More Work Or More Free Time

 Here is the first chapter of my book More Work Or More Free Time: The Crucial Political Issue that No One Is Talking About, to be published next month. 

Chapter 1: The Dutch Model

American progressives often use the Scandinavian countries as models for us to imitate, because they have prosperous economies and policies that let everyone share in the prosperity. But the Netherlands is a better model: it also has a prosperous economy and policies to spread the prosperity widely—and in addition, it has pioneered policies that let employees choose shorter work hours. The average Dutch employee produces about as much in an hour as the average American employee, but works only about 80% as many hours.1

By law, Dutch employees have the right to choose part-time work, and about half of them do choose to work part time. Allowing this choice challenges fundamental assumptions of America’s economy.

It challenges our belief that we are better off if we have the fastest possible economic growth. The Dutch would have faster economic growth if they worked as much as Americans, but many choose part-time work because they believe they are better off with more free time rather than more income. Most Americans do not have this choice: they have to work full time to keep their jobs, even if they think they would be happier working part-time.

It challenges our belief that government must promote rapid economic growth to provide more jobs. The Dutch model shows that we can create jobs either by promoting growth or by shortening work hours—or by some combination of the two. Since the end of World War II, America has avoided unemployment by producing more and more to create more and more work. The Dutch model shows that we can also avoid unemployment by letting employees work shorter hours to spread the needed work among more people.

Compulsory Consumption

In postwar America, the government promoted massive development of freeways and automobile-dependent suburbs to stimulate the economy and provide jobs. The Federal government funded freeways and FHA mortgages for suburban houses, and local governments used zoning to create suburbs with low-density housing and strip-mall shopping. Many of the new suburban neighborhoods did not even have sidewalks because they did not expect people to get around by walking. The nation was transformed in just a few decades, as Americans moved to these sprawl suburbs.

This is an example of compulsory consumption: in these suburbs it is almost impossible to get around without a car. Having a car is compulsory, no matter how great a financial burden it is. 

Anyone who goes to the Netherlands immediately sees one reason why they can work shorter hours than Americans: Dutch neighborhoods are filled with pedestrians and with bicyclists but have relatively few cars. On narrower streets, cars drive slowly behind bicyclists and wait patiently when pedestrians spill out from the crowded sidewalks onto the street; American drivers would be leaning on their horns. 

Postwar America promoted automobile use to stimulate economic growth and provide jobs. But the Dutch created a prosperous economy with low unemployment without promoting automobile dependency. 

Though they work less and make less money than Americans, the Dutch have higher average levels of happiness, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and higher educational achievement than Americans—in part because they have much lower levels of inequality than we do, so they do not have a large number of very poor people who bring down the average.2 

Their policies to reduce inequality also help them to work shorter hours. In the United States, median income has stagnated for many decades, despite rapid economic growth, because most of the benefits of growth have gone to the very rich. In the Netherlands, there is less inequality, so people with moderate incomes earn enough per hour to work part-time. 

The Dutch model of low inequality and shorter work hours gives people better lives than the American model of higher inequality, longer work hours, and faster economic growth.

The Global Environment

Shorter work hours and slower growth would make it easier to deal with global warming and other pressing ecological problems. They are essential to environmental sustainability in the long run.

In this century, much of the world could become affluent, and the model that the developing nations follow will obviously have a powerful effect on whether the global economy can be sustainable. If most of the world follows the postwar American model, keeping their work hours long and promoting rapid economic growth to provide more jobs, it will be hard to avoid environmental crisis. If the world follows the Dutch model, choosing more free time and slower growth, it will be much easier to protect the global environment. 

In the long run, following the Dutch model could lead to dramatic changes in the way people live. As improved technology makes it possible to produce what people want in less and less time, most people’s work hours could become so short that their lives center on what they do with their free time rather than what they do at their jobs. We would need changes in education to teach people to make good use of their free time. And we would need to reexamine our ideals: in order to decide how to use that free time, we would have to think about what is a good life. 

The choice between more work and more free time is crucial to protecting the environment and to improving people’s lives, but no prominent mainstream American politician has talked about it since the Roosevelt administration.