Why Technology Didn't Produce Increased Leisure

[pbrower2a]

(05-29-2018, 01:21 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-29-2018, 09:12 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: This thread has veered way off from its original topic. To bring it back over, in 1992 author Juliet Schor wrote a book called "The Overworked American" It's subtitle was "The Unexpected Decline of Leisure". I created this thread in the hope that some of you would have some interesting opinions about why we never became that society of increased leisure and, actually, beginning around 1980 we reversed course and workweeks began lengthening even though the society of increased leisure was something we were once all but promised.

The cause for the decline of leisure is based on the rise of the power of oligarchy, pure and simple: keep the hamsters running and the profits tied to capital.  I doubt this will change without a major impetuous to trigger it.  If the economy crashes even more spectacularly than it did in 2008, that may get the job done.  Short of that, I don't see it changing very much … cosmetically at most.  

John Maynard Keynes estimated that the work week would have to be limited to 15 hours at some point if productivity continued to rise at the rate it was in his time.  In the 1960s, the Senate Labor committee estimated that the 15 hour level would be reached by 2000.  Neither foresaw the total collapse of labor unions, to say nothing of the abandonment of working people by the Democrats.:et's not forget that

Let's not forget that we are paying higher rents than ever in real terms, and that commute times are lengthening. Young adults who have middle-class incomes have huge student loans to pay. Much of our income is thus going into economic rent instead of into manufactured goods or into services.

We are going from a competitive economic system in which prices shadow costs closely to a non-competitive order in which the highest priority is in enriching the "right people", especially those wielding political or bureaucratic power.