By Atanu Biswas
Legendary English economist John Maynard Keynes made a number of intriguing and daring predictions about social life and economic conditions of one hundred years later in his essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, published in 1930. Keynes followed a large group of distinguished thinkers who predicted that if productivity gains eliminated the need to labour beyond a minimal amount of time, people would find it extremely difficult to fill their days. He actually predicted a massive rise in incomes over the next century, along with an unprecedented period of leisure due to the higher standard of living, during which people would work “three hour shifts or a fifteen hour week” and “do more things for ourselves… only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines.” “[T]hree hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!” Keynes perceived.
What would the state of affairs be on this planet in 2030, after a hundred years?
“We should take a pledge that we will work 10 hours a day, six days a week – as against 40 hours a week – for the next 2-3 years so that we can fast-track and grow the economy much faster,” Infosys founder and one of India’s most respected businessmen, NR Narayana Murthy, suggested in 2020, nine decades after Keynes’ article. Which is 60 hours a week! Well, one might realise that was an extraordinary time, as the pandemic of the century shook the country and the rest of the world. After three years, he has upped the bar for young Indians in terms of productivity, stating that the nation needs them to put in at least 70 hours a week if it is to compete with emerging economies.
It’s interesting to note that some other billionaires have recently made similar suggestions.
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma supported China’s contentious “996” or 12-hour-per-day, six-day-per-week work culture in April 2019. The number designates working from 9 AM to 9 PM six days a week. Going one step further, another tech titan declared that the “996” culture was only for slackers. The CEO of e-commerce company JD.com, Richard Liu, claimed to work “8116+8” hours, implying 8 AM to 11 PM Monday through Saturday, and only eight hours on Sunday. Elon Musk also sent a warning to Twitter staff in November 2022, amidst a turbulent beginning to his leadership at the company, advising them to prepare for 80-hour workweeks.
In a 2006 article in the Harvard Business Review, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce discussed how “the American dream” was “on steroids.” It was noted that successful professionals were exerting more effort than before. 62% of high-earners work more than 50 hours per week, 35% work more than 60 hours, and 10% work more than 80 hours per week.
But weren’t such calculations meant to characterise American professionals with high incomes? However, millions of everyday people might not want to become wealthy or successful professionals; instead, they could want to strike a meaningful work-life balance. And in between, wasn’t there a massive technological revolution brought about by AI’s magic wand?
Ah, AI! Surprisingly, Jack Ma spoke in a different way in August 2019 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai while on stage alongside Elon Musk, just a few months after embracing China’s notorious “996” culture. In the next 10-20 years, people may work as little as three days a week, four hours a day, with the help of technological advances and a reform in education systems, according to the co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. As an illustration of how technological advancements might free up time for leisure, Ma cited electricity as an example: “The power of electricity is that we make people more time so that you can go to karaoke or dancing party in the evening. I think because of artificial intelligence, people will have more time enjoying being human beings.” Perhaps a lot of people in China were not impressed by Ma’s abrupt change of stance. Interestingly, though, it was consistent with Keynes’ predictions.
Henry Ford changed the standard six-day workweek to a five-day one in 1926. The statement “Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation” was made by Henry’s son Edsel. Richard Nixon envisioned a 4-day workweek in 1979. Currently, this concept is becoming more and more popular globally. Positive results are obtained from trials and experiments for a 4-day workweek, from Iceland to New Zealand, the UK to Japan. Interestingly, a few days before NR Narayana Murty’s advice, the global media was ablaze with reports that UK workers were so tired of the five-day workweek that the majority would accept a pay cut in exchange for a four-day workweek. Politicians in the UK may feel obligated to back that as well.
But why do we work so much longer today than Keynes predicted? Was the Keynesian hypothesis completely wrong? These are serious questions that require introspection. Keynes nearly seemed to be challenging future generations to test his predictions. Coming from a man regarded by many as the greatest economist of the twentieth century, this was undoubtedly a tempting challenge. With the exception of Jack Ma’s 2019 proposal for a 12-hour workweek, I was unable to find any significant indication affirming Keynes’ nearly century-old prediction. In any case, there’s little doubt that Keynes miscalculated the global labour laws’ progress graph. Will AI ultimately bring about the tectonic shift in work culture that Keynes predicted?
The author is a professor at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.
Views are personal.