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In 1930, a year into the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down to write about the economic possibilities of his grandchildren. Despite widespread gloom as the global economic order fell to its knees, the British economist remained upbeat, saying that the ‘prevailing world depression … blind[s] us to what is going on under the surface’. In his essay, he predicted that in 100 years’ time, ie 2030, society would have advanced so far that we would barely need to work. The main problem confronting countries such as Britain and the United States would be boredom, and people might need to ration out work in ‘three-hour shifts or a 15-hour week [to] put off the problem’. At first glance, Keynes seems to have done a woeful job of predicting the future. In 1930, the average worker in the US, the UK, Australia and Japan spent 45 to 48 hours at work. Today, that is still up around 38 hours.
Keynes has a legendary stature as one of the fathers of modern economics – responsible for much of how we think about monetary and fiscal policy. He is also famous for his quip at economists who deal only in long-term predictions: ‘In the long run, we are all dead.’ And his 15-hour working week prediction might have been more on the mark than it first appears.
If we wanted to produce as much as Keynes’s countrymen did in the 1930s, we wouldn’t need everyone to work even 15 hours per week. If you adjust for increases in labour productivity, it could be done in seven or eight hours, 10 in Japan (see graph below). These increases in productivity come from a century of automation and technological advances: allowing us to produce more stuff with less labour. In this sense, modern developed countries have way overshot Keynes prediction – we need to work only half the hours he predicted to match his lifestyle.
The progress over the past 90 years is not only apparent when considering workplace efficiency, but also when taking into account how much leisure time we enjoy. First consider retirement: a deal with yourself to work hard while you’re young and enjoy leisure time when you’re older. In 1930, most people never reached retirement age, simply labouring until they died. Today, people live well past retirement, living a third of their life work-free. If you take the work we do while we’re young and spread it across a total adult lifetime, it works out to less than 25 hours per week. There’s a second factor that boosts the amount of leisure time we enjoy: a reduction in housework. The ubiquity of washing machines, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens means that the average US household does almost 30 hours less housework per week than in the 1930s. This 30 hours isn’t all converted into pure leisure. Indeed, some of it has been converted into regular work, as more women – who shoulder the major share of unpaid domestic labour – have moved into the paid labour force. The important thing is that, thanks to progress in productivity and efficiency, we all have more control over how we spend our time.
So if today’s advanced economies have reached (or even exceeded) the point of productivity that Keynes predicted, why are 30- to 40-hour weeks still standard in the workplace? And why doesn’t it feel like much has changed? This is a question about both human nature – our ever-increasing expectations of a good life – as well as how work is structured across societies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:27PM (4 children)
The article brings up retirement as a major difference between the 1930s and today. And according to my back-of-the-envelope math I'm on-track for a 15 hour week.
If we estimate your adult life is 60 years, that is 3360 weeks total. If you were to work 15 hours/week for that long you would work a total of 50400 hours. However, I have an office job which is 40+ hours a week. If I retire from a 40 hour/week job after 22.5 years, I would have worked 50400 total hours, averaging my adult life to 15 hours/week. If you make early retirement a priority, this is achievable.
This is both encouraging and discouraging. When I hear 15 hours/week I imagine having a couple days of work followed by leisure in my 30s, where as the retirement accounting model is an all-or-nothing take on work/life. However, it reinforces that the predictions of increased productivity resulting in reduced hours are not completely outlandish.
I suppose the real answer is to steal as many working hours from your employer while posting on Soylent News from the office. Do these hours count as working or leisure?
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Tuesday October 29 2019, @07:21PM (3 children)
And to your point...
Companies, being only in it for the profits, don't absorb the true costs of these downturns. When they fire these people they are pushing their care into the domain of the government. The government is finely tuned to barely work when the economy is running well. Us normal folks who run the government don't have the means to help each other when all of these people are fired and put on public rolls.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Wednesday October 30 2019, @12:13AM (1 child)
No, they are ending an agreement that no longer provides them more value than it is worth. One which the employees should be prepared to handle through savings.
Seriously, if you don't have enough saved to prevent you and your family from being destitute in a matter of days, then you are the one taking irresponsible risks.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:43AM
Sorry bub, but you're woefully misinformed about the situation of many Americans. It is rarely a lack of responsibility that puts people on the edge of homelessness, it is the slow pace of wages compared to inflation along with your fancy rich people using the real estate market as their retirement plans which have driven rents up to insane levels.
This is the problem with the personal responsibility trope, it is lacking in empathy and based on incorrect facts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:52AM
You are missing an important factor. The companies are forced to use a 'savings' account called unemployment insurance. This is designed to perform two tasks:
1. Shelter us from minor and mass unemployment impacts (the 'us' being employees, businesses, society, etc.) by making businesses/employees* pay for insurance during the good times.
2. Stimulate the economy just as the business community starts lowering spending.
Point #2 is a Keynes idea, that gov't should spend more just as business lowers spending to kick start the economy when it starts slowing down. This also implies that gov't works exactly as expected for the event cited (during down turns) and not inefficiently, if you buy Keynes's arguments.
* Employees ultimately pay for all government taxes through lower wages, except for minimum wage employees. Minimum wage employees pay for it by having competition (automation, outsourcing, hours), reduced benefits and greater risk of unemployment during company stressing events.