Exceeding planetary boundaries

1. Exceeding planetary boundaries

3. Job seekers per opening

4. Nominal wage growth in decline

5. Green growth? failure to decouple

7. the importance of working hours for the new economics

8. WORKING HOURS IN SELECTED COUNTRIES, 1870-1973

9. Working Hours in Selected Countries, 1973-2007

12. Household data show 40 years of rising hours

13. The flip side of overwork: underwork • Long term rise in involuntary part-timers • Weekly hours: 2001 3.3 m 2011 8.6 m • average hours of invol PT: 22.5 per week •  low hours are a cause of poverty and exacerbate inequality

14. Working hours and theories of the labor market

15. THE MARXIAN LABOR MARKET wage Level of employment

17. The US labor market: 25 million still lack adequate work

18. Major declines in employment

19. Youth unemployment rate, US

20. June 2012 study of H.S. grads who did not go to college 2009-2011 graduates 16 % employed full time 33% unemployed 15% working part time. 17% out of the labor force 2006-2008 graduates 37% employed full time. Source: June 2012 study by John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

21. Unemployment rate for college grads

23. How can we respond to this deterioration? Group exercise: what are “new economics” approaches related to the labor market that can address the growing oversupply of labor and worsening condition of workers in the labor market?

24. De-commodifying Labor • The goals of new economics (democracy, equity, and ecological limits) require de-commodification of labor • Threat of job loss has been key to reproduction of the economic system and to the growth imperative • worker coops • other publically owned assets • hours reductions • expansion of low/no cost access to goods and services/HTSP • public provisioning—“hyper-efficient public goods” (energy, transport, food, other?) • income streams from new assets (cap and dividend)

25. The challenges ahead Drastically reduce ecological impact in a short period of time Solve the unemployment crisis Be fair: improve the distributions of assets and income Create wealth and well-being (enhance productivity) Avoid top-down, inefficient or elitist solutions: i.e., meet people’s needs Create a politics to make this happen PLENITUDE: an integrated approach working on all these fronts

26. Plenitude: the economic model Green tech shift: to a closed loop/clean production and consumption system Eco-knowledge: open source transmission and ecological skill diffusion Reduce hours in BAU jobs, build time wealth A growing green sector of small scale enterprises; new property forms Invest in social capital and common property Revamp the consumer sector

28. From Productivity Growth to Ecological Impact: when hours do not fall SCALE EFFECT Rising Output & Consumption Ecological Impact Productivity Growth Fixed Hours of Work Technology Change

29. Reducing Ecological Impact: achieve sustainability in ways that enhance well-being Less Growth in Output Ecological Impact Productivity Growth Reduced Hours of Work Technology Change

30. Changes in Household Behavior: Composition Effect • Households have both time and income budgets. If low-impact activities are more time consuming, reductions in working hours can lead to reduced household impacts

32. The multiple dividend of shorter hours • Benefit #1: shorter hours lead to lower unemployment and more job creation; they partially de-commodify labor • Benefit #2: shorter hours reduce ecological and carbon footprints • Benefit #3: shorter hours give people more free time, reduce stress, enhance family life and community, enable political activity, and enable self-provisioning and lower cost lifestyles

33. Hours released from the BAU economy get deployed to “self-providing” and green entrepreneurship reduces market dependence and reliance on large corporations builds a small-scale, low-impact sector of enterprises builds self-reliance and local resilience helps individuals acquire skills, thereby improving the wage distribution enhances community HIGH TECH SELF PROVIDING & GREEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

34. Permaculture and urban agriculture: green production and self-reliance

35. Micro-generation of energy

36. DIY home building

37. :fabrication technology

38. Why self-provisioning is savvy economics High-productivity: high-tech, high in knowledge, esp eco-knowledge Small scale Low financial barriers to entry Insurance against adverse events (climate or financial disruption) Can build social capital

39. Factor e Farm: a self-sufficient, high-tech, replicable, open source community Plenitude in action Eco-restoration Permaculture All DIY

40. Post industrial peasant economics

41. Transitional policies and pathways • Vision: Frithjof Bergman’s New Work System; nef’s 21 hours • New hires at 80% • Work Sharing as part of UI system • Voluntary time/income tradeoffs for high income workers • Income and consumption provision for low hours workers • Short hours for new businesses

42. BAU

43. Session 2. new consumer regimes

44. Interrogating growth by thinking materially

45. Unsustainable Consumption:Apparel Accumulation in the USA

46. Apparel Discard:Used apparel exports from US to Rest of World 1991-2004 Source: UN Commodity Trade Statistics Database

47. In this figure, resource consumption per capita and day is illustrated, for the year 2000 using the indicator “Raw Material Consumption”. Resource consumption equals domestic resource extraction plus imports (and the indirect resource flows of imports) minus exports (and the indirect resource flows of exports). One full rucksack equals 15 kilograms of resource consumption. The numbers only include economically used materials and thus exclude unused materials, such as overburden from mining. Material consumption per capita and day

48. Reducing the costs of reproduction through sharing

49. thredUP: the Netflix of Clothing