Better than growth - Australian Conservation Foundation

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etter work 18. ABS 2007 Survey of Employment Arrangements, Retirement and Superannuation, www.abs.gov.au/ AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/ Lookup/4102.0Main+Fea tures50Dec+2009 19. ABS 6361.0, Table 6 20. Ibid. 21. Joseph Romm, ‘Is a 4-day workweek inevitable? Utah cuts energy use 13%,‘ Grist (7 August 2009), www.grist.org/ article/2009-08-07-isa-4-day-workweekinevitable-utah-cutsenergy-use-13 22. Deutsche Bank Research, ‘Measures of wellbeing‘ (8 September 2006), p.9, http://tiny.cc/e2x6s FIGURE 4: EMPLOYED PEOPLE(a)(b), SATISFACTION WITH NUMBER OF HOURS USUALLY WORKED PER WEEK, 2007 18 %(c) 100 80 60 40 20 0 1-15 16-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40 41-44 45-49 49+ Weekly hours usually worked in all jobs Prefer to work more hours Prefer to work fewer hours Prefer to work about the same number of hours (a) Excluding those usually working less than one hour a week in all jobs. (b) Excluding those who are a contributing family worker in their main job. (c) People who did not know which option they preferred were excluded prior to the calculation of all percentages presented in this graph. hours, in exchange for less pay. 19 And 43 per cent of men and 52 per cent of women often or always feel rushed or pressed for time. 20 And so while public and political attention focuses exclusively on unemployment, the phenomenon of overemployment is equally serious (Figure 4). Overwork takes its toll on personal relationships, health, family and community vitality, democratic participation, and the environment. The pressure to work harder is closely linked with pressures to consume more. Ever-increasing expectations of material standards of living can lead consumers to overcommit themselves, leading to high debt, low savings and pressure to work more to finance it all. Or, as Clive Hamilton puts it, we are constantly urged to use money we don’t have to buy things we don’t want to impress people we don’t like. And of course, the more we consume, the higher our ecological footprint. What causes overwork? The reasons are complex and varied. According to research by Deutsche Bank, “People tend to work too much because they Reduction in energy use achieved by the Utah State Government by shifting to a four-day work week: 13%. 21 overestimate the impact of income on happiness.” 22 Who hasn’t thought that just a bit more wealth will give us peace of mind, open up more choices, or allow us greater comfort? Yet the evidence shows that even individuals in the top income brackets continue to aspire to even greater wealth, with no end in sight. There are important structural causes of overemployment as well. A wide range of government policies are explicitly designed to mobilise individuals into the formal paid economy, and indeed the ABS tracks the “labour force underutilisation rate” as a key measure of Australia’s progress. Implicit in this measure is the view that individuals who are not part of the paid labour force are being socially “underutilised”, or that the unpaid activities they are doing are not socially desirable. In fact, activities including parenting and child care, voluntary community work, non-paid household and carers’ work, production outside the marketplace (from suburban veggie gardens to traditional Indigenous ways of life), participating in democratic processes and leisure time are all vital to the health and prosperity of human communities. Yet they are not counted in our economic statistics, and seldom valued in public policy. We should seek to foster these activities, rather than demand ever-increasing productivity and formal workplace participation. There are better ways of arranging a sensible balance between paid and non-paid work, family life and leisure time. For example, the US state of Utah has recently shifted to four-day working weeks for all public employees. The resulting pattern of work has resulting in significant environmental benefits, with reduced transport and energy costs. But the extra day off work has also led to a dramatic increase in community volunteering in Utah. Even more far-reaching is the proposal to establish a guaranteed minimum income or “negative income tax”. Economists as disparate as Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith have supported this idea, which decreases the cost of labour, while providing better support for individuals who are engaged in important unpaid activities such as raising children or caring for the unwell. In 2004, Brazil became the first country to enact a law providing for an unconditional minimum income for its citizens. To introduce such employment policies successfully, workload would need to be more equitably shared across the labour force, to create a more equitable earnings distribution across the economy and overall increased leisure time. 12 ACF BETTER THAN GROWTH
etter work Policy Directions • Show government leadership by shifting government to a four-day work week. • Provide incentives to private employers that offer four-day work weeks that still pay a reasonable living wage. • Consider government support for periods of activity outside the formal paid economy for all workers, such as a one-year paid sabbatical for all Australians after 15 years of work. • Recognise the importance of non-paid work by integrating non-paid child care, household work, carers’ work, volunteering, and the value of family and leisure time into National Accounts and into cost-benefit analysis frameworks. • Commission research and analysis on the economic, environmental and social implications of adopting a minimum income guarantee. • Explore options for discouraging overwork, such as tax disincentives for employers that regularly have employees working more than a specified benchmark. ACF BETTER THAN GROWTH 13
Page 1 and 2: 2010 Better than growth The new eco
Page 3 and 4: Introduction › The economic model
Page 5 and 6: 1 Better progress improving quality
Page 7 and 8: etter progress FIGURE 2: OECD FRAME
Page 9 and 10: etter progress Final recommendation
Page 11: 2 Better work balancing paid and no
Page 15 and 16: 3 Better production making cradle-t
Page 17 and 18: etter consumption 4 Better consumpt
Page 19 and 20: etter consumption Policy Directions
Page 21 and 22: 5 Better markets aligning prices wi
Page 23 and 24: Better markets Policy Directions
Page 25 and 26: 6 Better business matching private
Page 27 and 28: etter business Compared with privat
Page 29 and 30: 7 Better taxation rewarding work, n
Page 31 and 32: etter taxation Policy Directions
Page 33 and 34: 8 Better regulation fixing cost-ben
Page 35 and 36: etter regulation Annual cost of env
Page 37 and 38: Conclusion towards a new economics
Page 39 and 40: Further information General UK Sust

Better than growth - Australian Conservation Foundation

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