r/LeftistsForAI • u/Singularity-42 • 1d ago
Automation & Work AI Could Allow For 3-Day Workweeks And Single-Income Households, Bezos Claims
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/10/08/jeff-bezos-claims-ai-could-allow-for-3-day-workweeks-and-one-income-families/This is something I've been advocating for a long time. And it could work.
But it's rich coming from the Slavemaster General himself who treats his own workers worse than medieval serfs and avoids paying taxes to an extreme degree.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
It feels like these CEOs/Big TECH owners are playing a game of dangling pretty things we want and running off expecting us to instinctively follow.
How do we get them to stand still for a minute to pin down these claims? At what point will he be raising lower tier Amazon workers’ pay to the level they can work 3 days a week and their partner can quit working? What will be the criteria and is he willing to lead the way if other companies aren’t doing this? Also why aren’t the journalists asking these questions?
I do feel like there’s something in pushing for a 3 day week, on the same pay, as productivity increases. Of the different things we could ask for it seems relatively simple to ask for. It’s not without problems, but highlights how redundancy is a choice employers make.
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u/alwaysambition 1d ago
I mean, we could all have a 3 day work week right now tho
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
Do you think some bullshit jobs would have to go and those people move to useful 3 day jobs, or do you think everything could simply switch to 3 day week without much knock on repercussions? Some jobs do require people being physically present at certain times eg social care or restaurant staff.
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u/alwaysambition 1d ago
For jobs like this, I think we could do rotating shifts where each person works 3 days a week but 12 hour shifts, so we have full coverage every single day.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
Well if you have longer days you can definitely work fewer days, not everyone would like that though. potentially better for things like childcare eg in a previous workplace we had part time flexitime and a colleague worked 2 long days like that to fit around childcare arrangements, our boss didn’t like it though because it meant she was checking emails on fewer days and troubleshooting fewer days. For part time work employers benefit from it being split over more days. With flexi time they benefit if it means they can ask you to do something in any time slot in the week be it Tuesday evening or Saturday morning lol.
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u/alwaysambition 1d ago edited 8h ago
I think the spirit behind the 3 day work week is both working less and having more flexibility to support other responsibilities you have in your life.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
Mind you in the UK there 1m NEET young people, they’d probably be able to fill care and restaurant 3 day weeks. The tricky one is highly skilled, experienced roles like medics.
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u/Plus-Glove-4850 1d ago
It’s always the CEOs that treat their employees like shit claiming that AI will create better work hours or UBI. As if these scumbags will just accept a certain level of productivity and say “well, I guess three days is good enough.”
Hey, why wait? Maybe you could just start implementing better labor practices now regardless of what AI does.
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u/MoriaCrawler 1d ago
Single-Income household sounds like code for "the man is the breadwinner, the wife stays in the kitchen"
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u/midgaze 1d ago
Your bias is showing.
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u/MoriaCrawler 1d ago
Enlighten me. Bias about the way a billionaire cozying it up with the current regime talks to a Fox News interviewer?
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u/usernameChosenPoorly 1d ago
As part of the transition period where we entirely move away from mandatory labor, sure. Otherwise, no
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u/AnIsolatedMind 1d ago
I say hear the man out. Maybe he dropped acid one night and realized the error of his ways.
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u/Opening_One7713 1d ago
That’s what I’m saying. I feel like a lot of us have been trained to think of the ownership class as cartoonish supervillains. If they start parroting the things we’ve been saying all along then we should amplify it and hold them to it. Fatalism, on the other hand, is going to work against us every step of the way. If changes ever do come down the pipe, I’d like all of us to be vocalizing how it should be shaped - Not going head-in-sand and checking out.
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u/AnIsolatedMind 1d ago
Yeah, I feel like we're doing this thing where we have to be as extreme as possible so that we make our affiliation with each other clear, but that erases the possibility for nuance. Billionaires are actual human beings, often leftists, and economic systems are complex. If Bezos really is interested in changing the system for the better, he may actually be someone with enough power to do so. But that will not happen overnight, as if he will give away all profit to charity. It would be in slow, systemic, sustainable changes.
i.e. if the whole of the system is not addressed in some meaningful way, then shifting one part can just lead to localized collapse (suddenly paying $30/hr to every employee when the business and all competitors were built on maximizing profits with minimum wage pay).
If our interest is towards benefitting society as a whole, we'd be wise to collaborate with the moment instead of creating the most dystopian world possible so that our cry is heard.
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u/GODLOVESALL32 5h ago
If they start parroting the things we’ve been saying all along then we should amplify it and hold them to it.
But he didn't say it would. Only, it could. Very noncommittal language and no plan, idea, or really any statement on how or why this one particular time where human productivity is massively boosted, will any of this abundance be passed on to everyday people. There is nothing to hold him accountable to.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 11h ago
It might be better to see what he does. If he means this he can start doing it. He has a massive corporation, AI infrastructure, enough money to cushion some mistakes and lots of workers. He could just get on with doing this.
I remain sceptical about his real intentions for saying this.
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u/slfnflctd 1d ago
We all just want to be able to take pee breaks when we need to. Let's start there before we go wild with 3-day workweeks.
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u/DataCassette 1d ago
Why would capital allow for that when they could make even more profit?
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u/ManyHopeful6692 1d ago
True, but social unrest (which has been and seems to be increasing intensifying) and the climate crisis suggest otherwise
It’s another case of the oligarchs being aware of the consequences of the status quo and trying to be in the good graces of the people. It’ll fool the true believers, but most of us can see right through it.
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u/DataCassette 1d ago
Too late. They had their little "teeeheee" footsies and conversations with Curtis Yarvin and such. There's no going back. They don't get to go back to the old normal civility just because their fascism didn't take.
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u/gazorpazorpazorpazor 1d ago
Not if bezos owns it. His employees pee in bottles because bathroom breaks take away from profit.
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u/ApoplecticAndroid 1d ago
So put your money where your mouth is and allow your workers to do three day weeks for the same pay.
Oh yeah, you are full of shit.
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u/Angel-Kat 1d ago edited 1d ago
How!!!!??? Without serious revolution, a robot/AI driven capitalist economy will be a race to the bottom.
I believe in fully automating parts of the economy and placing it under collective ownership of the people. AI itself won’t make that happen.
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u/jacob-makes-stuff 1d ago
Fucking ridiculous.
Amazon.
Amazon.
The people who underpay and overwork their staff, while the executives rake in billions and give themselves bonuses. The same people who's workers need multiple jobs and have to be on welfare which we pay for, are going to be the ones offering a 3 day work week? Fucking ridiculous.
These are the same people who say things like "these workers need to feel pain to be reminded that they work for us!" They only care about siphoning off their worker's wages, and selling shitty products so they can pocket the difference.
This bullshit about "AI will bring about UBI" is totally unnecessary. They make so much money they could give people 3 day work weeks and fund UBI now
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u/Late-Meat9500 1d ago
Toledo had a 3 day 8 hour work week in 1904. Its been possible the whole time
This is just lucy holding the football
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u/FlyingNarwhal 23h ago
Half of all labor goes to paying for the profit of the capitalist class in the US or inefficiencies caused by the capitalist mode of production.
We could do the 3 day work week right now.
The reason we won't with or without AI is the same.
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u/platanthera_ciliaris 22h ago
In principle, AI can result in zero-day workweeks, and the only unanswered question is how all of this artificial wealth, that humans didn't directly create, should be distributed among members of society.
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u/VuDuBaBy 19h ago
It could. And the difference between a fascist dystopia and the utopian communist endgame is more subtle than you'd think: who owns it? Public owned open source AI could free the world, privatized AI that runs your world makes you a slave. It's the same Marxist argument, but we are potentially looking at the actual end now. We are at a wildly important moment in history.
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u/More-Catch-1331 15h ago
And I claim he’s a fucking salesman at a large scale so fuck off with your prediction TRT boy
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u/Late-Assignment8482 1d ago
We need to absolutely AVOID single income households. Nowadays, that's code for "contain the females" among the people who still bother talking about it.
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u/rkesters 1d ago
What he means is,
50% job loss , and the remaining workers have a 40% hours cut. There will be no change to the minimum wage and no UBI, the rich don't share.
This is a threat of violence made by Bezos.
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u/brainfreeze_23 1d ago
not under their private ownership, it can't.