work less

i heartily endorse the following(from):

Our culture’s unsustainable environmental footprint doesn’t come from consuming “too much” but from consuming the wrong things — cheap crap. Ironically, the reason we’re consuming the wrong things is because wages are too low. WE CAN’T AFFORD the good life. What Juliet Schor identifies as “overspending” could better be viewed as throwing money away on disposable stuff because we don’t have sufficient time or income to indulge in uplifting AND MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE social activities such as, say, taking five years off work to write a book, paint, sing in the opera, or play soccer.

One of the things that struck me as I was comparing Cambridge Professor Alfred Marshall’s writing to that of Boston mechanic, Ira Steward, is that the truly innovative thinking usually comes from outside the academy. An inordinate amount of the output of professional intellectuals consists of obscurantist rationalizations and repetition of the obsolete or the obvious. How many people would like to have the time and financial security to really develop their artistic talent, athletic ability or scholarly interest without it having to be a perilous and constricting career track?

So I’m tempted to say, “Sir, as strange as it may seem to you at first blush, it is a fact that your way of life will never become environmental sustainable until your wages are increased as a result of the hours of labor being reduced.”