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>In 1929 John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2029 people in the developed nations could enjoy a perfectly civilised standard of living while working for 16 ho
by mason240 10y ago
>In 1929 John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2029 people in the developed nations could enjoy a perfectly civilised standard of living while working for 16 hours a week.
This is true today if you wanted to live at the same standard of middle class living in 1929, complete with eating only meals hand cooked from base ingredients and no concern with the environmental effects of things like burning coal and garbage.
- ska 10y agoIt is probably a false dichotomy to think of this in terms of "1929 standard of living" vs. "what we have today". I don't see any compelling reason (but I haven't thought about it too hard) to believe that we couldn't have some sort of an increase in standard of living and a decrease in average hours/week worked. The trade offs are obviously complex, though.
- eru 10y agoA straightforward way to effect that would be to remove building restrictions: build higher in city centres, and less people would have to endure crazy commutes to find a place they can afford.
- qsymmachus 10y ago> eating only meals hand cooked from base ingredients Yeah what a nightmare. Where's soylent goo when you need it??
- hanoz 10y ago> This is true today if you wanted to live at the same standard of middle class living in 1929, complete with eating only meals hand cooked from base ingredients... I'm sorry? Are you suggesting that by working 16 hours a week each, a modern couple could live to the same standard as their 1929 middle class counterparts, i.e. owning thier home and supporting a family on one full time sallary and with one full time housekeeping and child-rearing? This will be news to the masses of modern couples who are both working full time for a sallary, housekeeping in their spare time, and with no hope in sight of owning a home or being able to afford to start a family.
- eru 10y agoYou can't legally build a 1929 house any more, or use and pay only for 1929 government services. If you can arrange a remote working gig, you can live comfortable in a by-now first world country like Taiwan on 16 hours/week of American salary. (It might be easier to find a place to work 40% of weeks of the year fulltime, instead of 40% of hours each week. Same principle.)
- agumonkey 10y agoPersonnally it's not a matter of time per week. It's a matter of chaos and absurdity. - not having to fake looking busy - not rushing through contradictory orders - no draconian hierarchy that forbid solving problems etc etc Each one is different but many desk jobs ended up straining me more than prepping sandwiches from 7am to 2pm. In the latter I was sweating but passed a 3 week adaptation phase things were swift and smooth.
- aaron695 10y ago> This is true today if you wanted to live at the same standard of middle class living in 1929, complete with eating only meals hand cooked from base ingredients and no concern with the environmental effects of things like burning coal and garbage. I wished you stopped at "eating only meals hand cooked" It's garbage that people in 1929 had "no concern with the environmental effects of things like burning coal and garbage" OK, they probably had no concern, but that was because there was none to have. They didn't buy stuff and throw it away, there was no disposable society. They lived simply. Not travelling the world, or large distances to go to X every weekend. But whats worse in your comment to me is you can live a much much better lifestyle than 1929 on 16 hours a week, traveling the world and having great things while respecting the environment. You just can't have the things society says you should have.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoVery much this. As our supposed standard of living rises, we blithely add in all sorts of costs we could never imagine living without. That's where you get the joke: "how many people does it take to dig a hole?" "One person to dig a hole. One person to make sure they are working under union regulations. Another person to make sure they are compliant with environmental regulations. Another person to handle payroll." And so on.
- Godel_unicode 10y agoI realize it's a joke, but it's also kind of not. We have environmental standards because otherwise businesses would not care about spillover costs. We take care of workers rights because the market is pretty one-sided in most professions. We have professional accountants to prevent embezzlement and make taxation possible. And so on.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agospecific to digging holes - there are strict safety rules about who can go into things like confined spaces, and holes may be close enough to qualify. This may seem "unioney" but it is decidedly not. If it's "make a pencil"[1] rather than "dig a hole", then the number seems to go up quite a bit. [1] reference to "I, Pencil"
- dv_dt 10y agoI think this is a bad assumption. My feeling is that the biggest shortfall from many people working shorter hours primarily cultural, followed by the economic capture of generated productivity away from labor and toward capital owners - which in a way is also cultural in the bucket of accepted business philosophy trends.
- eru 10y agoIt's actually towards land owners.
- pyrale 10y agoOne would argue that land owners are a subset of capital owners :)
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoOne might then be wrong, if we are a bit more strict about separating land, labor and capital as the three elements of production... I think this a chronic strawman tactic ( present company cheerfully exempted ) - misclassify land as capital, then complain about capitalism.
- bigmanwalter 10y agoI can permanently exchange capital for land, therefore land is capital. If slavery were legal, then labor would be capital too.
- eru 10y agoYou can exchange labour for land or capital as well: go work for money, then buy a house.. Your second point is sort-of true. That's why when Britain freed the slaves they bought them free.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoLand and capital are not interchangeable as factors of production. Next: let's please not confuse accounting and economics :)
- debt 10y agoI doubt he actually believed this. He thought people would be working 16 hours a week with zero caveats? Sure if all things remained equal, if basically nothing changed at all from 1929 to 2029 then yes his prediction would be accurate. But did he actually believe that?
- stuaxo 10y agoWorking hours had been trending down for a while at that time, so it must have seemed reasonable.
- snrplfth 10y agoThey've continued trending down since then, especially when you count hours of domestic labour, which has dropped a lot (and no surprise, since you're not getting paid wages for those hours generally.)
- mark_edward 10y agoThis, I think, leaves out how much formerly domestic labor has been converted into social labor provided either by the state or market forces. Which could be responsible for a lot of reduction as well, as when one does this efficiencies of scale and rationalization can take place in an organization. I have no idea how or why either aspect would be bigger. Hypothetically, reduction of (for example) childcare hours could be as much about proliferation of daycares and kindergarten and schooling in general as it's about development in domestic childcare technologies. Eating and fix prison is microwaves and McDonald's, etc.
- snrplfth 10y agoBut what I'm saying is that both paid labour and unpaid labour (or "domestic labour") are both going down in number of hours. People working in daycares and kindergartens are already counted in the paid labour hours. What technology does is make domestic labour time-effective enough so that keeping house is no longer a full-time occupation, which permits for the expansion of other kinds of work.
- hyperpape 10y agoIn real dollars, US per capita income has more than quintupled since 1929. http://www.demographia.com/db-pc1929.pdf http://www.demographia.com/db-pc1929.pdf (2016 is higher than 2008, to fill in the missing info). So even if you want a rising standard of living, work hours could conceivably be shorter. That said, the fundamental point that most of us wouldn't accept 1929 lifestyles for any amount of leisure is right.
- vivekd 10y agoIt's not like we're ever given the option right, society poses a narrowly defined set of options as to how we can live and the lives of a 1929 person is never presented. If when I was in primary school or high school someone had presented that as an option I might have foregone university and lived simpler
- snrplfth 10y agoOkay, but that means no fridge, no car, no air conditioning, no television or computer, no air travel, only a few sets of clothing, and many other things missing besides. That's what's being offered as the "1929 life". Not the life of the 1929 affluent, but the life of the 1929 average. I know a number of people who've intentionally decided to live pretty much like that. Mostly they don't do it anymore after a few years, but it's totally an available option if you really want it. Saying "society poses" an expensive standard of living is not much proof that you're being forced to do anything.