Larry Page, co-founder of Google, 15th richest man on Earth:
Carlos Slim, richest man in the world:Plan For People Whose Jobs Are Replaced By Tech: Work Less
Page and Google co-founder Sergey Brin talked last week with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla at a Khosla Ventures summit. The conversation touched on Google’s long-term strategies and self-driving cars, but reached its peak when Page began talking about an underemployed future:
90-percent of people used to be farmers. So it’s happened before. It’s not surprising.
I totally believe we should be living in a time of abundance, like Peter Diamandis’ book. If you really think about the things that you need to make yourself happy – housing, security, opportunities for your kids – anthropologists have been identifying these things. It’s not that hard for us to provide those things. The amount of resources we need to do that, the amount of work that actually needs to go into that is pretty small. I’m guessing less than 1-percent at the moment.
So the idea that everyone needs to work frantically to meet people’s needs is just not true. I do think there’s a problem that we don’t recognize that. I think there’s also a social problem that a lot of people aren’t happy if they don’t have anything to do.
So we need to give people things to do. We need to feel like you’re needed, wanted and have something productive to do. But I think the mix with that and the industries we actually need and so on are– there’s not a good correspondence. That’s why we’re busy destroying the environment and other things, maybe we don’t need to be doing. So I’m pretty worried. Until we figure that out, we’re not going to have a good outcome.
One thing, I was talking to Richard Branson about this. They don’t have enough jobs in the UK. He’s been trying to get people to hire two part-time people instead of one full-time. So at least, the young people can have a half-time job rather than no job. And it’s a slightly greater cost for employers.
I was thinking, the extension of that is you have global unemployment or widespread unemployment. You just reduce work time. Everyone I’ve asked– I’ve asked a lot of people about this. Maybe not you guys. But most people, if I ask them, ‘Would you like an extra week of vacation?’ They raise their hands, 100-percent of the people. ‘Two weeks vacation, or a four-day work week?’ Everyone will raise their hand.
Most people like working, but they’d also like to have more time with their family or to pursue their own interests. So that would be one way to deal with the problem, is if you had a coordinated way to just reduce the workweek. And then, if you add slightly less employment, you can adjust and people will still have jobs.
Finally, excellent video on why 40 hour work week might soon prove to be unsustainable mirage:A three-day work week may sound idealistic, but the world's richest man thinks it should be the standard.
Carlos Slim is calling for a "radical overhaul" of how people work. People shouldn’t retire when they are 50 or 60 – instead, people should work until they are older, but take more time off during their longer careers, says the Mexican telecoms tycoon, and now the richest man in the world.
“People are going to have to work for more years, until they are 70 or 75, and just work three days a week – perhaps 11 hours a day,” he said at a business conference in Paraguay last week, according to Paraguay.com, as translated by the Financial Times. A three-day work week would allow people to relax more and lead to a healthier and more productive labor force, Slim says. Plus, working beyond your fifties and sixties would benefit people financially, he added.
), and he can't plan anything ahead because of this.