[franciscop]

> it's almost certainly true that overall work will go down (because efficiency will not go up enough to compensate for the loss of work time)

That might be true, or it might not. It depends on how much efficiency goes up and how much buffer time people has, right? In many jobs people spene a non-trivial amount of time reading news, or in FB/Twitter/etc, so it def can be true that removing one hour of news+twitter yields the same productivity.

[RHSeeger]

I've seen no compelling evidence to suggest that working fewer hours will raise efficiency enough to result in the same amount of work being done in those fewer hours. It _can_ be true, but it seems unlikely enough (to my intuition) that I'll assume it would not be the case unless someone can put forth a convincing argument/evidence.

[mlyle]

I assume you don't quite break even.

I really support 4x9, though, for a lot of reasons. It should become a work norm (and 36 hours set as the nominal workweek by government).

- I do think productivity will go up some, and the fall in output will be less than 10%. Split the difference, and call it 5%.

- Because there will be some fall in output, and because there are some professions where you need butts-in-seats for coverage... I think it will, by reducing the supply of labor, push up the equilibrium price and get more people into skilled work.

- It's a hedge against automation reducing demand for labor.

- I think we'll recognize a lot of ancillary benefits from reduction of commute times, etc.

- It's a massive difference in quality of life.