https://dineshmannam.com/tags/money/Recent content in Money on Dinesh MannamHugoen-usdinesh@dineshmannam.com (Dinesh Mannam)dinesh@dineshmannam.com (Dinesh Mannam)Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://dineshmannam.com/thoughts/when-the-hour-stops-being-the-unit/Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000dinesh@dineshmannam.com (Dinesh Mannam)https://dineshmannam.com/thoughts/when-the-hour-stops-being-the-unit/<p>The link between a 40-hour week and a paycheck no longer makes sense to me. I think it will be gone soon.</p> <p>Once hours stop measuring work, I think money will stop measuring need, and an old question comes to the front. What is money for?</p> <h2 id="the-hour-was-a-proxy"> The hour was a proxy </h2> <p>The 40-hour week is less than a hundred years old. In the United States it came from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which phased it in: <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/chapter5">44 hours in 1939, 42 hours in 1940, and 40 hours after that</a>. It was a limit on how hard a factory could push a person, and it said nothing about what that person produced.</p>