In Praise of the Economically Inactive

Britain needs more leisure – not more growth, says Socrates (and Tom Hodgkinson)

Are you one of the economically inactive millions in their late fifties or older who are selfishly holding back the growth of this great country by not working as a delivery driver, not doing the night shift at B&Q or not retraining as a low-level coder?

Then be afraid. The government is after you.

You can picture the scene, can’t you? You’re sitting in the garden with an early evening cocktail, Radio 3 in the background, reading Middlemarch and vaguely considering doing some ukulele practice.

You’re thinking how wonderful it is to be doing very little. After all, you put in 30 years of work. That’s enough for anyone. Socrates said that leisure is the highest good. You can now devote your days to philosophy, art, family and pottering about in the garden. Live simply, live well.

But then the phone rings. It’s the government. “Hello lazybones, it’s the government here. Economically inactive individuals like you are slowing down our rate of growth. You must get out of the easy chair immediately. Tomorrow morning you’ll report to the building site at 8am.”

According to government statistics, the number of working-age people either unable or unwilling to take a job has increased by about 630,000 since 2019. Clear to me is the fact that lockdowns gave us a vision of a more philosophical life – slowed down, less consumerist, less busy, less stressful, more Athenian in other words – and we don’t want to go back to the old ways. Doing less means less environmental destruction, less oil use and more happiness for the individual. So it’s a win-win.

And anyway, who does “economic growth” really serve? Only that small percentage of the population who own shares in big companies and are greedy for returns. Growth helps corporations like BP. Busy people use lots of oil. Oil creates lots of profit for the greedy ones.

According to the Guardian, there are now 3.6 million idlers, sorry, “economically inactive individuals”, in the UK. The Guardian thinks this is bad. But to me this is great news: more people are enjoying life. And maybe they’ll subscribe to the Idler. As Dr Johnson said, “Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.”

The Office for National Statistics, puzzled, sent out a survey. What on earth was making these happy folk reject work? Top reason was “I wanted to retire”. That was followed by “I wanted a lifestyle change” and, simply, “I did not want to work any more”. In other words, a huge proportion of these new idlers are quitting work entirely of their volition. Ill health is certainly a factor in a large number of cases, but these are outweighed by people who are deliberately choosing an idle life.

So, in steps the utilitarian, puritanical, work-obsessed government to try and convince these slackers of the error of their ways. And after all, hard work will help their mates in the City. Hard work increases share prices.

The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt – a captain of industry who made £14 million when he sold his company HotCourses in 2017 – is leading the appeal to a waning work ethic. “If companies can’t employ the staff they need, they can’t grow,” he said at an event hosted by Bloomberg. “So to those who retired early after the pandemic, or haven’t found the right role after furlough, I say Britain needs you. And we will look at the conditions necessary to make work worth your while.”

It’s not just the government. The Labour Party too persists in its blind faith to the creed of work. According to the FT, Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s work and pensions spokesman, is also planning to attack the idle as part of his work-work-work plan for the country: “The final strand of Ashworth’s plan,” reported the pink paper, “is to seek to persuade people aged over-50, many of whom gave up work during the pandemic, to return to work, partly by improving the training offer to them to secure new skills.”

So the Labour Party too reveals itself as a servant to the corporations. And the FT would approve: like the Tories and like Labour, their leader writers are also fervently anti-idle. They recently commented: “High levels of inactivity are a serious drag on the UK economy.”

What about you? Are you about to give up your hard-won idling life in order to boost the country’s growth?

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

Sir: In response to your letter from the editor dated 9th February 2023, I say “Ha-ha, the pleasure of being idle”. Having retired in April 2022, having had a full-time job since 1975, wild horses will not drag me back into the work place. On the day I read your article here are the many simple delights I indulged in whilst idling. I savoured rather than rushed my morning coffee. I enjoyed watching the birds on my bird feeder. Time slipped pleasantly by as I watched a tiny wren forage hungrily for insects in my flower bed. The sun shone through the windows as one of our dogs snored happily across my lap, causing me to slip into my own delicious snooze. I read the paper and a chapter of my book (Food For Life – Tim Spectre, I’m on non-fiction at the moment!). I made a pan of home-made soup for lunch, and indulged in a slice of home-made bread from yesterday’s loaf. No more grab and go meal deals from the supermarket for me! I had time to speak to my girlfriends, and plan a social get together. In a moment of weakness my mind strayed to the possibility of doing a spot of dusting, however I thought better of it, what harm comes from doing tomorrow what you can put off today! I even had time to walk to my local yoga class; previously I often had to rush, or I was late or too stressed to go due to work demands or traffic delays. I spent next to nothing. I wasted nothing. I felt no desire to acquire anything. I felt calm. I felt relaxed. Peaceful. So, I say to Mr Jeremy Hunt and his overprivileged cohorts – swivel! You screwed up the economy, your own inept policies and abject lack of foresight created the very situation that you now rail against. So, no. I’ve no intention of getting back on that treadmill or participating slavishly in the consumerist society. Live simple, live long.
Angela Ankers

Sir: Great! I’m finding my 15 hours of work a week too much at the mo, and told my directors I’d be happy to take a sabbatical again – so obviously your strap line caught my eye. It’s flexible part-time working we want! So we can look after our health, our creativity, families and friends. Or working followed by big gaps… then another bit of work and another big gap. But I’ve discovered that the big computer systems that workplaces use nowadays for QA/Accounting/HR aren’t built for flexibility – it’s much harder to tweak things on them, and a part-time individual takes up more accounting/HR time than a full-time employee. The systems have to change to make it easier to plug in different hours etc. Then companies wouldn’t be so sticky.
Helen

Sir: I’m in my late 50s with multiple disabilities. I work 19 hours a week. In addition, I lead two choirs and I am about to assist on a third. I also sing professionally and do volunteering. I wish I could be an idler, but this government wants me to work until I drop. So I’ll retire at 80. Good job I love my work. I’m a grassroots campaigner working to strengthen the rights of disabled people (who have been murdered by the DWP under the last three Conservative governments, by having their benefits withdrawn, leaving them to die of either starvation or suicide). Cannot thank you enough for this message.
Rona Topaz, Singer/Campaign Co-ordinator, Bromley X by X / Berkshire Maestros

Sir: Although I’ve just taken a 10-hours-a-week post at a non-profit to supplement my layabout artist income so I can continue to enjoy the luxury of a daily bath (oh, the decadence!), I don’t intend to “skill up” at any point soon to help “the country’s economic growth”. In fact, I have “skilled down” recently by refusing to renew my Adobe Photoshop subscription. Looking forward to cutting and pasting posters with scissors and glue. Idle on.
Sister Chain

Sir: As a self-employed sailor I get the winters off and work double-time in the summer. A fair exchange I reckon. And yet every day now I do a few hours’ work, walk the dogs, and make sure I catch sunset with a beer; but still feel “productivity anxiety” as I breeze through the hibernation season. Every week however there is a lone voice that reminds me it’s fine to seek balance, and for that I am grateful to you.
Tim in Montenegro

Sir: Re giving up retirement time: it’s a good question. This government bumped the retirement age of 3.8 million women to 66 from 60, so the government is asking us to keep going. Health is a huge issue for the over 50s but capacity is bigger, including the capacity to give a **** about anything the UK government that did this has to ask, recommend or comment on. I recall one Tory MP saying the government hadn’t given up on women over 60 – they believed they could start again with re-training. As one lady succinctly put it, “Why would I return to an ageist, misogynistic situation to be marginalised again?” Why would anyone our age want our experience to be swept neatly away to be retrained by someone resembling a junior elf, who might be deluded enough to think we could derive a sense of self-worth from thumping a keyboard we can barely see without varifocals, or a sense of social validation by ambushing customers from a dark corner of B&Q with a trolley we’re too weak to control, or , coughing out a dated script about double glazing at customers who easily body-swerve the hunched leaflet-wielding Methuselah? Just slightly more terrifying would be members of the government setting an example in the spirit they intend us to have, fulfilling these roles when they retire instead of going on the lecture circuit and sharing their memoirs. I intend to continue to weave and paint and leave the agoge of the fulfilment dispatch stations to the stout-hearted elves and make a point of going real shopping to make it easier on them.
A.L.

Sir: I saw a headline yesterday that went something like “‘Get off the golf course and back to work,’ says Jeremy Hunt” and I found myself saying, “Why on earth would you?” They don’t get it, do they? The more they push, the more likely we are to say “no thank you” and even the threat of another year’s wait for my pension won’t budge me. In fact, it makes me even more hardened because the thought of working until I’m 68 fills me with so much dread that it will have the reverse effect. Why bother to even try? I am missing some aspects of work, like the social and community side of things, but the thought of being at my desk for 9am day in, day out is not appealing anymore. I’m happy to work, but for myself, as so many Idlers do. I don’t know yet what that “looks like” (a dreadful phrase only topped by “doubling down”) but I’ll try my damnedest before going back into “employment”.
Sarah

Sir: I fit into the category of economically inactive individual and have for the past three years now. I retired at 51 after spending six years in industry and 30 years in the public sector, and I promised myself I would have six months off before assessing my lifestyle and my options. At the time, we were being told by “those in the know” that there would be a huge rise in unemployment as businesses failed and furlough came to an end following the pandemic, and I decided I would extend this period for a while as I saw it as my public duty not to clog up the system by taking a job when there were others in greater need. By the time that “those in the know” were proved to be “those who have no idea”, I had decided I quite liked being economically inactive. There are drawbacks, I suppose – more time spent alone and a bit of a loss of identity – but these are far outweighed by the benefits. I spend very little, apart from the odd coffee here and there and the occasional beer; I walk miles in parks and interesting parts of the city I’ve never had time to explore before; I never miss a social event unless through choice; and my life is spent at a much slower pace than ever before, with absolutely no one to answer to. So, to Mr Hunt, Mr Ashworth, the Guardian and all the other interfering types: why would I want to go back to setting my alarm, scraping ice off the car, sitting in traffic and being told what to do by someone with only promotion in their mind? I have volunteered for an oral history project and a service that provides company for older people, which gives me no money but far more pleasure and satisfaction than having to go to work. For those readers who are thinking of quitting work but are worried about the consequences, I would say: if you can afford it, do it. You’ll be shocked at how little you spend and how much slower and pleasant life is.
Matt Jackson, Sheffield

Sir: As I have written extensively before, the approach based on “economically active” has always been profoundly sexist. If a woman or man looks after someone else’s children, she is economically active. If she or he spends more time looking after their own children, doing exactly the same work, they are economically inactive. There are over five million people in Britain doing full-time care work for relatives, young or old. I have mocked all this in my forthcoming book, The Politics of Time. I understand I was in the Guardian’s list of birthdays today. The bad news is that they gave my age.
Guy Standing

Sir: I’ve been reading your newsletter for a year or two now and I LOVE it. Thank you so much, it’s refreshing, fun and cool.
Julia

Sir: I’ll answer your question by paraphrasing a recent letter from one of your readers: “No, I am not giving up my way of life. I don’t give a fig if I do or don’t accomplish my own goals, let alone the government’s.”
banab

Sir: May I add that, having worked without either interruption or joy for some 36 years, I have decided not to go back and do it all again. I never made a secret of my dislike of work, or my contempt for the “earn and spend” society. I am easily made happy – books, music, the radio, fine coffee, the company of my wife and cats. These things are enough. As for my missed contribution, I claim nothing from the government and expect only that my many, many years of taxes are expended with wisdom and compassion. But instead, where we used to have the workhouse we now have the warehouse; where we used to have soup kitchens for the hungry, we now have food banks for care professionals. We open warm spaces to the elderly, before sending them back to their cold homes. All this through charity. And to think that the recently promoted Lee “30p” Anderson [deputy chairman of the Tory Party] is trying to shame lazy bastards like me back to work.
Steve Bithell

Sir: It’s fine to be “economically inactive” if one is also self-sufficient. If some of these middle-aged idlers are also claiming benefits like tax credits, though, then surely their freedom comes only at the wage-slavery of others who pay taxes.
Toby Pilling

Sir: There are 8.9m economically inactive people in the UK between the age of 18-64. Unpaid carers make up 1.6million of these. These unpaid carers contribute an estimated £138billion into the economy. Which is in the region of £10billion more than the NHS budget. Without that economically inactive tranche, the entire economy would require a good deal more paddles to navigate the creek. A further 2.9million are unpaid housekeepers for lone families. There is no estimate for their worth – which makes perfect sense given that our political cattle herders give nary a toot about paying people to do things – however, on the same basis as the unpaid carer evaluation, that would be another £250billion. On the same basis, the remaining 4.4million of economically inactive people contribute another £330billion to the economy. These estimates are quite conservative and the real figures are probably higher. The unpaid carers estimation, for example, assumes they don’t have access to a motor vehicle, which could add £35,000 to the contribution they make – which would be an additional £56billion. That makes a running total of around £770billion – that’s racing towards a trillion squid at a giddy rate of knots. In short, the UK government – of whatever poppy or lily they might jam on their rosette – can go fuck themselves.
Hubert Huzzah (postmortuarist)

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