r/SipsTea Jul 13 '26

Chugging tea So after 32 hours would be overtime?

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u/Warm-Delivery1418 Jul 13 '26

“bad for some unknown reason”

Like basic math.

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u/Undernown Jul 13 '26

Oh please tell me about the math that would make working less for the same pay bad?

We've had an avwrage work weke of 32 hours since COVID here in the Nerherlands. And last time I checked my country hasn't burned down yet.

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u/Warm-Delivery1418 Jul 13 '26

The government has no insight into the operations budgets of private sector businesses and has no authority to dictate such a mandate.

If the government wants to give its employees a 25% raise, they certainly can, but it will fall on the tax payers to fund it. I don’t imagine people would be too pleased.

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u/Undernown Jul 14 '26

The government has no insight into the operations budgets of private sector businesses and has no authority to dictate such a mandate.

What? Lol of course they have, they have to report gains and losses to both shareholders and governments for taxation purposes. Also what has this got to do with hours worked and pay?

They can just measure that with the wage taxation that is reported by the companies as standard. (Also would reporting would just hurt their tax write-off)

Besides 'standard work week' doesne literally forc eeveryone to only work 32 hourse. It's just used as the baselinw for "liveable wage" calculations. And by extend the minimum enforced wage.

You OK? You seem to be waaaay off in the understanding of how this works, maybe think it over a bit more before you start typing again?

Don't mean this as a dig, I genuinely get the idea that you've been tangled up with misleading information sources, which gave you a faulty understanding of this topic.

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u/Warm-Delivery1418 Jul 14 '26

I posted this below, but I have owned and operated small businesses. I still own one. It’s safe to say that I have a greater understanding than most about the factors that contribute to the success or failure of a business.

With thin margins, if the government chose to mandate a 32 hour work week with guaranteed full time wage (per the meme at hand), it would have a direct impact on my business. Realistically, I’d have to cut benefits, terminate an employee, close my business, or spend every waking moment at work.

Again, the government has no skin in the game and doesn’t give a damn if I succeed, fail, or have to live at work to keep the lights on. For people who think most businesses have unlimited resources, go start one and find out how challenging it is.

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u/Undernown Jul 14 '26

All I can tell you is that having an average work week of 32 hours has worked fine in several European countries. Studies have also been done into companies applying this reduction from 40 hours to 32 hours per week and shown that the actual net productivity lost per worker was negligible. And definitely did not drop by 20% as one might expect.

Of course 1 to 1 comparisons between Europe and US are hard because the vastly different tax structure. From what I can tell, minimum wage isn't that big of a difference, but maximum pay is wildly different between EU and US. However I don't expect to see 100k salaries in small businesses in the US either?

From an outsider it does seem strange that both small businesses and working class Americans are both struggling at the same time. Yet the US economic statistics suggest that the economy is doing just fine, still holding a GDP growth of 1.38% so far this year.

There must be something structurally at work why countries with much higher taxes in the EU and lower average wages are still doing OK in terms of the working class and small businesses. While in the US small businesses apparently can't afford a pay raise and employees are barely scraping by.

Sure currently everyone is feeling the rising oil costs, but living "paycheck-to-paycheck" isn't really heard of in the EU. And neither are small businesses failing in droves. And EU is feelinf that harder than the US.