There are three strands of argument against shorter working time in mainstream teaching. None of them is viable by itself. And their core assumptions are inconsistent with each other. But the threesome are routinely deployed tactically as if they were compatible.
The first, perhaps "best" argument is that reducing the hours of work drives up fixed costs relative to variable costs, i.e. capital relative to labor and labor overhead costs (or quasi-fixed costs) relative to variable labor costs. The most influential statement of that argument would be by Walter Oi. His analysis is, in some respects descended from John Maurice Clark's analysis of overhead costs. However, Oi doesn't address Clark's fundamental point that labor can only be considered a variable cost from the short-term perspective of the firm and that ultimately there are fixed costs behind that apparent variable cost that must be borne by society and by individuals if they are "shifted" by employers. The fixed cost argument stands entirely on an accounting fiction. The second argument is that the hours of work are freely chosen by individuals, who choose between leisure time and the amount of income they desire to buy commodities. Leisure is treated in this "labor supply model" as a normal good. Reducing the hours of work by legislation or collective agreement would interfere with this freedom to choose between leisure and income and thus lead to inefficient allocation of resources. This explanation has been decisively disproven empirically (Pencavel), it has a dubious history as a kind of dust-bunny-under-the-bed theory and it doesn't "ring true" to most people's personal experience. Nevertheless, it's easy to teach, fits in with broader arguments about consumer choice and has a nice simple "butt on a slide" graph to go with it. So it gets taught as gospel. The third argument is the "you're stupid so that makes me smart" taunt of the lump-of-labor fallacy. This is the claim that advocates of shorter working time commit the fallacy of assuming there is a fixed amount of work "to go 'round" when actually -- what would Say say? -- supply (of labor) creates its own demand (for labor). This one would be the zombie dust bunny under the bed theory. Economists are fond of "enumerating" these three non-sequitur arguments as if they were cumulative rather than contradictory. On 1/22/08, raghu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Jan 21, 2008 9:31 PM, Sandwichman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > As Mark Twain DIDN'T say (but it is nevertheless widely attributed to > > him), " 't ain't what people don't know that hurts 'em; it's what they > > think they know that just ain't so." What I am constantly trying to > > call attention to is not MY slogan or MY program but the slogans and > > programs that are so deeply embedded in the discourse that good people > > like Jim mistake them for their own presumably "unbiased" thoughts. > > What is the best (neoclassical) argument against shorter working > hours? What if, say workaholic programming types in Silicon Valley > really do want to put in 80 hour work weeks? Should they be prevented > by law from doing so? > > > > As for Shemano: David, there are moments at work when there is nowhere > > else I would rather be, moments when I can share joyous laughter with > > an almost complete stranger. Those moments happen more frequently when > > I have enough time outside of work to accomplish the things I want to > > accomplish. So getting robots to do all the work doesn't appeal to me. > > Eliminating the drudgery, the waste of time and gratuitous instances > > of social domination at work do appeal to me. > > The idea that robots will someday replace human labor is silly: who is > going to service the bloody robots? It is not even true in general > that robots replace unpleasant, difficult work with pleasant, easy > work. Can anyone point to any research that shows otherwise? > -raghu. > -- Sandwichman
