The World’s Richest Man Wants To Introduce A Three Day Working Week: Guess Why?

Carlos Slim Helu is the world’s richest man. His $79.1 billion fortune makes him even wealthier than Bill Gates.

Yet although the Mexican telecommunications mogul may boast more of a bang to his buck than most, the world’s richest man doesn’t appear to believe in cracking the whip and working the poor peasants until they drop.

Far from it. The 74-year-old billionaire believes working people are desperately in need of a radical overhaul to their working week and thinks we could all benefit from taking a little bit more rest and recreation during our weekly grind.

At a recent business conference in Paraguay, the Daily Mail reported that the world’s richest man demanded that people should take more time off in the course of their professional lives, working only three days a week instead of the standard full-time five days per week.

Amen to that. But is there a somewhat sinister motive to the world’s richest man’s philanthropic ramblings. After all, is it not true that for someone to possess billions, thousands must go without.

Apparently not. Old Slim believes in slashing the working week to three days and making our weekends even longer because it would be hugely beneficial to the quality of our lives.

Slim said: “With three work days a week, we could have more time to relax; for quality of life. Having four days off would be very important to generate new entertainment activities and other ways of being occupied.”

To an extent, Slim has already been implementing his three day working week vision when it comes to his own phone company Telmex.

Workers on Slim’s payroll who joined the company in their late teens can retire before they reach 50, and can continue to work for full pay four days a week.

Yet there is an obvious catch to Slim’s train of thought. By giving with one hand, the world’s richest man is happy to take away with the other.

The world’s richest man may be proposing to slash the length of the working week, but it’s not because he plans on demanding a universal and significant increase in wages across the land anytime soon. He just wants to restructure the hours you work, not reduce them.

Slim said: “People are going to have to work for more years, until they are 70 or 75, and just work three days a week – perhaps 11 hours a day.”

So there it is. The gospel according to the world’s richest man. You may only work three days a week but the shifts just got longer, and when it comes to enjoying your retirement, well you can forget about that too pal. Money never sleeps, so why should you?