Work and leisure

Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Richard Posner mocks the British father-son pair Robert and Edward Skidelsky for wondering about the balance between work and leisure in contemporary society. He is particularly derisive of their depiction of leisure as an opportunity for letting the mind “wander freely and aimlessly.” 

Perhaps the Skidelskys’ book How Much is Enough: Money and the Good Life is mistimed for Americans facing a large jobless rate. The thought of workless leisure time is more likely to conjure up images of financial panic than pleasant afternoon strolls. The Skidelskys—one a Keynesian economist, the other a philosopher—take up Keynes’s ill-fated prediction that by 2010 people would only need to work 20 hours a week to maintain an acceptable material quality of life.

Posner disagrees with the Skidelskys about what is essentially of value in life, but he agrees that Keynes’s prediction may have been right. Most people, he argues, could indeed work and earn about half of what they do now in order to live as well as they did in 1930—it’s just that we are unlikely to be content doing so. We want more, and so we work harder to attain it.