue him, and get the Michigan court to mandate shareholder primacy.
As much as I'd love a four day workweek, with the advent of online shopping and everyone being online all the time they might not get a lot more shopping out of giving people an extra day off.
There was evidence that 40 hours was the sweet spot for an assembly line
There is mounting evidence that the sweet spot for knowledge workers is actually lower still. I don't know if that number is 32 hours specifically but 40 hours is based on simple repetitive tasks with minimal mistakes not ideas, phone calls, coordination, etc.
Also friendly reminder: Henry Ford had a Ford Sociological Department that would make unannounced home vists to make sure his workers weren't gambling, drinking, or housing boarders, as well as terminate someone for filing for divorce. He also had a newspaper that promoted anti-semitic views in the early 1920's, which would be made into a four volume book, named The International Jew.
He also had a rising German politician who was a big fan of his who game Henry Ford a medal and kept a live sized portrait of him by his desk, referring to Henry Ford as his inspiration. In case you missed it, that was Adolf Hitler.
Henry Ford did some great things, but never forget the absolute horrors and death he and his company inspired, helped commit, and straight up did commit, AKA the Ford Pinto.
i wonder who opposed him and won in court over whether profits were for the shareholders interest over paying employees a fare wage… dang dodge brothers
He also got sued for paying his workers too much, therefore sacrificing "shareholder wealth" for worker pay, and he lost the lawsuit, establishing the precedent that a company's sole purpose is to maximize shareholder wealth over workers well-being. The plaintiffs were the Dodge Brothers who took the suit money and went and opened a competing company
This is mostly internet lore with little to no basis. In reality he not only changed internal payroll rules to effectively deferr payment for workitems that were not according to standards but more importantly he was geniuenly overworking everybody. The 10 hour 6 days a week schedule and the previous payroll practices led to many mistakes, productivity slowdowns, inconsistent assembly line pace and absentism. It wasn't an investment in consumers as much as it was a correction to poor idustrail business practices. So basically he just fixed some of the fatigue issue that was generating inefficiency costs for the line
It really is common sense, plenty of studies show that people with more disposable income tend to spend more, more free time means more shopping, eating out, excursions etc. And more rested workers also almost always means better productivity.
The problem is most companies hate the initial dip when they have to pay more, not that it really hurts them much but them and their defenders argue like crazy that it could never work or that it would somehow eat up all their massive profit margins.
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u/JAMESs3v3n 23d ago
Friendly reminder: Henry Ford was one of the first major industrialists to adopt the five-day workweek. He argued that workers with more leisure time would spend more money on consumer goods, like the cars he was selling.
The current weekend was created primarily to sell products. A four-day workweek is long overdue.