{"id":52717,"date":"2020-04-23T08:36:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52717"},"modified":"2020-04-23T08:36:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:36:47","slug":"lets-be-less-productive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52717","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Be Less Productive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"link-6352c489\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/27\/opinion\/sunday\/lets-be-less-productive.html\">Let\u2019s Be Less Productive<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">HAS the pursuit of labor productivity reached its limit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Productivity \u2014 the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy \u2014 is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.\u2019s and finance ministers. Perhaps forgivably so: our ability to generate more output with fewer people has lifted our lives out of drudgery and delivered us a cornucopia of material wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the relentless drive for productivity may also have some natural limits. Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don\u2019t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work. If more is possible each passing year with each working hour, then either output has to increase or else there is less work to go around. Like it or not, we find ourselves hooked on growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What, then, should happen when, for one reason or another, growth just isn\u2019t to be had anymore? Maybe it\u2019s a financial crisis. Or rising prices for resources like oil. Or the need to rein in growth for the damage it\u2019s inflicting on the planet: climate change, deforestation, the loss of biodiversity. Maybe it\u2019s any of the reasons growth can no longer be safely and easily assumed in any of today\u2019s economies. The result is the same. Increasing productivity threatens full employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One solution would be to accept the productivity increases, shorten the workweek and share the available work. Such proposals \u2014 familiar since the 1930s \u2014 are now enjoying something of a revival in the face of continuing recession. The&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.neweconomics.org\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Economics Foundation<\/a>, a British think tank, proposes a 21-hour workweek. It may not be the workaholic\u2019s choice. But it\u2019s certainly a strategy worth thinking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s Be Less Productive HAS the pursuit of labor productivity reached its limit? Productivity \u2014 the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy \u2014 is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[141,391,29525,5647,15672,868],"class_list":["post-52717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-growth","tag-new-york-tiimes","tag-productivity","tag-tim-jackson","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52718,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52717\/revisions\/52718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}