Still, you do have a point. Or two. In fact, when I was but a starry eyed lad, I blithely assumed that by now we WOULD have REDUCED our hours spent in workaday toil. Yeah.

Here in this corner of the upper northeast, most of the local government offices went to a four-day week last summer, back before fuel prices fell off a cliff. (OK, OK, rolled down a hill.) I don’t see any sign of that changing, now that all have become accustomed to a three-day weekend. Maybe we should just all work for the gummint….

Getting schools down to four days would generate major savings and environmental benefits. But, of course, this would only be possible if all employers did the same, and on the same days; otherwise, parents might have to pay for their OWN child-care. There’s also the issue that our students don’t seem to be excelling on a five-day schedule, and likely wouldn’t do any better on four. Unless, perhaps, we went to a 12-month school year?

As to the USPS, I think they’re actually thinking about cutting a Tuesday, rather than a Saturday; the idea being to eliminate the slow-mail day. Wonder how that would work out for businesses…especially if FedEx, DHL, UPS and the rest did the same (pretty sure I know how it would work out for the USPS if they didn’t). The distribution and bulk-mail facilities are currently 24/7 operations, and I doubt that would change, although perhaps they could go to 24/6. Oh no, wait, they’re union.

All in all, an interesting and quite possibly beneficial concept, but one with at least a few major stumbling blocks, possibly knee-breakers. And, in harsh point of fact, all this may be taking care of itself without any effort on our part: As companies fold and people lose their jobs, both roadway congestion and polution indices should already be showing signs of improvement.