The End of Work
The nature of work is changing fast, and society needs an informed debate as to how we should respond. One in five British adults are now classed as ‘economically inactive’. Nearly nine million people are neither working nor registered as looking for work, a group which swelled by three-quarters of a million since the pandemic – most of whom are over fifty years old. Of these ‘economically inactive’ citizens, four-fifths candidly state that they do not want a job. With labour shortages reported across the economy Government ministers are voicing concern. The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt urged recent retirees to get off the golf course, pleading, “Your country needs you.” To spur us on he is planning changes to the tax and benefit system. But what exactly is the problem? The state legitimately aims to raise living standards, measured in terms of output-per-hour-worked, but why target total economic output per se? Most economists would not see anything wrong with an economy that fails to grow simply because its citizens rationally decide to enjoy more leisure.
Of course, there are many reasons behind the retreat from paid employment other than a preference for leisure. For example, long-term health problems including those related to COVID are a pressing area for more government action. Nonetheless, over the long-run, productivity growth driven by technological advancement will continue to free-up more leisure time for those who choose to embrace it. The two-day weekend was first introduced in the 1930s, and a century later the four-day week is becoming a reality for many. The Human Progress Institute calculated that a basket of commodities which took an hour for the average worker to produce in 1980 now only takes 21 minutes. A barrel of crude oil is 65% ‘cheaper’ than 1980; rice 80%; and colour televisions even more so. Furthermore, incipient new technologies such as artificial intelligence promise to boost productivity in the service sector in the way that electrical machinery revolutionised manufacturing. As it becomes more optional, paid work will also change its nature, and society needs to change with it.
Aristotle and the Nature of Work
Unless Jeremy Hunt wants to become like King Cnut, pointlessly trying to hold back the tide of leisure, he might want to consider the insights of the ancient Greeks on the proper role of the state. Living some 350 years BCE, the great philosopher Aristotle held that values were based on the concept of telos – a Greek word meaning purpose or essential nature. For example, the telos of an acorn is to grow into an oak tree, and that is the use to which acorns should ideally be put. A flute makes beautiful music, so teleological reasoning dictates that the best flutes should go to the best flautists irrespective of their cost. As an explanation of the natural world, teleology is now defunct, but when applied to social practices such as employment, it still offers insights. Indeed, there is virtue in the act of debating about the essential nature of social institutions.
Before considering the telos of work, Aristotle would place it in the context of wider society. He wrote, “The end and purpose of a polis (a City State) is the good life, and the institutions of a social life are a means to that end.” He believed that what makes humans different from other animals is our ability to use language, especially when used to reason with each other in a public forum. He believed that we flourish when debating ideas about right and wrong, and herein lies our essential nature. The duty of the state then is to create active, virtuous citizens; educated to deliberate with each other about the best way to live our lives. Aristotle was also a strong proponent not just of learning, but also ‘doing’. In the Nicomachean Ethics he wrote, “moral virtue comes about as a result of habits”. Towards this end, “Legislators make the citizens good by forming good habits in them”.
These ideas are a framework to debate the future of employment as it changes in nature due to technological progress. Aristotle taught that when considering the telos of any social practice, we should separate its instrumental purpose from its honorific, or exemplary, purpose – the qualities it honours or celebrates. For example, it is logical for the army to recruit not just fit, young men, but also those with a history of violence, because the ultimate objective of war is victory in battle, which requires killing other human beings.
The Changing Nature of Work
Turning to employment, most people would assert that earning an income is the primary, and instrumental, purpose of paid work. While this is still true today, productivity growth means that over the long-haul, this aspect will surely diminish further. Increasingly, well-paid workers can choose to retire early, or work for only a few days per week. If money were the only consideration, the state should just focus on ordering a labour market that facilitates flexible hours and pensions, allowing employees to take more leisure time should they choose to do so. The idea of a ‘Universal Basic Income’ is consistent with this view. US presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposed a ‘Freedom Dividend’ starting at $12,000 a year paid to every adult citizen. The message is plain: work is discretionary, and the state is neutral as to its rights or wrongs.
As a social institution, however, work is more complex that the simple exchange of labour for wages. It offers many ancillary benefits. It is useful to divide them into those that offer ‘private’ and ‘public’ gain. Some benefits of employment accrue solely to the employee, for example developing new skills or foreign travel. Such activities are readily separable from the workplace and in a workless future will continue without state support. Many professionals are motivated by social status, but arguably this benefit is ‘zero-sum’ – the flash city trader would be less cocksure if everyone drove a Ferrari. Hence status offers little net benefit for wider society. At the other end of the scale, puritanical Calvinists believed that hard work had virtue in itself because it was a sign that you would go to heaven. In a post-religious, multi-ethnic society, arguments for a ‘protestant work ethic’ must be disregarded (and while ascending to heaven is, by definition, reserved only for ‘good’ people, it is also a rather selfish goal).
Rather, the state should seek to promote those aspects of work with spill-over benefits to society at large – economists call this a ‘public’ good or ‘merit’ good. Some of these professions honour altruism as a key motiving force, for example: teachers, nurses, and social workers often report that the most rewarding part of their job is helping others, but they end-up helping not just individuals but the whole community. Education is a wonderful example. We all gain from living in an educated society because well-educated people are less likely to break the law, lead healthier lives, and – as Aristotle would stress – can make more informed choices in elections. Those jobs where the gains accrue more widely than just to paying customers are the most virtuous types of work that should be encouraged and promoted by the state.
There is another reason for subsidising education. As work becomes increasingly optional, this removes a major incentive to strive hard and succeed at school and university. The centuries-long trend for greater acquisition of knowledge by humankind might be close to an end. A land of ignorant loafers would surely depress Aristotle more than anything else. He valued education very highly, saying “the educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.” He believed that only educated people could properly contribute to civic debates, and it was through education that good citizens are created: people whose behaviour is governed not by strictly enforced laws, but because they see that it is right to do so.
In conclusion, as the social institution of work undergoes a gradual change in its nature, the state should actively repurpose it towards the transfer of knowledge from one generation to another. This might be achieved by abolishing income tax for teachers, subsidised evening classes in history, art and languages, and certainly not, as the Labour Party is proposing, imposing VAT on private schools. Tax breaks should even be considered for ...yes...golf coaching. Teachers make better citizens!