Under pressure to make changes to boost sluggish economic growth, the conservative has told voters their country’s prosperity will not be maintained “with a four-day week and work-life balance”. He recently effectively accused them of skiving by falsely calling in sick, criticising the relative ease with which sicknotes could be obtained from GPs over the phone.

Someone does not understand what productivity means and how it’s meaningfully improved.

If you (you being the proverbial CDU brain here) need people to marginally increase their working hours, in order to achieve higher economic output, you’re in deep trouble. The increased output is also marginal and a one time boost. If you want meaningfully higher economic output, with sustained growth, you have to use machines and automation to achieve more with the same work hours. In other words you gotta do productive capital investment. Unfortunately conservative brains can only think of the cheapest solution (for businesses) first, at the expense of workers quality and quantity of life.