Interestingly, workers are not ready for the freedom that a shrinking workweek may entail. For many the fear is "if I'm not commuting to and from work daily or earning a better job title, then who am I?"- an existential crisis. The same type of fear that makes even wealthy people hate losing their job - rather than embrace the opportunities for a newer freer life, they're just upset because they want, more than anything zen you can think up, to keep in the game, so to speak. The job gives them meaning and order.
It is also true that many, particularly the poorest, need the jobs because they absolutely need the income. Employment creates a pathway, particularly for the poorest people, to scramble out of poverty into the realm of possibility.
Employment creates a pathway for the poorest NATIONS also, and this is why it must remain a pillar of economic policy in Nigeria and several other developing nations - massive employment gives the population something to do that is not destructive, it may sometimes give the people a skills ramp too so they can move to higher-value production, and - very importantly - it earns income in a granular way that goes direct to the people and fosters democracy rather than through a central source that then fosters inequality and crime and war in the extreme scenario.
Anyway, here are two comments on the need to shrink the workweek instead of moaning endlessly about unemployment:
Vivek Wadhwa, in
We're Heading into a jobless future, no matter what the government does (The Washington Post):
"...
Summers is right. Within two decades, we will have almost unlimited energy, food, and
clean water; advances in medicine will allow us to live longer and
healthier lives; robots will drive our cars, manufacture our goods, and
do our chores. There won’t be much work for human beings.
Self-driving cars will be commercially available by the end of this
decade and will eventually displace human drivers—just as automobiles
displaced the horse and buggy...
Summers is wrong, however, in his belief that governments can do as they
did in the industrial age: create “enough work for all who need work
for income, purchasing power and dignity.” They can barely keep up with
the advances that are happening in technology, let alone develop
economic policies for employment.
The only solution that I see is a shrinking work week. We may perhaps be
working for 10 to 20 hours a week instead of the 40 for which we do
today. And with the prices of necessities and of what we today consider
luxury goods dropping exponentially, we may not need the entire
population to be working. There is surely a possibility for social
unrest because of this; but we could also create the utopian future we
have long dreamed of, with a large part of humanity focused on
creativity and enlightenment."
Larry Page, in this
famous, and very highly recommended, chat that also features Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture-capitalist Vinod Khosla.
"
VinodKhosla The vast majority of employment shifted from farming to
only needing about 2-percent of the U.S. workforce. That happened
between 1900 and the year 2000. I see the beginnings of that happening
again with the rapid acceleration the next 10, 15, 20 years.
LarryPage
I totally believe we should be living in a time of abundance, like
Peter Diamandis' book. If you really think about the things that you
need to make yourself happy - housing, security, opportunities for your
kids - anthropologists have been identifying these things. It's not that
hard for us to provide those things. The amount of resources we need to
do that, the amount of work that actually needs to go into that is
pretty small. I'm guessing less than 1-percent at the moment. So the
idea that everyone needs to work frantically to meet people's needs is
just not true. I do think there's a problem that we don't recognize
that. I think there's also a social problem that a lot of people aren't
happy if they don't have anything to do. So we need to give people
things to do. We need to feel like you're needed, wanted and have
something productive to do. But I think the mix with that and the
industries we actually need and so on are-- there's not a good
correspondence. That's why we're busy destroying the environment and
other things, maybe we don't need to be doing.
So I'm pretty worried.
Until we figure that out, we're not going to have a good outcome. One
thing, I was talking to Richard Branson about this. They don't have
enough jobs in the UK. He's been trying to get people to hire two
part-time people instead of one full-time. So at least, the young people
can have a half-time job rather than no job.
And it's a slightly
greater cost for employers. I was thinking, the extension of that is you
have global unemployment or widespread unemployment. You just reduce
work time. Everyone I've asked-- I've asked a lot of people about this.
Maybe not you guys. But most people, if I ask them, 'Would you like an
extra week of vacation?' They raise their hands, 100-percent of the
people. 'Two weeks vacation, or a four-day work week?' Everyone will
raise their hand. Most people like working, but they'd also like to have
more time with their family or to pursue their own interests. So that
would be one way to deal with the problem, is if you had a coordinated
way to just reduce the workweek. And then, if you add slightly less
employment, you can adjust and people will still have jobs.
SergeyBrin
I will quibble a little bit. I don't think that in the near term, the
need for labor is going away. It gets shifted from one place to another,
but people always want more stuff or more entertainment or more
creativity or more something."
Watch and/or read the complete
fireside chat and transcript here.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...
