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Rich, western countries face a stark choice: 6-day workweeks or more immigration

One of the world's foremost economists, Lant Pritchett, has a plan.

In Japan, a nation already facing the consequences of a graying population, the average cost of nursing care is projected to increase 75% in the next 30 years, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warning that the nation is on “the brink.” In the U.S., think tanks have warned, an older population with more retirees means a shrinking tax base and higher demands on programs like Social Security and Medicare, along with a smaller number of working-age people to pay into those programs. In short, we have a “ticking time bomb” on our hands, in the words of Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose government introduced a six-day workweek last month to address the nation’s labor shortages. Mexicans freely flowed across the border, coming for a short time to work, returning home to enjoy their money, and sometimes repeating this journey over several years, Haas wrote.

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