The Atlasian economy has been on a completely different trajectory than that of the real-life US for a decade now. Sure, gradual yet cumulatively-massive adjustments to our employment and the economy have been made during this time, but there is no economic evidence to suggest that a 32-hour work week has been detrimental to the national economy.
The average Atlasian minimum wage worker earns 165% that of a real-life US worker per hour (to my knowledge, the Right Wages for the Right Regions provisions haven't been utilized by any region); couple that with basic economic indicators like inflation that have been available at times through the GM's office, and evidence would suggest that the purchasing power of the average citizen is much stronger than in the real world with our current 32-hour work week.
Some basic math would suggest that the effective weekly earnings for someone who is earning minimum wage while working 32 hours per week in Atlasia is comparable to someone who is earning $9.60 per hour while working 40 hours per week in real-life.
I don't believe anybody (especially the left wingers in this thread) was debating whether or not a 32 hour workweek was unviable. I myself would prefer if we actually had a 28 hour workweek (7 hours a day, four days a week) with overtime to kick in after 28. I don't have the math or the science to say "yes this will cure cancer" but for a center left nation it's both doable and won't completely wreck the economy.
20 hour workweeks though? Under an system that is at least vaguely capitalist? The Bachelor of Accounting in me senses that would cause too much chaos. Of course, this is hard for some of you to understand, given that there are literally no real life consequences to this game.
Of course my point is, you guys might as well have your damn revolution rather than come out with these insane ideas.
Oh, I just jumped in on the tail-end of this discussion and wanted to make sure we weren't considering raising the minimum work-week, due to the economic situation already being better as-is with 32 hours at minimum wage than it is in real-life with 40 hours at minimum wage.
And what a Glorious Revolution it has been.
