Suppose that we have a truly “quality-adjusted” QALY measure, where time spent working “at jobs where they have to smile and bear it when their bosses abuse them” counts as zero, alongside other unpleasant but necessary tasks. We also count time spent sleeping as zero. It might be clearer to label this measure as “quality hours”.
(Maybe we count especially good times as double or triple, and this helps us understand people working hard to earn enough for a vacation or wedding or some other memorable experience)
In this model we could define absolute poverty based on the absolute number of quality hours per year. Maybe we set an arbitrary threshold at 100 quality hours per year. If a hypothetical medieval peasant is working every hour they are awake, except that their lord gives them Christmas off, they have 8 quality hours per year and are in poverty. If a poor Anoxian spends all their non-work time sleeping because of the low oxygen supply, except for an hour a week reading books with their kids, they have 52 quality hours per year and are in poverty.
This type of measurement wouldn’t have the same distorted effects of partial abundance, compared to the $/day metric that is commonly used. I think it would still show significant progress in quality hours, with extended childhood, longer retirement, and labor-saving devices. I think UBI experiments would likely continue to show improvements when measured with quality hours.
Suppose that we have a truly “quality-adjusted” QALY measure, where time spent working “at jobs where they have to smile and bear it when their bosses abuse them” counts as zero, alongside other unpleasant but necessary tasks. We also count time spent sleeping as zero. It might be clearer to label this measure as “quality hours”. (Maybe we count especially good times as double or triple, and this helps us understand people working hard to earn enough for a vacation or wedding or some other memorable experience)
In this model we could define absolute poverty based on the absolute number of quality hours per year. Maybe we set an arbitrary threshold at 100 quality hours per year. If a hypothetical medieval peasant is working every hour they are awake, except that their lord gives them Christmas off, they have 8 quality hours per year and are in poverty. If a poor Anoxian spends all their non-work time sleeping because of the low oxygen supply, except for an hour a week reading books with their kids, they have 52 quality hours per year and are in poverty.
This type of measurement wouldn’t have the same distorted effects of partial abundance, compared to the $/day metric that is commonly used. I think it would still show significant progress in quality hours, with extended childhood, longer retirement, and labor-saving devices. I think UBI experiments would likely continue to show improvements when measured with quality hours.