We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by bluedanieru on Sunday February 03, 2013 @10:03PM (#5162217)

So what, then, do you think the purpose of technological advancement is? Quality of life and wages have more-or-less flat-lined while productivity is way, way up. We are producing heaps more wealth per person than at any point in history, and yet we don't have much to show for it. Nowhere near proportional to the productivity increases, that's for certain.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not a Luddite by any stretch and I'm not suggesting we should go back to an agrarian society, but we have a serious economic and political problem where the benefits of technological advancement are going in overwhelming proportion to a very small subset of the population. If something isn't done about that, and soon, the resulting upheaval may force us back to pre-industrial living anyway (or more likely, much worse).

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by judgardner on Sunday February 03, 2013 @10:33PM (#5162292)

> Quality of life and wages have more-or-less flat-lined while productivity is way, way up.

Can you support this? Millions of people all over the world are being lifted out of poverty.

Here is a chart of per capita GNI for the past 20 years http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...

edi: linked wrong chart

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by svachalek on Monday February 04, 2013 @01:31AM (#5162794)

GNI is just a grand total divided by population; people would be making more if the money was divided up evenly but it's not, particularly in the U.S.

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by judgardner on Monday February 04, 2013 @04:36AM (#5163278)

> GNI is just a grand total divided by population;

Right, per capita, as I stated, but really just GNI is fine too.

> people would be making more if the money was divided up evenly but it's not, particularly in the U.S

Unfortunately the google public data didn't have enough US data but take a look at these two charts for India.

First is just India's per capita GNI the second is India's income distribution over the same time frame. Notice how the income distribution is relatively flat and how the GNI is growing.

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by afterburner on Monday February 04, 2013 @01:50AM (#5162843)

Actually, the wealth has accrued quite nicely to the top 1%, even more so to the top 0.01%. Whereas the rest of the population has seen real pay flatline as you say. That is the real problem.

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by tossacct on Sunday February 03, 2013 @10:50PM (#5162332)

>>>Nowhere near proportional to the productivity increases, that's for certain.

What is the proper proportion?

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by svachalek on Monday February 04, 2013 @01:34AM (#5162805)

Why not 1:1?

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by tossacct on Monday February 04, 2013 @01:54AM (#5162859)

Would you care to share your measuring system for how do decide if it is 1:1 or not? It seems complex to measure health, "wealth", happiness, and security. I sure haven't found any actionable or reasonably complete metrics in my readings, maybe I am bad at searching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life

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Re:We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor by jdotjdot on Sunday February 03, 2013 @10:37PM (#5162306)

I think this is an excellent point.

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