{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":285,"pdf_page":293,"physical_index":293,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ee1a64ff13029a3752cc84b758c6a605ad38b2cfb29241b368954b506569c1b2"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"34. Indiference would lead to passive acceptance of businesses’ preference to avoid cuts in work time.\n\n35. This discussion to some extent rehearses the points made in the previous chapter, in which I introduced the puzzle.\n\n36. Economists tend to claim that they don’t have much to say about preferences. People want utility because, rather tautologically, utility is, by definition, something that is wanted. What gives rise to utility is not supposed to be a question for investigation within economics. However, there is a tendency among economists to assume that utility is most accurately and conveniently measured by money.\n\n37. Marx likewise made the content of use value exogenous to his theory—a product of collective self-discovery through history. There are exceptions to this generalization about the neoclassical exogenization of tastes. Becker and Stigler (1977, p. 76), for example, infamously argued that preferences are endogenous, claiming “that tastes neither change capriciously nor difer importantly between people.”\n\n38. Joseph Stiglitz (2010), considering the question of why Keynes’s prediction of falling work time failed to come to pass, expresses skepticism about the standard economic explanation. He notes that the capacity of economic theory to explain anything is reason enough to be suspicious of the theory. Stiglitz also points out that the research on happiness casts doubt on the invocation of utility maximizing consumer choice as an explanation for why Keynes’s prediction failed. If subjective well-being is any measure of utility, then it seems not to be the case that consumption under conditions of afluence continued to increase because by doing so it increased utility. Part of the dificulty economic approaches to consumption have when confronted with apparently substantively suboptimal patterns of the kind under investigation in this book is the tremendous emphasis they put on choice. As Amartya Sen (1985, p. 12) points out, choice is very limited as a gauge of welfare because “it confounds choosing with benefiting.” The emphasis on choice as the key index of valuation in economics suits the positivist inclinations of the discipline because choices can easily be observed. Yet any theory of welfare must rest on more substantive grounds.\n\n39. The usual response given by neoclassical economists when presented with their often quite implausible assumptions, for example about the degree to which instrumental rationality can be precisely operationalized, is that their models seek parsimony and so must be as simple as possible.\n\n40. The point of saving might be to buy time later on in life (by, say, early retirement) or as insurance against unforeseen eventualities, as a form of risk control. It is not obvious, theoretically, which of the two—leisure or savings—should increase. As noted, Frank Knight thought that the demand for leisure would increase with income. Keynes, by contrast (and somewhat in tension with his argument in The Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren), argued in The General Theory that in the short run, the savings rate would increase.\n\nNotes to Pages 28–30\n\n285","previous_page":284,"next_page":286}