The official house conservative at the NYTimes (as distinct from all the other conservatives there posing as journalists and pundits) has brought into open discourse a fundamental problem of the US economy and of capitalism. "A WORLD WITHOUT WORK." Good for him. This is well worth reading, though his idea of subsidizing work -- i.e. keep the profits flowing and go ahead and give food stamps -- is typical for his ilk. It sounds close to Juliette Shor's "self provisioning." " Those riches mean that we can probably find ways to subsidize — through public means and private — a continuing decline in blue-collar work. Many of the Americans dropping out of the work force are not destitute: they’re receiving disability payments and food stamps, living with relatives, cobbling together work here and there, and often doing as well as they might with a low-wage job. By historical standards their lives are more comfortable than the left often allows, and the fiscal cost of their situation is more sustainable than the right tends to admits. (Medicare may bankrupt us, but food stamps probably will not.) To my great surprise, the comments posted through 11:41 am on the 23rd were remarkably good. I seldom read comments because the ignorance and vileness usually found in comments discourages that. This time the comments give me hope. Gene OP-ED COLUMNIST A World Without Work By ROSS DOUTHAT Published: February 23, 2013 47 Comments Enlarge This Image  Josh Haner/The New York Times Ross Douthat Go to Columnist Page » Ross Douthat’s Evaluations The columnist’s blog on politics and culture. More From Evaluations » Readers’ Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. • Read All Comments (47) » If such a utopia were possible, one might expect that it would be achieved first among the upper classes, and then gradually spread down the social ladder. First the wealthy would work shorter hours, then the middle class, and finally even high school dropouts would be able to sleep late and take four-day weekends and choose their own adventures — “to hunt in the morning,” as Karl Marx once prophesied, “fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner ...”Yet the decline of work isn’t actually some wild Marxist scenario. It’s a basic reality of 21st-century American life, one that predates the financial crash and promises to continue apace even as normal economic growth returns. This decline isn’t unemployment in the usual sense, where people look for work and can’t find it. It’s a kind of post-employment, in which people drop out of the work force and find ways to live, more or less permanently, without a steady job. So instead of spreading from the top down, leisure time — wanted or unwanted — is expanding from the bottom up. Long hours are increasingly the province of the rich. |
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