4 ms·

You forgot the temporal scale: now, then. We work harder now to be better off then.

• Tichy 16y ago
  It still doesn't add up: suppose I earn one piece of chocolate per day. If I defer eating one piece of chocolate today, I can eat two pieces of chocolate tomorrow. On average, I still only have one piece of chocolate per day. So I am not better off. In the same vein, if I work harder today I maybe have more money tomorrow and can afford to work less. But on average, I have still worked the same amount of time as before. So working harder does not make me better off on average (if by "being well off" in this case we take "can afford to not work too much"). What REALLY works is increasing the efficiency of work. We are not well off because we work so much. We are well off because we have machines that do a lot of work that other people still have to do manually.
  • stretchwithme 16y ago
    Increasing the efficiency of work is what we've been talking about. When you defer consumption and use the funds to improve your productive capacity, you are improving the efficiency of your work. I wasn't just talking about not consuming. Sometimes a thought is not complete in the first two sentences of a paragraph. Sometimes the third sentence has to be read too.