Spain to launch modest trial of four-day working week
&quot;The Workweek&quot; is, surprisingly, a really deep topic.<p>Keynes&#x27; 15 hr work week prediction, for example, is a fascinating rabbit to travel down. The typical economics professors&#x27; &quot;why it failed&quot; explanations (at least circa 2005) are tellingly evasive. They preserve all Keynes&#x27; premises^ with a &quot;<i>what &quot;happened</i>&quot; scenario that threads a tiny needle.<p>IMO, regardless of which rabbit hole you follow, it turns out that workweek is a very culturally defined thing. It isn&#x27;t very reactive to economic forces at all. People get rich. Societies get rich. Women join the workforce. Efficiency rises by N000%. Workweeks remain similar.<p>Where quantity of work does change, it tends to be outside the workweek paradigm. Retirement became a big thing. Children don&#x27;t work. Young adults do a lot of college. Women join the workforce, or don&#x27;t. IE, we might work fewer years. Fewer people might work. Shortening workweeks rarely happens.<p>IMO, empirically, workweeks seem to be mostly a social institution... not an &quot;economic&quot; one. IE, economic explanations have very little predictive power because &quot;out-of-theory&quot; stuff is more important.<p>^[1]advancements in efficiency, [2] substitution effects, [3] income effects.