I love reading Jason Calacanis. For every good idea he has, there are at least 10 or 15 moronic ones. Take this, for instance:

If we're going to have any chance of bringing America back to greatness, we're all going to have to work 20% more than we have been. I'm suggesting that, until America takes care of its debt, untangles the housing mess and gets unemployment under control, we all commit to working six days a week. Yep, move the standard 35-40 hour work week right up to 48 hours.

In its own way, this is just as dumb as France's mandated 35 hour week. It makes wild assumptions about the nature of work - it's easy to throw in a few extra hours if you're in the software industry - just fire up the laptop, and get some stuff done. You can work in the office or outside of it.

What about the person who works retail, or in food service? Or in any job that pays by the hour, for that matter? Suddenly, it's not as simple, because working more hours involves a little bit more than firing up the laptop - it requires coordination with other people (and, if we're talking about manufacturing, it may involve coordination with hundreds, or even thousands of other people). I haven't even touched on the obvious problems of work rules (either government or union mandated) for extra hours - but they're non-trivial ones. Nor have I addressed the obvious burn out issues that will crop up with working 6 days a week - in general, you can "burn" hot for short periods and boost productivity, but you pay for it down the line. If you're married and you have kids at home, you'll pay for it even sooner.

It's not so much that 40 hours is a magical number; it's that outside of a relatively small number of people, working outside the norm is more complicated than Calacanis seems to think. But heck - this is a guy who thinks the Tesla is magical (never considering where all the extra grid power will have to come from, or how it'll work in places where A/C is required), and that banner advertising on a website solves all problems.