Why we should all work part-time

I really enjoy working 30 hours a week. I still get benefits, a regular schedule, and interesting responsibilities at my place of work. I do lose ten hours worth of money a week, but in return, I get ten more hours to do whatever the hell I want.

These days a lot of that time is taken up with community organizing (that $150K isn't going to raise itself), but when it's not I get to take naps, garden, and generally toodle around the Hill. Working part-time serves my health, my sanity, and the community to boot.

I get crap every so often from friends/relatives who think that I need to grow up and get a "real" job, i.e. work 40 hour a week. Personally, I think the schedule I have now is pretty adult - I make plenty of money to take care of myself financially and I have the time to do neat things like meet with city councilmembers about finding funding for John and Summit. On top of all that, I might also be saving the planet at the same time, according to this article at WorldChanging.

It might be particularly evil to write this post on a nice sunny day, but so be it. Sometimes you have to be a sneaky ninja to save the planet.

P.S.- If we all worked part-time, there would be more jobs. Let's say everyone at Corporation A goes from working 40-50 hours a week to working 30-35 hours a week. Assuming Corp. A gets the same work load, they'd have to hire more people to take up the hours. More jobs and more free time :D.

But let's assume that all these part-timers still got full benefits - wouldn't that make the "part-time scenario" prohibitively expensive for Corporation A? Possibly. But I keep hearing that workers tend to be more efficient when they work a six hour shift rather than an eight hour shift. Maybe that efficiency would translate into enough money to cover all the extra benefits that Corporation A now has to pay up for.