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The usual way of thinking about this (if you think about it at all) is to think on the margin: was the marginal hour worth the marginal purchase? That is, if yo
by jimrandomh 9y ago
The usual way of thinking about this (if you think about it at all) is to think on the margin: was the marginal hour worth the marginal purchase? That is, if you cut the hours you'd most like to cut, and cut purchases until the budget balances again, is that better?
If you compare all of the work to all of the stuff, then there's no way to notice (within that framework) if the best answer was to work part-time, or slightly less overtime, or slightly more overtime.
- cfmcdonald 9y agoThat assumes that one can arbitrarily exchange free hours and money. Most workers do not have that choice.
- x1798DE 9y agoI'm not sure it does make that assumption - if you could arbitrarily exchange hours for money, then you could calculate out how man fewer hours to work and do that, but otherwise you just have a benefit function with discontinuities in it (e.g. you lose your job if you try to work 35 hours per week, incurring large job switching costs), but I'm fairly certain you can still work out in the abstract which side of the discontinuity you're better off on.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoAssuming that you retire, you most definitely can. Each dollar you don't spend today can be saved for retirement, at which point the invested dollar can be "spent" by retiring marginally earlier.
- ikeyany 9y ago> Assuming that you retire Thus proving most workers (as in >90%) do not have that choice.
- etplayer 9y agoI think it's rather funny that the economic theory of marginalism has even managed to invade our thought processes to make such calculations "usual". I wonder if anyone still thinks in terms of labour hours and use value versus exchange value.