>If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. I

>If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. I think this is fundamental to capitalism and, at least from a Marxian point of view, this is what’s so bad for the wage earning person about capitalism. The owners of “finance capital” (ie the wealthy) will eat into workers’ wages exacerbating the gulf between rich and poor. >The standard line today is that he [Keynes] didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. I think there is a lot more going on here than what Graeber addresses in this article. IMO, the reason we don’t all work 15 hours per week has a lot more to do with the nature of competition (both in the labor market and in the economy at large) and the legal framework around a 40hr work week than it does “consumerism”. This whole article in general felt like a massive over simplification of the issue in order to justify Graeber’s lived experience I’m not an economist and I definitely don’t understand these issues as well as I wish I did but this is just my two cents. Perhaps Graeber is due more credit than I gave him.