9 ms·

Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure. Instead, we chose consumption, and helicopter mone

Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure. Instead, we chose consumption, and helicopter money gave us bullshit jobs so we could keep buying more bullshit. This is fairly evident by the fact when the helicopter money runs out, all the bullshit jobs get cut. AI may give us more efficiency, but it will be filled with more bullshit jobs and consumption, not more leisure.

pmlnr 1y ago
Keynes was talking about work in every sense,including house chore. We're well below 15 hours of house chores by now, so that part became true.
- autobodie 1y ago
  Source? Keynes was a serious economist, not a charlitan futurist.
  - itishappy 1y ago
    John Maynard Keynes (1930) - Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren > For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us! http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/content/upload/Intro_and_Section_I.pdf https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/cont...
- itishappy 1y ago
  We've got 10 whole hours left over for "actual" work! (Quotes because I personally have a significantly harder time doing bloody housework...)
- leoedin 1y ago
  Clearly you don’t have children!
  - tim333 1y ago
    I was thinking it's a function of the social setting. Single bloke 1h/week. Couple 5h/week. With kids continuous. Or some such.
    - leoedin 1y ago
      I imagine standards have also shifted. It just wouldn’t have been possible to wash a child’s clothes after one wear before the invention of the washing machine. People also had far less clothing that they could have even needed to wash.
  - antonvs 1y ago
    Life pro tip: teach your children to do chores.
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > Life pro tip: teach your children to do chores. Before teaching your children to do chores: x hours per week for chores After teaching your children to do chores: y hours per weeks to have annoying discussions with the child, and X hours per week cautioning the children to do the chores, and ensuring that your children do the chore properly. Here X > x. Additional time for you: -((X-x)+y), where X>x and additionally y > 0.
      - nrclark 1y ago
        I did a lot of chores growing up. Looking back, X>x was true for the first few months of each new chore; but X died down to zero as time went on.
- LeonB 1y ago
  Washing machines created a revolution where we could now expend 1/10th of the human labour to wash the same amount of clothes as before. We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash. I don’t know if it’s induced demand, revealed preference or Jevon’s paradox, maybe all 3.
  - tim333 1y ago
    I saw some research once that the hours women spend doing housework hasn't changed. I think because human nature, not anything to do with the tech.
    - Lu2025 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - Auracle 1y ago
      That's nonsense. It used to take women a full workday per week just to wash clothes.
      - AStonesThrow 1y ago
        Well, now we can own more clothes! And we can wash them more often! And rather than specialist washerwomen, everyone can/must use the laundry-room robots!
      - tim333 1y ago
        https://robinmarkphillips.com/household-appliances-made-life-easier/ https://robinmarkphillips.com/household-appliances-made-life... I've done some 3rd world travel without washing machines for a while and my laundry was once a week dunk stuff in the sink for 5 minutes with shampoo + rinse water, wring and hang up. I don't buy the whole day being necessary thing.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 1y ago
    > We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash. OK, but I doubt we're washing 10 times as much clothes, unless are people wearing them for one hour between washes...
autobodie 1y ago
Keynes lived in a time when the working class was organized and exerting its power over its destiny. We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.
- eastbound 1y ago
  It is very possible that foreign powers use AI to generate social media content in mass for propaganda. If anything, the internet up to 2015 seemed open for discussion and swaying by real people’s opinion (and mockery of the elite classes), while manipulation and manufactured consent became the norm after 2017.
  - rusk 1y ago
    This is a pre-/post- Snowden & Schrems, which challenged the primary economic model of the internet as a surveillance machine. All the free money dried up and the happy clapping Barney the Dinosaur Internet was no more!
  - kergonath 1y ago
    > It is very possible that foreign powers use AI to generate social media content in mass for propaganda. No need for AI. Troll farms are well documented and were in action before transformers could string two sentences together.
  - amarcheschi 1y ago
    Italian party Lega (in the government coalition) has been using deep fakes for some time now. It's not only ridiculous, it's absolutely offensive to the people they mock - von Der leyen, other Italian politicians... -
    - genewitch 1y ago
      Queen Ursula deserves to be mocked.
      - 1y ago
SarahC_ 1y ago
"Bullshit jobs" are the rubbish required to keep the paperwork tidy, assessed and filed. No company pays someone to do -nothing-. AI isn't going to generate those jobs, it's going to automate them. ALL our bullshit jobs are going away, and those people will be unemployed.
- tim333 1y ago
  I foresee programers replaced by AI and the people who programed becoming pointy haired bosses to the AI.
  - dgfitz 1y ago
    I for see that when people only employ AI for programming, it quickly hits the point where they train on their own (usually wrong) code and it spirals into an implosion. When kids stop learning to code for real, who writes GCC v38? This whole LLM is just the next bitcoin/nft. People had a lot of video cards and wanted to find a new use for them. In my small brain it’s so obvious.
    - tim333 1y ago
      LLMs maybe but there will be other algorithms.
      - dgfitz 1y ago
        For sure, same point though.
    - nhod 1y ago
      i dunno, i have gotten tons of real work done with LLM’s. i just had o3 edit a contract and swap out pieces of it to make it work with SOW’s instead of embed the terms directly in the contract. i used to have to do that myself and have a lawyer review it. (i’ve been working with contracts for 30 years, i know enough now to know most basic contract law even though IANAL.) i’ve vibe coded a whole bunch of little things i would never have done myself or hired someone to do. i have had them extract data in seconds that would have taken forever. there is without question real utility in LLM’s and they are also without question getting better very fast. to compare that to NFT’s is pretty disingenuous. i don’t know anyone who has ever accomplished anything with an NFT. (i’m happy to be wrong about that, and i have yet to find a single example).
davedx 1y ago
Some countries are still trending in that direction: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/iceland-36-hour-working-week-stress-job https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/icelan... Policy matters
tim333 1y ago
I think something Keynes got wrong there and much AI job discussion ignores is people like working, subject to the job being fun. Look at the richest people with no need to work - Musk, Buffett etc. Still working away, often well past retirement age with no need for the money. Keynes himself, wealth and probably with tenure working away on his theories. In the UK you can quite easily do nothing by going on disability allowance and doing nothing and many do but they are not happy. There can be a certain snobbishness with academics where they are like of course I enjoy working away on my theories of employment but the unwashed masses do crap jobs where they'd rather sit on their arses watching reality TV. But it isn't really like that. Usually.
- navane 1y ago
  Meanwhile your examples for happy working are all billionaires who do w/e tf they want, and your example of sad non working are disabled people.
- trinix912 1y ago
  The reality of most people is that they need to work to financially sustain themselves. Yes, there are people who just like what they do and work regardless, but I think we shouldn't discount the majority which would drop their jobs or at least work less hours had it not been out of the need for money.
  - tim333 1y ago
    Although in democracies we've largely selected that system. I've been to socialist places - Cuba and Albania before communism collapsed where a lot of people didn't do much but were still housed and fed (not very well - ration books) but no one seems to want to vote that stuff in.
    - trinix912 1y ago
      The thing about those systems is you'd have to forgo the entire notion about private property and wealth as we currently know it for it to work out. Even then, there would be people who wouldn't want to work/contribute and the majority who would contribute the bare minimum (like you're saying). The percentage of people who'd work because they like it wouldn't be much higher than it is now. Or it might be even lower, as money wouldn't be as much of a factor in one's life.
seydor 1y ago
Most of the people are leisuring af work (for keynes era standards) and also getting paid for it
ccorcos 1y ago
If you work 15 hours/week then presumably someone who chose to work 45 hours/week would make 3x more money. This creates supply-demand pressure for goods and services. Anything with limited supply such as living in the nice part of town will price out anyone working 15 hours/week. And so society finds an equilibrium…
- jjk166 1y ago
  Presumably the reduction to a 15 hour workweek would be much the same as the reduction to the 40 hour workweek - everyone takes the same reduction in total hours and increase in hourly compensation encoded in labor laws specifically so there isn't this tragedy of the commons.
  - ccorcos 1y ago
    Unless the law forbids working more than 15 hours per week, the numbers will shift around but the supply-demand market equilibrium will remain approximately the same. If minimum wage goes up 40/15 = 267%, then the price of your coffee will go up 267% because the coffeeshop owner needs to pay 267% more to keep the cafe staffed. The 40 hour work week is something a cultural equilibrium. But we've all heard of doctors, lawyers, and bankers working 100h weeks which affords them some of the most desirable real estate in the world...
    - jjk166 1y ago
      > Unless the law forbids working more than 15 hours per week, the numbers will shift around but the supply-demand market equilibrium will remain approximately the same. Require anyone working over 15 hours to be paid time and a half overtime. If you want to hire one person to work 40 hours per week, that is 30% more expensive than hiring 3 people to work the same number of hours. In some select instances sure, having a single person do the job is worth the markup, and some people will be willing to work those hours, just like today you have some people working over 40, but in general the market will demand reduction in working hours. Similarly, there is a strong incentive to work enough hours to be counted as a full time employee, so the marginal utility of that 35th hour is pretty high currently, whereas if full time benefits and labor protections started at 15 hours, then the marginal utility of that 35th hour would be substantially less. > If minimum wage goes up 40/15 = 267%, then the price of your coffee will go up 267% because the coffeeshop owner needs to pay 267% more to keep the cafe staffed. That would be true if 100% of the coffee shop's revenue went to wages. Obviously that's not the case. In reality, the shop is buying ingredients, paying rent for the space, paying off capex for the coffee making equipment, utilizing multiple business services like accounting and marketing, and hopefully at the end of the day making some profit. Realistically, wages for a coffee shop are probably 20-30% of revenue. So to cover the increased cost of labor, prices would have to rise 53%. Note that in this scenario you also have 267% more money to spend on coffee. Of course there are some more nuances as prices in general inflate. Ultimately though, the equilibrium you reach is that people working minimum wage for a full workweek wind up able to afford 1 minimum-wage workweek worth of goods and services. This holds true in the long term regardless of what level minimum wage is or how long a workweek is. Indeed you could just as easily have everyone's wages stay exactly the same but we are all working less, then we all have less money and there is a deflationary effect but in the long term we wind up at the same situation. Ideally, you'd strike a balance between these two which reaches the same end state with a reasonably steady money supply. > The 40 hour work week is something a cultural equilibrium. No, it isn't. It is an arbitrary convention, one in a long series which had substantially different values in the past. It has remained constant because it is encoded in law in such a way that it is no longer subject to simple pressures of labor supply and demand. > But we've all heard of doctors, lawyers, and bankers working 100h weeks which affords them some of the most desirable real estate in the world... There are a lot more than just doctors and lawyers and bankers working long hours. 37% of americans work 2 full time jobs, and most of them aren't exactly in a position to afford extremely desirable real estate. If the workweek were in a equilibrium due to supply and demand, wouldn't these people just be working more hours at their regular jobs?
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks Most people with a modest retirement account could retire in their forties to working 15-hour workweeks somewhere in rural America.
- steveBK123 1y ago
  The trade is you need to live in VHCOL city to earn enough and have a high savings rate. Avoid spending it all on VHCOL real estate. And then after living at the center of everything for 15-20 years be mentally prepared to move to “nowhere”, possibly before your kids head off to college. Most cannot meet all those conditions and end up on the hedonic treadmill.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > you need to live in VHCOL city to earn enough and have a high savings rate Yes to the latter, no to the former. The states with the highest savings rates are Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, Massachussetts and Maryland [1]. Only Massachussetts is a top-five COL state [2]. > then after living at the center of everything for 15-20 years be mentally prepared to move to “nowhere” This is the real hurdle. Ultimately, however, it's a choice. One chooses to work harder to access a scarce resource out of preference, not necessity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings...
    - steveBK123 1y ago
      CT & NJ being top of the list points to the great NYC metropolitan wage premium though doesn't it? MA at #4 picks up Boston, MD at #5 picks up DC, etc. CA probably nowhere on the list because its such a small state that any Silicon Valley premium gets diluted at the state level average. I am not finding a clear definition of this index but it appears to be $saved/$income (or $saved/$living expenses) right? So 114% in CT dollars is probably way more than 102% Kansas dollars.. It's also worth noting the point I was making is - if you take a "one years NYC income in savings" amount of money and relocate to say, New Mexico.. the money goes a lot further than trying to do the opposite!
gosub100 1y ago
> Instead, we chose consumption instead, corporations chose to consume us
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Slow_Hand 1y ago
Not to undercut your point - because you’re largely correct - but this is my reality. I have a decent-paying job in which I work roughly 15 hrs a week. Sometimes more when work scales up. That said, I’m not what you’d call a high-earning person (I earn < 100k) I simply live within my means and do my best to curb lifestyle creep. In this way, Keynes’ vision is a reality, but it’s a mindset and we also have to know when enough wealth is enough.
- oblio 1y ago
  You're lucky. Most companies don't accept that. Frequently, even when they have part time arrangements, the incentives are such that middle managers are incentivized to squeeze you (including squeezing you out), despite company policies and HR mandates.
  - Slow_Hand 1y ago
    I am lucky. I work for a very small consultancy (3 people plus occassional contractors) and am paid a fraction of our net income. The arrangement was arrived at because the irregular income schedule makes an hourly wage or a salary a poor option for everyone involved. I’m grateful to work for a company where the owners value not only my time and worth but also value a similar work routine themselves.
  - tonyedgecombe 1y ago
    Which is a shame because I bet most knowledge workers aren't putting in more than three or fours hours of solid work. The rest of the time they are just keeping a seat warm.
    - gibbitz 1y ago
      Spoken like middle management. If a knowledge worker is only putting in 4 hours they're either mismanaged or dead weight. Fire their manager and see if they are more effective, if not, then let them go. As a developer I routinely work 9 hour days without lunch and so do the others on my team and most people I've worked with as a developer. Myths like the 10% developer and lazy 4 hour knowledge workers are like the myth of the welfare queen. We really need to be more aware that when we complain about 5% of people that it becomes 100% to those outside of the field.
raincom 1y ago
Now one has to work 60 hours to afford housing(rent/mortgage) and insurance (health, home, automotive). Yes, food is cheap if one can cook.
WorkerBee28474 1y ago
> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks Yeah, I'd say I get up to 15 hours of work done in a 40 hour workweek.
laughing_man 1y ago
It's more likely 15% of the workforce will have jobs. They'll be working eighty hour weeks and making just enough to keep them from leaving.
latentsea 1y ago
It's still not 2030 yet. It could still happen.
runeks 1y ago
Keynes also convinced us that high unemployment and high inflation couldn't happen at the same time. This was proven wrong in the early 1970s.
onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure. I suspect he didn't factor in how may people would be retired and on entitlements. We're not SUPER far from that now, when you factor in how much more time off the average person has now, how much larger of percentage of the population is retired, and how much of a percentage is on entitlements. The distribution is just very unequal. I.E. if you're the median worker, you've probably seen almost no benefit, but if you're old or on entitlements, you've seen a lot of benefits.

pmlnr 1y ago

Keynes was talking about work in every sense,including house chore. We're well below 15 hours of house chores by now, so that part became true.

autobodie 1y ago
Source? Keynes was a serious economist, not a charlitan futurist.
- itishappy 1y ago
  John Maynard Keynes (1930) - Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren > For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us! http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/content/upload/Intro_and_Section_I.pdf https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/cont...
itishappy 1y ago
We've got 10 whole hours left over for "actual" work! (Quotes because I personally have a significantly harder time doing bloody housework...)
leoedin 1y ago
Clearly you don’t have children!
- tim333 1y ago
  I was thinking it's a function of the social setting. Single bloke 1h/week. Couple 5h/week. With kids continuous. Or some such.
  - leoedin 1y ago
    I imagine standards have also shifted. It just wouldn’t have been possible to wash a child’s clothes after one wear before the invention of the washing machine. People also had far less clothing that they could have even needed to wash.
- antonvs 1y ago
  Life pro tip: teach your children to do chores.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > Life pro tip: teach your children to do chores. Before teaching your children to do chores: x hours per week for chores After teaching your children to do chores: y hours per weeks to have annoying discussions with the child, and X hours per week cautioning the children to do the chores, and ensuring that your children do the chore properly. Here X > x. Additional time for you: -((X-x)+y), where X>x and additionally y > 0.
    - nrclark 1y ago
      I did a lot of chores growing up. Looking back, X>x was true for the first few months of each new chore; but X died down to zero as time went on.
LeonB 1y ago
Washing machines created a revolution where we could now expend 1/10th of the human labour to wash the same amount of clothes as before. We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash. I don’t know if it’s induced demand, revealed preference or Jevon’s paradox, maybe all 3.
- tim333 1y ago
  I saw some research once that the hours women spend doing housework hasn't changed. I think because human nature, not anything to do with the tech.
  - Lu2025 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - Auracle 1y ago
    That's nonsense. It used to take women a full workday per week just to wash clothes.
    - AStonesThrow 1y ago
      Well, now we can own more clothes! And we can wash them more often! And rather than specialist washerwomen, everyone can/must use the laundry-room robots!
    - tim333 1y ago
      https://robinmarkphillips.com/household-appliances-made-life-easier/ https://robinmarkphillips.com/household-appliances-made-life... I've done some 3rd world travel without washing machines for a while and my laundry was once a week dunk stuff in the sink for 5 minutes with shampoo + rinse water, wring and hang up. I don't buy the whole day being necessary thing.
- B1FF_PSUVM 1y ago
  > We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash. OK, but I doubt we're washing 10 times as much clothes, unless are people wearing them for one hour between washes...

autobodie 1y ago

Keynes lived in a time when the working class was organized and exerting its power over its destiny. We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.

eastbound 1y ago
It is very possible that foreign powers use AI to generate social media content in mass for propaganda. If anything, the internet up to 2015 seemed open for discussion and swaying by real people’s opinion (and mockery of the elite classes), while manipulation and manufactured consent became the norm after 2017.
- rusk 1y ago
  This is a pre-/post- Snowden & Schrems, which challenged the primary economic model of the internet as a surveillance machine. All the free money dried up and the happy clapping Barney the Dinosaur Internet was no more!
- kergonath 1y ago
  > It is very possible that foreign powers use AI to generate social media content in mass for propaganda. No need for AI. Troll farms are well documented and were in action before transformers could string two sentences together.
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  Italian party Lega (in the government coalition) has been using deep fakes for some time now. It's not only ridiculous, it's absolutely offensive to the people they mock - von Der leyen, other Italian politicians... -
  - genewitch 1y ago
    Queen Ursula deserves to be mocked.
    - 1y ago

SarahC_ 1y ago

"Bullshit jobs" are the rubbish required to keep the paperwork tidy, assessed and filed. No company pays someone to do -nothing-. AI isn't going to generate those jobs, it's going to automate them. ALL our bullshit jobs are going away, and those people will be unemployed.

tim333 1y ago
I foresee programers replaced by AI and the people who programed becoming pointy haired bosses to the AI.
- dgfitz 1y ago
  I for see that when people only employ AI for programming, it quickly hits the point where they train on their own (usually wrong) code and it spirals into an implosion. When kids stop learning to code for real, who writes GCC v38? This whole LLM is just the next bitcoin/nft. People had a lot of video cards and wanted to find a new use for them. In my small brain it’s so obvious.
  - tim333 1y ago
    LLMs maybe but there will be other algorithms.
    - dgfitz 1y ago
      For sure, same point though.
  - nhod 1y ago
    i dunno, i have gotten tons of real work done with LLM’s. i just had o3 edit a contract and swap out pieces of it to make it work with SOW’s instead of embed the terms directly in the contract. i used to have to do that myself and have a lawyer review it. (i’ve been working with contracts for 30 years, i know enough now to know most basic contract law even though IANAL.) i’ve vibe coded a whole bunch of little things i would never have done myself or hired someone to do. i have had them extract data in seconds that would have taken forever. there is without question real utility in LLM’s and they are also without question getting better very fast. to compare that to NFT’s is pretty disingenuous. i don’t know anyone who has ever accomplished anything with an NFT. (i’m happy to be wrong about that, and i have yet to find a single example).

davedx 1y ago

Some countries are still trending in that direction: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/iceland-36-hour-working-week-stress-job https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/icelan... Policy matters

tim333 1y ago

I think something Keynes got wrong there and much AI job discussion ignores is people like working, subject to the job being fun. Look at the richest people with no need to work - Musk, Buffett etc. Still working away, often well past retirement age with no need for the money. Keynes himself, wealth and probably with tenure working away on his theories. In the UK you can quite easily do nothing by going on disability allowance and doing nothing and many do but they are not happy. There can be a certain snobbishness with academics where they are like of course I enjoy working away on my theories of employment but the unwashed masses do crap jobs where they'd rather sit on their arses watching reality TV. But it isn't really like that. Usually.

navane 1y ago
Meanwhile your examples for happy working are all billionaires who do w/e tf they want, and your example of sad non working are disabled people.
trinix912 1y ago
The reality of most people is that they need to work to financially sustain themselves. Yes, there are people who just like what they do and work regardless, but I think we shouldn't discount the majority which would drop their jobs or at least work less hours had it not been out of the need for money.
- tim333 1y ago
  Although in democracies we've largely selected that system. I've been to socialist places - Cuba and Albania before communism collapsed where a lot of people didn't do much but were still housed and fed (not very well - ration books) but no one seems to want to vote that stuff in.
  - trinix912 1y ago
    The thing about those systems is you'd have to forgo the entire notion about private property and wealth as we currently know it for it to work out. Even then, there would be people who wouldn't want to work/contribute and the majority who would contribute the bare minimum (like you're saying). The percentage of people who'd work because they like it wouldn't be much higher than it is now. Or it might be even lower, as money wouldn't be as much of a factor in one's life.

seydor 1y ago

Most of the people are leisuring af work (for keynes era standards) and also getting paid for it

ccorcos 1y ago

If you work 15 hours/week then presumably someone who chose to work 45 hours/week would make 3x more money. This creates supply-demand pressure for goods and services. Anything with limited supply such as living in the nice part of town will price out anyone working 15 hours/week. And so society finds an equilibrium…

jjk166 1y ago
Presumably the reduction to a 15 hour workweek would be much the same as the reduction to the 40 hour workweek - everyone takes the same reduction in total hours and increase in hourly compensation encoded in labor laws specifically so there isn't this tragedy of the commons.
- ccorcos 1y ago
  Unless the law forbids working more than 15 hours per week, the numbers will shift around but the supply-demand market equilibrium will remain approximately the same. If minimum wage goes up 40/15 = 267%, then the price of your coffee will go up 267% because the coffeeshop owner needs to pay 267% more to keep the cafe staffed. The 40 hour work week is something a cultural equilibrium. But we've all heard of doctors, lawyers, and bankers working 100h weeks which affords them some of the most desirable real estate in the world...
  - jjk166 1y ago
    > Unless the law forbids working more than 15 hours per week, the numbers will shift around but the supply-demand market equilibrium will remain approximately the same. Require anyone working over 15 hours to be paid time and a half overtime. If you want to hire one person to work 40 hours per week, that is 30% more expensive than hiring 3 people to work the same number of hours. In some select instances sure, having a single person do the job is worth the markup, and some people will be willing to work those hours, just like today you have some people working over 40, but in general the market will demand reduction in working hours. Similarly, there is a strong incentive to work enough hours to be counted as a full time employee, so the marginal utility of that 35th hour is pretty high currently, whereas if full time benefits and labor protections started at 15 hours, then the marginal utility of that 35th hour would be substantially less. > If minimum wage goes up 40/15 = 267%, then the price of your coffee will go up 267% because the coffeeshop owner needs to pay 267% more to keep the cafe staffed. That would be true if 100% of the coffee shop's revenue went to wages. Obviously that's not the case. In reality, the shop is buying ingredients, paying rent for the space, paying off capex for the coffee making equipment, utilizing multiple business services like accounting and marketing, and hopefully at the end of the day making some profit. Realistically, wages for a coffee shop are probably 20-30% of revenue. So to cover the increased cost of labor, prices would have to rise 53%. Note that in this scenario you also have 267% more money to spend on coffee. Of course there are some more nuances as prices in general inflate. Ultimately though, the equilibrium you reach is that people working minimum wage for a full workweek wind up able to afford 1 minimum-wage workweek worth of goods and services. This holds true in the long term regardless of what level minimum wage is or how long a workweek is. Indeed you could just as easily have everyone's wages stay exactly the same but we are all working less, then we all have less money and there is a deflationary effect but in the long term we wind up at the same situation. Ideally, you'd strike a balance between these two which reaches the same end state with a reasonably steady money supply. > The 40 hour work week is something a cultural equilibrium. No, it isn't. It is an arbitrary convention, one in a long series which had substantially different values in the past. It has remained constant because it is encoded in law in such a way that it is no longer subject to simple pressures of labor supply and demand. > But we've all heard of doctors, lawyers, and bankers working 100h weeks which affords them some of the most desirable real estate in the world... There are a lot more than just doctors and lawyers and bankers working long hours. 37% of americans work 2 full time jobs, and most of them aren't exactly in a position to afford extremely desirable real estate. If the workweek were in a equilibrium due to supply and demand, wouldn't these people just be working more hours at their regular jobs?

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks Most people with a modest retirement account could retire in their forties to working 15-hour workweeks somewhere in rural America.

steveBK123 1y ago
The trade is you need to live in VHCOL city to earn enough and have a high savings rate. Avoid spending it all on VHCOL real estate. And then after living at the center of everything for 15-20 years be mentally prepared to move to “nowhere”, possibly before your kids head off to college. Most cannot meet all those conditions and end up on the hedonic treadmill.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > you need to live in VHCOL city to earn enough and have a high savings rate Yes to the latter, no to the former. The states with the highest savings rates are Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, Massachussetts and Maryland [1]. Only Massachussetts is a top-five COL state [2]. > then after living at the center of everything for 15-20 years be mentally prepared to move to “nowhere” This is the real hurdle. Ultimately, however, it's a choice. One chooses to work harder to access a scarce resource out of preference, not necessity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings...
  - steveBK123 1y ago
    CT & NJ being top of the list points to the great NYC metropolitan wage premium though doesn't it? MA at #4 picks up Boston, MD at #5 picks up DC, etc. CA probably nowhere on the list because its such a small state that any Silicon Valley premium gets diluted at the state level average. I am not finding a clear definition of this index but it appears to be $saved/$income (or $saved/$living expenses) right? So 114% in CT dollars is probably way more than 102% Kansas dollars.. It's also worth noting the point I was making is - if you take a "one years NYC income in savings" amount of money and relocate to say, New Mexico.. the money goes a lot further than trying to do the opposite!

gosub100 1y ago

> Instead, we chose consumption instead, corporations chose to consume us

deleted 1y ago

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Slow_Hand 1y ago

Not to undercut your point - because you’re largely correct - but this is my reality. I have a decent-paying job in which I work roughly 15 hrs a week. Sometimes more when work scales up. That said, I’m not what you’d call a high-earning person (I earn < 100k) I simply live within my means and do my best to curb lifestyle creep. In this way, Keynes’ vision is a reality, but it’s a mindset and we also have to know when enough wealth is enough.

oblio 1y ago
You're lucky. Most companies don't accept that. Frequently, even when they have part time arrangements, the incentives are such that middle managers are incentivized to squeeze you (including squeezing you out), despite company policies and HR mandates.
- Slow_Hand 1y ago
  I am lucky. I work for a very small consultancy (3 people plus occassional contractors) and am paid a fraction of our net income. The arrangement was arrived at because the irregular income schedule makes an hourly wage or a salary a poor option for everyone involved. I’m grateful to work for a company where the owners value not only my time and worth but also value a similar work routine themselves.
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago
  Which is a shame because I bet most knowledge workers aren't putting in more than three or fours hours of solid work. The rest of the time they are just keeping a seat warm.
  - gibbitz 1y ago
    Spoken like middle management. If a knowledge worker is only putting in 4 hours they're either mismanaged or dead weight. Fire their manager and see if they are more effective, if not, then let them go. As a developer I routinely work 9 hour days without lunch and so do the others on my team and most people I've worked with as a developer. Myths like the 10% developer and lazy 4 hour knowledge workers are like the myth of the welfare queen. We really need to be more aware that when we complain about 5% of people that it becomes 100% to those outside of the field.

raincom 1y ago

Now one has to work 60 hours to afford housing(rent/mortgage) and insurance (health, home, automotive). Yes, food is cheap if one can cook.

WorkerBee28474 1y ago

> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks Yeah, I'd say I get up to 15 hours of work done in a 40 hour workweek.

laughing_man 1y ago

It's more likely 15% of the workforce will have jobs. They'll be working eighty hour weeks and making just enough to keep them from leaving.

latentsea 1y ago

It's still not 2030 yet. It could still happen.

runeks 1y ago

Keynes also convinced us that high unemployment and high inflation couldn't happen at the same time. This was proven wrong in the early 1970s.

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago

> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure. I suspect he didn't factor in how may people would be retired and on entitlements. We're not SUPER far from that now, when you factor in how much more time off the average person has now, how much larger of percentage of the population is retired, and how much of a percentage is on entitlements. The distribution is just very unequal. I.E. if you're the median worker, you've probably seen almost no benefit, but if you're old or on entitlements, you've seen a lot of benefits.