Stuff You Should Know - How the Five Day Weekend Works

Episode Date: December 9, 2008

What if Congress passed a law mandating a two-day week work? The Friends of the Five Day Weekend want Congress to do just that -- sort of. Check out this podcast to find out if their proposal is feasible or just plain farfetched. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to Stuff You Should Know. It's Josh and Chuck. Hi, Josh. Yeah, there you go. Was you waiting on me?

I was. I was staring right at you, Chuck. I didn't notice. I should have given you a... Yeah. Yeah. You know, Chuck, I don't know if you've checked out the editorial department calendar recently of our editorial calendar. Sure. Yeah, sure. Not the article slated, but our actual calendar calendar. Oh, no, no, no. No, you haven't? No. Well, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that if you go into the week of Christmas, this coming December, we work two days. That's not, and you know, I'm not working any. Are you taking those days off? Oh, yeah, I'm taking off a couple of weeks.

Well, you know, I used up almost all my vacation time. Sure. I'm very grateful for this. But do you realize what that gives us? Less... What it gives me? Well, it sounds like a two-day work week. It sounds also like a five-day weekend. Right. Yeah. One man's two-day work week is another man's five-day week. Yeah, it definitely depends on how you look at it. If you're a workaholic two-day work week, if you're, you know, a slacker, five-day weekend. Right. That sounds great. It does. And actually, our HR department

isn't the first to ever come up with this concept. Is that so? It is so. There is actually a movement of foot, Chuck, called the Friends of the Five-Day Weekend. Right. There is actually a constitutional amendment, a proposal for one. Right. Which, last time I counted, had about 6,500 signatures on it. I wasn't too impressed with that number, by the way. No, it could be better. Yeah. Basically petitioning Congress to say, all right, you know, we're going to have

a two-day work week from now on, and the rest is a weekend. Right. Legally, you, if you work more than this, you have to pay, you have to be paid over time. Right. I love that this group really went for it there. They didn't go with a three-day weekend, or even a fourth. They just said, screw it, five days off, two days a week will work. Yeah. And we should probably give a little background on this group. I got to tell you, it sounds very tongue-in-cheek. It sounds almost satirical and a joke, and it almost completely is. It's, the group behind it is the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau, I believe. Right. Asheville, North Carolina. And this is an ad campaign, a marketing campaign,

to get people to Asheville to, you know, create this five-day weekend so everybody could come to Asheville and spend their five-day weekends there. Now, do you know how it was the idea just to get press? I think so. I think that was part of it, but I think it was kind of like a whole campaign. And then the press aspect wrote itself, you know, especially once they floated a constitutional amendment. So it was kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing, but actually people reacted to it. They responded to it. You know, hey, that sounds great kind of thing, especially I imagine when there's like, you know, they held rallies at festivals and stuff like that. And I imagine the more beer there was there, the more of a response there was to it, you know? Sure, no work. Five-day weekend

kind of thing. So, well, we found out about it here at How Stuff Works. And of course, as is our way, we took a tongue-in-cheek idea to the nth degree. It's extreme conclusion. And wanted to find out, I mean, like, what the deal is. Could this even work? Right. And what would happen if it did? So it's like, be careful making a joke around us because we'll investigate it and publish it. And if it's a stupid idea, we'll say so. Right. But frankly, these people, I think they have a good idea. I think the Friends of the Five-Day Weekend, they have a good idea and they're actually pointing something out. What's that? They're pointing out that Americans work way too hard and have become far, far too serious. Right. Well, Donald Trump doesn't agree with you. No, he doesn't,

but that's the Donald. Yeah. He said the idea was ridiculous. He did. He actually, he said it in his blog. Right. I'm impressed that it got to him in the first place. I'm impressed that he knows how to blog. That's true. So, yeah, he didn't like that. But there's plenty of people who agree with the concept. And actually, this idea that Americans are overworked is, we've got yards of figures here, Chuck. Chuck, how about some figures? I'm the stat man. Yeah. In 2007, a survey was performed by the conference board and they found that fewer than 50 percent of Americans were happy with their jobs. Sounds right. Yeah, that's pretty sad, though. Yeah. In 1987, 61 percent had job satisfaction. That's a sharp decline. And you will note that I think in 1987, that was the year that the Michael

Keaton pro-American movie, Gung-Ho, came out and really kicked the American worker into overdrive. We're not going to get beaten by the Japanese. Let's get to work, you know. So you think you had a lot to do with it. It'll be the lovable Michael Keaton led the charge. Well, I think that's, it's centered exclusively around the movie Gung-Ho. Yeah. Wow. Pretty Batman, Michael Keaton. Right. Yeah. And then there was another study in 2004 that one-third of all Americans feel overworked, which I thought it might be a little higher than that, to be honest. I would, too. But I think we've also developed an endurance over time, too. Right. From fat, lazy, pre-Gung-Ho days to like, you know, kind of a lean, trim workforce. Yeah. And I think that's slightly evidenced by, I know,

something else you mentioned in the article that a lot of Americans don't use all their vacation days. No, 10 of 14. Yeah, that's just crazy. That was in 2006 that added to 574 million unused vacation days. Yeah. That is one thing you will never catch me with unused vacation days. That's great. Hats off to you, buddy. I just, I don't, I don't get it. Yeah. Time off is good. I'm not lazy. No, you definitely aren't lazy, but you know, you know how to live, you know how to take care of yourself. Yeah. And the value of time off, it's a value at treasure it. But I think there's a lot of people, I think you could even say a majority of American workers don't know. They don't know how to do that. So that's kind of the point of this five-day

week and it's like, wake up, man. Settle down. Let's all just kind of chill out here. They're learned to live like Chuck. That kind of thing. Well, I think I don't have any stats for this, but I bet a lot of these types are the men and women that are after the dollar and that, you know, they figure if they're snoozing, they're losing on money. And, you know, people use asinine rhymes to describe like their motivation. Right. And we're not really like that. We're meager livers. And yeah, we know how to be happy and content. Yeah. Without, you know, making $300,000 a year. You're not making $300,000? Well, maybe I should renegotiate. So if you'll notice, Chuck, the friends of the five-day weekend, like I said,

they proposed a constitutional amendment. Now, if Congress for some weird reason took this up, championed it and passed it, it actually wouldn't be the first time that they've done this. Right. Did you know that there wasn't any such thing as a weekend in the United States until 1938? I know. That's weird. And the weekend was actually created by a congressional act. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. I bet no one, that's your takeaway today, folks. If you want to amaze around the water cooler, that's a good fact. Yeah. The weekend was created by Congress. Right. And it was called the Fair Labor Standards Act. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about, we talked about the Labor Department in free market regulation

podcast, if you'll remember. And, you know, they shouldn't exist in this free market, but really the Fair Labor Standards Act is one of these shining acts that really protects people. Right. You know, it established a 44-hour workweek, you know, Monday through Friday, about eight hours a day. It also established a minimum wage. Right. Got rid of child labor. Right. Across the board, it was a good act. Yeah. And it stood the test of time, clearly. Yeah. Because the 40-hour workweek is still, kind of between 40 and 50 is still the standard. Exactly. Okay. So, what would happen if we did go to a two-day a week workweek? Well, you tell me. No, you tell me.

Well, it depends on, are you talking about economically speaking? Yeah. I know people would be a lot happier. Well, supposedly. It depends. I mean, can you really say that? Well, that's just my feeling. Okay. Let me tell you about an unnatural law that you might be interested in. All right. Here's the first problem with the two-day workweek. How are you going to do five days worth of work in two days? Is it possible? Well, stay off Facebook. Exactly. That would be a good start. There's this guy named, I believe, Alan Parkinson. No, that's Alan Parsons project,

I'm thinking. Seed Northcoat Parkinson. He created Parkinson's law. It's like Murphy's law. It's an unnatural law, right? Kind of a rye observation. And Parkinson's law says that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. So, if you have a one-day job to do, but you're given a week to do it, it's going to take you pretty much all week to do that job. No matter how hard you try. So, I guess if you put Parkinson's law up to the five-day weekend, you could probably trim several days off of your workweek if you just went all out for those two days. Probably not going to be able to finish everything in two days, but it is possible, right? I would agree. Okay. So, that's number one. And then number two,

as far as the friends of the five-day weekend see it, basically we're not taking any time for ourselves as it is, even on the weekends. Right, because there's a lot of times, so much time spent working that the weekends are often spent doing chores, housework, that kind of thing. And in a strict economic sense, in a strict economic definition, actually, leisure time is activities that give direct enjoyment. So, just because you have time off doesn't mean you're engaging in leisure time, which is the whole point behind the five-day weekend thing. We need more time to have leisure time because, like you said, we're vacuuming, we're running errands, that kind of thing. That's not leisure time. That's working, but not being paid for it. So, that's another

aspect of the whole thing. And there's also a physical aspect to it. Our health could actually improve if we adopted a five-day weekend. Case in point, a 2000 study from the University of Pittsburgh and the State University of New York, Oswego, they found that there was a direct correlation between middle-aged men who were at risk for heart disease, suffering heart attacks, and a lack of vacation time. Right. I did a lot of articles recently on the heart and stress, as you know, and it's there. It's not supposed, you know, it's those are direct links. Yeah, there's definitely a mind-body link, and it appears to be stress is the most clear example of it, right? Right. So, okay. So, we would technically be able to do most of our work

in two days that we're now taking five days to do. We would be able to actually engage in actual leisure time, our health would benefit, and even more, there's a model already in place for lots of time off, and that's in Europe. Correct. I went to Malta, remember this summer? There's this guy who's a diplomat over in Croatia. He's an English diplomat, and he had like 86 paid days off per year. You're kidding. No, I'm not kidding at all. He hardly knew what to do with all the time off that he had. Wow. And it was fairly, fairly common, fairly standard. Yeah. And I'm like, wow, I get two weeks off. Right. You know, so yeah, it was kind of, it was a rough thing to come, you know, face-to-face with. Right. I'm jealous of your, we often talk about our weekend activities,

and you really do it right at your house. Yeah, but you have a very improved house. Well, I'm renovating a house. Some of you may know this, some of you may not. So, there's a lot of work to be done on the weekends. I do get pleasure out of that though. So, I guess technically, that still counts as leisure time. Yeah, as long as you're deriving pleasure is a direct pleasure. So, Chuck, let's look at it from an economic aspect. Now, we know what the friends of the five-day weekend are saying, that it could be beneficial to us, but you know, would it be beneficial to the economy? Well, this is where you need to school me, because I know economics is your, your one true love in life. I love economics actually. It's so weird and nerdy, but I've become

fascinated by it as I've grown older. And there's this guy who pertains to what we're talking about named John Maynard Keynes. Right. And he appropriately enough came up with Keynesian economics. And he wrote a paper, basically Keynesian economics is a form of macroeconomics. Right. So, before people would say, oh, okay, there's this much, much wealth in the world, or, you know, people sold this many goods, and, you know, there was this gross profit, and then, you know, minus expenditures, and now you have net profit, and there's economics. Right. And Keynes is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're missing like a lot of aspects here. So, like, our, our really, I guess, granular view of economics now where we're, we're keeping track of office

supply indexes or indices. That's all Keynesian. He said, we need to take into account debt and taxes and all this other stuff, right? Right. Makes sense. So, by the time he writes this paper called economic, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, you. Economic possibilities for our grandchildren. Right. And he writes that in 1930, and he'd already established himself as like the, the economic genius of his age. So, he writes this thing, everybody's listening, right? And in it, he says, okay, he took a very conservative growth rate of, of the economy and wealth, which he called a capital equipment. Yeah, thank you. He said 2% growth per year, and a 7.5% growth of the capital equipment, which is, I believe, all the money available in the

world. Right. And within 100 years, we're going to basically be living in this leisure society that the Friends of the Five-Day Weekend came up with. Yeah, I love this theory. Right. Now, he actually took a, his, his estimates were pretty much spot on, and they were actually a slightly more conservative. We've grown more than that. Right. And I believe like our capital equipment has grown much more than 7.5. I think it's like 100 or 200 times or some, some really enormous amount. And yet, we're still not in this leisure society that Keynes envisioned. Right. Within 100 years, even though we far exceeded his predictions for growth, right? Yeah, he was off the mark there for sure. He was, though, why? Well, I think you actually did an interview,

correct? I did two interviews. Uh-huh. And I've always kind of had this idea that if you want to know a question, go to Harvard. Right. That's good. They have some really, really good interview subjects. And actually, I also called a guy from Cornell, too. And both of them just turned out to be spot on. Uh-huh. And, um, yeah, from Cornell, Robert Frank, and from Harvard, Richard Freeman. And the thing is, is I call both of them out of the blue. Neither one of them had ever heard of the Five-Day Weekend before. Uh-huh. And both of them just right off the cuff, talked just perfectly, gave me all the information I needed. And as if that weren't enough, both of them had just submitted chapters for a book called Revisiting Keens on the very question I called them about.

And I had no idea that book was even coming out. So it was all just kind of going. Like, you know, we're operating on all cylinders here. I'm kind of, I can't sit down while I'm interviewing. I'm very excited. It's economics and all that. Um, so Robert Frank from Cornell, his, his theory was that we haven't reached this Keynesian leisure society because Keynes grossly underestimated relative needs. Right. So you've got basic needs, right? Which are like food and water and say clothing, right? And then there's relative needs as well, which can also be basic needs, like for example, clothing, but instead of, you know, tattered rags that keep you warm, relative need would be a nice suit. Right. And what Frank was saying was that, um,

in our modern society, it's not enough to just have tattered rags that keep you warm. If you want to have a better life, if you want to provide for your children, you have to throw more into relative needs. So your suit has to be nicer so you can get a better job at an interview and then pay for your children. And it's become much more important. You can't walk into a place in an interview and in rags, this basic need that's been covered and expect to advance in life. True. So he, it was his opinion that that's why Keynes missed the mark. Right. Freeman, I know you interviewed, and this was from Harvard, correct? And he just kind of flatly said that Keynes overestimated our desire for leisure. Yeah. And that it's an

five day work week is pretty optimal. Yeah. He said that, um, that labor and management came to a perfect agreement pretty much the five day, eight, five day work week, eight hour day. Right. What do you think? I've got to tell you, you know, I, I had since before that that's, it's, I, I don't like too much time off. It's weird. I feel weird. I feel like I have to do something. I have to produce something. And, um, yeah, too much time off actually makes me a little edgy. I think a four day work week would be just about right for me. I think it'd be good to pepper it here or there. Right. I don't think it has to be standard every time. It may be like twice a month. You get a day or two off or something like that. And we're not talking about telecommuting.

That's a different deal. It totally is. Yeah. This is actually a day off. Right. Yeah. A day off where you're just not expected to do any work. Yeah. Right. Um, okay. So, so now we, we, the, the friends of the five day week, they, uh, five day weekend, they don't, um, they, they're not the first to come up with it. Keynes did. Um, but I asked Freeman and Frank, uh, you know, what, really, what would happen to the economy? Sure. If we do this, what would happen? Yeah. What you got? Well, I know the first thing that, um, you would have to do is to convince your employers to pay you a full wage for two days work. Right. So paying on production rather than time. Right. Which makes sense. But, uh, I don't think either of them assume that employers would be willing

to do that. Right. So right there, you, you've got two-fifths of the wages we have now. Exactly. Which is fine for domestic products, right? Right. So anything that's produced domestically, um, it's going to fall down and step eventually to reflect these two-fifths of wages that Americans are making. In theory, yes. Okay. But also houses would get substantially smaller, cars would get substantially smaller, but we'd be able to survive. Basically America would take a gigantic step backward out of the rat race. Right. As one collective whole. But then it would all kind of catch up with itself and adjust itself. It would. And, and everything would be fine. Right. Uh, it'd be much like it is now, except two-fifths is valuable. Right. But, uh, foreign

produce goods in comparison to our lowered wages, the prices of those would skyrocket. Right. So so long Sony Plasma TV. Right. Because do you, it'd be so, it'd be as out of, out of balances as, you know, a $500 million home is. Right. The average person. Um, so you'd have that. But again, we'd still be fine. Our relative needs would, would lower to, to reflect that two-fifth wage. But I think it was a Freeman who predicted sadly that we would still compete with one another. Right. Like we'd still want to get the, the best TV we could for two-fifths of the wages we were getting and we'd want it to be better than someone else. Yeah. The Joneses. Yeah. Which is kind of sad that, you know, even after taking a gigantic step backward, we would still compete with one

another. Right. This is an interesting article. It'll clearly never happen, but, uh, it's interesting to kind of think about what the what if. I think so too. I think so too. So, uh, there's actually quite a bit more to this article. Right. Uh, you tell me, you wrote it. Well, let's, let's, let's just advise people to go on to our handy site, look into our handy search bar, just type five day weekend into the search bar, howstuffworks.com and stick around because it is a listener mail time. Right. Listener mail time. Listener mail time. Okay. So Chuck, who is our listener mail from? Our listener is David and we have no last name. We don't know where David's from, but, uh, David did not take kindly to our Delta Force podcast. Okay. But he was very

constructive in his criticism. Okay. Good to know. David says, hi, Chuck and Josh. I usually enjoy your podcast quite a bit, but your recent podcast on Delta Force was way over the line. Yeah. Uh, while I appreciate the bone you threw human human rights activists at the end before suggesting that they may be killed for a policy disagreement, you're over the top adulation for all things military was disturbing. Uh, you seem to suggest that any action they took was justifiable saying how happy you were that they were taking care of business. Uh, not every policy decision may be our government, particularly when using shadowy military groups for the best. Uh, I'm not going to read it because it's too long, but basically

he thinks our opinion of special forces might change if some European or Arabian country special forces to tap their way through the White House to arrest our president. Uh, so he was kind of just disagreeing with us a little bit. And at the end there, David's referring to, uh, the kernel of Delta Force backwards to tap method, two shots to the head of every terrorist, which I have to say, can we play a clip because we actually warned David and all the other listeners that it could devolve into something like this, right? Sure. Let's listen. Okay. It is. Yeah. There's, uh, we should probably warn the listeners right now. Chuck and I will most likely devolve into some sort of weird boyhood admiration of all the sick, sick stuff Delta Force has done over the years.

So just be forewarned. If we start tittering or get really excited or one of us takes our shirt off, don't be offended. Okay. So David actually shamed us a bit. We did feel bad after this one, if I recall correctly, because we're not big work guys. No, we're not. It's just this weird power the Delta Force has over us. Yes. We are odd. Yes. We got a little, um, a little juvenile, sure. But yeah, David, generally we, we would agree with you. Right. We believe in, in human rights and, um, uh, p diplomacy, non-military reaction is as much, but I think one point that we tried to make and I don't know if we made it clear enough is that if there is action to be taken, we would much prefer a small operation, um, rather than some day 130,000 troops and invasion.

Yeah. And just quickly before we go, we got a message from another Dave about the same podcast. Hi, I listened to your podcast from the UK and really liked the one about Delta Force. Would it be possible for you to do one on European special forces like in Germany and France? Cheers. Yes. And cheers to you, Dave. Um, we were not aware that France had a special force. So some guys liked it. Some guys didn't. That's great. Oh, and don't forget our girlfriend in Sudan who started listening to it through her speakers and sent us an email saying that she felt uncomfortable doing so. So press pause. Right. But she was happy with it as well. Yeah, great. So thank you to all three of you guys for sending email. Um, and David, thank you very

much for letting us know how you feel. We appreciate it. If you guys want to send us an email, let us know what's on your mind, whether you like what we said, whether you didn't. Either way, we're cool with it. Send it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Attention, bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.