The 35 hour week.

15 years ago France produced a law limiting the French workforce to a work roster of 35 hours a week. The western world was aghast, this was economic suicide we need to get workers to work longer, not shorter hours. 

Work was sacrosanct, work was the natural default position for a heathy human being, anyone who said differently was lazy and unintelligent, dare one say probably a communist, certainly an activist against the citadel  of capitalism. 

15 years on the French haven't crashed in flames and in fact lead the Germans in their productivity and far out pace us in the UK where we are completely laissez-faire ranging from, "no hours contracts" to 48/50 hours which we expect our junior doctors to work. This of course doesn't cover the 3 jobs, single mother who apart from the hours spent cooking and caring goes out all hours, god send, to make ends meet.

So with high productivity it can work. High productivity means good training and good motivation of which part is looking forward to the life you have outside work. 

"Life outside work" how very un-Milton Friedman of you, how very un-American.

The actual leaders in this "Life Value" scheme of things are the Scandinavian countries but this is no surprise since these Nordic people have not succumbed to the American format of consumerist driven lifestyles and in so many ways have been unwilling to follow the flock.

Perhaps BREXIT will give us also a new perspective on how we build a society. A society based on "real" needs not artificial ones dreamt up in the boardrooms on Wall Street and Goldman Sachs, but I'm not holding my breath !!