Why is free time still so elusive?

John Maynard Keynes made a famous prediction: within a century, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advance of technology, no one would have to work more than about fifteen hours a week. The challenge would be how to fill all our new-found leisure time without going crazy. ‘For the first time since his creation,’ Keynes told his audience, ‘man w

... See more

John Maynard Keynes made a famous prediction: within a century, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advance of technology, no one would have to work more than about fifteen hours a week. The challenge would be how to fill all our new-found leisure time without going crazy. ‘For the first time since his creation,’ Keynes told his audience, ‘man w

... See more

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a fifteen-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead

... See more

Defenders of modern capitalism enjoy pointing out that despite how things might feel, we actually have more leisure time than we did in previous decades—an average of about five hours per day for men, and only slightly less for women. But perhaps one reason we don’t experience life that way is that leisure no longer feels very leisurely. Instead, i... See more

The 8-hour work day, weekends, time off—hard-fought and won by the labor movement!—seem to have been triumphs for human health and well-being. Why should we assume that stopping here is right? Why should we assume that less work was better in the past, but less work now would be worse?

Unlike Marx, Keynes viewed capitalism as inevitably shifting to greater abundance, this resulting from its ability to become ever more productive over time while reducing the demand for labour. In Economic Possibilities his claim was that this would translate to a shorter working week, with improvements in productivity as technology progressed bene

... See more