Time on Our Side: Why We All Need a Shorter Working Week by Robert Skidelsky

by Juliet B. Schor

Have you ever wondered why you're so busy, where your times goes, or how much your time is really worth? This book will radically alter your understanding of the nature and value of time. Authored by leading experts in social, economic and environmental sciences, it explains how moving towards shorter, more flexible hours of work could help tackle urgent problems that beset our daily lives - from overwork, unemployment and low well-being, to entrenched inequalities, needless high-carbon consumption and the lack of time to live sustainably. Time On Our Side challenges conventional wisdom about what makes a `successful' economy. It shows us how, through using and valuing time differently, we can reclaim the time to care for each other, follow our dreams and enjoy each moment.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Juliet Schor’s research over the last ten years has focussed on issues pertaining to trends in work and leisure, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic justice. Schor's latest book is Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner 2004). She is also author of The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer. She has co-edited, The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience, The Consumer Society Reader, and Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century. Earlier in her career, her research focussed on issues of wages, productivity, and profitability. She also did work on the political economy of central banking. Schor is currently is at work on a project on the commercialization of childhood, and is beginning research on environmental sustainability and its relation to Americans’ lifestyles.

Schor is a board member and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream, an organization devoted to transforming North American lifestyles to make them more ecologically and socially sustainable. She also teaches periodically at Schumacher College, an International Center for Ecological Studies based in south-west England.

from http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/default.html

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Academic paper pushers striving for the bigger pension plan paid by cranking up the production of "published works". Ironically, their wages, as well as their future pensions, are paid by those who are criticized. Long live income redistribution!

[Carlosfelipe Pardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really provocative proposals, that may well be difficult to implement but worth a try. It describes very well the issues surrounding work time, the problem behind longer work weeks and the potential to redistribute work time in many ways. It took me a very long time to finally finish it but it was worth it to read with great attention.