The 150-year trend that could help

Commercialisation of leisure could be the solution to many economic problems

In 1930, the great economist J M Keynes wrote in his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” that in a hundred years, the average work week could fall to 15 hours. People would need to work just three hours a day, and “for the first time since his creation man will be faced with … how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure”.

That a hundred years later more than three-fourths of males even in advanced countries work more than 40 hours a week is not just because two of his conditions were not