The 40-hour work week is designed to encourage consumption

[Vorpal]

Sure, there is some hyperbole and some ipso facto fallacy (I made that up, but it's shorter than typing "post hoc ergo propter hoc") in this article, but overall it's a pretty good analysis of our consumer culture:

http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/your_lifestyle_has_already_been_designed/

[cats]

A friend passed this on to me and I was just coming to post about it here!  I always like reading these kinds of articles because they make me start thinking about how much of my life is stuff *I* choose to do/spend money on vs. stuff that I just seem to have wound up doing/buying.  I always seem to find there's something or another that could use jettisoning.

[Rezdent]

I like reading David Cain and visit his blog often.  Thanks for sharing!

[Vorpal]

A friend passed this on to me and I was just coming to post about it here!  I always like reading these kinds of articles because they make me start thinking about how much of my life is stuff *I* choose to do/spend money on vs. stuff that I just seem to have wound up doing/buying.  I always seem to find there's something or another that could use jettisoning.

My spending self-challenge really opened my eyes to the amount of "casual spending" I was doing. I certainly see the comparison to addiction, because now that I've been spending much less I actually crave fewer things.

[Daley]

Just for the sake of reference for the newer folks as there was some interesting discussion on it by others as well, here's a link to two older threads in the forums here on the same article:

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachianism-around-the-web/%27weve-been-led-into-a-culture-that-has-been-engineered-to-leave-us-tired-hungr/

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/interesting-article-%27your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed%27/

I want to say there's a third, but I can't find it. It's definitely a good article, though... and has aged well in the four years since Cain first wrote it.

[Vorpal]

Admittedly, I just checked the first page before posting :)  Thanks for the links.

[warfreak2]

It's an interesting idea, but even if we accept the premise that overworked people spend so much more on convenience that companies get more back than it costs to pay them to work so much, it doesn't really make sense from a game-theoretic perspective. It's a prisoner's dilemma.

Every company is better off if they all ask staff to work 40 hours, so people have less free time and buy more conveniences. However, each individual company has the choice of paying their own staff to work those extra hours, in exchange for their own staff buying more of the company's own conveniences.

A quick glance at any real company will show that staff tend not to spend 10%, 20%, 30%+ of their paychecks on the products/services their employer sells. If they are buying more conveniences due to having less free time, they are buying from other companies - and this does not incentivise their own employer to pay for them to work those extra hours.

Also, many companies employ staff for 40 hours, but sell necessities rather than conveniences, and these companies aren't expecting to benefit at all from overworked staff. The only way this could be a real explanation is if it is combined with some reason for companies to individually make decisions for the benefit of all companies, rather than for their own benefit. Maybe it's a big conspiracy? I doubt it.

It sounds more like the author imagines "corporations" as one big, homogenous mass, rather than a diverse population, each with individual motivations that often don't align with the motivations of other corporations.

[SwordGuy]

The 40 hour workweek isn't an invention of the capitalists to get us to spend more.

It is an invention of the socialist party so that capitalists didn't work us to death with a 70 or 80 hour work week.

Read up about Eugene V. Debs and say thank you to him when you're done.

[Vorpal]

It sounds more like the author imagines "corporations" as one big, homogenous mass, rather than a diverse population, each with individual motivations that often don't align with the motivations of other corporations.

True, but don't all for-profit corporations have the end goal of selling you their stuff?

The 40 hour workweek isn't an invention of the capitalists to get us to spend more.

It is an invention of the socialist party so that capitalists didn't work us to death with a 70 or 80 hour work week.

Read up about Eugene V. Debs and say thank you to him when you're done.

The article doesn't claim that:

The eight-hour workday developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14- or 16-hour workdays.

As I said, there are some definite problems with the article; however, the overall message (that we are driven to consume by outside forces, and are slaves to that consumption) is an accurate one IMO.

[warfreak2]

It sounds more like the author imagines "corporations" as one big, homogenous mass, rather than a diverse population, each with individual motivations that often don't align with the motivations of other corporations.

True, but don't all for-profit corporations have the end goal of selling you their stuff?

Yes, but they aren't motivated to help other companies sell you those other companies' stuff. That's the point.

No company has the decision to make everyone work 40 hours; they only decide for their own employees, and whatever the other companies are doing, it isn't a good decision for them. Companies don't collectively make decisions for the good of all companies - it's illegal to do that!

[Vorpal]

It sounds more like the author imagines "corporations" as one big, homogenous mass, rather than a diverse population, each with individual motivations that often don't align with the motivations of other corporations.

True, but don't all for-profit corporations have the end goal of selling you their stuff?

Yes, but they aren't motivated to help other companies sell you those other companies' stuff. That's the point.

No company has the decision to make everyone work 40 hours; they only decide for their own employees, and whatever the other companies are doing, it isn't a good decision for them. Companies don't collectively make decisions for the good of all companies - it's illegal to do that!

Ah, I see what you're saying now. Yeah, that part of the article is silly.

[TrulyStashin]

Another overall message, which I find to be very true, is that our biggest conflicts arise over time or lack thereof.

For instance:  Riding my bike to the grocery store is possible but it makes buying groceries a 90 minute endeavor instead of a 60 minute endeavor.  That extra 30 minutes really matters when I've worked until 6:30 PM and still have other chores to do that same evening.

I have found that in weeks where I've had insufficient non-work time, I go off budget because I just can't keep up with it all.

[SwordGuy]

The 40 hour workweek isn't an invention of the capitalists to get us to spend more.

It is an invention of the socialist party so that capitalists didn't work us to death with a 70 or 80 hour work week.

Read up about Eugene V. Debs and say thank you to him when you're done.

The article doesn't claim that:

The eight-hour workday developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14- or 16-hour workdays.

As I said, there are some definite problems with the article; however, the overall message (that we are driven to consume by outside forces, and are slaves to that consumption) is an accurate one IMO.

Eugene v. Debs made it happen here in the USA.