We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor
In the 1950s, there was the great promise of "the leisure society" - a future of such material abundance that most people would hardly need to work. That society became possible, but we systematically rejected it in favour of more consumption. The cost of living hasn't meaningfully increased, we've just continually redefined luxuries as necessities.My grandparents are perfectly typical working-class people. They grew up in cramped, damp houses with no central heating or indoor plumbing. They ate mainly seasonal vegetables, considered a chicken or roast of meat a rare treat and often went to bed hungry. They bought new clothes or furniture only when their old ones were beyond repair. They aspired to owning a bicycle, not a car. The only people they knew who had been abroad had done so while in uniform. They didn't regard themselves as materially deprived, because that was the only lifestyle they knew.As much as we might deny being materialistic, the naked truth is that what we consider to be a basic comfortable lifestyle today was, within living memory, unattainable luxury. We continue to work 40 hour weeks because we have adjusted our expectations to our income. We overwhelmingly choose to work the greatest number of hours we can sustainably tolerate (somewhere between 40 and 60 hours for most people), in order to maximise our spending power.The recent kerfuffle over "The 1%" is illustrative of this phenomenon. There was widespread mockery of people earning 500k who regarded themselves as just making ends meet. In a very real sense, we are all a part of that laughably oblivious 1%. The lifestyles we consider just about tolerable are, by any historical or global standard, utter luxury. Almost everyone who has ever lived (and almost everyone living today) would consider themselves lucky to have the spending power of an American on minimum wage.