"He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist."

More philosophy than hardcore economics, but since hardcore economics possesses its own voluminous imagination, I'd say we can call it even.

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber (Strike! Magazine)

... These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.

Sunday reading: Parking lots and work weeks.

Have you ever heard of the Pensacola Parking Syndrome?

Paved, but Still Alive, by Michael Kimmelman (New York Times)

As the critic Lewis Mumford wrote half a century ago, “The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city.” Yet we continue to produce parking lots, in cities as well as in suburbs, in the same way we consume all those billions of plastic bottles of water and disposable diapers.

What to do?

Meanwhile, I was under the impression that the 40-hour work week was ascribed on one of Moses' tablets? Or was that Santorum's?

Cut the working week to a maximum of 20 hours, urge top economists; Job sharing and increased leisure are the answer to rising unemployment, claims thinktank, by Heather Stewart (The Guardian/The Observer)

... A thinktank, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which has organised the event with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, argues that if everyone worked fewer hours – say, 20 or so a week – there would be more jobs to go round, employees could spend more time with their families and energy-hungry excess consumption would be curbed. Anna Coote, of NEF, said: "There's a great disequilibrium between people who have got too much paid work, and those who have got too little or none."

Stagger or be staggered.

After today, larger workplaces unwilling to adjust schedules to alleviate gridlock should be compelled to do so by governmental fiat. This will annoy free marketeers. So be it. This is not a disaster, but it is an emergency, and waiting for lemmings to adapt perhaps not the most hopeful strategy.

Suggestions?