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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

Economists (Keynes and others) in at the beginning of the 20th century projected that based on increasing productivity we would only be working about 15h a week by now. They actually did predict that this could become a significant problem, because many people need work for their personal fulfillment.

Now the productivity gains actually did happen, however what the economists didn't predict is that all the gains went to only benefit very few (essentially the holders of capital) and inequality would increase significantly preventing most people to reduce their work hours even if they wanted.

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However, people also want to spend more money and have more things / higher standard of living than people had at that time.

I'm curious if you would adjust your own standard of living accordingly, you could finance it with a 15h workweek just fine. But this for sure does not apply to low wage jobs.

While inequality is now clearly on the rise (and it's a big problem), afaik there also have been times in history when it was consistently higher. https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality seems to have some good charts and context here.

Well, so this kind of thinking is really part of the problem. The number of hours you put into something should never matter. What matters is the value of the productivity. We should be getting paid on the marginal value of our labor, not the minimum we're willing to bear. In addition, if the job can get done in 15 hours, then we should get paid the same, regardless. It's the conflation of hours to productivity that's destructive in this conversation. They're not the same, and a reduction in the work week should not be a salary-reducing event.

The problem lies in the "should" :) I do agree that the conflation of hours and productivity is a problem here. But it's a very common one and most people don't have the freedom. What I wanted to point out that there is not just one variable in play here. And there are some very practical problems which are not easy to solve. (Try explaining this to your employer and convincing him that this rule would indeed work for every employee he has. There are also jobs where hours and productivity are closer related. There are jobs where hours put in may be the best metric you have to measure output?)

Isn’t that one of the points of a salaried job versus hourly? You’re paid the same regardless of how long it takes you. Many companies sometimes don’t care if it takes you 5 or 10 hours to do the task as long as it’s done by the deadline.

It totally is, but companies don’t treat it that way. Most expect you to work at least 40 hours at all times, especially in office situations, and if you have to work overtime, that’s on you. So, company’s are having their cake and eating it to, while salaried folks are more likely to be abused by employers.

Exactly.

Keynes rejected Marx, who explains that while the capitalist class maintains state power the workers will continue to be exploited.

He also rejected Lenin, who explains how imperialism’s constant expansion most intensely exploits the periphery, where most production gets moved to.

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