"The most efficient labor-saving device is still money"
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Jones lands the punch with a bit of newsroom pragmatism: if you want less labor, don’t romanticize ingenuity, just pay for it. “Labor-saving device” conjures the usual shrine to gadgets and industrial progress, but he flips the category. Money isn’t a tool in the workshop; it’s the tool that hires the workshop, outsources the drudgery, and buys the machine that replaces the worker. The efficiency here is social, not mechanical.
The line carries a journalist’s suspicion of self-congratulating narratives. We like to tell ourselves that technology “frees” people through innovation and clever design. Jones suggests a less flattering engine: purchasing power. If you have cash, you can compress other people’s time into your convenience: a cleaner, a meal delivered, a taxi, a secretary, a new appliance, a contractor. If you don’t, you become the labor-saving device for someone else. That’s the subtext, and it’s why the sentence still stings.
Written across the mid-20th century, when household appliances, office automation, and consumer credit were reshaping daily life, the quip doubles as a class commentary. The dishwasher is “labor-saving” only after someone can afford it; the miracle of leisure is unevenly distributed. Jones’ economy of words mimics the very thesis: money streamlines. It cuts through the moral fog and names what actually makes work disappear from your calendar.
The line carries a journalist’s suspicion of self-congratulating narratives. We like to tell ourselves that technology “frees” people through innovation and clever design. Jones suggests a less flattering engine: purchasing power. If you have cash, you can compress other people’s time into your convenience: a cleaner, a meal delivered, a taxi, a secretary, a new appliance, a contractor. If you don’t, you become the labor-saving device for someone else. That’s the subtext, and it’s why the sentence still stings.
Written across the mid-20th century, when household appliances, office automation, and consumer credit were reshaping daily life, the quip doubles as a class commentary. The dishwasher is “labor-saving” only after someone can afford it; the miracle of leisure is unevenly distributed. Jones’ economy of words mimics the very thesis: money streamlines. It cuts through the moral fog and names what actually makes work disappear from your calendar.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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