Keynes: "less work is the ultimate solution"

[tom walker <lumpoflabour@xxxxxxxx>]

"4. After the war there are likely to ensure [sic]
three phases--
"(i)...
"(ii)...
"(iii) when investment demand is so far saturated that
it cannot be brought up to the indicated level of
savings without embarking upon wasteful and
unnecessary enterprises...."

"10. As the third phase comes into sight [say 10-15
years after the end of the war], the problem stressed
by Sir H. Henderson begins to be pressing. It becomes
necessary to encourage wise consumption and discourage
saving, --and to absorb some part of the unwanted
surplus by increasing leisure, more holidays (which
are a wonderfully good way of getting rid of money)
and shorter hours."

(May 25, 1943)

>From "The Long Term Problem of Full Employment" in The
Collected Writing of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 27, p.
320-325.

In a subsequent exchange of correspondence with Sir
Wilfred Eady, Keynes becomes noticably irritated with
the notion, put by Eady, that his note on full
employment is a "voyage in the stratosphere". "For, if
the argument which I have tried to bring into the open
in my paper is not understood by those responsible,
they are understanding nothing whatever."

The same volume contains a letter two years later
(April 5, 1945) to T.S. Eliot in which Keynes
reiterates plainly his point about the role of shorter
hours in maintaining full employment:

"...the full employment policy by means of investment
is only one particular application of an intellectual
theorem. You can produce the result just as well by
consuming more or working less. Personally I regard
the investment policy as first aid. In U.S. it almost
certainly will not do the trick. Less work is the
ultimate solution (a 35 hour week in U.S. would do the
trick now)."

The Sandwichman

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