There's nothing wrong with it, but all the parties involved just need to be conscious of the tradeoff involved: shifting focus from the production of wealth to the consumption of it. As long as the production is higher than the consumption, it's all good and sustainable.

But remember that especially in the scandinavian welfare states, your consumption isn't just your salary, it's a wide range of often rather expensive public services.

As is mentioned in the article, this has a flavour of political posturing, and it's not given that it will treated perfectly scientifically. But, of course, if it turns out that the employees are actually more efficient at the same cost, you can have your cake and eat it too.

> But remember that especially in the scandinavian welfare states, your consumption isn't just your salary, it's a wide range of often rather expensive public services.

It seems that outsiders (I am guessing you are, by the way you frame it) are eager to remind us that we have large public sectors, or whatever you want to call it. It feels a bit rude to me; as if you know better than us how our societies/governments are structured.

We do know that money doesn't grow on trees. We do know that "free" doesn't mean "from out of nowhere", handed to us by our benevolent, watchful, government.

Does it really need to be pointed out that if you work less (absolutely, not just measured by hours), you will be less productive? Please. Give us some credit.

> It seems that outsiders (I am guessing you are, by the way you frame it) are eager to remind us that we have large public sectors, or whatever you want to call it. It feels a bit rude to me; as if you know better than us how our societies/governments are structured.

It can be easy to take for granted your current situation, and become oblivious to it. So it often takes an outsider to remind the insiders of their situation. It is no different from how the lack of universal health insurance in the US may not be apparent to the ~85% of Americans who do have health insurance.

That's a good point. Sometimes you need outsiders to point out blind spots that you may have from having lived too close to something... so to speak.

I'm not an outsider, and no, "we" don't understand that. The average citizen is only close to breaking even financially in the public budgets, and that is "what's wrong" as the GP asked.

This is the life I want and the main reason I keep trying to start my own business. I really don't think it makes sense to work that long and having adults leave work when children get out of school makes perfect sense.

Yea, but are you changing the world like Silicon Valley start-ups are? /sarcasm

Switching to 6hr work week _is_ changing the world to be the better place for everyone.

Funny cause most people I know on paternal and maternal leave says it was such a chore. That it was more work being with their child and that coming to the office was like "vacation" for them. But I'm already expecting most of them just say that because otherwise hardworking non-parents would become very jealous of their lifestyle. :) I could probably also work just a few hours per day and be measurably many times more productive than my peers, but jealousy makes it completely impossible.

Note that this option is only available for those having small children (paid paternal leave). There is no way to shorten your work hours for any other kind of lifestyle

At what company do you work, and as what?

I'm a Software Engineer working at EPiServer.

You get 480 days paid vacation per child (shared between husband and wife). It is very common in every office (regardless of occupation, work type) that people go to 6-8 months vacation for full time. Lot of persons take half day off for extended period of time.