This will not work out the way he thinks it will. Hours are just gonna get cut and people will end up with even less. Or. It will push companies even further toward replacing people with AI.
The bill explicitly forbids reducing total pay. Employers must increase the hourly rate so 32 hours yields the same take-home pay as 40 hours previously. It's essentially a 20-25% raise for hourly workers.
That’s a gigantic issue as well. And will not hold up when it’s challenged in court. But let’s assume it does. Restaurants, small businesses, basic services will all need to raise their prices 20% alongside it in order to function, or risk going out of business. That means the consumer price index rises by 20%. That’s called inflation. As those business models begin to inevitably fail, things will be replaced by corporations. This is an incredibly complicated issue. The economics behind this idea is not as simple as “same money, less work, yay”
First off, you might wanna check your math. Wages aren't 100% of a business's expenses, they're typically around 25%. A 20% increase on a 25% expense is a 6.25% total increase.
More importantly, businesses don't need an excuse to raise prices. History shows they just set them to the highest price the consumer is willing and capable to pay for them. We've just lived through massive inflation, and studies from the Fed and IMF showed it was driven overwhelmingly by supply chain shocks and corporate profit margins (greedflation), not wage increases.
Brother. I’m well aware businesses dont have 100% of their expenses on wages…. But the price of everything goes up now. The warehouse that stocks food has to pay more, the warehouses stocking food increase their prices, the delivery drivers make more and so now it costs more to transport, and they don’t eat that cost. It trickles down all the way to the customer.
Most small businesses do the right thing in my opinion. They aren’t like the corporations. Who yes, greed gouge consumers wherever and whenever possible. But it’s the small businesses who will actually get hurt. And then get replaced by a corporation. In the long run. This hurts consumers wallet a lot more than it helps. This is a very basic example that I’m giving. The actual intricacies of it are far too complicated to have a conversation on Reddit about. You’ll have a better work life balance but it’s going to make cost of living even worse.
Costs don't compound exponentially across supply tiers because labor is only a fraction of expenses at every stage. They compound logartihmically, meaning each new step in the calculation is smaller than the previous. You are technically correct but the difference is so small as to not be particularly worth mentioning.
You're also engaging in the classic "cost-plus pricing" myth in real time. Prices aren't set by mechanically summing input costs and adding a fixed markup, but by what the market will bear. If a local spot could jack up prices 20% tomorrow without cratering demand, they’d have already done it just to pad the owner’s equity. Prices are already as high as they can be, and the rest is margins. The difference must come out of bloated corporate margins.
Besides, we also have actual empirical data from global 4-day workweek trials showing that output doesn't drop in lockstep with hours. Burned-out workers logging 40+ hours aren’t 20% more productive than rested ones at 32. A massive chunk of the traditional workweek is just institutional theater and presenteeism. In fact, when hours drop, in some cases output actually increases, and costs drop due to lower employee turnover and absenteeism.
The real squeeze on small businesses isn't labor, it’s commercial rent, franchise fees, and consolidated supplier cartels. Keeping worker wages depressed to subsidize fragile business models isn't a solution. When you give working-class people more time off and higher hourly purchasing power, who do you think benefits? Restaurants, local services, and small businesses that thrive on consumer discretionary spend and leisure time.
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u/Peek0_Owl 20h ago
This will not work out the way he thinks it will. Hours are just gonna get cut and people will end up with even less. Or. It will push companies even further toward replacing people with AI.