# Money brings choices — and downsides

- **Episode:** [156](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/156.md) (2024-12-24)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** money, choices, trade-offs
- **Time:** 40:20–44:52 (start 2420s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/156?t=2420](https://truthliesandwork.com/156?t=2420)

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[40:20] Al Elliott: Yeah. Right
[40:21] Leanne Elliott: You know, money brings with it more choices. So there's a downside to that sometimes as well, by the way. But broadly speaking, if you give people more optionality, they are better off. There are counters to that, but for the most part, okay. And this is simply bringing people more optionality. And it's about effing time. Because as I said, the gains to women entering the workforce over 30 to 40 years didn't really go where we expected them to go. Because you now have a situation— I'm not making this up— where, as I said, a consultant surgeon cannot afford to buy their one-bedroom flat. This is crazy. The intergenerational unfairness of this is absolutely monstrous, by the way. So the first generation of women to work actually did really well out of it, because the property prices hadn't yet caught up. But the lack of freedom of discretionary time— now, if you look at it, my wife's actually a vicar. And One of the problems you have in the church is that all the people who volunteer are now in their 70s and 80s. And the young people, the younger people, people in their 60s don't volunteer, partly because they've been working. Okay. And they not unreasonably see their retirement as a reward. So they're not getting into any commitment like running this group or preparing a lunch. They're not going to do any of those things. And anyway, they don't want to commit their time because they might want to go on a cruise and Bloody February. You see what I mean? So a lot of that, that 35 hours of discretionary time didn't just go into household maintenance, it went into community maintenance. People helping each other out, right? And that was an economy. It wasn't measured as part of GDP, but it was part of the economy. People with free time doing shit to benefit other people, looking after someone's kids
[42:12] Al Elliott: Right
[42:12] Leanne Elliott: All that kind of stuff. Now, there's an interesting case which no one's looked at, which is one of the reasons people are having children later. There are many, many reasons why people are having children later. But, you know, this is— there's going to be a demographic crisis. I mean, not to the Chinese proportions, but I mean, nonetheless, one of them is you probably need to wait for your parents to retire. So they can help with childcare. Okay. I mean, that's just one of many, many reasons. But previously, okay, you know, bringing up a child would probably involve a whole load of voluntary work from people who— so the extent to which people's lives, people are sort of frustrated is in part, I think, because at the household level, The amount of discretionary time available to just do things that are worthwhile for you and your family, as distinct from your employer, has gone from what would have been probably 80 hours a week to maybe the weekend. Okay. And with that has come the thing, which is I'm not going to do anything voluntary in my community because I, you know, this is the only leisure time I get. It isn't very much. I'm going to make the most of it in a selfish way rather than in a kind of pro-social way. By the way, don't shoot the messenger because the other person who said this to me was Faye Weldon. Faye Weldon, you know, fairly renowned feminist, made this point that this freedom to work was absolutely great for her. She was a copywriter at Ogilvy, which is why I know her, among other reasons. Much way before my time. And, but I got to know her anyway. And she made this point that actually, for a lot of people, the net results were only beneficial as far as working was a choice. It also got a lot of people out of abusive and unpleasant relationships, by the way, and made them no longer dependent on husbands. And so there'd been a lot, a hell of a lot of positives. I'm not disputing that. But purely in terms of time, It hasn't been a great success. So I would argue that the intelligent thing we would have done had we gone back to 1960 is said, okay, if you are going to have both parties in a relationship working, a 4-day week would be a hell of a lot better than the 5-day week. Then you have the problem, okay, that what if, what if only one of you can negotiate a 4-day? Well, there's not much point in having leisure if, if, if one of the, your wife or husband is still going to work
[44:51] Al Elliott: Yeah