I've been working a 4-day week for well over a decade (also because I've got kids, but I did this well before I had kids), and I strongly recommend it for everybody.
And I bet he was quite right, but there is an important nuance: it's true for the 1940s level of consumption. If you reduce your level of consumption to 1940s level, you could easily manage to have 15-hour week.
> but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking
You seem to gravely underestimate the huge gap in economic value between what people were consuming in Keynes' times and what they consume now. The productivity gains are embodied in goods in services like Uber, Amazon, Netflix, computers and stuff, computerized cars.
The newly built 1940s-level goods and services would cost a fraction of price.
And in a way, we're actually working more. Back in the 70s, a single income was enough to maintain a family with a house and kids and everything. These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs, which often depend on what people can afford to pay for the house they need, and with double income, we can afford to pay twice as much, so housing prices have gone through the roof.
I suspect we shouldn't have gone from one parent working fulltime to two parents working fulltime, but to two parents working part time. I've got a feeling we may have accidentally ruined this for ourselves.
What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today? Internet says that median house size in US went from 500sq feet to 907 sq feet. So yes, the consumption standards had risen significantly.
> These days, it's common for both parents to work
Can't say for US, but in EU these days it's common for parents to travel. It's common for parents to go on a massage or SPA on the weekends. It's common for parents to do sport, buy a bicycle etc. And I'm talking about regular blue collar peps.
My parents didn't do all that. They lived a much more humble life than most parents today. Also my mother did a shitload of manual work, she washed all the clothes manually, she did cleaning mostly manually, she fixed clothes with her own hands manually. How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing?
So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home (because absent/more expensive goods and services) and they overall live a pretty humble life by today standards even adjusted for better services".
If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent. But neither you, nor your spouse and kids will like that standards of living.
When you know for sure that you will have a job tomorrow, you’re more likely to sit back, reflect on, and savor your wealth.
On the other hand, knowing that people like you are getting fired at-will, unconscious fear sets in that the next time the music stops, you’ll be the one without a seat.
This feeling of not being able to control one’s destiny is what prevents us from enjoying our money sitting in the bank.
Not if you want a home.
In USA? Adjusted for inflation, you had pretty flat housing prices until mid 90s, where the housing bubble started. And even now and on peak of the housing bubble of 2008 the house will cost you 250% the cost of 1940s house (or 180% of the 1950s which is more fair comparison since it was after the war) which is not that bad.
At the moment we need growth fuelled by productivity gains at constant hours, or even increased hours, not a reduction of working hours, which goes in the opposite direction and, again feels like Europe is giving up.
Keynes did not "predicted" that based on continued increased productivity, not because of any rights to it.
Unfortunately productivity gains have largely stalled for years: growth is very weak while population keeps increasing.
I'd say there were mostly eaten by increased standards of living. Compare median global standard of living in Keyens times (say 100 years ago) and today. The difference is astounding, and we even work less for it than we did - just not "15 hours workweek" less.
Thought I suppose that this might be a lot harder in more conservative exploitative cultures. Working 4.5 days, with one free day per two weeks, is incredibly common in Netherland. Part time is not uncommon.
Germany isn't 45 German companies that will try it.
There's no labor shortage in Germany, what there is, are proper salaries.
One example are childcare workers in Kindergartens (Kita). Salaries are low and regulated, so nobody wants to do it. Increase the salary and you will have many workers lining up.
Germany has managed to grow for decades, from absolute destruction post WW2 without raises that accompany that amount of growth.
Tech workers in Germany are paid peanuts in comparison to Americans.
The situation isn't worse because some American companies offer good salaries, pushing the market up.
Do not increase the salary of tech workers in Germany. We are already making more of our fair share. More than double or triple the amount of money that a person working way harder makes.
Sincerely, a tech worker in Germany
Sincerely, FAANG
Sincerely, a tech worker
Maybe at big-tech and fanngs. On average at local companies not so much.
> More than double or triple the amount of money that a person working way harder makes.
Triple take home pay? Highly unlikely. Some outliers sure, on average no.
Saving for retirement in Germany as a middle-class employee is tremendously hard.
This combined with other initiatives might help Europe recover from the serious imminent demographic collapse.
I'm constantly seeing this idea, and if anything, it's the opposite of truth. Poverty is always breeding much better than the middle class, and the fertility rates always fall when standards of living rise.
> ability of parents to spend time with their childre
Children are an opportunity cost. When parents have a free time, it's a choice between self-realization and spending time with a kid. Spending on yourselves or spending on a kid etc. When you are dirt poor or rich there is no such choice, you'll either have no resources to spend anyway or have enough resources to not bother.
I live in Berlin and surrounded by middle class people and nearly non have children. Give them one more day and they will go to Kitkat/hiking one more day a week. That's it.
I'm constantly seeing this idea, and if anything, it misses the forest for the trees. Fertility rates fall when standards of living rise - up to a specific point. After that point, fertility rises to sustainable levels again. The research is quite clear on this.
> [...] it's a choice between self-realization and spending time with a kid
And this is exactly my theory on why the "slope" of childlessness occurs.
Rising towards the middle class means that all lesser needs are fulfilled and now only self-actualization remains unmet. The cruel joke is that people then forsake having children in favor of self-realization while someone a with more resources would not feel the need to make this compromise.
So in a sense, the most deprived people don't care and still have children despite the challenges (lower class), the less deprived people forsake children in order to meet their highest-order needs (middle class) and the mostly undeprived do not have to make any trade-offs like that and again have children. (upper class)
I live in Vienna, an arguably more family friendly city, and most middle class people around me (aged ~30-40) do have babies at home - esp. those working in relaxed environments like public sector. If you give people the resources, flexibility and time to have children without worrying, they will indeed have more children (in the long run).
People working 40+ hours a week just robotically wall off entire areas of ways to spend their time rewardingly. My 0,02€.
- The employer pays salaries based on negotiation, not on merit or some scientific measurement. An employee is allowed to do the same.
- Unless the employee is privy to all the details and math pertaining this overhead and is the one who asked for this overhead, then it's appropriate that the employee doesn't care about the overhead at all.
- There is also overhead in the employees side that is not taken into account by the employer. Commuting to that "office space" also spends the employee's time and money, for example.
- A 20% reduction of work time never amounts to a 20% reduction of productivity or work output, unless the work consists solely of sitting in a chair (and that's not counting bathroom breaks).
I don't understand what you're saying here. If I work 20% less then that's 20% less work that I get done. I don't sit in a chair for work.
Productivity and time aren't correlated.
Getting a significant raise is not unheard of, in particular when switching jobs, and a 4 day work week is basically the same.
Basic negotiation strategy suggest that "labour shortage" is the right time to ask for this.
Some companies have extremely fat margins and regular employees may very well feel that some of that money is better spent on their salaries than dividends, C-suite compensation or stock buybacks.
It turns out the better solution is to improve the lot of blue collar workers by investing in safety, tool, automation, etc. and increasing salary.
Sorry, I don't understand this part. Are the blue collar workers forced to work from home, use email and have a flexible schedule ?
Why do you think the amount of labor should be compressed?
Sure it can, it's just a matter of scheduling.
