Read My Lips: No New Jobs

I don't know about you, but my goal in life is not to have a good paying job, but rather to have no job at all. OK, some of you are way ahead of me on this front, and I also say this as someone who already has a pretty plum job, and has a decent retirement plan. Still, I recently took a nominal pay cut in order to have more time at home and less stress, yet I feel a lot richer than when I was getting five figure bonus checks and the prospect of a management position dangled in front of me like a carrot on a stick. I'd be willing to take a further pay-cut if it meant I could have longer weekends and shorter work days. The Undercover Economist explores this possibility in Slate:

We earn—this is a very rough average—twice what our parents did when they were our age. When today's teenagers are in their 40s, there is no reason why they shouldn't decide to enjoy their increased prosperity by working less instead of earning more. Rather than being twice as rich as their parents, they could be no richer but start their weekends on Wednesday afternoon.

The only problems I see with this are first, his suggestion doesn't go too far enough. I think many of us could do this in a much shorter period of time by cutting our lifestyles to the point where cable TV and two new cars in the garage of a 3,000 square foot house are no longer seen as basic necessities of life. Second, this doubling of the average income completely ignores the explosion in the income gap. while this suggestion is fine for people who make their living pushing paper, it is of no use to people who are working service sector jobs. Finally, the biggest problem is the linking of health coverage to full-time work. Many couples could easily live quite well on two part-time salaries, but one or both have to have a full-time gig to get insurance, especially if either have any history of health problems.

Still, I think that working less is a good goal to aspire to, and I hope to reach it sooner than later.