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Originally Posted by #-3
Just curious, why would you want to normalize work hours between 1920 and 2021? Is it not a good thing that we are trending towards a 30some hour work week, instead of the 60some hours worked back then, but have maintained our productivity gains? At some point growth for the sake of growth is not a a positive, economics has to be about increasing human wellbeing, and really personal leisure time well used is a good way to feel well.
Also I know you egg example spits in the face of this, but in the 20's they average family was probably getting by on +/- 70 hours of work / week. 60ish hours from dad and maybe a few hours from the kids paper route... Now the kids don't work but Mom does full time, and most families are seeing 75+hours of work. So really families are contributing the same amount of work hours to society to get by. We've just shift much of the burden from men to women.
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This was a big contributor in my opinion to asset inflation. When one person worked you could spend 30% of your income on housing. When two people work you can now spend 30% of both if not more as your other costs don’t double by having two people working.
I think comparisons to the 50-80’s as probably a low point in terms of hours worked for family success.