Public Comment

I enjoyed your editorial "Building Berkeley Better," which makes the point that I made with the Flexible Work Time Initiative, Measure Q on the 2014 ballot: we would have a smaller carbon footprint and we would be happier, if we worked shorter hours to spread the useful work, rather than producing things we don't need and don't want to create more unnecessary work. 

I think the world will have to realize this some time in this century, if we are to avoid global warming and other ecological crises. 

One minor correction: Keynes wrote the essay you mention ("Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren") in 1930. At the time, many people believed that there was a Depression because our economy was so productive that people did not want to consume as much as we could produce. 

Our per capita GDP today (after correcting for inflation) is about five times as much as it was in 1929 and about twice as much as it was during the very prosperous 1960s.  

It is time for us to ask how much is enough and to shift our focus from promoting the most rapid economic growth possible to promoting the best quality of life possible - by reducing inequality so everyone has enough income to live comfortably and reducing work hours so everyone has enough free time to live well.