COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF LIVING
C00006 ENDMK
C⊗;
THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF LIVING


	It is  a  truism that  the American  standard  of living  has
greatly  advanced in the last  hundred years.   Formerly, this marvel
was looked at  uncritically, but more  recently social thinkers  have
come to believe that maybe it was  a mistake, at least in many of its
aspects.  The purpose of this section is to estimate what America has
done with its increased productivity and to see whether we could have
done much better.  The uses of the productivity have been as follows:

	1.  Hours of  work have  been reduced.   70  hour  weeks were
common.  There has been  little reduction in work week  recently even
though the  increase in  productivity has  continued.  This  suggests
that going much below a 40 hour week is not as highly regarded as the
goods and  services the  labor will  buy.   In fact  workers in  mass
production  industries generally  value the  time-and-a-half although
they would like it to be voluntary. 

	2. Vacations have increased slightly.  Going from no vacation
to 4 weeks requires an 8 percent increase in productivity.  It is not
clear whether  long vacations are unvalued or  whether employers have
just been unable to organize the resulting disorganization. 

	3. The years of work have  been reduced.  We have  retirement
at 65,  high school  and college causing  a later  entry in the  work
force, and  now voluntary early retirement  in some industries.  This
seems to run counter to the worries that people won't know what to do
with increased  leisure.   They prefer  early complete  retirement to
longer vacations. 

	4.  Getting  away  from  each  other.    Children leave  home
earlier. No-one lives with parents after getting  married.  The level
of  disagreement  that  produces  divorce  is  reduced.    The  trend
continues in that from 1950 to 1965 the number of households went  up
26% while the population went up 15%. 

	5.  More expensive  housing.    This  is the  single  largest
increase in expense. 

	6.  Not  working  as hard.    This  varies  from industry  to
industry, but is important for many people. 

	7. Avoidance of certain  kinds of work.   Many people have  a
great repugnance for  blue collar work.  In order  to accomodate this
preference,  white  collar  featherbedding has  occurred  on  a grand
scale.