In Praise of Idleness — Bertrand Russell

Russell begins inside the old moral training: 'Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' He says he 'acquired a conscience' that kept him working hard, but his opinions underwent 'a revolution.'

The central reversal is that the modern world suffers from too much work, not too little. Russell gives it comic force through the Naples beggars: when a traveler offered a lira to the laziest, eleven jumped up and the twelfth got the coin. > I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous. He then jokes that YMCA leaders should 'start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing.'

The true economic suspect is the saver, not the spender. Money in a stocking employs nobody; government lending often feeds militarism; failed investment may waste labor on useless production. > The real villain, from this point of view, is the man who saves. > A large amount of human labor... was expended on producing machines which, when produced, lay idle and did no good to anyone. By contrast, parties at least help 'the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger.'