system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are our working days so short because the manufacturing process has been outsourced to countries with a really long working day?

I've been reading Marx's Capital for quite some time and this struck me as odd: when our (US/European) working day shortens, this should lead to us getting paid less (regardless of whether you take capitalist exploitation into account or not). However, during the 20th century, the working day has shortened dramatically, while our ability to buy relatively high quality commodities (relative to the most of the Earth's population) seemed to have risen. 

I have 2 explanations for this:

1) the technology behind the manufacturing process has become so advanced that it allowed to shorten the working day without lowering our wages (Marx would probably say that this is the result of our struggle against capitalists, since this means that exploitation has become less severe);

2) that the manufacturing process has been outsourced to countries, where workers have 12-18 hour long working days, and this greatly cheapens the product (while keeping capitalists profit high because of the degree of exploitation). If so, is our short working day paid for by brutally long working day of 3rd World countries' workers?

I am not an economist, just trying to educate myself a bit on the matter.

EDIT: Have I asked something wrong? Why the downvotes?
gpt
You sort of have the causation backwards. Working less hours does cause people to get paid less. BUT, as workers become more productive, their wages increase (note that this is contrary to a basic assumption that Marx was working from); and as those wages increase, workers begin to prefer more time off to more wages.

As a simple example, imaging it costs $20 a day to keep yourself indoors at night, and fed and clothed at basic sustenance levels. If you make $2/hr, you are going to work as much as possible, because having an extra $10 dollars or so could make a real difference in the quality of your existence. It could be the difference between affording basic medicines or not, or an apartment without bugs, or some other important but small improvement.

Now imagine that you make $20/hr instead of $2. Now, you could work just a few hours a day, and have your basic needs well taken care of. If you work 5 hours a day, you can afford to eat better food, to have higher quality clothes, and maybe even some luxuries like a cell phone. Now, if you are offered the chance to work more hour, you are less likely to take it; even though you could always use more money, you don't need it as urgently as the person making $2/hr. One extra hour of pay (even though you make more per hour) isn't going to revolutionize your life the way it would for someone making only $2/hr, because you will probably just spend the extra money on luxuries, so perhaps you would rather go home early and go to the beach or play with your kids.