When peals of laughter floated up the stairs, the librarian asked Connie Allen what her group was laughing about. After all, hadn’t they formed to deal with the restrictions of living on limited income? What makes that any fun?

The group was based on an insight of Connie’s, who started a “Resource Sharing Group” in South Paris, Maine. “I knew several people who were living with limited income either because of unemployment, under-employment, retirement, or voluntary simplicity,” she says. “And I thought, if we put this group together, we could all benefit from it. It would make life easier for all of us.”

She was right. But what she didn’t expect was how much fun they would have.

“We used to meet in the basement of the local library, about twelve of us, each week,” explains Connie. “The librarian was always asking us what we were laughing at. Somehow we just always had a lot of fun when we met. And we helped each other in all kinds of ways.”

At each meeting, members of the group said what they needed, and what they could offer. “Usually by the time we got around the circle, the needs had been addressed, or at least ideas had been shared about how to address them,” says Connie.

“We also talked about things we had done during the week that saved money or time, and we listed the sharing that had occurred during the week—the things we had exchanged with each other,” she adds.

That listing must have taken a while, given how much the group members helped each other. They shared lawn mowers, books, and tools; helped one member set up her new office; organized a yard and craft sale for forty people; set up a website to share information and list items to sell; offered tutorials in a variety of subjects; brainstormed job possibilities; met for potlucks; and shared inexpensive recipe ideas and savings tips.

“We would bulk shop together,” Connie says. “And we’d tell each other about sales.”

One woman started teaching exercise classes after the group helped her get started, and a few others published books using suggestions and expertise from the group.

They even kept an “emergency jar” at the center of the table. People would often put 50 cents or a dollar into it at meetings, though it wasn’t required. The money didn’t get used very often, but much like the group itself, it “provided a sense of security just in knowing it was there.”

Instead of hoarding their possessions or knowledge during a time of vulnerability, the participants opened themselves up and discovered a new source of abundance in each other.

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Across the country, people are discovering this new type of security and abundance as they meet in small groups. Some call themselves Common Security Clubs (CSC) and use the tools provided by the CSC Network. Other groups, like Connie’s, have happened spontaneously. These groups may be under the mainstream radar, but their accomplishments are real and powerful nonetheless. They’re part of the movement toward a new economy based on local connections and exchanges.

After a successful run, Connie’s resource group has disbanded, but many members continue to share. Connie and some of the members have now formed another group, guided by the “Transition Town” concepts.

The new group’s accomplishments include organizing a large green-energy fair at the local high-school, and a project that has mapped out all the arable land in their community where people can grow their own food.

And, I’m willing to bet, they’ve had some good laughs together.

Sarah Byrnes wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sarah is the organizer for the Common Security Clubs at the Institute for Policy Studies. She has worked with Americans for Fairness in Lending, Americans for Financial Reform, and the Thomas Merton Center. 

Interested?

• Read more from the Common Security Clubs blog.
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• The Work-Sharing Boom: Exit Ramp to a New Economy?
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Twenty months into the United States’ worst recession since the 1930s, standard approaches for putting people back to work are proving increasingly inadequate. Corporate bailouts, tax cuts, government spending, and stimulative monetary policy have been the mainstays of the government’s response to the downturn. But unemployment has remained stubbornly high, and job creation has been far below what is needed to return the labor market to its pre-crash state.

There is one bright spot on the policy agenda: work sharing. Government policies that encourage companies to reduce hours rather than lay people off are getting a new look.

Operated through the regular unemployment insurance system, state-based work sharing programs are a straightforward way of spreading and diffusing the impact of downsizing: Workers whose hours have been reduced in order to save jobs at their company are able to claim unemployment benefits for the lost hours, retaining a portion—typically half—of their lost wages. Companies have to maintain benefits for these workers; depending on the state, there can be some other requirements as well.

Shorter work time (SWT) schemes have been around for years, although they have tended to be a little known, even esoteric part of labor market policy. They are far more prevalent in Europe, where they originated in the early 20th century and expanded after World War II. SWT schemes didn’t come to the U.S. until the late 1970s, when California implemented an informal version to cope with stagflation, followed by a formalized policy in 1982. Ten years later, the federal government made these schemes a permanent part of labor market policy through an amendment to the Social Security Act.

After the Crash: A Work-Sharing Boom

The National Association of State Workforce Agencies estimates that work sharing resulted in 166,000 jobs saved in 2009—a record number, and almost triple the number from 2008. New York, in particular, has been aggressively pushing its program, and use has also exploded in a number of other states.

Before the crash, 17 states allowed workers to collect unemployment insurance on the wages they lost when their hours were cut. (Those states were Arkansas, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Washington). Two more states, Colorado and New Hampshire, have passed work-sharing policies in recent months, and both programs are already operating. Five more states—Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Hawaii, Ohio, and Oklahoma—are considering adopting similar policies. As of this writing, the Pennsylvania bill had passed the state’s lower chamber and was awaiting action in the Senate.

Common Sense for Saving Jobs

SWT won’t do too much to put today’s unemployed back to work directly. But it can play an important role in preventing more layoffs, which in turn improves job prospects for all. Still, timing is crucial. SWT is most effective during the early months of a recession, when companies are deciding how to respond. If the economy goes into a double-dip and weakens even further, SWT could be an important stabilizer. Getting more states involved and expanding awareness of the programs that do exist should be urgent priorities.

Germany—which responded to the crash primarily through the adjustment of hours, and whose unemployment rate barely increased—is an outstanding example of how to do this. A federal scheme to replace lost wages (Kurzarbeit) accounted for about 20 percent of the reduction in hours; private bargains between employers and unions, canceled overtime, and flexible use of vacation and other time off was responsible for the remainder.

Nor was Germany the only country to use schedule changes to cushion the collapse. Korea, Norway, and the Slovak Republic also used hours for more than 95 percent of their labor market adjustment; Belgium, Italy, Finland and Japan were also big “hours” (rather than jobs) adjusters. By contrast, in the U.S., employers responded almost wholly with layoffs.

Even with the growth in work-share programs, SWT has not yet been used in the U.S. nearly to the extent that it could be. Jack Reed (D-RI), has introduced a bill in Congress to encourage more states to join the program and to ensure its continued funding.

The politics of work sharing are encouraging for their broader application in the U.S. Such programs are cost-neutral for badly-stretched unemployment insurance funds, so they don’t run afoul of anti-spending sentiment. Though they have historically been associated with the progressive side of the fence, they appear ideologically neutral. Ben Bernanke has given them his seal of approval; businesses often like them because they save on re-hiring costs. They are also, rightly, perceived as fair—rather than concentrating the pain of unemployment in a small number of people, they allow it to be shared equally. In the parlance of the day, they’re generally considered to be win-wins.

Exit Ramp to a New Economy

Work-share programs are probably the best way to respond to a short-term reduction in economic activity. But they also form a key pathway to a saner economy.

Reducing work hours improves work-life balance for many overworked, overstressed employees. Americans frequently report that what they most sense to be missing from their lives is the time necessary to enjoy them; research on well-being also indicates that adequate time is at the core of a healthy, happy life. Overworked employees report more family tension, less happiness, and more stress. This is a particular problem for Americans, who work between 100 and 350 more hours each year than workers in comparably wealthy countries.

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Surveys done before the crash indicate that between 30 and 50 percent of Americans say they would prefer to work fewer hours, even for less pay. However, the structure of the labor market—including the need to work full-time to receive benefits—has made that difficult. That’s why taking advantage of SWT now, at a time when hours have fallen due to the shortfall in demand, is a golden opportunity.

Reduced hours can also lead to smaller ecological footprints, as I explain in my recent book Plenitude. Productivity has been on the rise for decades, but we’ve been using the benefits of increased productivity to consume ever more stuff—which we often don’t even have time to enjoy. Those additional material goods (not to mention those extra miles of commuting) have a major impact on the environment. Research shows that longer work hours are associated with more ecological degradation. Working less typically leads to reduced spending and also a shift to lower-impact forms of consumption: taking the bike instead of the car; cooking at home instead of buying fast food. For the ecologically aware, the preference for SWT over standard job creation measures such as stimulus spending or tax cuts should be clear.

By helping to institute a new, shorter hours regime, in which increases in productivity result in time off the job rather than more material output, work-sharing programs help maintain labor market balance even if economic activity is stable or falling. That’s the win-win that has yet to factor into the mainstream discourse on shorter work hours—and the reason why reducing hours equitably in a recession is an exit ramp to a new economy.

Juliet Schor wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Juliet is, most recently, the author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, and a professor of sociology at Boston College. Her website is www.julietschor.org.

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During the last two great depressions in the U.S., hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people organized to meet their basic needs when the mainstream economy and centralized monetary system failed them. Unemployed poor folks got together to create time dollar stores and cooperative mills, farms, health care systems, foundries, repair and recycling facilities, distribution warehouses, and a myriad of other service exchanges.

Many of these were based on the hour as a unit of account, and often everyone’s hour was equal and could either be exchanged for another hour of service or its equivalent in goods.

Modern forms of time exchange, called Timebanks and LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems), have been around since the 1980s. Now, with one in ten Americans unemployed (likely twice that, given recording problems), time exchanges are making a comeback.

Timebanks USA, a system of over 120 timebanks in the U.S. and a few other countries, was developed by activist lawyer Edgar Cahn as a way to help the underprivileged and underserved help each other through an organized system of reciprocity. In the following interview, Cahn explains the basic principles behind timebanks:

Official Timebanks purchase software that provides a ready-made, standardized directory and accounting system of individuals, and sometimes nonprofits or government agencies, that are willing to provide services to their communities and receive help in return.

Timebank coordinators help create matches between people who need things and others who can help meet those needs, and they keep track of completed transactions in the system. No money is involved, and everyone’s hour is equal, which is one of the features that enabled Timebanks to receive an official IRS income tax exemption declaration so that people on disability, social security, unemployment, and other government benefits can participate without penalty.

The egalitarian nature of the system ensures that people will be able to purchase the services that they need without toiling endlessly to meet high prices in the market economy. People can also trade goods with the stipulation that their price be based on the amount of time involved in producing the goods and not their market value. Timebanks’ most successful application has been to provide a means for at-risk youth who have gone to court to do service for their community.

LETS systems also operate without money (except for fixed costs like gas or paper copies), but the value of time or goods may be linked to market value. Every community determines its own rules, so every LETS is a little different. LETS are now mostly online accounting and directory systems just like Timebanks, but they have also taken the form of paper ledgers, checkbooks, paper currencies, and time-based stores.

When one person provides service or goods to another, the giver receives credit in her account and the receiver gets a debit to his account so the system is always in balance. People manage their own accounts and make payment over the internet by logging into their personal account. Businesses, nonprofits, and government may also have accounts if they are involved in reciprocal community exchange. Some systems have account balance limits, others don’t or merely flag high or low balances and then contact members to help them figure out how to spend or earn their credits.

Many communities have created  similar time exchange projects, going by names like Fourth Corner Exchange, Village Networks, Richmond Hours, and Austin Time Exchange.

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Probably the largest time exchange in the world is the Fureai Kippu in Japan. Fureai Kippu (“Caring Relationship Tickets”) was created in 1995 to help families who had migrated to other parts of Japan care for elder family members from whom they'd been separated. Seniors can help each other and earn the hour credits, family members can earn credits and transfer them to their parents who live elsewhere, or users may keep credits for when they become sick or elderly themselves.

Free open source software is now available for any community to tailor a time exchange to its own needs and to reflect the local culture. Many of these projects also have regular in-person meetings, swaps, and potlucks to help facilitate exchange, trust, and community building.

While we may not have many dollars these days, most people do have some time. Instead of paying professionals who we may never see again to provide services, we can use time exchanges to find neighbors who might provide service in exchange for hour credits, thereby saving scarce U.S. dollars for things like rent and medicine.

In the process, people get to know and trust their neighbors, establishing caring relationships that can help reweave the fabric of our communities, and replace our culture’s over-reliance on individual financial security.

Mira Luna is a San Francisco based activist who is working on developing an alternative economy in the Bay Area. She helps coordinate Bay Area Community Exchange, a local timebank, JASecon, and the Really Really Free Market. She wrote this article for Shareable.net, a new online magazine that explores the ways that sharing is transforming life in the twenty-first century.

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Sandra Boston remembers the day four years ago when she watched a movie about climate change.

“It wasn't the first presentation I’d seen about our changing climate, but it finally sank in,” said Boston, who turned 69 this year. “I thought: I want to do something about this every day for the rest of my life.”

Boston lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts, a former mill town in a largely rural county in the western part of the state. She talked to a neighbor about forming a support group to face the changing ecology and economy. “We figured we were going to do this work with people who were in walking distance. So we brainstormed 22 people within a mile of our street and sent them a letter inviting them to meet on a Sunday night. They all came.”

They call themselves “The Neighbors,” and they’ve been meeting one Sunday night a month for over three years. The group has grown to 28, which is the maximum that can fit in Sandra’s living room.

The Neighbors formed before the emergence of the Common Security Club movement, but like newer clubs they incorporate fun and food into their meetings. They spend time learning together, engaging in mutual aid, and inspiring one another to learn new habits in order to live in a new economy with ecological limits.

“We start every meeting by singing,” said Boston. “Then we have a check-in and discussion.” The Neighbors have read books together, watched documentaries, and generally helped each other out. When members have faced health challenges, they’ve taken turns cooking and accompanying one another to the hospital.

Several members started or expanded gardens. “We had a work weekend for one member when she wanted to clear land for a garden plot. We all showed up with saws and shovels to clear the plot.”

In addition to their monthly meeting, The Neighbors have a monthly game night usually attended by half the members. “This is fun and affordable entertainment,” said Boston.

“Early on we created a list,” said Tom MacLean, a member of The Neighbors. At 82, he is the oldest member and lives in elder housing in an  apartment building. “We identified things we could share and things we needed. These included tools, skills, copy machines, kayaks, and other services.”

“The spirit of our exchanges are gifting and sharing,” reflected MacLean. “We admire the time bank and time dollars approach, but don’t want to spend all the time keeping score.”

MacLean encouraged the group to deepen their story sharing, inspired by the series “This I Believe" on National Public Radio. “We reflect on how we became who we are. There is a wealth of life experience in our group and this has really deepened our connections.”

The Neighbors are a great example of strengthening community ties and sharing with each another. “We don’t do a lot of action within The Neighbors,” said Boston. “But our internal support feeds us to be active in other places like our local Greening Greenfield. The action announcements section of our meetings usually takes about 15 minutes!”

The Neighbors of Greenfield, Mass. are all over 60 years old and mostly women.  “We have this limitation,” observed Boston, “which is we’re isolated from people of other ages. We can take care of each other for the next ten or twenty years, but that’s it.”

Others in the community have approached them with envy, asking for help starting new organizations. The group has discussed helping form other support groups in the Greenfield Area. “We want to share what we’ve learned without turning it into a huge project. But we want to help.”

It is stories like these that have inspired the Common Security Club network. Many clubs are deliberately multi-generational, so that members can share stories and skills across the age spectrum. Over a hundred such clubs are now in existence, with many convened at religious congregations. The network provides tools to new and existing groups.

Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good.

Interested?
Read more from Common Security Clubs.

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Imagine a world where economic systems support our real needs and aspirations: a world guided by a "caring economics" where the main investment is in caring for people and nature.

In this world, the most valued work is the work of caring for people, starting in childhood, as well as caring for our Mother Earth. Leaders recognize that, particularly in the post-industrial knowledge/information era, our most important asset is what economists call "high-quality human capital"—and that neuroscience shows this largely depends on good physical, mental, and emotional care starting at birth. Consequently, childcare in families is supported by caregiver tax-credits, stipends, paid parental leave, and social security credit for the first seven years of caring for a child—whether the caregiver is a woman or a man. Workplace rules such as flex time, and job sharing are commonplace, as businesspeople recognize that when employees feel they and their families are cared for they work better and harder. Training for childcare, primary-school teaching, and other caring professions is a top priority, as is training for elder care. And these jobs are highly respected and well-paid. Parenting education is another top priority. And so it maintaining a clean and healthy natural environment.

There is already movement in this direction, especially in Nordic Nations such as Sweden, Finland, and Norway—nations that often call themselves "caring societies." These nations were so poor at the start of the 20th century that many thousands fled famines (Minnesota was populated by these Nordic refugees). But because they invested in their people through universal healthcare, childcare, generous paid parental leave, parenting education, investment in solar and other alternative power, and other caring policies, today these nations are in the top tiers of both the UN Human Development Reports and the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Reports.

These nations show that caring pays—not only in human and environmental terms but in purely economic terms. They also show that the main obstacle to building a more caring world isn't economic, it's cultural.

The Nordic nations are in the forefront of a cultural transformation toward what research identifies as the configuration of a partnership rather than domination system. Two major characteristics of this configuration are real democracy in both the family and state and equal partnership between the female and male halves of our species. So in these nations women are about 40 percent of the national legislatures. And as the status of women rose, so also did the value given by both men and women to caring, caregiving, nonviolence, and other traits stereotypically associated with the "feminine.".

We too can, and must, move in this direction. Indeed, in this time of unprecedented environmental and social challenges, the movement from domination to partnership is more urgent than ever before.

To build a new economic system, we need new economic indicators. Consider, for example that current economic indicators like GDP fail to include as "productive work" the work of caring in households—although already in 1995, the U.N. Human Development Report estimated the value of women's unpaid work as a whopping $11 trillion per year. Not only is the work of caregiving in homes—without which there would be no workforce—still generally given little support in economic policy; it's paid substandard wages in the market economy. So in the United States, people pay plumbers, the people to whom we entrust our pipes, $50 to $100 per hour. But childcare workers, the people to whom we entrust our children, according to the U.S. Department of Labor are paid an average of $10 an hour.

This is not logical, it's pathological—and we can, and must, change it! Now is the time to build on the frustration with the economic and ecological disasters this irrational system of values is causing—and change the rules and social structures that support it.

Riane Eisler wrote this article for  YES! Magazine, a national nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Riane is a social scientist, attorney, and social activist best known for her international bestsellers The Chalice and The Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations. She keynotes conferences worldwide, is a consultant to business and government on the partnership model introduced in her work, and is president of the Center for Partnership Studies. She has been a powerful advocate for the human rights of women and children, has received many honors, and is included in the award-winning book Great Peacemakers, as one of 20 leaders for world peace, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King. Her website is www.rianeeisler.com

Interested? Riane is leading a series of training workshops to build momentum for a grassroots movement to create a more realistic, humane, and sustainable economic system. Find out more  at www.partnershipway.org.

It’s Labor Day weekend, and another summer vacation season has come to an end. For the 71 percent of working Americans who actually get a paid vacation, that is. If this year was like last year or the one before that, half of all Americans will have taken only a week—or less—off work this summer. Compare that to an average of five weeks in Europe and you get an idea why some people call the United States “No Vacation Nation.”

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller lamented that we “suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation,” but even those two weeks aren’t a legal right, and millions of working Americans don’t get them.

Nearly all other countries in the world have something we don’t: a national law mandating that workers receive some amount of paid vacation each year. Only the Guyanas, Nepal, and that paragon of human rights, Myanmar (Burma) join the US in having no vacation law.

What’s with the difference? And does it really matter if people have vacation time or not? Some 50 experts from the fields of medicine, psychology, business, labor, recreation, environmental sciences, and family studies joined a group of activists at Seattle University to try to answer those questions.

Their answers were resoundingly clear: vacations are not an idle luxury. They’re a crucial ingredient in creating a healthy, civically engaged, and environmentally responsible society.

Vacations matter, especially for health. Sarah Speck, a cardiologist at Seattle’s Swedish hospital, scared everyone at the conference with a graphic look at the impact of stress, and especially workplace stress, on heart health, concluding that such stress is “the new tobacco,” and that vacations are an important way to reduce stress and burnout. Dr. Arnold Pallay, a family physician from New Jersey, confirmed Dr. Speck’s findings, saying that many of the health problems his patients suffer from stem from lack of vacation time. “Take two weeks and call me in the morning,” he tells them.

Representative Alan Grayson of Orlando, Florida introduced the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, the first effort to pass a vacation law in the United States since 1936. “When people tell me they oppose such a law, I ask them if they get vacations,” Grayson told participants, “and every single one of them has said, ‘Yes.’ They want vacations for themselves but not for others.”

Grayson’s proposed law (HR 2564) is extremely modest—one to two weeks of paid time off for workers in companies with more than 50 employees—but it’s a start, a down payment toward a time when we recognize the greater cost we pay for not providing vacation time. Even now, that cost to our already overburdened health system is substantial—men who don’t take regular vacations are 32 percent more likely to have heart attacks than those who do; for women, the figure is 50 percent. And they are two to three times as likely to suffer from depression.

With the fight over health care reform heating up, it’s useful to consider that in Europe, where long vacations and shorter working weeks are common, people live longer and healthier lives than in the U.S. while spending only half as much on health care. We need to insure everyone in the United States, but that alone won’t improve our health. Working less, and instead spending more time exercising, eating well, connecting with friends and family, sleeping, and relieving the stress caused by our long working hours, will.

Indeed, according to Dr. Stephen Bezruchka of the University of Washington School of Public Health, even the involuntary drop in working hours caused by the recent recession has had a positive impact on Americans’ health, as people are exercising more, eating better and eating out less (since they can’t afford as many restaurant meals), sleeping more, spending more time with friends and family, driving less, and breathing less pollution. We don’t want to lose these health improvements when our economy rebounds.

Vacations also offer considerable benefits for productivity and creativity in the workplace, explained Joe Robinson, a business consultant. Several experts from both the U.S. and Canada pointed out the value of vacations for family bonding.

Moreover, working less is essential to a sustainable environment. We Americans consume more than the planet will bear. It’s time to begin trading gains in productivity for time instead of for stuff. A study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that simply by cutting our work time to European levels, we could reduce our energy use and carbon footprint by 25-30 percent. It would also make us happier—Forbes magazine reported that the four happiest nations on earth—Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden—are all characterized by the comparatively short working hours and attentiveness to work-life balance.

Each year, October 24th marks Take Back Your Time Day, an event started by the Take Back Your Time organization. This year, October 24th is also the date of scheduled “350” actions against global warming. In support, Take Back Your Time Day’s theme this year is “Chill Out.” The idea is that slowing down and working less can chill us out—and chill a warming planet as well.

It’s time to take the issue of time seriously. Our lives and our planet depend on it.

John de Graaf is the Executive Director of Take Back Your Time, and a documentary filmmaker.

Interested? Check out YES! Magazine's special issue on Sustainable Happiness.

Nor do I recall a lack of time. To the contrary there is an abundance. The less time is measured and packaged, it seems, the more of it there is. To which a skeptic might reply, “Well of course. These people are poor. They don't have anything else to do.” But that's the point. They are poor in one sense and yet rich in another. That other sense happens to be the one that we Americans increasingly lack.

We are obsessed with time. We assault it, seek to tame and manage it, the way our forebears once did the frontier. We measure our progress largely by the amount of stuff we turn out per hour of work, which we call “productivity” (without regard to whether we really need the items produced). Yet striving to conquer time we end up having less of it and feeling miserable as a result.

 For decades people have suffered their temporal poverty in silence, as though it's all their own fault. But that is changing, and partly as a result the nation's politics are changing, too. Political debate in America generally has centered on the distribution of money and material goods. Now, slowly, it is starting to be about the distribution of time. We are starting to think about temporal wealth, as well as the financial kind. Frank Luntz, the Republican message Merlin, says that time emerges as a major concern in his focus groups. Celinda Lake, a Democratic counterpart, says the same. The brushfire enthusiasm for Take Back Your Time Day suggests that they are right.

Demands for more time “off”—to attend to kids and communities, or just to rest—are going to become a staple in American politics, and this is good. It is insane to pour increasing amounts of time into the market when most of us have accumulated more things than we need already, and when so many needs in our families and communities are going unmet. But a few more holidays, and a few more days off, are not going to do the job. There are more basic questions lurking here, and a great opportunity to reach across the political-cultural divide as well.

Metronome of the marketplace
To be out of time, in the way that traditional societies are, is, in large measure, to be out of the market. It is to dwell in a world in which the market is a place one goes to, not an ambient force field that defines all of life. Clock time is the market's metronome, the central regulatory device that entered daily life through the factory. Turning work into a commodity called “labor” created the need to measure it, just like wool and grain. And as production became more complicated, there was a need to coordinate the factors that comprised it. There had to be hours of business. Meetings had to occur.

Hence the clock. Where once the task defined time, now time defined the task. Yes, the microchip now is making the old metronome somewhat obsolete. But it is doing so not by eliminating clock time, but rather by accelerating it to warp speed. Do you really feel more rested and rich in time in an economy rushing to the pulse of the microchip? If so, you should tell the rest of us your secret. From the factory, clock time spilled out into the society at large along with the products it helped produce. The temporal organization of work became that of the home, as households had to synchronize with it. Then the market itself entered the home and planted its metronomic flag there. Television in particular partitioned the flow of life in the household into half hour segments. Inch by inch, people internalized their new master and identified with it. The body became a productive “machine.” A big-ticket “Alpha Mom,” profiled in New York magazine, said that her baby was something she and her husband “really dedicated time in our schedules for.”

She said this with pride, as though she had identified a hot strategic opportunity. The schedule rules, and kids get fitted to it. Chances are her child, like others, soon will become hyper-scheduled as well. Kids today are getting day planners at age six. Their days consist of a sequence of lessons and supervised sports, all governed by the clock. Unstructured outdoor play has dropped by 50 percent since the late 1970s. (A letter-writer to New York suggested that Alpha Mom start to set aside money for the psychiatry bills that are coming.)

Scarcity in abundance
It might seem a paradox that the desperate quest to cram more into time has caused it to diminish. But time is the awareness of space between events. More events really do mean less time. Besides, the tendency to conjure scarcity out of the abundance it helps create is a central feature of the market itself. The textbook definition of a market economy is: a system for allocating scarce resources. The corollary, usually unspoken, is that for a resource to be so allocated it must first become scarce.

There is a psychological dimension to this. A sneaker is a sneaker. Put a Nike swoosh on it, spend millions to build an aura around that swoosh, and you can sell it for a great deal of money. Branding is psychologically induced scarcity. The simple fact of immersion in a product culture causes us to feel a chronic lack. No matter how much we have already, there is always something that we don't.

Then there's material scarcity. In the use of natural resources such as oil, land, and air, the market tends to be an appetite without a shut-off switch. By the time the price system clicks in, the damage usually has been done. Things once abundant become scarce, with the result that people have to buy commodified substitutes. Befoul the water and then sell bottled water for drinking and pools for swimming in; that's the basic pattern.

As with oil and water, so with time. A growing portion of this thing we call “the economy” is devoted to selling people substitutes for time, such as calming drugs, fast food, and the many “services” that have displaced the normal functions of the home. Upscale parents are contracting out the tasks of putting on birthday parties, helping kids with homework, even teaching them how to ride their bikes.

Economists call this “growth.” For the rest of us it sounds more like pathology. But our strange notions regarding time help to obscure this simple fact.

A sanctity has grown up around the assault on time. It is as though temporal exhaustion, and the self-exhaustion it involves, is a devotional act, almost a form of communion. The kind of pride a medieval monk might have felt, or been tempted to feel, at his endurance in prayer, people today feel at their capacity to multi-task, to cram more in. Few traits so signify competence; the media reported breathlessly on President Kennedy's speed-reading and on Bill Clinton's lack of need for sleep.

The parallel to the monastery is not accidental. Clock time took root in the Benedictine monasteries before the factory owners got hold of it. St. Benedict had declared war on idleness. “Toward this end,” Jeremy Rifkin observed in his book Time Wars, “the Benedictines organized every moment of the day into formal activity.” They revived the Roman concept of the hour, and arranged their day around it. Eating, prayer, even the call of nature, had an appointed time. Devotion was seen in regularity in every sense of the word.

When this form of temporal management came over the wall, it kept a certain pietistic quality. The monk prayed at an appointed time; the man of business arrived at work. The center of gravity shifted from the church to the counting house, and the pursuit of the absolute became the service of Mammon. But punctuality was now the issue, not the cause it served.

Eventually this all became part of the strange amalgam we now call the “Protestant Ethic,” in which fitness for the Kingdom was seen in the ability to acquire this world's goods. The destruction of time became a secular version of the destruction of sin and the supposed virtue of the destroyer became a veil for the destruction itself. Thus the Republican Party today, with its awkward alliance between the moneychangers of Wall Street and the purported followers of the exemplar who whipped them out of the temple two millennia ago.

In some segments of the Left there has been revulsion, not just for the alliance but also for the churches that comprise it, and often for the whole Judeo-Christian tradition as well. There has been a resort to teachings that seem as far away as possible, from Native American spirituality to Zen. This is understandable but also tragic, because it has separated activists from the roots of their own culture and from the inner reference points they need to reach. Instead of refuting the ideologues from the standpoint of scriptural teaching they attack “religion in politics” and thus tighten the bonds between the preachers and their flocks.

The best of the Good Book
The truth is, it would be hard to find a text more subversive of linear and clock time, and the ideologies built upon it, than the Bible. This is not just a matter of Jesus' denunciations of empire and greed, his demand that we “take no thought” for our lives, and the like. It goes deeper, to insights about the ultimate nature and reality of things, including human consciousness itself. If reclaimed from the preachers, these insights could help break the spell of both the market and its metronome.

The Judeo-Christian scripture was written at many levels. At first it seems an historical narrative, and not always an appealing one. But these people understood something about pedagogical indirection, and latent in the history is a dimension that is out of time. It comes through in passages that can seem a little off-the-wall, but that in fact go to the core.

There is, for example, this passage in Ecclesiastes: “That which hath been is now, and that which is to be hath already been.” And this one from Isaiah, in which the prophet portrays the Absolute as “declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” This thread continues through the works of Jesus up to Revelations, where the ultimate reality—that is, “God”—is described as “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending ... which is, and which was, and which is to come.”

This is not linear or clock time—and there are many passages in this vein. As Maurice Nicoll, the late Jungian psychiatrist, pointed out in his book Living Time, the words translated as “eternal” in both the Old and New Testaments do not mean what the English suggests: extending forever into linear time. They do not mean the kind of eternity that biochemistry can give us.

Rather they suggest a past and future that exist all-at-once as an “overshadowing Totality.” Nicoll quotes Tayler Lewis, a 19th century American scholar, on the point. In the Hebrew concept, “the future world does not come to us and acquire reality by being present but we are going into it,” Lewis wrote. “The future has as real an existence as that through which we have passed.”

This is a large subject, but the point here is this: The West's own traditional teachings regard clock time—and therefore market time—as a kind of sleep from which we have to wake. It is sin in the original sense of that word—that is, to “miss the mark” or misapprehend the point of one's existence. When one sets to work to grasp this larger concept of time, the way the prophets did, internal changes start, including change in the way we relate to money, stuff, and this world's goals.

Could there be a better starting point for raising questions about temporal poverty and its sources in America today?

I am not suggesting a frontal assault based on scriptural metaphysics. Big ideas such as this have to be broached in small steps. But there's a bridge here, a way to speak from inside a tradition and teaching that many Americans identify with. The basic question in politics is: “Does this candidate (or cause) think pretty much the way I do? Can I hear something of myself in him or her?” Here's a way to get closer to “yes.” We are not going to return to the temporal abundance of Third World villages, and most of us would not want to. But we can learn something from it and look for ways to recreate it in our own society. It certainly would help to carve out more temporal enclaves within the market—more vacations, more days off for purposes of children and family, and the like. But if we just use that time for shopping, then the market still has us.

To get the market out of our lives we first have to get it out of ourselves. We need to make this shedding an object of desire. To start with something people desire already is a big help.

Jonathan Rowe is a YES! contributing editor.

At a Venice, California, hair salon, Kyla works while daughter Lilikoi hangs around. Kyla often brings her daughter to work to save on child care costs.

Photo by Rachel Kerns

With the November presidential election drawing near, we may see groups of Americans pitted against one another: young versus old, blue states versus red, liberals versus conservatives.

But there is one issue that cuts across these (supposedly) opposing groups: the importance of family. There is a growing consensus that the U.S. needs to build both public and private sectors that are friendly to families in order to remain the economic and democratic leader of the globe, as well as to fulfill our human calling to care for our tiniest, most innocent citizens.

But can we do it? What would an America that is truly friendly to families look like?

First, it would recognize that American mothers are occupied with two roles: mothering and working. When she has on her “working” hat, she’s a breadwinner, just like dad. Today nearly three quarters of American mothers are in the paid labor force. Six out of 10 moms with children under age six work full time. You know these mothers: they cut your hair, scan and bag your groceries, prepare your taxes, teach your children, run local businesses, and maybe even serve as your pastor, pediatrician, or mayor.

Today’s economic realities require two incomes from the vast majority of households, even those in which the mother might choose a reduced work schedule if it were available and devoid of penalties such as pay cuts, loss of upward mobility, and benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. The global labor supply unleashed by the Internet and other technologies has leveled the playing field for workers in many industries, ensuring that American parents—even that new mom down the street who is still breastfeeding her infant—will feel continued pressure to work more.

But employment is only half of what mom’s expected to do. As soon as she gets home, she puts on her “mothering” hat. She holds, feeds, and cuddles her infant; talks, plays, sings, and reads with her toddler (oops, potty-trains, too); stimulates, teaches, and disciplines her pre-schooler.

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. mothers are in the paid labor force. Mothers earn 27% less than their male counterparts; single moms earn 34% to 44% less.

Sounds like fun, and it is. But these days, “mothering” means even more, whether mom works full time at home or in the paid labor force: supplementing her children’s education, sometimes advocating for them when special circumstances arise; guarding against an ever-changing landscape of commercial and technological advances that seek to gobble up childhood; staying abreast of dangerous ingredients in food and toxins in toys and other products; and coordinating children’s social, athletic, and academic commitments. In Salary.com’s 2008 Mother’s Day survey, stay-at-home mothers reported working 94.4 hours per week. It’s no wonder the term “executive mom” is catching on.

So an America that is truly friendly to families would recognize that mothers wear two hats and thus move toward social policies and employment practices that bridge work and family.

To support “mothering” it would offer paid leave following birth or adoption, or to care for a sick child, parent, or self; educational excellence in the early years (child care and pre-school) as well as elementary and secondary school; after-school programs and other supplements to the traditional school day and calendar (including the need for remedial, accelerated, and summer programs); and access to affordable health care. This would lighten the burden of the two-hat mom, especially for the millions of mothers in America who are trying to solve these problems individually and piecemeal, year after year. You’ve seen them, Blackberry in one hand, science project in the other, scrambling to get a sick child to the doctor, frantically patching together a child-care plan for summer vacation that is stimulating (possibly) and affordable (rarely).

Support for moms’ (and all parents’) working role would include: flexible work arrangements, such as flex-time, telecommuting, compressed schedules, job sharing, part-time with parity, and on-ramps to ease back into work after time away to care for children.

And don’t forget fair wages. We’ve all heard about the wage gap between men and women. But mothers face a double whammy. Women who are not mothers earn 10 percent less than their male counterparts, while mothers earn 27 percent less and single moms earn 34 to 44 percent less.

Further, having a baby is a leading cause in the United States of “poverty spells”—temporary dips into poverty. That’s partially because 51 percent of new mothers lack paid maternity leave; those with the lowest-paying jobs are least likely to have it.

Those who deny mothers equitable wages would be wise to remember a basic finding of anthropological research: when more resources are placed in the hands of mothers, they use them to invest in their offspring, a nation’s future human capital.

We have a long way to go. The U.S. lags far behind other industrialized nations in support for working families. For example, the U.S. is one of only four countries, of 170 surveyed, without paid family leave for new mothers—the other three are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho. The U.S. is tied for 39th with Ecuador and Surinam for enrollment in early childhood education for three- to five-year-olds. And according to a report issued just weeks ago, the governments of 20 countries are ahead of the U.S. in workplace flexibility. Of 21 countries surveyed, 17 have laws allowing parents to move to part-time work or otherwise adjust their working hours; five allow working time adjustments for those with family care-giving responsibilities; and five give everyone the right to alternative work arrangements.

One of the great challenges at this moment in U.S. history is to find peaceful harmony at the nexus of work and family. Few Americans would be anything but grateful to see progress toward this goal. So this November and beyond, when politicians and corporate leaders lay claim to a family agenda, put on your “mothering” hat and ask, “Is this what mothers and families need?” Then put on your “working” hat and ask, “Does this help me thrive at work and at home?” If your answers are “yes, yes,” then it doesn’t matter if it comes from a Democrat or Republican, an old-timer or newcomer. What matters is that he or she recognizes how many hats moms wear.

 Citations

:: Percentage of American mothers in the paid labor force:
Labor Force Participation Rates Among Mothers, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor
http://www.bls.gov/opub/working/page16b.htm

:: Hours per week worked by stay-at-home mothers:
Six-Figure Moms, Salary.com, 2008
http://www.salary.com/personal/layoutscripts/psnl_articles.asp?tab=psn&cat=cat011&ser=ser032∂=par901
CNN article about the study:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/05/09/mom.salary.ap/index.html

:: International Ranking for enrollment in early childhood education for 3-5 year-olds:
From 1997 to 2007: Fewer Mothers Prefer Full-time Work, PEW Research Center, 2007
http://pewresearch.org/assets/social/pdf/WomenWorking.pdf

:: International Ranking of workplace flexibility:
Statutory Routes to Workplace Flexibility in Cross-National Perspective, Institute for Women's Policy Research and Center for Work Life Law, University of California, 2008
http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/B258workplaceflex.pdf