Where's My Three-hour Workday, Mr. Keynes?

I would like to ask Mr. John Maynard Keynes where we went wrong, and why I am not enjoying a 15-hour workweek.  In his oft-quoted “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1930),” the famous British economist predicted a future society, having advanced so far in manufacturing & transport and accumulating such and abundance of capital, that it would solve the economic problem (e.g., we wouldn’t have to work so much).  Amazingly, with very little economic science on which to lean, he was astonishingly correct about the advances in our technological capabilities, and almost spot-on regarding our wealth; the increase of the United States’ GDP increased nearly six fold from 1930 to 2011.  So why are we still working so many unhappy hours?

Well, despite the romantic allure of the shortened business day, it may be us who are not ready to commit to a life of leisure.  First, we still view such an economy as a failure – something Mr. Kenyes described in the same essay:

We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come--namely, technological unemployment.  This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.

He was predicting a wonderful and terrifying technological revolution in 1930, before the advent of instant mobile banking or Amazon’s Kiva robots would do the work of many skilled and unskilled workers with the tap of a touch screen.  And still today with these remarkable tools, a 15-hour workweek would be a sure sign of the economic apocalypse: the equivalent of a 60% unemployment rate - completely unacceptable by today’s standards.

In all fairness to Mr. Keynes, he also predicted humanity’s intellectual and emotional reluctance to such a life of leisure:

Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.  It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional society.

But if we do not accept that it is our inability to fill our days with worthwhile pursuits that has kept away economic utopia, perhaps our flaw has been our love of money itself: the reported evil lurking in the hearts of all Wall Street’s power brokers.  Yes this might be the case, as this was something Mr. Keynes naively thought we might overcome:

We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession -as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life -will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

But still, even these sad souls are accounted for in his prediction:

Of course there will still be many people with intense, unsatisfied purposiveness who will blindly pursue wealth-unless they can find some plausible substitute. But the rest of us will no longer be under any obligation to applaud and encourage them.

Sadly, it is not be our stockpiling of treasury notes that causing our woes, as our households are thwarted with almost $15,310 in credit card debt.  This alone ensures a 15-hour workweek is out of the question. 

So, Mr. Keynes, where have we stumbled?

It seems our success may also be our Achilles heel.  After the Second World War, it has been American (and now global) consumerism and obsession with “things” that has driven much our economic success.  It is now difficult for most of us to believe that there was a time of“traditional American uneasiness with consumption: the fear that spending would lead to decadence."  But our post-war marketing gurus easily quelled this fear:

In fact, the American consumer was praised as a patriotic citizen in the 1950s, contributing to the ultimate success of the American way of life. "The good purchaser devoted to 'more, newer and better' was the good citizen," historian Lizabeth Cohen explained, "since economic recovery after a decade and a half of depression and war depended on a dynamic mass consumption economy."

So, quickly we have become – a society unquestionably obsessed with the accumulation and continual ‘improvement’ of things.  Our new and noble cause brought strength to our country, and around the world.  We saw that consumerism was not the dark path we had feared, but the lighted torch that would lead us to economic excellence and personal freedoms… or maybe not.

Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater (or the email out with the iPhone), but it is highly doubtful Mr. Keynes assumed that 68% of adults would need a smartphone.  And would he have suggested that we increase the median size for a newly constructed home from 983 square feet in 1950 to nearly 2,500 square feet, today?   Surely, Mr. Keynes would have considered it inconceivable that we would now fill our increased space with almost 300,000 items. 

Without a doubt, there have been many inventions, innovations, and objects of beauty that have improved and enhanced our lives in the past 87 years.  There are tools and technologies that allow us to communicate in stimulating new ways, and artisanal artifacts that cause us to pause and appreciate the human experience.  But just perhaps, Mr. Keynes would suggest we trade in 150,000, or so, in exchange for a few more hours of time with our family, our friends, or our own daydreams.   Then again, maybe I am just impatient.  After all, Mr. Keynes promised this utopian society to develop 100 years from the time of his writing.  Until then, we can look forward to our 13 new iPhone upgrades.

Additional Reading:

Why is Everyone So Busy? (The Economist)

Why Not a Three-Day Week? (The New Yorker)