Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced legislation this week which would standardize a 32-hour workweek for the same pay.
"Today, American workers are over 400 percent more productive than they were in the 1940s. And yet, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than they were decades ago. That has got to change," Sanders said in a Wednesday press release.
"The financial gains from the major advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, and new technology must benefit the working class, not just corporate CEOs and wealthy stockholders on Wall Street," the statement continues. "It is time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life. It is time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay."
Sanders was joined by Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) in introducing the "Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act."
Companion legislation in the House was introduced by Rep. Mark Tekano (D-CA).
Sanders defended the bill in a Friday op-ed in CounterPunch:
Today in America, 28.5 million Americans – 18% of our workforce – now work over 60 hours a week and 40 percent of employees in America now work at least 50 hours a week. We were talking about a 40-hour workweek 80 years ago, and that is what people today, despite the explosion of technology, are working.
The sad reality is, Americans now work more hours than the people of most other wealthy nations. And we’re going to talk about what that means to the lives of ordinary people.
In 2022, employees in the United States, and I hope people hear this, logged 204 more hours a year than employees in Japan, and they’re hardworking people in Japan. 279 more hours than workers in the United Kingdom, and 470 more hours than workers in Germany.
Despite these long hours, the average worker in America makes almost $50 a week less than he or she did 50 years ago, after adjusting for inflation.
...
The question that we are asking today is a pretty simple question – do we continue the trend that technology only benefits the people on top, or that we demand that these transformational changes also benefits working people? And one of these benefits must be a 32-hour workweek.
And this is not a radical idea.
France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, has a 35-hour work week and is considering reducing it to 32.
Norway and Denmark, their workweek is about 37 hours and Belgium has already adopted a 4-day workweek.
Yet, as the American Thinker's Olivia Murray notes:
HuffPost reports that while running for a special election senate seat in 1974, Sanders drew unemployment benefits. He would rack up a number of other political office losses until 1981, at which point he became the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. A leftwing “fact-checker” outlet revealed that this was the first time in Sanders’s life that he had ever had a steady paycheck; if that’s true, Sanders would have been 39 years old before he actually had a steady job… but not even in the private sector actually producing anything!
This, this is the man trying to use government to force his manure ideas on all businesses; here are the specifics of the Sanders’s proposal, from The Hill:
The bill, over a four-year period, would lower the threshold required for overtime pay, from 40 hours to 32 hours. It would require overtime pay at a rate of 1.5 times a worker’s regular salary for workdays longer than 8 hours, and it would require overtime pay at double a worker’s regular salary for workdays longer than 12 hours.
I mean, if we’re just throwing our preposterous and pie-in-the-sky ideas, why not eliminate work altogether Bernie? When it’s “government-funded” that means it’s “free” right? Why don’t we all just get on Universal Basic Income, starting at a million dollars a year—or heck, why not a billion? We could all be on the government payroll like you! “Free” healthcare, “free” Peloton memberships, “free” retirement plans, etc. It will be a perfect socialist utopia!
A Marxist has absolutely no clue how wealth is actually produced, because they don’t produce anything beneficial for anyone (that’s not hyperbole), and they seem incapable of realizing the obvious: the more the government intervenes in the market, the more expensive everything becomes.
It’s a philosophy from the deadbeat of deadbeats; here’s this, from FEE:
On some days, Marx could not even leave his house because his wife Jenny had to pawn his pants to buy food. His friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, frequently sent Marx money (between 1865 and 1869 alone Engels gave Marx the equivalent of $36,000). In a letter written on his fiftieth birthday to Engels, Marx recalled his mother’s words: ‘if only Karl made capital instead of just writing about it.’
LOSER. (I mean, this man walked around pantsless instead of getting a job and feeding his family.)
If only Bernie stuck to stealing our capital, instead of trying to legislate it out of existence.
