In 1930 the British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that the biggest problem facing future generations would be what to do with all their leisure time.
Well, here we are in Keynes’s future: Where is that leisure we were promised?
Well, here we are in Keynes’s future: Where is that leisure we were promised?
12 comments:
It's interesting that even with modern technologies making life easier and chores faster to complete, we don't have a huge increase in leisure time. The thing about leisure is it's a relatively new concept, it wasn't long ago that leisure was viewed as lazyness or idleness. I think they're is an increase in leisure time, just think how much time some people spend watching TV. Today, leisure is more available for those who want it, but I think a lot of people simply don't like to remain idle for too long, and so the reason we don't have a problem with too much leisure time is that we've created work for ourselves so we're not bored.
i dont see the time of leisure increasing in the future. cause leisure so hard to define. not everyone likes the same things so therefor what one person does for fun another person may hate to do. which means they have to change how they poll for this. the question should be something more like how much time a day do you spend outside of work/school doing things you truly enjoy doing. but i dont see any real increase in leisure time unless something happens where we have more hours in a day and even then the school will make us go longer or justify more homework. and many people who wish to get ahead will want to work harder or longer hours.
I would deffinetly like to have more leisure time. This is intresting that the amount of hours worked has decreased but yet still there is the same or less leisure time that there was in the past. People I think need to feel busy to feel accomplished. With this being said there is no time for leisure time. In other countries however there is tea time and many other occasions that do allow for leisure time. But this is not so as much in the United States.
One would have taught leisure time has gone up over the years but it has remain constant. Yes we do have more free time, but not leisure time. This is because most of the things we do do not give us "direct enjoyment".
you really cannot say what leisure time is, i think it is all dependent on the person. Sure time you are outside work or school can be devoted to leisurely activities but there are also other obligations that people have. We live in a very fast moving society and sometimes its hard to find time to just sit back and do nothing.
From what the article stated our time for leisure has increased it just seems we may not know what to do with it now thus we end up doing chores which we dont consider leisure. Personally i consider blogging leisure since im not working or in school except for your class mr.rood thats always a leisure time.
I wish i had more leisure time like predicted. i guess most kids my age back in the 1800's didnt got to school 7 hours a day and then work until 7 at night and expect to get some down time. i barely have time to do this blog, let alone be a kid and sleep until noon on the weekend. i kinda think new technology plays a major role in my down time.
the amount of leisure time for each individual could be dramatically different. overall i believe that there has been an enourmous amount of leisure time increase since the 1930's. Well it would be leisure time if i had anything to do with it. Maybe i should find a job instead of sitting idle in my "leisure time"...just kidding
I think that in todays world where we take our leisure time and fill it with various activities who wouldnt want more leisure time as predicted for the future. But we also have a tendency to take our free time and participate in athletics which includes competing and practice. I know i spend all of my leisure time competing and practicing and i treat it as if it is school work so i guess your leisure time depends on your interpretation of 'leisure time.'
I'd be interested to see how leisure time in the U.S. compares to other places in the world. Obviously people in Africa wouldn't have more leisure time than we do, but Europeans take like 9382456 coffee breaks a day while people here eat lunch at their work desk. But I think a lot of it depends on the person. One person may have to work a lot and by the time that person gets home they have no free time because they have to do chores, while someone else may have more free time but just occupies themself with things that aren't "enjoyable" because relaxation is not something that is generally encouraged in our culture.
The expectancy of more liesure time in the future was ill founded. The amount of time that people work in a day is generally stable. This is becasue as productivity increases a set amount of work takes less time. This increase in productivity makes products cost less. With a decrease in cost consumers will purchase more of each product or will buy new products. This increase in demand will require the production of more products. This will increase the demand for labor and will then cause people with liesure time to then return to work. This supports a relativly stable anount of work and liesure time in each generation.
i dont think that keynes's predictions of more leisure time were accurate at all. with the increase of productivity and americans' fast paced new york minute every second counts state of mind we just produce more and more and more? and all that leisure time is just reabsorbed. and i agree with devin that it would be interesting looking into the amount of leisure time europeans get compared to americans becuase they take off WAY more time than americans could even imagine
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