Would You Choose More Money or Less Hours?

[Okeefenokee]

Money now, hours later.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Money, until I hit 50. Then hours are more valuable.

[Ex-California]

I'd rather have more days off at the cost of longer work days.

If I could work 3 13s instead of 5 8s or something like that I'd be stoked.

In fact, we're trying to modify our schedule to do just that

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

I'd rather have more days off at the cost of longer work days.

If I could work 3 13s instead of 5 8s or something like that I'd be stoked.

In fact, we're trying to modify our schedule to do just that

Absolutely. Especially if you commute.

I took the question to mean: If offered the same pay, but half the work, versus the same work for twice the pay what would you choose. I would choose the former without hesitation.

Plus, that would open up more work for everybody, giving workers a better bargaining position and more options, so, win win.

[Martin Hash]

It's not that pay doubles, doubling productivity means that you can buy the same thing for half the amount. That's a huge distinction.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

It's not that pay doubles, doubling productivity means that you can buy the same thing for half the amount. That's a huge distinction.

It is a distinction in how you achieve it, but doubling productivity so I can have twice what I have now... meh, I live comfortably now, mo money mo problems. Doubling productivity so I can have more free time? I get hot and bothered just thinking about it.

[Martin Hash]

You're missing the concept: with doubled productivity, you can buy everything you have now at half the price, which means you can work half as much to get the same stuff OR you can keep working the same amount and get twice the stuff.

[Martin Hash]

A Market System is almost magical, it increases a society's standard-of-living ever upward. The 3 ways to make twice as much money from a product are:
1) Double the price (but competition prevents that)
2) Half the cost (but scarcity prevents that - unless you can "offshore.")
3) Double productivity (which halves the number of jobs unless people consume twice as much)

Only a Market System can do this because it relies on greed: why try to make twice as much money otherwise?

So, to restate the OP: progress increases productivity, eventually to a point where you can choose to live meagerly but have more time off, or continue working so that you can consume more.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

You're missing the concept: with doubled productivity, you can buy everything you have now at half the price, which means you can work half as much to get the same stuff OR you can keep working the same amount and get twice the stuff.

Is that not exactly what I said? I get it... I would work less for the same stuff.

Frankly, with the increases in productivity over the last century, I don't know why we haven't reduced full-time employment to a three day work week already. Bam, more jobs, more free time for personal edification, go go gadget capitalism!

[Martin Hash]

Frankly, with the increases in productivity over the last century, I don't know why we haven't reduced full-time employment to a three day work week already. Bam, more jobs, more free time for personal edification, go go gadget capitalism!

There are more 3-day workweek jobs, increasingly so. It's all up to how "meager" you're willing to live, Millennials moreso than GenXers, but advertising-based consumerism, and natural monopolies like healthcare, make the number of meager-livers relatively small. And most people are status-seeking, which is expensive.

p.s. I'm a meager-liver.