This only works for some goods. Critically, it doesn't seem to be possible to do this for housing, health care, or education. Which means that stagnant wages increasingly put these things out of reach.
I'm not an economist but can imagine forcing the lowering of prices could have far more impact on the whole economy, not all good. Off the top of my head it would lead to shortages and thus to increased prices. You'd have to produce more while having less money available to invest in that. Possibly a whole lot more.
But reducing the work week only impacts the employer's profit via slightly decreased productivity. On the other hand with 3 free days per week you'd be more likely to put more money back into the economy.
The problem is today's balance of productivity vs. wage is only perfect for the employer and not much else is taken into consideration. What kind of bargaining power do employees have to change this?
It would only lead to shortages if at the current price there is a perfect match of buyer to product with no waste, AND no capacity to produce a larger volume of supply. That's hardly ever the actual case.
The price is dynamic and usually set by supply and demand. Is there a reasonable way to enforce a decrease? The work week and day have been historically static and more importantly arbitrary. To my knowledge there's very little to support a specific number of hours (per week/day) is optimal, except for upper limits dictated by the limitations of human biology.
Can price drops be forced on things that are in very limited supply, like homes in coveted areas? Or even on products or services that already have very low margins? Would the seller be there next year to tell you how it went?
The technicalities of forcing a price drop feel out of reach while shortening the work week has been done successfully twice already just in the past 100 years. Profitability is still higher than ever.
Items are just about as cheap as they've been. Instead of saving the extra money, most people simply buy more crap.
I get that that other costs (healthcare, education, housing) have risen so much that the cheap goods can't offset them. But, it seems that every little bit would still help, even if things were net-worse.
