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Life As Leisure.
The idea that life is leisure and that
individuals forego leisure for a real income
abounds in economic literature. The following long quotations
are taken from one of the better examples. All emphases are added.
Other authors take the same approach, but on occasion
some hint that man cannot live by leisure alone.
The author, David Laidler, was Professor of Economics at
the University of Manchester, and later Professor of Economics
at the University of Western Ontario. The book,
Introduction to Microeconomics, was intended
for second year undergraduates taking single honours degrees
in economics.
1. Introduction
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At any momemt the individuals making up a particular society
will desire a whole variety of items - food, clothing, housing,
holidays, recreation, access to countryside and seashore, to
music, to art, to sporting events, to educational facilities,
and so on - but the means available to provide all these are
limited. The population is of a given size, and possesses a
particular mix of skills; a certain given level of technology
and mix of capital equipment are available (to say nothing of
given amounts of open space and seashore). Thus not everyone can
have all he desires of everything. For any individual to have more
of one thing, he must either have less of another thing, or
someone else must have less of something.
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In the following section, an indifference curve describes the
preferences of an individual for numbers of two goods, X and Y,
which might be chocolates and apples.
An individual may be indifferent to whether he has 2X plus 10Y,
or 5X plus 5Y, or 10X plus 2Y, or various other combinations.
7. The Individual's Supply Of Labour
In this chapter we apply the theory of choice to aspects of the
supply of a productive service - labour. In particular, we consider
the choice of an individual member of the labour force as to how many
hours per week he will undertake. As always, we need to know about
three factors in order to set the problem up in manageable form -
the objects of choice, the constraints upon choice, and the tastes
which govern the choice. Once these are properly defined subsequent
analysis is straightforward.
Consider first the objects of choice. At first glance one might
think of each member of the labour force being faced with a choice
between work and leisure but a moment's reflection makes it apparent
that only one item is in fact being chosen. When hours to be worked
have been selected, the number of hours available for leisure are
already determined and vice versa. In mentioning work and leisure
we are specifying one of the objects of choice, and in our analysis
it is convenient to deal explicitly with leisure and hence implicitly
with work.
As our individual gives up leisure, he receives wage
payments in recompense for his efforts.
He gains income - the ability
to purchase consumption goods - and the objects of choice for him are
therefore income and leisure.
We measure income along the vertical axis of figure 7.1 and leisure
along the horizontal axis. Now let us consider the the constraint
upon the individual's choice. First of all there is
the obvious
physical constraint that limits the number of hours of leisure
available in a week to the number of hours that there are in the
week.
This point is given by L0 on the horizontal axis of figure 7.1.
Working is only one source of income, there is no reason why any
person cannot also receive unearned income. Such income receipts are
common indeed in a modern economy in which the state provides a
number of services to individuals. Free education for children,
health insurance - and so forth, are all part of income but receipt
of them does not depend in any way upon hours worked. More
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Figure 7.1 The choice between combinations of income and
leisure. Note that hours worked may be measured moving to the left
from L0. Viewed in this way the diagram depicts the
choice of the best available of a 'good' (income) and a 'bad' (work).
The individual here chooses to work L0 - L2
for a wage income y2 - y0.
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traditional forms of unearned income accruing from ownership of
wealth belong here as well. Thus there is no reason to suppose that
the level of income associated with not working, i.e. with L0 hours
of leisure per week, is zero. In figure 7.1 it is assumed to be
y0 and the budget constraint is drawn vertically up to this level of
income. Beyond this point, however, more income can only be obtained
by working and hence by sacrificing leisure.
Each hour worked increases income by the hourly wage the individual
can command. Hence the slope of the budget constraint above point
L0y0 is given by the wage rate, with a negative sign of course,
showing the rate at which income can be substituted for leisure.
It is clearly not possible to continue the constraint to cut the
vertical axis since no individual can work every hour of the week
without some 'leisure' time being devoted to eating and sleeping.
Thus there is a cut-off at some minimum amount of leisure L1 and
an associated maximum income level of y1. Thus the constraint on the
choice we are analysing is characterised by a kinked relationship
such as shown in figure 7.1. The continuity of the constraint over
the range L0y0-L1y1 does
imply that the individual may choose the
length of his own work week. This is obviously too simple for direct
application to modern labour market institutions. Despite this
degree of simplification, however, the analysis is of some interest.
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Figure 7.2 The indifference map implicit in the assumption
that, after a certain point, leisure becomes a 'bad'. Moving to the
left from L0 the individual would be willing to pay for
permission to work for the first few hours.
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As to the individual's tastes, if income and leisure are both goods
in the sense that more of one of them without sacrifice of the other
increases satisfaction, then we are safe in characterising them by a
conventional indifference map. One may object to this on the grounds
that perhaps
the first few hours of work a week may actually be a
pleasant alternative to the boredom implicit in complete idleness,
and prefer indifference curves that actually become upward sloping
at high levels of leisure as in figure 7.2. But because this extra
complication adds nothing to the analysis that follows we ignore it
from now on. This is not to say, though, that the assumption
underlying it lacks plausibility.....
David Laidler. Introduction to Microeconomics. 1974. (emphases added)
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A very distinct picture emerges from this account. For Laidler, the amount of leisure anyone has in a week would appear to be equal to the number of hours in the week. Life basically consists of leisure. And this leisure is then foregone to earn a real income.
This is the Rosy Vision expressed in economic orthodoxy. It should be added that Laidler is hardly alone in seeing this way. Other textbooks say exactly the same.
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