lostdirectionless

Thank you for taking the time out for this, Ray. My question largely revolves around workplace culture and future of jobs in our society because of your previous work on productivity and growth.

There is a huge gap in the working hours between slow growing western nations (~35 hrs/week in Europe, ~42 hrs/week in USA) and the fast growing developing world, mostly Asia, where the working hours even in the likes of advanced countries like Korea and Japan regularly touch the 10+ hours a day mark in offices. Ever since '08, most of the western world has witnessed a huge fall in labour productivity levels and in some cases like the UK and Italy, it has only gone sideways.

Considering the renewed focus on remote working, work-life balance and the newly discussed idea about 4 day work weeks, will the Asian workplace culture converge towards their western counterparts or will the West lose out much more in the long run considering that 2/3rds of the world GDP will be concentrated in Asia in the not so distant future?

https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-puzzle-of-us-productivity-slowdown.html

It is slowing down by a large extent by historical standards.