you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]worm 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

If I might say so, you seem to have missed the larger picture entirely and focused entirely on a single, hypothetical working man and his choices, instead of why those choices exist in the first place.

If you take a look behind the mechanisms for your hypothetical working man, you will discover that the working man is offered 40 hour work weeks because the employer believes that the 40 hour work week will be profitable for him. The employer in turn believes that it would be profitable for him because he believes that there is a sufficient demand for the products he can create, such that he would extract a maximum amount of benefits from the employee should the employee work for 40 hours for him. The demand which drives his confidence is the reason why the employee is able to work 40 hour weeks and is not on part-time work; and the demand, for the most part, is for goods which previous generations would have considered alien luxuries.

If we as a society stop buying all but basic necessities, it would be entirely possible that the luxuries market would grind to a halt and employers would consequently start employing less people on fewer hours to produce such luxuries.

[–]Mnemonic[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If we as a society stop buying all but basic necessities, it would be entirely possible that the luxuries market would grind to a halt and employers would consequently start employing less people on fewer hours to produce such luxuries.

I agree on that.

Though this does touch on a kind of 'chicken--egg' scenario for these luxuries goods and the need/want for them. I mean like

if we as a society stop buying all but basic necessities

Could also be:

"f we as a society stop making all but basic necessities"