John Maynard Keynes? Bertrand Russell? Herman Kahn? Apocryphal?
Dear Quote Investigator: The ongoing developments in artificial intelligence and robotics remind me of a remark attributed to the famous English economist John Maynard Keynes. Apparently, he predicted that technological advancements would allow society to adapt a fifteen-hour work week. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Quote Investigator: In 1930 John Maynard Keynes published an essay titled “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” in “The Nation and Athenaeum”. He predicted a massive increase in the standard of living during the upcoming century due to progress in science and engineering:1
I would predict that the standard of life in progressive countries one hundred years hence will be between four and eight times as high as it is to-day.
Keynes believed that society would decrease the length of the average work week in response to these advances. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:2
For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter—to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible.
Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1930 British intellectual Bertrand Russell published “The Conquest of Happiness”, and he discussed the conundrum of leisure time:3
Most people, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their own choice, are at a loss to think of anything sufficiently pleasant to be worth doing. And whatever they decide on, they are troubled by the feeling that something else would have been pleasanter. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. Moreover, the exercise of choice is in itself tiresome.
In 1967 physicist and futurist Herman Kahn together with colleague Anthony J. Wiener published “The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation On the Next Thirty-Three Years” which contained a prediction about the length of the future work week:4
A Leisure-Oriented “Postindustrial” Society
(~1100 Working Hours per Year)7.5 Hour Working Day
4 Working Days per Week
39 Working Weeks per Year
10 Legal Holidays
3 Day Weekends
13 Weeks per Year Vacation
(Or 147 Working Days and 218 Days Off/ Year)
The book included other speculations about robots and computers such as the following:5
- Extensive use of robots and machines “slaved” to humans
- Pervasive business use of computers for the storage, processing, and retrieval of information
- Shared time (public and interconnected?) computers generally available to home and business on a metered basis
- Other widespread use of computers for intellectual and professional assistance (translation, teaching, literature search, medical diagnosis, traffic control, crime detection, computation, design, analysis and to some degree as intellectual collaborator generally)
- Home computers to “run” household and communicate with outside world
- Home education via video and computerized and programmed learning
In 1999 the prediction of Keynes was recalled in “Newsday” newspaper of Long Island:6
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Technology was touted as the key to shorter and easier workdays, and even John Maynard Keynes envisioned a 15-hour work week by the first half of the 21st Century. Instead, in our chase for higher standards of living, we’re joined at the hip to beepers and waking at the crack of dawn to squeeze in a yoga class before work.
In conclusion, John Maynard Keynes penned a 1930 essay which envisioned a fifteen-hour work week by 2030. Keynes correctly predicted a large increase in productivity. Yet, today even wealthy people continue to work long hours because they wish to purchase more goods and services. They also wish to keep up with the Joneses.
Image Notes: Picture of two clock faces from Jon Tyson at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to two anonymous people whose inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1963 Copyright, Essays in Persuasion by John Maynard Keynes, Part 5: The Future, Chapter 2: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Year: 1930, (Reprinted from “The Nation and Athenaeum”, October 11 and 18, 1930), Start Page 358, Quote Page 364, W. W. Norton & Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1963 Copyright, Essays in Persuasion by John Maynard Keynes, Part 5: The Future, Chapter 2: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Year: 1930, (Reprinted from “The Nation and Athenaeum”, October 11 and 18, 1930), Start Page 358, Quote Page 368 and 369, W. W. Norton & Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1930, The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell, Chapter 14: Work, Quote Page 208, George Allen & Unwin, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1967, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation On the Next Thirty-Three Years by Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener with contributions from other staff members of the Hudson Institute, Chapter 4: Postindustrial Society in the Standard World, TABLE VI, Quote Page 195, The Macmillan Company, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1967, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation On the Next Thirty-Three Years by Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener with contributions from other staff members of the Hudson Institute, Chapter 1: Change and Continuity, Table XVIII, Quote Page 54 and 55, The Macmillan Company, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1999 July 23, Newsday (Nassau Edition), Coming Sunday, Quote Page A19, Column 1 and 2, Hempstead, New York. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎