00100	THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF LIVING
00200	
00300	
00400		It is a truism that the American standard of living has
00500	greatly advanced in the last hundred years.  Formerly, this marvel
00600	was looked at uncritically, but more recently social thinkers
00700	have come to believe that maybe it was a mistake, at least in
00800	many of its aspects.  The purpose of this section is to estimate
00900	what America has done with its increased productivity and to see
01000	whether we could have done much better.  The uses of the productivity
01100	have been as follows:
01200	
01300		1. Hours of work have been reduced.  70 hour weeks were common.
01400	There has been little reduction in work week recently even though
01500	the increase in productivity has continued.  This suggests that
01600	going much below a 40 hour week is not as highly regarded as the
01700	goods and services the labor will buy.  In fact workers in mass
01800	production industries generally value the time-and-a-half although
01900	they would like it to be voluntary.
02000	
02100		2. Vacations have increased slightly.  Going from no
02200	vacation to 4 weeks requires an 8 percent increase in productivity.
02300	It is not clear whether long vacations are unvalued or whether
02400	employers have just been unable to organize the resulting disorganization.
02500	
02600		3. The years of work have been reduced.  We have retirement
02700	at 65, high school and college causing a later entry in the work
02800	force, and now voluntary early retirement in some industries.
02900	This seems to run counter to the worries that people won't know
03000	what to do with increased leisure.  They prefer early complete
03100	retirement to longer vacations.
03200	
03300		4. Getting away from each other.  Children leave home
03400	earlier. No-one lives with parents after getting married.
03500	The level of disagreement that produces divorce is reduced.  The
03600	trend continues in that from 1950 to 1965 the number of households
03700	went up 26% while the population went up 15%.
03800	
03900		5. More expensive housing.  This is the single largest
04000	increase in expense.
04100	
04200		6. Not working as hard.  This varies from industry to
04300	industry, but is important for many people.
04400	
04500		7. Avoidance of certain kinds of work.  Many people
04600	have a great repugnance for blue collar work.  In order to
04700	accomodate this preference, white collar featherbedding has
04800	occurred on a grand scale.