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Mass_Driver comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3 - Less Wrong
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Both of these are contradicted by the fact that no economist, in discussion of the recent economic troubles, has suggested that letting the economy adjust to a lower level of output/work would be an acceptable solution.
Yes, they recognize that leisure is good in the abstract, but when it comes to proposals for "what to do" about the downturn, the implicit, unquestioned assumption is that we must must must get GDP to keep going up, no matter how many make-work projects or useless degrees that involves.
I most certainly am defending it -- by showing the errors in the classification of what counts as a benefit. If the argument is that stimulus will get GDP numbers back up, then yes, I didn't provide counterarguments. But my point was that the effect of the stimulus is to worsen that which we really mean by a "good economy".
The stimulus is getting people to do blow resources doing (mostly) useless things. Whether or not it's effective at getting these numbers where they need to be, the numbers aren't measuring what we really want to know about. Success would mean the useless, make-work jobs eventually lead to jobs satisfying real demand, yet no metric that they focus on captures this.
Downvote explanation requested. This looks like a reasoned reply to MichaelBishop's criticism, and I'm interested in knowing how it errs and how Michael's comment doesn't, and how this is so obvious.
[Didn't downvote.] This is silly. The 'leisure' of unemployment is concentrated on a few, and comes with elevated rates of low status, depression, suicide, divorce, degradation of employability, etc.
That's a misinterpretation of what I was suggesting as the alternative. Lower output + more leisure doesn't mean the "leisure" is concentrated entirely in a few workers, making them full-time leisurists who starve. Rather, it means that anyone who wants to work for money would work fewer hours and have a lower level of consumption, not zero consumption.
Furthermore, the lower consumption is only consumption of goods purchased with money; with significant restructuring, labor with predictable demand (like babysitting) can be handled by cooperatives that avoid the need to pay for it out of cash reserves.
I don't deny that make-work programs allow workers to show off and practice their skills, retaining employability. I criticize economists who miss this benefit. But if you're going to spend money to get this benefit, you should spend it in a way that directly targets the achievement of this benefit to the workers, rather than on make-work projects that only achieve this benefit as a site effect, and which waste capital goods and distort markets in the process.
Unfortunately, in the United States, you really would end up with much more of the former and less of the latter. Europe would be better off, though, thanks to different labor laws; would you suggest that the United States adopt something like France's maximum 35 hour workweek, or Germany's subsidies to part-time workers?
Currently, hours worked per week is positively correlated with hourly wages; one person working 80 hours a week usually makes more money than two people who both work 40 hours a week. Also, specifically wanting to do part-time work is a bad signal to employers. It signals that you're not committed to your job, that you're probably lazy, and that you're weird. So, absent government intervention, you probably won't see people voluntarily reducing their working hours.