Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco...
by kube-system on Thursday March 05, 2020 @01:55PM
(#22496763)
Exactly. Too many people think about the relationship between employment, productivity, and prosperity way too linearly.
The biggest problem is that we don't really have a good way to measure the value of free time or well-being. While someone could spend every penny of a minimum wage job on daycare services and it would boost productivity figures, it would be a pretty silly decision for someone to make in terms of actual prosperity.
Society has decided for a long time to continue working the same or more hours as productivity rises, but at what point does it make more sense in terms of prosperity to cash out some of that productivity in the form of free-time rather than dollars?
The biggest problem is that we don't really have a good way to measure the value of free time or well-being. While someone could spend every penny of a minimum wage job on daycare services and it would boost productivity figures, it would be a pretty silly decision for someone to make in terms of actual prosperity.
Society has decided for a long time to continue working the same or more hours as productivity rises, but at what point does it make more sense in terms of prosperity to cash out some of that productivity in the form of free-time rather than dollars?