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Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day work week
(techcrunch.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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You can't resist technology, it will ALWAYS win. Economies always strive to be more efficient, and people will always gravitate towards the convenience of efficiency. Because of this, new technologies get adopted all the time, and economies evolve with them.
Think about computers for a second. How many jobs have they created that didn't exist 50 years ago? There were no online retailers or social media managers or youtubers or software engineers back then. These are all new jobs that were created recently, and they dominate our economy. Even traditional jobs that didn't use computers before like an accountant, lawyer, or doctor do now because these are powerful tools.
But it's not just computers, the same thing happened with the television, the radio, the telegraph, cars, trains, even light bulbs. Before, electric street lamps became a thing, cities used to hire lamplighters who would go around the streets lighting and extinguishing gas lamps. When electric street lamps started being adopted a lot of people complained about how this new technology is going to automate away jobs and hurt the economy... but it didn't.
Instead, the economy specialized and people created new businesses and took on new jobs. The same thing will happen here. It's simply going be the next major thing to evolve the economy, and we will adopt it and adapt to it just like the many different technologies before it.
Nobody is arguing that technology won’t progress. Even Marx defends that as a precondition for socialism/communism.
The question is the following. Tomorrow a ground breaking technology is developed that makes literally everyone twice as productive. (Please let’s ignore the technical aspect of this. I’m simplifying for the sake of the argument, but this is happening at some paces everywhere).
Now you have 3 options:
Number 1 is what people are talking about in this thread.
Number 2 won’t happen because salaries aren’t actually tied to productivity. Productivity just sets a higher limit on salary that in any case is never reached. The salaries are actually determined by competition between workers.
Number 3. Has been happening since the seventies and will continue to happen.
But we're talking about different things though. I don't disagree with the notion that the work week should decrease or that people should get more based on their production. We're in total agreement here. I'm arguing that automation is going to bring about the apocalypse like the person I replied to implied because history shows us that this wasn't the case when similar situations arose in the past. Technology does progress, the economy does evolve, old jobs and industries do die out, and people do lose their jobs because of it. But what is also true at the same time is that new jobs and industries do get created because of the new technology, and the people who lose their jobs do adapt and end up getting new roles that utilize their skill sets. People who get laid off don't become forever useless, people aren't that rigid.
Yes new jobs will be created but more and more wealth is concentrated at the top
It’s not the apocalypse but it’s also not not bad in many ways.
Technological progress should only be a good thing but in a capitalist society like ours it has a lot of downsides too (for the majority of the population ofc)
But this isn't an issue of technology or economic progress, but of politics. These are two different discussions. Jobs being automated away isn't new nor is it going away. It's simply a part of the evolution of economies. The issues we have stem from a flawed political system that's not doing it's job.
For our system to work as intended, we need to have a robust democratically elected government that proactively regulates the economy on the behalf of the people to protect consumers, the environment, and the health of the economy. This is one of the fingers of the invisible hand. A government is supposed to break up monopolies, ban deceptive and predatory practices, protect consumers from harmful products, make sure that businesses don't pollute the environment, protect workers from exploitation, and so on. In other capitalist countries like Sweden, Germany, and Ireland they have this, we don't... at least not anymore.
The reason for this is because there's no accountability in our government anymore. No politician faces any consequences no matter the crime or controversy. Our public officials no longer fear the public, and this type of unchecked power allows them to be corrupt because they know they can get away with it. They have lost any incentive to do their job of holding bad actors in the country accountable and instead started doing their bidding (like endless deregulation and tax cuts for the rich). That's the root of our issue, and blaming AI for it is just silly.
First I’m not from the US
Second, yes ofc it’s politics. Nobody is disagreeing on that.
Third even in Europe this is becoming a problem even if the inequality gap doesn’t grow as fast