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Why Do Americans Work So Much?
HughPickens.com writes Rebecca Rosen has an interesting essay at The Atlantic on economist John Maynard Keynes' prediction in 1930 that with increased productivity, over the next 100 years the economy would become so productive that people would barely need to work at all. For a while, it looked like Keynes was right: In 1930 the average workweek was 47 hours. By 1970 it had fallen to slightly less than 39. But then something changed. Instead of continuing to decline, the duration of the workweek stayed put; it's hovered just below 40 hours for nearly five decades. According to Rosen there would be no mystery in this if Keynes had been wrong about the economy's increasing productivity, which he thought would lead to a standard of living "between four and eight times as high as it is today." Keynes got that right: Technology has made the economy massively more productive. Now a new paper Benjamin Friedman says that "the U.S. economy is right on track to reach Keynes's eight-fold multiple" by 2029—100 years after the last data Keynes would have had. But according to Friedman, the key reason that Keynes prediction failed to come true is that Keynes failed to allow for the changing distribution of wealth.
I live in a house built by my own hands on land I claimed after killing the Indians living here. I'm typing this on a telegraph because I'm not the kind of greedy bastard that has to have a newfangled computer. I'm only using the telegraph until I figure out how to make the internet work with an abacus. I keep my food in the root cellar instead of wasting money on one of those refrigerators and keep the house lit by candles made with fat rendered from the animals I raise. TV is shadow puppets on the wall and I ride a horse buggy into town.
YOU sound like the greediest asshole ever with all your modern conveniences! How dare you buy things??
Hey, that gives me an idea. Think we can somehow tack global warming onto Obama?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, because global warming doesn't exist. I know this because the weather outside is cold, thus proving once again that Obama lied to us.