Volume IV
Work
Labor, hours, wages, and the purpose of a job.
Available
Work asks what a job is worth and why it pays what it does: what makes work good or bad, why the paycheck loses the race with a growing economy, and the charged questions that follow, about the minimum wage, the pay gap, immigration, executive pay, care, hours, machines, and what a job is finally for. Each chapter takes one question and follows the evidence to an answer.
All twelve chapters are available below. Every concept is treated here once, and the other volumes point back rather than restate.
Contents
- What makes a job good or bad, and why does society pay some jobs so much more than it honors them?
- If the economy keeps growing, why don’t paychecks feel like it?
- Why do governments deliberately tolerate some unemployment?
- Do minimum-wage increases destroy jobs?
- What actually explains the male–female pay gap?
- Does immigration lower wages?
- What happened to CEO pay?
- Why does GDP count a nanny but not a mother?
- Is the length of the workweek arbitrary?
- Every automation panic since the Luddites proved wrong about jobs — is AI different?
- Do people lose purpose without work?
- Can retirement survive demographic inversion?