Interestingly, this is one of the issues where libertarians and progress studies people, who usually get along well, would disagree. Libertarians would say that if you can afford it, by all means, work just one day a week. Progress studies people would point out that GDP growth decreased by, say, 1% over 100 years will leave people in the resulting economy almost three times poorer.
I think this model is mistaken, and overly worships GDP as a measure of value. You’re defining non-job value-production out of existence. For example, if someone stays at home and does dishes, laundry, and raises children, this doesn’t count. If instead a nanny and a maid are hired, this counts for GDP. If someone contributes to Wikipedia in their spare time, this doesn’t count. If they’re paid to write crappy ad-copy instead, this counts for GDP. Writing a video game counts if you sell it, but doesn’t count if you give it away for free. Etc.
The libertarian view seems deeply superior here, because it trusts people’s own sense of what is valuable, rather than accepting a numerical proxy.
I think this model is mistaken, and overly worships GDP as a measure of value. You’re defining non-job value-production out of existence. For example, if someone stays at home and does dishes, laundry, and raises children, this doesn’t count. If instead a nanny and a maid are hired, this counts for GDP. If someone contributes to Wikipedia in their spare time, this doesn’t count. If they’re paid to write crappy ad-copy instead, this counts for GDP. Writing a video game counts if you sell it, but doesn’t count if you give it away for free. Etc.
The libertarian view seems deeply superior here, because it trusts people’s own sense of what is valuable, rather than accepting a numerical proxy.