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We were supposed to be suffering from a surfeit of leisure by now. British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted during the Depression that English workers of 2030 would be eight times better off economically and "would choose to work only 15 hours a week," Robert B. Reich writes in The Future of Success. Unless an awful lot changes over the next 30 years, though, Keynes will be way off on both counts. In this thought-provoking new book, Reich pulls together rich streams of data and surrounds them with sparkling prose and illuminating history to explore why Keynes was so wrong. Reich concludes that the changing nature of work creates stresses that are forcing businesses—and, thus, their employees—to always work harder. He then offers ideas on how we can all better manage the pressures of work and find time for our personal lives, though those ideas are less compelling than the analysis that shows the depth of the problems we face. (Just by writing the book, Reich demonstrates the courage of his convictions. To find time, the prominent economist and author resigned as labor secretary in President Clinton’s cabinet, a job that was more likely to require 15 hours a day than 15 hours a week. Reich reports that he also used his newfound time to say good night regularly to his sons.) The first part of the book shows how our pursuit of better deals as buyers forces us, as workers, to deliver those deals. Innovations in technology, communications, and business models feed on themselves, so there is always the possibility of creating a better product, of providing a better service. No innovation is invulnerable to the next one. There are no natural barriers to the seemingly instantaneous spread of ideas. So, workers have to continually try harder to stay ahead of the competition, pushing themselves to the point of obsession and exhaustion. Breakthrough products aren’t called killer apps for nothing. Reich writes: "[The] rewards of the New Economy are coming at the price of lives that are more frenzied, less secure, more economically divergent, more socially stratified. As buyers switch more easily to better deals, all of us have little choice but to work harder to satisfy buyers. As our earnings become less predictable, we leap at every chance to make [money] while the sun shines. As the stakes rise...we’ll do whatever we can to be in the winner’s circle and to get our children safely there as well." In the middle section of the book, Reich provides the most cogent explanation I have yet seen for the "free-agent" economy. We no longer "get along" with others to get ahead, Reich writes. Instead, without job security, we have to get ourselves noticed. Shameless self-promotion is no longer true just of rock stars and ballplayers, but even stock analysts, dentists, and Ivy League economics professors, all of whom must build their personal brands. "Once, the worst thing that could be said about someone was that he sold out," Reich writes mordantly. "Now, the worst thing that can be said is that he’s not selling." Reich does a fascinating analysis based on "sorting," the idea that rational economic choices by individuals sort us into ever-finer subgroups. (Think of how precisely your ZIP Code predicts your household income.) Reich argues that communities no longer are the places where we are bound together in common cause and friendship. Rather, they are "commodities" weighed for what they will yield in amenities, social gratification, and real-estate values. How to make the New Economy less ugly? Reich suggests you become more self-aware and repeats the old chestnut that you should "imagine yourself nearing death and pondering what your life’s priorities should have been." He offers lukewarm support, at best, to such various recommendations as time-management techniques and decisions to pursue "voluntary simplicity." His fundamental reservation about such personal choices is that they may be overwhelmed by the economy’s structural changes. Reich closes by exploring how public policy needs to address these structural changes to provide the best "trade-off between economic dynamism and social tranquility." He offers no overarching solution but provides some "points of departure" that reveal his liberal disposition. These include cushioning people with earnings insurance, widening "the circle of prosperity," giving caring attention to the young and elderly, and granting poor families housing-assistance vouchers so they can live in high-income areas. Whatever the specifics, Reich writes that the debate over the nature of success in the future "cannot be—it must not be—solely an economic conversation. It is more fundamentally a moral one."
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