Without looking at it in greater detain the raw number tells us nothing however. If a person working assembling cars worked 37 hours a week in 1964 and today works 43 hours a week BUT the average is pulled down by an increase in part-time fastfood workers and scrapbook shops that either didn't or barely existed in 1964 then this fact makes all the difference in the world. This is just an example, I pulled these numbers out my ass just to demonstrate the point. Refine the data and you'll see what I'm getting at.
> Tom Walker, like John, takes issue with the evidence that on the average, fewer hours are
> worked in the US today, than were in 1963. Comparing apples with pears, he says, since there
> are more women working. Service sector work replacing manual work, says John. Read Juliet
> Shor, the Overworked American, says Tom.
But he's correct.
> I do not think that you can explain the shift away. It is true there are many secondary texts that
> argue that we work longer hours than we used to (like Madeleine Bunting's book, or Pietro
> Basso's Modern Times, Ancient Hours). However, looking at the statistics, I find this not to be the
> case, at least not in the long term. The real movement in working hours is that there was a sharp
> turn upwards from the mid eighties, but that the longer term trend (say from 1947 onwards) is
> downwards. In Britain and the US, the upward shift in the eighties has been reversed. Most
> people are remembering the eighties increase, and projecting it backwards, without really taking
> on board how much longer people used to work.
1947? Maybe in the UK you have those numbers but in the US I couldn't
find data going back past 1964. That's why that was as far back as I
went in my reply instead of going back to 1960 as was the date used by
someone else. I'd be happy to look at any data for the years 1947 to
1963.
>
> There is a point that work is spread more evenly between the sexes. But do you reallywant to
> argue for the exclusion of women from full-time work?
Huh? Who even suggested this? Where is this coming from? You lost me on this question completely.
> I think what really needs to be explained is the near-universal assumption that the past was
> better than now, even when the evidence is to the contrary. I suggest the following answer. The
> past was not better than the present in material terms. But in terms of social agency, most people
> enjoy less influence over the direction of society today than they did thirty years ago. This is
> projected backwards (mistakenly) as 'we were better off then', when all the evidence is that in
> terms of material fulfilment, that is not a plausible proposition.
>
> fraternally
>
> James Heartfield
> (off to France for a week, so happy posting)
I don't think of 1960 as utopia or even as better, overall, than today. I don't believe in any nostalgic idea about the past being better than today. I also don't hold to the idea that today is inheriently better than the recent past. The distant past yes but not necessarily the recent past. I also don't believe the future is inevitably going to be better than today. It may or may not be.
John Thornton