Here's the report about what Page actually said:
"If you really think about the things that you need to make yourself happy—housing, security, opportunities for your kids—anthropologists have been identifying these things. It's not that hard for us to provide those things," he said. "The amount of resources we need to do that, the amount of work that actually needs to go into that is pretty small. I'm guessing less than 1% at the moment. So the idea that everyone needs to work frantically to meet people's needs is just not true."
This absolutely true although 1% is probably rather undercooking it. We most certainly all don't need to be working as hard as we are in order to meet everyones' needs. But there's a lot of weight upon *needs* there rather than desires which is what drives most of the modern economy. Still:
"You just reduce work time," Page said. "Most people, if I ask them, 'Would you like an extra week of vacation?' They raise their hands, 100% of the people. 'Two weeks vacation, or a four-day work week?' Everyone will raise their hand. Most people like working, but they'd also like to have more time with their family or to pursue their own interests. So that would be one way to deal with the problem, is if you had a coordinated way to just reduce the workweek. And then, if you add slightly less employment, you can adjust and people will still have jobs."
This is a subject that JM Keynes visited in his famous essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. And while all sensible people have their doubts about "Keynesian Economics" there's no doubt he was a most perspicacious economist. The essay looks at exactly this point: when will we actually be able to supply everyone's needs with not all that much work? He thought it would be some 15 years or so from now and we'd all be working 15 hour weeks. Simply because productivity would have advanced so much that that's all we would need to work.
And this usually brings out the people shouting about why it hasn't happened yet. But the thing is that is has happened, just not in quite the manner that everyone thought it would.
Economists like to point out that there are not two types of time, paid work out in the market and leisure. Actually, there are four: we have to add two more. The first is personal time: we cannot get someone else to sleep for us nor take our shower. So, some minimum amount of time is necessary just to continue to be human. And it's the fourth part of time that causes so much confusion, that is unpaid working time in the household. Yes, cooking, cleaning, caring for the children, doing the washing: these are all things that households need to have done (assuming children for one of them) and they're generally things that are done without pay (direct pay that is) within the household. And the hours spent on these things have declined precipitately since Keynes wrote in the 1930s. I think these numbers are slightly exaggerated in both ways but one I've seen it said that to run a household in the 1930s took 65 hours a week of labour and that now it can be done on 5 (10 might be closer to the truth for that second).
What has changed all of this is domestic technology. The vacuum cleaner, the electric or gas oven, the microwave, takeaway food joints, famously both Hans Roslin and Ha Joon Chang describe all of this as "the washing machine". We have actually killed off at least one person's full time work in that household, unpaid, labour. Our working hours in the market, paid, economy have declined for men and they have increased for women over those decades but the net effect for both sexes has been a significant expansion in leisure hours.
We have, already, been doing exactly what Page is suggesting we should be doing. We've been reducing the hours we "work" in response to changes in technology. We already do take more of our increased wealth in greater leisure. And it's interesting to note how this plays out internationally as well. The average German woman, adding domestic and paid hours together, actually works half an hour a week longer than her American cousin. That American woman is likely to be doing many more market hours but many fewer domestic. One of the reasons why it's so important to add both types of working hours together before pronouncing because that's not a result, that Germans work longer hours than Americans, that you would generally expect.
I will admit that there's one thing that terribly amuses me about it being Larry Page who actually says this. For we've all heard the stories about Google's perks for employees. The free food (and good food too!), the free onsite dry cleaning, all those sorts of things. And they're exactly the same thing as I'm talking about above: they're the replacement of domestic, or household, unpaid working hours with leisure. Because you don't need to spend that time cooking dinner if you already ate at the office, you don't have to run to the dry cleaner if that's taken care of for you. Exactly the things that Google offers its employees (over and above interesting work and good pay) are the things that increase their leisure time by reducing their unpaid working hours.
It's actually feasible that someone working for Google could put in 45 or 50 hours a week and still have more leisure than someone working for a company that doesn't provide those perks but only works 40 hours. Odd but true that is.
So Page is right in his basic idea (as is Brin, in that it's desires that determine things, not needs) that working hours don't need to be as long as they were. But they're not as long as they were so it's already happening.
