Germany and even folks in the USA seriously starting to look at the 4 day work week. Another unexpected side effect of covid?
Wonder how long before we are seriously considering it here?
https://m.dw.com/en/germanys-biggest-union-calls-for-4-day-week-to-save-thousands-of-jobs/a-54582132
This new interview with Max and Stacy at the Keiser Report, with Alasdair McLeod of Goldmoney.com is dynamite. Four day week? Think yourself lucky if you get a day of paid work a month to just about keep body and souls scraped together, once this bastard goes down. Think 1929-1933 on stilts on steroids:
As usual, these canny fellows recommend gold, silver and bitcoin as reliable stores of real value of your savings during such an omnishambles. Personally, I go with the precious metals, but I wonder what happens to cryptocurrencies, and the very blockchain itself, if the power goes out for the internet; and that prospect is definitely on the horizon as the Long Descent (qv) continues to pick us speed (having already begun). Bitcoin ‘mining’ - hah! - is a huge, ludicrous - and inherently unsustainable - splurge of electrical energy, quite apart from the ultra-hitech physical infrastructure which is utterly essential to its functioning. What happens when its no longer possible - literally physically impossible - to keep a whole-Earth internet going…?
Evening @Rhis
Thanks for the link. I’ve not watched Max and Stacie for a while, I’ll definitely check em out!
You’re right about the bitcoin, I think. It’s a very decentralised system, though, so it would require a massive power outage affecting many parts of the globe, but such a thing is definitely possible.
I wonder whether this is another great depression upon us, and what that would mean. Couple that with the loss of many Graeber-esque “shit jobs” due to automation and computerisation, and the further loss of close contact face to face jobs (masseurs, physics etc) due to fear of and regulation around covid and it does seem a fearful storm is a-brewing.
At the same time Apple had just been valued at 2 trillion dollars… Who are they going to keep selling their shiny new shit to?
I wonder how many hundreds of millions of unemployed this global system can absorb and continue to survive? 200 million? 500 million? A billion?
These numbers seen unthinkable, but we hit 50-60 million official unemployed just in the USA (and unofficial is surely much higher).
This 4 day idea is a scramble to try and hang onto the shreds of the biz-as-usual, and I fully expect it to be rolled out as a desperate measure. And most likely some form of UBI too, but will they work?
Desperate, poor, unemployed people don’t tend to lie down and die just because the rich masters tell them to… A big change is surely coming.
Cheers