The economist who believed we would work only 15 hours a week — and why his prediction didn't work out

Now on g1 Workdays of only three hours a day, or 15 hours a week. Societies eight times better, economically, than 100 years ago. These are not unfounded delusions, but rather the futurological belief of one of the greatest economists in history, the British John Maynard Keynes (1883-1945).

In 1930, he published the essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, a text in which he seeks to deconstruct the economic pessimism of his time— for him, an exaggeration, a "grossly erroneous interpretation" of reality. Deputy Director of the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (DIEESE), economist Patrícia Pelatieri highlights that this is one of Keynes' classic texts. "The essay was presented at a conference in 1928, was expanded in a lecture presented in Madrid in June 1930, and published in literary format in October of the same year, in the midst of the Great Depression context," she contextualizes, recalling the great crisis that shook the world economy at the end of that 1920s decade. Essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, by Keynes, spoke of 3-hour workdays Getty Images For economist John Keynes, a professor at the University of Cambridge, the crisis and unemployment of the first decades of the 20th century did not indicate a permanent decline of capitalist society, but rather a transition phase precipitated by the speed of technological and economic transformations. Keynes points out that, for millennia, humanity's standard of living had changed very little — and the combination of capital accumulation, compound interest, and scientific advances ended up triggering unprecedented growth since the Industrial Revolution — which occurred in England starting in the second half of the 18th century. Based on this historical trend, Keynes predicts that, in about a hundred years, the most developed countries would reach a level of wealth much higher than that of his time. Technological progress would allow producing much more with much less human labor, although this would temporarily create so-called "technological unemployment".

In the long run, however, he believed that humanity would solve its main historical problem: economic scarcity. The basic material needs would be largely satisfied, reducing the centrality of the struggle for survival. The most original part of the essay is the reflection on the human consequences of this abundance. Keynes reflects on an immediate consequence of this transformation.

When work ceases to be a vital necessity, people will face a new challenge: finding purpose for their lives and using free time well. He imagines very short workdays, perhaps only fifteen hours a week, and a society less obsessed with the accumulation of wealth. Almost a utopia. In this scenario, values such as culture, pleasure, coexistence, and personal development would gain more importance than money, allowing human beings to dedicate themselves to the "art of living" instead of just working to survive. John Maynard Keynes is considered one of the greatest economists in history Public Domain Professor at the Foundation School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo (FESPSP) and at the Superior School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM), sociologist Paulo Niccoli Ramirez explains that the Keynesian vision confronted the "dogma of classical economics, that the more work, the more wealth".

This is because he realized the weight that technology had in this equation. "For him, against the grain of increased productivity, it would be possible to reduce the workday and give the worker more quality of life," comments Ramirez. Leisure would not simply be time off — it also meant an increase in consumption, since the worker gained "consumption time," also making the "economy spin," explains the sociologist. "The fierce money-makers may carry us all along with them into the lap of economic abundance," points out Keynes. "But it will be those people — who can keep alive and cultivate in a more complete perfection the art of life itself and not sell themselves for the means of life — who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes." "Keynes presents a quite optimistic vision about the future," defines Pelatieri. "For him, the combination of capital accumulation and technical progress in capitalism would allow for continuous growth in productive capacity. Investments, especially abroad, but not only, driven by compound interest, and the scientific and technological advances resulting from the Industrial Revolution had significantly raised the average standard of living in Europe and the United States even in the face of population growth." For Keynes, explains the economist, "these forces would allow producing more and more goods and services with less human labor". "In the short term, this could generate what he highlights as technological unemployment, that is, the result of discoveries that save labor at a pace superior to the creation of new occupations. In the long run, however, society could maintain or even expand its standard of living by working much fewer hours," explains Pelatieri. "Keynes' bet was that, once the fundamental economic problem, which is the struggle for subsistence, was solved, humanity would have to face the old question: how to use the free time gained by the advance in productivity. Considering that over so many centuries, we have been trained to struggle and not to enjoy, Keynes describes this point as a permanent problem of the human race, how we will deal with free time. That is, as our productive capacity multiplied, we would need only a fraction of the previous work time to ensure the same level of subsistence, such as food, housing, and clothing," details Pelatieri. "The rest of the time would be converted into leisure." It was in this context that he estimated those 15 hours a week. For the British economist, this would be enough to keep society functioning and, at the same time, ensure work for everyone. The jurist Brasilino Santos Ramos, a retired labor judge and former member of the Superior Council of Labor Justice, highlights that at the time of the Keynesian proposition, grueling workdays predominated in the labor landscape, which easily reached — and even exceeded — 10 hours a day. "It was in this scenario that Keynes formulated one of the best-known predictions in the history of economics. A defender of the market economy and private property, he believed that capitalism could be preserved and perfected through the action of the State in correcting crises, promoting employment, and reducing economic instabilities," says the expert in labor legislation. The Keynes School "Before examining John Maynard Keynes' ideas about technology, productivity, and the reduction of the workday, it is important to understand his intellectual and social trajectory," comments Ramos. "Coming from the British intellectual upper-middle class and educated in the most prestigious academic centers of his time, Keynes dedicated himself to studying the effects of economic crises, unemployment, and inequality. Defender of the market economy, but also of state intervention to correct its failures, he became one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and formulated reflections that remain current in the face of the challenges imposed by automation and artificial intelligence." Member of the Liberal Party, Keynes was one of the main thinkers to theorize about macroeconomics. His ideas also changed the way economic policies came to be instituted by governments in much of the world — which makes him commonly listed among the most influential people of the 20th century. The main innovation of his economic thought lies in refuting the neoclassical economic idea that the free market would automatically offer jobs to workers as long as they demonstrated flexibility regarding wages. For him, the State needs to be interventionist, with fiscal and monetary measures that seek to avoid or mitigate the effects of recession, depression, and economic booms. At the heart of the Keynesian school, this model of thought created by him, the State is seen as an agent of economic control — in search of full employment. In his conception, the problem of the free market is that the "animal spirit" of entrepreneurs needs to be tamed, regulated. The old British Liberal Party to which Keynes was affiliated defended social liberalism, with an emphasis on building a welfare state. Why did it go wrong? But if it is clear that the world has experienced remarkable economic advances, mainly with technological apparatuses ranging from the robotization of industries to the consolidation of artificial intelligence, why are the 3-hour daily workdays predicted by Keynes not even on the horizon? Political scientist Christian Lohbauer, a member of a research group at the University of São Paulo (USP), comments that Keynes was right "about the increase in productivity" with the intensification of technologies. The issue, according to him, is that he did not foresee how consumption also increased exponentially. "People want to have more leisure and continue consuming," he explains. "They want more access to goods and services. For this, they need more hours of work." "The math didn't add up because of that," summarizes Lohbauer. For the Keynesian formula to work, Lohbauer argues that it would be necessary for people to want to "have a smaller house," "use the car less," "eat out less," "take fewer trips per year." And that is not what happens — both among those who can effectively do this and for the vast majority who only have these privileges as an object of desire. Productivity growth was accompanied by an increase in consumption Getty Images Pelatieri reminds us that the British thinker himself divided human needs into two types. On one side were the basic ones, necessary for survival. On the other, the relative ones, those linked to the desire for status and social recognition. In the Keynesian perspective, those in the first group would be quickly supplied. "What he didn't count on was capitalism's ability to create needs, that is, basic needs were altered over time, such as the need for cell phones, internet, digital services, among others, which began to be perceived as essential for daily life," comments Pelatieri. She also reminds us that although global productivity has grown "expressively," the gains "generated by this advance were not distributed homogeneously." "A significant portion of the benefits of technical progress was appropriated in the form of profits and capital income," she points out. The economist illustrates with the data that, in 2024, 204 new billionaires were created — almost one per week. In the end, "many workers remained dependent on long workdays to sustain their standard of living, even if modest," says Pelatieri. "Furthermore, companies' decisions about using all available technology are directly conditioned by cost assessment: whether it will be more advantageous to invest in technological innovation or maintain dependence on existing labor," states the economist. "In other words, Keynes underestimated the conflicts surrounding the distribution of productivity gains," she adds. "Repetitive work was overcome by automation. The idea was promised that it would be possible to reduce workdays, but what came was the loss of labor rights," says Ramirez. For the sociologist, it would be contradictory to increase wealth with shorter workdays. "There is no capitalism without the exploitation of the labor force," he says. Pelatieri agrees that, "from the point of view of Keynes' reasoning," it was to be expected that with the advances of new technologies, humanity would gain shorter workdays. "The problem, however, is not in the technology itself, but in the way its benefits are distributed. The central question is who appropriates the gains generated by the increase in productivity. Instead of automatically converting into more free time, technological advancement often results in greater income concentration or new forms of work intensification," she says. "Digital technologies, for example, have expanded the possibilities for monitoring, control, and permanent availability of workers." "More than an economic prediction, the essay was a reflection on the social, cultural, and moral consequences of abundance. Keynes imagined a society in which individuals could dedicate more time to education, culture, social interaction, and personal development," analyzes Ramos. "His central message was that economic progress could free humanity from the permanent struggle for material survival, shifting the human challenge to the search for purpose and fulfillment beyond work and the accumulation of wealth." Ramos points out that, if productivity really grew extraordinarily in recent decades, "what was not confirmed was the conversion of these gains into a drastic reduction of the workday." "Among the reasons for this are the emergence of new consumption patterns, the permanent desire to increase income and assets, the increase in inequalities in the distribution of productivity gains, the expansion of the service sector and intellectual work, and the intensification of global economic competition," states Ramos. "Keynes also did not foresee the strength of consumerist culture stimulated by advertising and credit, the growing financialization of the economy, nor the role of work as an element of identity, social status, and personal fulfillment. Nor did he anticipate that a significant portion of productivity gains would be appropriated in a concentrated manner by large companies and economic groups, instead of being converted into a generalized reduction of the workday.".