The idea came from a British guy called Robert Owen in the 19th century. It was a huge step forward in workers rights seeing as it was fairly normal for factories to work from sunrise to sunset to try and maximise their output.
Typical working hours were 10-18 hrs a day 6 to 7 days a week
I'm not saying I love working 8hrs a day and modern society can definitely do better but this was a positive step forward in history and should be celebrated... celebrated isn't quite the right word but I hope you get what I mean
Whoever invented the eight hour five day work week is Satan.
Unions. Unions won the five day eight hour workweek after heavy, sometimes bloody conflicts with employers. Before that it was common for workweek to be 10 or 12 hours a day.
Labor unions are the Satan to which you are referring. Labor unions brought you many infernal things: the weekend, lunch breaks, paid vacation, social security, minimum wage, FMLA, 8-hour work days, OSHA, sick leave, child labor laws, etc.
Yeah, I try to be grateful for the progress we have made, given that labor used to be even more exploitative than it is now. Still, we have miles to go.
A video about the historical work-day one of my favorite YouTubers (Historia Civilis) released a few months ago, I think everyone should watch it: https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo
His videos about Roman-era politics & important battles are also great :)
Backwards. Satan was a bro and tried to tell god to take a chill pill when he was being a fuckwad but God was "like no U, go to hell" and he did and now we bow to the corporate overlords as God intended.
We shouldn't have to work so many hours but until labor right improve and companies hire 20% more people to cover the lost 8 hours for everyone that isn't white collar, then we're going to need another baby boom in most societies where population is declining instead.
World understanding that the stock market is basically a magic money generation machine for the rich while only funding a measly retirement for the working class since they don't pay us enough to save for our own retirement without magically quadrupling what we put in via compound interest. Have fun trying to reconcile static based GDP with retirement via stocks until we figure out Fusion and make a Dyson sphere.