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In 1930, John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), the most famous economist of the day, predicted that his grandchildren would need to work only 15 hours a week. Since then, their great-grandchildren have been complaining that their children only want to work 30 hours when we urgently need more workers. What exactly was Keynes wrong about?
This cannot be due to productivity. Since then it has increased 5 times in Switzerland, 8 times in Great Britain and 11 times in Germany. Longer life expectancy is also not an argument, because even construction workers do not need an early retirement age due to the 15-hour work week. But Keynes could not have imagined that his grandchildren would be so busy navigating the increasing complexity of the global market economy.
domestic pig growing
Let’s buy the basic food we need. Nestlé spends only 50 percent of its sales on actual food production. The rest is advertising, distribution, transportation and profit margin. Once the produce is put on the table, there is a retail margin of at least 20 percent and another 10 percent in food waste. This is still more efficient than a domestic pig and allotment, but the gap is narrowing.
Then there’s something else: Nestlé and Co. We prevent our feeling of fullness with highly processed foods, and we consume approximately 500 more calories per person per day, and we pay the price for it. With the Ozempic slimming injection, Big Pharma gives us satiety back. In Germany, it costs 300 Euros per person per month. That’s nearly twice what Germany’s lower class can spend on food. It also has many expensive side effects. The pet pig’s growl sounds very seductive now.
Business has gone mobile
Take another basic need: today less money is made in Switzerland than from building apartments, buying and selling real estate and all related services. For this, tenants also need to work. Moreover, Keynes probably did not take into account that today we use about 10 percent of our labor to manage or speculate on a growing pile of assets or assets and liabilities. Today’s youth want to become day traders or financial influencers.
In Keynes’ time the labor market was predominantly local. The business was where the people and their needs were. Today, workers are moving where multinational companies are changing their jobs. Business and therefore society as a whole became mobile. As a result, children are no longer looked after by neighbors and grandparents, pizza is no longer cooked ourselves but delivered by courier service, and we no longer keep fit at the local gymnastics club but at the commercial studio. And lots of applications, advertising, recruiting, labor market bureaucracy, commuting, traffic jams, etc. there is.
What Keynes still underestimated
The globalization of markets also means that more and more countries are trying to outstrip their own needs. Switzerland, for example, has a chronically high export surplus and is therefore very much in balance, but suffers from a shortage of skilled workers, especially in the export sector. Human resources departments like to recruit globally, and their powerful lobbies ensure that the free movement of people as the “fundamental freedom of the EU” remains intact.
However, long queues are expected here too: Expats and their relatives need to be settled first. Approximately 6 man-years of work were spent on the apartment alone, and the construction cost was around 500,000 francs. Also, living expenses continue. Roughly speaking, a worker from the upper class beats two workers from the lower class – nannies, nursery workers, couriers, catering staff, etc. – takes over. And since most of these personnel are imported and they often travel back home and make long trips, there is also a lot of transportation effort involved. Keynes probably underestimated this too.
Note: The return of the pet pig will also be the beginning of the end.
factory farming.
Source :Blick
I’m Tim David and I work as an author for 24 Instant News, covering the Market section. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, my mission is to provide accurate, timely and insightful news coverage that helps our readers stay informed about the latest trends in the market. My writing style is focused on making complex economic topics easy to understand for everyone.
