The Hours Keynes Promised

Abstract

Chapter 2 read the passage carefully, and it is worth reading once more before the evidence arrives. Keynes did not predict that his grandchildren would work fifteen hours a week. He proposed short hours as a way through the problem he expected abundance to create: a people trained by necessity, suddenly without it, and unsure what to do with the time. "Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while," he wrote. The short week was a way of sharing out what work remained while everybody learned to live. So the question this chapter asks is not whether Keynes was right about the number. He was not, and he did not quite claim to be. The question is narrower and more useful to a person who runs something. When an organisation in a rich country deliberately shortens its working week, holding pay where it was, what actually happens to the work, to the people and to the accounts? And how much of the answer can the evidence bear?