If you're asking "what caused the change?" the answer is "Ronald Reagan".
If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible".
Just to expand on that a bit, in case it isn't fully clear:
There is a level of productivity per worker required to support everyone in the society. This level fluctuates some with the overall standard of living, but does not vary with total productivity, population, or GDP. Let's call this level P, for Parity. (And let's assume it's not "just barely enough to support everyone", but "enough to support them comfortably and reliably, with a decent buffer".)
Once the level of productivity per worker passes certain thresholds—multiples of P—the total amount of work required to maintain the society at the same level drops. More work produces surplus. That surplus can be then used in a variety of ways. One of those ways is by reducing the amount of work being done. So, for instance, if the productivity level reaches 2P, then every worker can work half the amount of time they were working before, and still be producing enough to fully provide for everyone. If it reaches 3P, then every worker can work 1/3 the amount of time, and so on.
If, instead, the surplus is captured by the wealthy, the workers don't see benefit, and inequality grows.
I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. I'd say that at this point, just as a rough estimate, we're probably somewhere between 1.5P and 2P, but that's not really my field of expertise. But because the wealthy have captured approximately all productivity gains above the level we were at in 1980, they have seen their wealth massively increase, while the rest of us have just been scraping by.
>If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible".
>[...] I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. [...]
GDP per capita has been growing exponentially for centuries[1]. Is there some arbitrary GDP per capita level where people should be expected to kick back and relax? Why makes your arbitrary line more or less correct than someone else's arbitrary line? Moreover people's revealed preferences show that for most people, that line hasn't been reached yet. Why should people's revealed preferences be overridden by whatever number you came up with?
>If, instead, the surplus is captured by the wealthy, the workers don't see benefit, and inequality grows.
Economic statistics shows it hasn't been captured. Even if you're some sort of marxist that thinks labor's share of GDP should be 100%, at the very most this means the point at which everyone can kick back and relax is delayed by 40%.
This isn't about GDP in a currency sense. It's about Creating Enough Stuff that people can thrive.
Like I said: there is a threshold of Stuff Created Per Person above which providing a comfortable life for every person is purely a distribution problem. For most of human history, we have not been above that threshold.
"Subsistence farming", for instance, is effectively defined by only being able to meet the much lower threshold of "enough that people can survive".
A post-scarcity society is, broadly speaking, defined by being able to produce enough for everyone to thrive with minimal work from anyone.
We are somewhere between the two, but we are reaching the point where we're closer to the latter than the former. Technological advancements have, for some time, ensured that we have enough food for everyone on earth (again, there's still a distribution problem; that part is nearly 100% about politics, not about scarcity). If the very wealthy had not captured all the productivity increases since 1980, I don't know what else we could have achieved, but it wouldn't have been small.
> Economic statistics shows it hasn't been captured.
Look at any graph of income growth by quintile that goes back to the middle of the 20th century or earlier, and you'll see it starts with some roughly parallel lines, and then one line that keeps going up at about the same slope, while the rest stay nearly flat.
The 4 day work week movement continues to move forward, and becomes more likely to succeed as workers gain more power as the prime working age population continues to shrink over decades due to structural demographics (total fertility rates below replacement in most of the world).
If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible".
Just to expand on that a bit, in case it isn't fully clear:
There is a level of productivity per worker required to support everyone in the society. This level fluctuates some with the overall standard of living, but does not vary with total productivity, population, or GDP. Let's call this level P, for Parity. (And let's assume it's not "just barely enough to support everyone", but "enough to support them comfortably and reliably, with a decent buffer".)
Once the level of productivity per worker passes certain thresholds—multiples of P—the total amount of work required to maintain the society at the same level drops. More work produces surplus. That surplus can be then used in a variety of ways. One of those ways is by reducing the amount of work being done. So, for instance, if the productivity level reaches 2P, then every worker can work half the amount of time they were working before, and still be producing enough to fully provide for everyone. If it reaches 3P, then every worker can work 1/3 the amount of time, and so on.
If, instead, the surplus is captured by the wealthy, the workers don't see benefit, and inequality grows.
I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. I'd say that at this point, just as a rough estimate, we're probably somewhere between 1.5P and 2P, but that's not really my field of expertise. But because the wealthy have captured approximately all productivity gains above the level we were at in 1980, they have seen their wealth massively increase, while the rest of us have just been scraping by.