4 ms·

We've been saying that for a long time. [Keynes predicted we'd be working 15 hour weeks by now](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439 http

We've been saying that for a long time. [Keynes predicted we'd be working 15 hour weeks by now](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439) The thing is, people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much. There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! But you'd need to have a smaller appartment, an older car, and eat more lentils. While people say they want to work less, their [revealed preference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference) is that they value buying stuff above having more leisure.

seper8 2y ago
How detached from reality are you that you think people can make ends meet while working 15 hours a week?
- Nimitz14 2y ago
  Some people do do that. Try stepping outside of your bubble.
  - ameister14 2y ago
    The average hourly wage in the United States is $30, so 15 hours a week is $450 pre-tax. Live on that with a family.
    - rfwhXQ5H 2y ago
      If you don't think that there aren't people doing that already in this country, get out of your bubble. How much do you think farmers are making?
      - maxsilver 2y ago
        Farmers (i.e., Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers) make a lot more than $450 a week. Average salary for these folks is $70k/yr. A farm hand only makes like $15/hr on average, which puts it on par with a job at McDonalds or such.
      - ameister14 2y ago
        I think people are doing it and I think it sucks. If you are making $10 an hour in the US you aren't really making ends meet.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    I concur. They're not looking in the right places. Musicians and artists would know about these sorts of hustles, but not your typical HN bubble dweller.
    - thomastjeffery 2y ago
      I know at least a dozen artists, and not one of them has found a side hustle that lucrative. Instead, they get a Master's degree, and use it teach at 2 universities, and work a third job part time so they can afford rent.
  - dehrmann 2y ago
    There's a youtuber I've seen who I think is mostly legit who spent not much money on land in the middle of nowhere and built himself a one-room cabin and an outhouse on it. He's up-front that he isn't actually living off the grid or even in the cabin full-time, but his point is that if you live a very modest life and are handy, you can live on just a side hustle. Like you said, you're unlikely to meet people like this in the (sub) urban tech bubble.
nabla9 2y ago
All what you say is true, if the wage share stays constant. The "working poor" phenomenon where you can't pay for necessities like rent, healthcare etc. while working full time is the result of declining wage share. Wage share has steadily declined in OECD countries since early 1970s. In the US since 1960s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS84006173 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS84006173 Wages make smaller and smaller portion of national income while capital share increases.
- VHRanger 2y ago
  FWIW, the wage share declining is a result of many other factors. See here: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/where-has-all-the-income-gone https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/where-has-all-th... Health insurance and other benefits, household composition have hurt wage share. Not that it didn't decline in real terms for the lower skilled workers, just less than the naive chart you put. Here is good reading on the topic (maybe my favorite paper of the last decade): https://www.nber.org/papers/w25588 https://www.nber.org/papers/w25588
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Your first link points out that income inequality is still growing, however. Which unambiguously means that those at the top are increasingly taking larger and larger slice of the pie.
xemra 2y ago
Or maybe it's the security net that comes with it.
dpflan 2y ago
What if you bring the ideas of measuring productivity and wage growth of employees? How have productivity, wage growth, and corporate profit changed over the decades since Keynes? What was that 15 hour work week, how "productive" and paying is it supposed to be?
Adverblessly 2y ago
> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! Not without a 90% pay cut (i.e. as opposed to the ~60% pay cut you'd expect for working 40% of the hours), I've checked.
- actuallyalys 2y ago
  Agreed. I think this is clearest when you look at benefits, e.g., the many American companies that only offer health insurance benefits to their full-time workers, but you see it in terms of pay, too. Most middle and high-paying jobs are exclusively full-time (and some expect 50, 60, or even more hours a week).
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    I live in a country where health insurance is individual, not employment based, so maybe that's part of why we offer 80% (most common) but also 60 and 40% positions?
paxys 2y ago
> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! What 15 hour/week job pays enough to afford rent, food, medicine?
- timClicks 2y ago
  That was the prediction at the start of the 20th century as thinkers considered the consequences of increased automation and therefore productivity.
mschuster91 2y ago
> The thing is, people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much. Or simply they want to live. The amount of money we gotta spend on rent is insane.
maxsilver 2y ago
> people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much. We don't actually know that. Most people don't have the option. For all but a select few industries, there is no such thing as "work a part time job, and trade the rest for extra leisure" since almost no part-time job can sustainably cover cost of living. (Heck, most full time jobs don't really cover basic cost of living today). > There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. But you'd need to have a smaller apartment, an older car, and eat more lentils. The average wage in Michigan is currently $21/hr. ($36k/yr after federal, city, and state taxes). The average basic 1-bed apartment here is about $1300/month or $15k/yr. Minimum income requirement to qualify for an apartment is usually 2.5x to 3x times monthly rent. Math that out and you can quickly see that the vast majority of people simply aren't going to ever afford basic housing on 15hours a week. Or even 30hours a week. -- And on the flip side, when it was actually possible to pull this trick off, more people used to use it. In the 60s and 70s, when you could actually live off a part time 20hr a week job, people routinely did so (and then used their free time to do things like enroll in college and pay for it on the side). You don't see that anymore, because wages have fallen so drastically, and costs risen so drastically. It simply doesn't math out for the vast majority of folks.
fragmede 2y ago
> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! Try talking to recruiters and tell them you want to work 2 days a week as a software developer and see how far you get.
thomastjeffery 2y ago
I work full time, make triple the minimum wage, and can barely afford to live in a 256 square foot micro studio apartment. You're dreams are not my reality.

seper8 2y ago

How detached from reality are you that you think people can make ends meet while working 15 hours a week?

Nimitz14 2y ago
Some people do do that. Try stepping outside of your bubble.
- ameister14 2y ago
  The average hourly wage in the United States is $30, so 15 hours a week is $450 pre-tax. Live on that with a family.
  - rfwhXQ5H 2y ago
    If you don't think that there aren't people doing that already in this country, get out of your bubble. How much do you think farmers are making?
    - maxsilver 2y ago
      Farmers (i.e., Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers) make a lot more than $450 a week. Average salary for these folks is $70k/yr. A farm hand only makes like $15/hr on average, which puts it on par with a job at McDonalds or such.
    - ameister14 2y ago
      I think people are doing it and I think it sucks. If you are making $10 an hour in the US you aren't really making ends meet.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  I concur. They're not looking in the right places. Musicians and artists would know about these sorts of hustles, but not your typical HN bubble dweller.
  - thomastjeffery 2y ago
    I know at least a dozen artists, and not one of them has found a side hustle that lucrative. Instead, they get a Master's degree, and use it teach at 2 universities, and work a third job part time so they can afford rent.
- dehrmann 2y ago
  There's a youtuber I've seen who I think is mostly legit who spent not much money on land in the middle of nowhere and built himself a one-room cabin and an outhouse on it. He's up-front that he isn't actually living off the grid or even in the cabin full-time, but his point is that if you live a very modest life and are handy, you can live on just a side hustle. Like you said, you're unlikely to meet people like this in the (sub) urban tech bubble.

nabla9 2y ago

All what you say is true, if the wage share stays constant. The "working poor" phenomenon where you can't pay for necessities like rent, healthcare etc. while working full time is the result of declining wage share. Wage share has steadily declined in OECD countries since early 1970s. In the US since 1960s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS84006173 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS84006173 Wages make smaller and smaller portion of national income while capital share increases.

VHRanger 2y ago
FWIW, the wage share declining is a result of many other factors. See here: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/where-has-all-the-income-gone https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/where-has-all-th... Health insurance and other benefits, household composition have hurt wage share. Not that it didn't decline in real terms for the lower skilled workers, just less than the naive chart you put. Here is good reading on the topic (maybe my favorite paper of the last decade): https://www.nber.org/papers/w25588 https://www.nber.org/papers/w25588
- int_19h 2y ago
  Your first link points out that income inequality is still growing, however. Which unambiguously means that those at the top are increasingly taking larger and larger slice of the pie.

xemra 2y ago

Or maybe it's the security net that comes with it.

dpflan 2y ago

What if you bring the ideas of measuring productivity and wage growth of employees? How have productivity, wage growth, and corporate profit changed over the decades since Keynes? What was that 15 hour work week, how "productive" and paying is it supposed to be?

Adverblessly 2y ago

> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! Not without a 90% pay cut (i.e. as opposed to the ~60% pay cut you'd expect for working 40% of the hours), I've checked.

actuallyalys 2y ago
Agreed. I think this is clearest when you look at benefits, e.g., the many American companies that only offer health insurance benefits to their full-time workers, but you see it in terms of pay, too. Most middle and high-paying jobs are exclusively full-time (and some expect 50, 60, or even more hours a week).
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  I live in a country where health insurance is individual, not employment based, so maybe that's part of why we offer 80% (most common) but also 60 and 40% positions?

paxys 2y ago

> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! What 15 hour/week job pays enough to afford rent, food, medicine?

timClicks 2y ago
That was the prediction at the start of the 20th century as thinkers considered the consequences of increased automation and therefore productivity.

mschuster91 2y ago

> The thing is, people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much. Or simply they want to live. The amount of money we gotta spend on rent is insane.

maxsilver 2y ago

> people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much. We don't actually know that. Most people don't have the option. For all but a select few industries, there is no such thing as "work a part time job, and trade the rest for extra leisure" since almost no part-time job can sustainably cover cost of living. (Heck, most full time jobs don't really cover basic cost of living today). > There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. But you'd need to have a smaller apartment, an older car, and eat more lentils. The average wage in Michigan is currently $21/hr. ($36k/yr after federal, city, and state taxes). The average basic 1-bed apartment here is about $1300/month or $15k/yr. Minimum income requirement to qualify for an apartment is usually 2.5x to 3x times monthly rent. Math that out and you can quickly see that the vast majority of people simply aren't going to ever afford basic housing on 15hours a week. Or even 30hours a week. -- And on the flip side, when it was actually possible to pull this trick off, more people used to use it. In the 60s and 70s, when you could actually live off a part time 20hr a week job, people routinely did so (and then used their free time to do things like enroll in college and pay for it on the side). You don't see that anymore, because wages have fallen so drastically, and costs risen so drastically. It simply doesn't math out for the vast majority of folks.

fragmede 2y ago

> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! Try talking to recruiters and tell them you want to work 2 days a week as a software developer and see how far you get.

thomastjeffery 2y ago

I work full time, make triple the minimum wage, and can barely afford to live in a 256 square foot micro studio apartment. You're dreams are not my reality.