#Things to consider

  • Is there a way forward without a universal, unconditional basic income?
  • Henry Ford was the first to introduce the five day workweek. And people laughed at him at first. Then they followed him.
  • Those who cannot remember the past is condemned to repeat it. The past teaches us a simple but crucial lesson: Things could be different.
  • The GDP is blind to everything that makes life worth living. Mental illness, obesity, pollution, crime – in terms of the GDP, the more the better.
  • When you’re obsessed with efficiency and productivity, it’s difficult to see the real value of education and care.
  • As the writer Kevin Kelly says, “Productivity is for robots. Humans excel at wasting time, experimenting, playing, creating, and exploring.”
  • Technology should be used to curb the workweek as far as possible.
  • Productivity and long work hours do not go hand in hand.
  • The rich are finding it ever more “expensive” to take time off as their hourly rates rise.
  • Excessive work and pressure are status symbols.
  • Working less provides the bandwidth for other things that are also important to us, like family, community involvement, and recreation.
  • Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
  • Bullshit jobs: Instead of creating wealth, these jobs mostly just shift it around. An increasing number of people do jobs that we can do just fine without. A recent poll revealed that as many as 37% of British workers think they have a bullshit job.
  • Which knowledge and skills do we want our children to have in 2030?
  • The purpose of a shorter workweek is not so we can all sit around doing nothing, but so we can spend more time on the things that genuinely matter to us.
  • Borders are the single biggest cause of discrimination in all of world history. Opening up our borders, even just a crack, is by far the most powerful weapon we have in the global fight against poverty.
  • A fifteen-hour workweek, universal basic income, and a world without borders… They’re all crazy dreams – but for how much longer?