“180 Trillion Leisure Hours Lost To Work Last Year,” says The Onion.
The article actually presents some fundamental problems of scarcity in rather interesting ways. Why do we only think in terms of work-hours lost? Probably because that’s what the organizations who fund such studies care about, but in future, it’s not too difficult to imagine a time when leisure hours might actually outnumber work hours. It’s not unreasonable to think that productivity could rise to a level where we might enjoy a 3.5 day work week. Then, we’d only lose half of our leisure time to work. Says the “study”:
“Week after week of potential relaxation time is squandered to jobs, with millions of would-be leisurers prohibited from sleeping in, working on hobbies, or taking trips,” said Kletter, executive director of the Five-To-Nine Foundation. “An average employed person’s ability to stroll aimlessly around his town and ‘do whatever’ is basically nonexistent 49 weeks out of the year.”
“Ironically, the unemployed fared the best in this report,” Kletter said. “One of the questions that remains unanswered, unfortunately, is how jobless citizens’ high number of available leisure hours somehow fails to translate into overall happiness.”
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It’s like the Jetsons: “These 3-hour work days are killing me!”
Most unemployed people are happy. Retirees, housewives, and welfare recipients. If they weren’t happy, they’d get a job.
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Matt:
I think you can say they are as happy as they can be given the available options… but that doesn’t mean they consider themselves happy.
Maximum happiness given the circumstances can still mean misery.
If their unhappiness is due to something like “I’ll never set foot on the moon” or “There’s no cure for cancer”, there isn’t much that can be done.
If their unhappiness is due to “I’d like to be employed at my maximum productivity of $3 per hour but I’m not allowed”, or “I smoked some weed and they put me in a cage” then obviously the source of their unhappiness COULD be corrected, and it’s a shame / crime / tragedy / gross injustice that unhappiness has been forced on them.
I should clarify: they are happy with not working.
I’ll counter-clarify: they’re happy not working, unless they are being forcibly prohibited from working.
Then the true statement becomes: are happy not being punished for working.
Housewives do “work” during the day. Although there are plenty of Peggy Bundy’s who spend the day doing nothing worthwhile, there are still plenty of housewives who do endless rounds of laundry, yardwork, cooking, childcare and, in the evening, make the man of the house a stiff drink, and, perhaps, time permitting, offer a massage (with or without happy ending).
Is there a more noble profession? (Aside from blogger or economist…)
Hm.
Recalls a handpainted sign I saw during a protest strike by one of our more belligerent Union Federations:
‘we want jobs, not work!’.
Is stealing work or leisure? Is profiting from the work of others work? There are just too many undefined metrics here and a lot of twisted judgemental cracks to consider them intellignet or civil…..A civil remark should respect the commons or not?
Should not all human hours be considered as consumption? Given that your work has replaced your energy use by ‘productive’ use of your energy, what more is required of anyone? Most of what we have comes from natural resources, most of which we squander uselessly in the mode of ‘property rights’ based on concepts of scarcity…
Think about it..
“Most of what we have comes from natural resources, most of which we squander uselessly in the mode of ‘property rights’ based on concepts of scarcity…”
Based on facts of reality, called scarcity, yes. I hope this isn’t some rant about property rights.
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