On first reading, the suggestion by the New Economics Foundation, reported on the BBC website, sounds great - 4 day weekend, wehey!
Naturally, it'll never happen, but suppose for a moment it did. This would represent a massive shift to the left in the Aggregate Supply curve for the economy, since we could produce much less if we could only work for 21 hours each week.
Moreover, it's an entirely illogical proposal: Force people to work less - what about those people that want to work 37.5 hours a week, and don't feel like they've done enough if they haven't put a good work week in? Some people might like it, but forcing people to work less instead of the current situation where some people feel forced to work more doesn't seem like much of a difference.
This blog accompanies the econ101ab Principles of Economics course given at the University of Birmingham. The lecturers for both parts of the course (101a, microeconomics and 101b, macroeconomics) will occasionally post here on matters related to lecture material. We hope to show the relevance of the concepts we are teaching at each stage of the course for helping understand how the world works...
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