(05-30-2018, 02:59 PM)David Horn Wrote:(05-29-2018, 02:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(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.
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.
Nothing changes until the pressure to change exceeds the power of inertia. We Americans seem to be worse than most in that regard, so it's feasible that the 4T could come and go before the pressure to change gets high enough to actually trigger one. I've been in that camp for a long time. FWIW, it's not inevitable that we'll fail this 4T, but it is possible and getting moreso by the day.
Most of us have read Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. At one point, the predictability of history collapses because an inexplicable event occurs. Like the Mule, Donald Trump is outside the prediction window. Since Trump arrived on the scene, events are occurring that seem to be counterintuitive. Why, for example, are lies considered more valid than truths, even though they known to be lies to those who cling to them? Is there a technique or practice that can reverse that trend, and, if not, what does THAT portend?
Until the 2018 election cycle is complete, we won't have a clue. Even then, it may be less than clear. We entered political space typically occupied by autocrats and tyrants, and aren't very adept in this milieu. If all this leads to a failed 4T, then the next 2T has to be dramatic in the extreme or the cycle is probably broken.
Bad systems collapse of their absurdity. Recall that the late novelist and playwright (political prisoner-turned-President Vaclav Havel) called a thinly-disguised communist Czechoslovakia "Absurdistan". We claim to be a democracy yet corporate lobbyists control Congress and most state legislatures, which is grossly undemocratic and even fascistic. American fascism does not need torture chambers, labor camps, and shooting pits -- yet. We claim to have a competitive economy, yet we have pricing increasingly monopolistic in character.
Take away a welfare system that keeps people consigned to roles as losers from either starving to death or turning to crime, and we would have riots that make those of the 1960s look like minor, isolated incidents. (It is the competitive parts of the American economy that are doing best without the aid of crony capitalism, so the optimum looks like a competitive economy with a solid welfare system. You can count on food retailers like Kroger, Safeway, and Wal-Mart ... and food processors like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Nabisco, IBF, Armour-Swift-Eckrich, Kellogg's, Beatrice Foods, etc. resisting any end of SNAP, a/k/a Food Stamps). There just isn't enough work to be done super-cheaply, and trying to create jobs that have no productivity behind them is wasteful. A competitive economy with a generous welfare system is the best that we can hope for.
Keynes may have been wrong about work requirements for producing the necessities of a world in the 1930s being only about 15 hours per person. First, there has been the growth of the service sector which has been getting much of the increase in productivity. I am not sure that the movies are better now than they were in Keynes' time, but they are certainly more expensive to make unless one wants to return to movies with low budgets and no special effects. Say "Pixar" or "Marvel" and I am now interested. Second, there are activities like teaching that cannot be readily reduced to 15 hours or less a week. Third, to achieve the level of excellence necessary for the highly-refined performance in art, science, writing, athletics, pop or classical music, or acting (stage or screen) that people are willing to pay good money for takes about 10,000 hours of preparation -- which, coincidentally is about what is needed for achieving a PhD, professional status in medicine or law, or master-craftsmanship in skilled labor -- if you want to believe what Malcolm Gladwell relates in Outliers. 60 hours a week allows one to achieve such in 133 weeks; 40 hours a week allows one to do so in 250 weeks; 25 hours a week allows one to do so in 400 weeks. This must start early during formative years. There are few "natural talents" who need no refinement, and there are few late-bloomers.
OK, so 15 hours a week of milling cows, delivery work, busing tables, or doing oil-and-lube jobs might be adequate for meeting basic human needs. Robot production will meet many of those basic needs.
We may have to tax robot-based production to support a solid welfare system that subsidizes people for doing certifiably-miserable work for a few hours each week. In general, the higher the level of skill that a job requires to achieve excellence, the less problematic are the long hours. K-12 teaching, effectively about 35 hours a week if one looks at arrival times and departure times, may go from being seen as 'short hours' to 'long-hours' work. But this said, people who enjoy teaching would rather do 35 hours of teaching than do 15 hours of work cleaning up cattle-droppings in a dairy for the same pay. Preparation is part of the necessary culture of the work.
...So what is Asimov's 'unpredictable event'? Having not read his Foundation Trilogy, I would have to guess some possible events:
1. a financial panic as in 1857, 1929, or 2008, when people suddenly realize that they have been investing in $@!+ instead of in something good
2. a war for profit that either fails to turn a profit (one loses a war for seizure of other countries' resources or control of other countries' consumer markets) or turns into a catastrophic defeat. Satan Hussein thought that his invasion of Kuwait would work well. An American President who believes that invading Cuba to graft it into America as a 51st state or take over the oilfields of Venezuela will quickly find how fleeting some old partnerships and alliances can be after such an act.
3. technological calamities such as Chernobyl because the project was done on the cheap, or perhaps robots initiating a proletarian revolution (Robots of the world, unite!... after a library program draws some conclusions from the Communist Manifesto and convinces smart robots that they are the true workers and humans are gross exploiters).
4. the rise of a demagogue who convinces enough people that his contradictory promises are achievable because someone else will pay. Donald Trump is the most demagogic politician who has ever gotten close to the Presidency of the United States, and his ideological contradictions form a disaster.
5. ecological disaster (like global warming) that threatens food sources and put masses of people with starvation or epidemics that cold weather once suppressed -- or political chaos due to inundation of valuable property and the economic infrastructure upon such property.
I have just suggested financial, military, technological, political, and ecological disasters as the absurd events that few could predict or were willing to recognize as such before they happened. Blunders seduce those people, especially those who should know better, who commit assets and personal credibility to them.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.