The average human being will be substantially richer in 50 years, just as the average American today has a real income three times what it was in 1955. But the average human being will not have much more time in 50 years than today; and life expectancy has increased by only 10 percent in the U.S. since 1955, so for most people time has become relatively scarce compared to money.
Not surprisingly, we feel more stressed for time than ever before — the opportunity cost of time has risen compared to the opportunity cost of goods. In fact, people with higher incomes usually express more time stress than those with lower incomes.
It’s not only that higher-income people typically work more hours per week; even those who don’t work at all express greater feelings of being rushed than do poorer people. The reason is that it takes time to spend money and consume goods — you can’t inject a vacation in Provence into your bloodstream — you have to go there, lie on the beach at St. Tropez, go to the Picasso museum in Antibes, and tour the perfume factories of Grasse.
So the next time you hear a wealthy person complaining about having no time, tell him/her that there’s a simple alternative — give away money. Of course, a person who does that will then complain that his/her income is insufficient. Time or money: one or the other is always relatively scarce and always generates complaints!
(See full paper here.)
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If wealthy people have more money than time, and working-class people have more time than money, then it makes sense for wealthy people to hire personal assistants, lawyers, gardeners, et al, to do tasks that working-class people do for themselves.
So, as time becomes even more scarce for people, what other products/services will become available to help us save time?
I feel especially bad for people who have neither time nor money. I have seen the same person working at three different fast food chains. Three low paying jobs still do not provide enough of money and take away a lot of time.
“So the next time you hear a wealthy person complaining about having no time, tell him/her that there’s a simple alternative – give away money.”
So money can’t buy time but giving away money can?
Man, from the headline I assumed this piece was about a failed magazine merger.
Just giving away money takes time too. Especially if they care where it is going rather than just shovelling bucket loads of cash off the top story of a skyscraper.
I find happiness in many things, and one of those IS money. I work hard for what I earn, and I take pride and find joy in being able to spend it in the ways I choose. And those ways include material gifts for myself and others, as well as donations to organizations.
As for money buying time: Can’t money afford time-saver luxuries, i.e. efficient washer and dryers, cell phones, laptops, etc.?
Real income has gone up for Americans 3 times since 1950? It seems like a pretty meaningless statistic.
The New York Times has this to say:
“The past three decades have seen a momentous shift: The rich became vastly richer while working-class wages stagnated. Economists say 80 percent of net income gains since 1980 went to people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, boosting their share of total income to levels unseen since before the Great Depression.”
Is the average American richer than they were in 1958? I guess you could make that case. But to be honest you’d have to talk about the number of hours that Americans are working today.
A much simpler, and fair and accurate statistic would be to look at real wages since Reagan came to town. Real wages have stagnated or gone in reverse, all while forcing us all to work many more hours.
The solution, then, is to reverse the policies of the Reaganites and Clintonites — not complain about ‘time vs money’. We can and should have both, but we can’t allow the people who own this country to continue to set regressive tax policies, regressive labor policies, etc.
Your quite general observation may in fact serve well as a focal point for coordinating collective action within an economy.
http://brokensymmetry.typepad.com/broken_symmetry/2008/06/thomas-schellin.html
The tradeoffs we make as a society between spending more time and spending more money can be measured as frequency distributions for consumption and production. Integrated up, these frequency distributions are equivalent to aggregate supply and demand.