I've been working a 4-day week for well over a decade (also because I've got kids, but I did this well before I had kids), and I strongly recommend it for everybody.
And I bet he was quite right, but there is an important nuance: it's true for the 1940s level of consumption. If you reduce your level of consumption to 1940s level, you could easily manage to have 15-hour week.
> but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking
You seem to gravely underestimate the huge gap in economic value between what people were consuming in Keynes' times and what they consume now. The productivity gains are embodied in goods in services like Uber, Amazon, Netflix, computers and stuff, computerized cars.
The newly built 1940s-level goods and services would cost a fraction of price.
In USA? Adjusted for inflation, you had pretty flat housing prices until mid 90s, where the housing bubble started. And even now and on peak of the housing bubble of 2008 the house will cost you 250% the cost of 1940s house (or 180% of the 1950s which is more fair comparison since it was after the war) which is not that bad.
And in a way, we're actually working more. Back in the 70s, a single income was enough to maintain a family with a house and kids and everything. These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs, which often depend on what people can afford to pay for the house they need, and with double income, we can afford to pay twice as much, so housing prices have gone through the roof.
I suspect we shouldn't have gone from one parent working fulltime to two parents working fulltime, but to two parents working part time. I've got a feeling we may have accidentally ruined this for ourselves.
What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today? Internet says that median house size in US went from 500sq feet to 907 sq feet. So yes, the consumption standards had risen significantly.
> These days, it's common for both parents to work
Can't say for US, but in EU these days it's common for parents to travel. It's common for parents to go on a massage or SPA on the weekends. It's common for parents to do sport, buy a bicycle etc. And I'm talking about regular blue collar peps.
My parents didn't do all that. They lived a much more humble life than most parents today. Also my mother did a shitload of manual work, she washed all the clothes manually, she did cleaning mostly manually, she fixed clothes with her own hands manually. How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing?
So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home (because absent/more expensive goods and services) and they overall live a pretty humble life by today standards even adjusted for better services".
If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent. But neither you, nor your spouse and kids will like that standards of living.
> What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today?
The home I grew up in was larger than the house I raise my kids in. Lots of older houses weren't all that small, and plenty of new ones aren't that big, but they all got a lot more expensive.
> How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing?
I always want to, but never get around to it. This lack of repair has definitely contributed to the disposability of our stuff.
> So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home
But we still have chores at home. Only now we have to do them outside working hours. Although I do quite a bit on my free wednesdays.
> If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent.
I have friends who do. But the thing they mostly cut their expenses on is still their house: they live in an old, poorly insulated house in the middle of nowhere that still needs a lot of work.
When you know for sure that you will have a job tomorrow, you’re more likely to sit back, reflect on, and savor your wealth.
On the other hand, knowing that people like you are getting fired at-will, unconscious fear sets in that the next time the music stops, you’ll be the one without a seat.
This feeling of not being able to control one’s destiny is what prevents us from enjoying our money sitting in the bank.
Not if you want a home.
I know it doesn't make sense. I know how marginal tax rates work. And yet when the tax service estimates my income for 2024 at € 130k, they expect me to pay 50k in taxes, but if my accountant lowers the estimate to $100k, I'd only have to pay 22k. I have no clue how that works, but it looks to me like I should switch to a 3-day work week or take 3 months vacation.
At the moment we need growth fuelled by productivity gains at constant hours, or even increased hours, not a reduction of working hours, which goes in the opposite direction and, again feels like Europe is giving up.
Keynes did not "predicted" that based on continued increased productivity, not because of any rights to it.
Unfortunately productivity gains have largely stalled for years: growth is very weak while population keeps increasing.
I'd say there were mostly eaten by increased standards of living. Compare median global standard of living in Keyens times (say 100 years ago) and today. The difference is astounding, and we even work less for it than we did - just not "15 hours workweek" less.
Thought I suppose that this might be a lot harder in more conservative exploitative cultures. Working 4.5 days, with one free day per two weeks, is incredibly common in Netherland. Part time is not uncommon.