Plenitude by Juliet Schor

This is the text of the speech I wrote and delivered for Toastmaster's this week. 

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading and thinking recently. Having spent most of the past 12 years in university, that really shouldn’t be anything new, but once I finished school and wrapped up my work contracts, I got to do a different kind of thinking and reading. My reading was no longer limited to quantum dots, viruses and nanotechnology. I started thinking about bigger things – literally and figuratively.

Two of the issues that interest me most are unemployment and environmental sustainability. How do we build a society where everyone can make a living? And how do we do that while preserving the environment we depend on to live?

We live in one of the most prosperous societies that have ever existed. At a mundane level, just look at our grocery stores and the abundance and variety of food on the shelves. I remember going to my local Loblaws a few years ago and counting 18 different kinds of apples available for sale. 18! Our grocery stores are brimming with foods from every corner of the world. And yet, so many people in this society struggle to put food on the table for their families because they are unemployed or underemployed.

In first year economics, we learned that to decrease unemployment, we have to increase growth. We need to pump more money into the economy so that people will spend more and buy more. This increased demand will lead to increased production and the creation of new jobs.

But this solution comes with its own problems. In a world with finite resources, we can’t grow indefinitely. Even the seemingly infinite stock of fish in the sea will dwindle and disappear if we keep fishing more and more – as we’ve seen with the collapse of the cod fishery in Newfoundland. In the past 30 years alone, we have consumed one third of the planet’s resources. Besides that, this production and consumption is polluting our air, water and land. So, given these environmental constraints, growth does not appear to be a feasible solution to the problem of unemployment.

So, what is?

Well, a few months ago, I read a book by Juliet Schor, which suggests an interesting alternative. The book I read was called True Wealth. It was previously published as Plenitude.

Dr. Schor, who is a professor of sociology at Boston College, proposes that we can reduce unemployment and protect the environment by working less. Yes, that’s right, we should each work less. Instead of working 40 hours a week, what if we worked at 80% of full time? That’s 32 hours a week -- 4 days a week instead of 5. Effectively, this would enable us to share the existing workload amongst more people.

You’re probably thinking right now about all the reasons this pie-in-the-sky socialist idea wouldn’t work, right? Well, in the early 1980’s, there was a worldwide economic downturn and Western Europe was particularly hard hit. The Netherlands decided to take a proactive stance and started hiring new government employees at an 80% work week. The idea caught on and public sector workers were joined by academics. Eventually, even their whole banking industry joined in the 80% schedule.

But what would people do with 20% less income. Well, for one, they would buy less. Immediately, that would reduce the strain on scarce environmental resources. Instead of shopping or buying new gadgets for our entertainment, we could spend time outside, read a book or hang out with friends. Instead of paying other people to make our food or coffee, we would do it ourselves – and thereby not only save money, but save on the packaging and disposable cups or napkins or cutlery that comes with having take-out.

But where are you going to find the time? Remember, the basis of this whole model is working less. Less time for work means more time for everything else. More time to do stuff can help offset the less money you have to buy stuff. So we’re buying less and creating more.

Of course, there are some things we can’t do on our own. Sometimes we’ll need help from other people. That’s also part of the model. With less time working, we could have more time connecting with other people. It could be friends helping friends move instead of hiring movers. It could be neighbours sharing a lawnmower rather each buying their own. We would be strengthening our social fabric while reducing unemployment and protecting the environment.

In summary, this model proposes that we work less, buy less, create more and connect more.

Albert Einstein once said that “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This model of Plenitude, by Juliet Schor, is a different kind of thinking.