I think the core of the problem is the idea of the 40-hour work week. It is inevitable that more and more jobs will become marginalized and automated. That is a good thing: the goal of technological progress should be increased happiness, of which one component is increased leisure time.
As more and more jobs require less and less work performed by humans, the obvious solution is to work less hours. Instead of family providers working a total of 60-90 hours per week, they should be working closer to 40-50 in the somewhat-near future, with that number continuing to drop over time.
We obviously have 3 possible paths:
1. We return to the single-provider days of old
2. We scale back "normal" hours to be 20-30 hours per week per person.
3. We have high unemployment while many are working 70+ hour weeks.
Currently we are going with (3), and it just doesn't make that much sense. Either (1) or (2) would be acceptable to me, but (2) certainly seems more fair. I would love to get to a situation where families get to spend valuable time together and kids are raised by their parents.
I think an average of 25 hours per week would hit a nice sweet spot. It would allow companies to have 10-hour work days, either alternating 3/2 10-hour days per week, or 5-hour shifts 5 days a week. Jobs like programming could be designed to have 2 8-hour shifts per week (to perform actual development) along with 3 3-hour shifts (to address meetings, squash bugs, perform customer service, etc.). What is keeping us from this?
Instead, we have something like 15-20% of the population overworking themselves while another 15-20% are under- or unemployed. Something's gotta give.
As more and more jobs require less and less work performed by humans, the obvious solution is to work less hours. Instead of family providers working a total of 60-90 hours per week, they should be working closer to 40-50 in the somewhat-near future, with that number continuing to drop over time.
We obviously have 3 possible paths:
Currently we are going with (3), and it just doesn't make that much sense. Either (1) or (2) would be acceptable to me, but (2) certainly seems more fair. I would love to get to a situation where families get to spend valuable time together and kids are raised by their parents.I think an average of 25 hours per week would hit a nice sweet spot. It would allow companies to have 10-hour work days, either alternating 3/2 10-hour days per week, or 5-hour shifts 5 days a week. Jobs like programming could be designed to have 2 8-hour shifts per week (to perform actual development) along with 3 3-hour shifts (to address meetings, squash bugs, perform customer service, etc.). What is keeping us from this?
Instead, we have something like 15-20% of the population overworking themselves while another 15-20% are under- or unemployed. Something's gotta give.