[originaltext] Free-market capitalism hasn’t freed us; it has trapped us. It’

Free-market capitalism hasn’t freed us; it has trapped us. It’s imperative for us to embrace a workplace revolution. We are unlikely to spend our last moments regretting that we didn’t spend enough of our lives slaving away at work. We may instead find ourselves feeling guilty about the time we didn’t spend watching our children grow, or with our loved ones, or travelling, or on the cultural or leisure pursuits that bring us happiness. Unfortunately, the average full-time employee in the world works 42 hours a week— well over a third of the time we’re awake. Some of our all too precious time is being stolen: office workers do around two billion hours of unpaid overtime each year. So it’s extremely welcome that some government coalitions have started looking into potentially cutting the working week to four days.
   The champions of free-market capitalism promised their way of life would bring us freedom. But it wasn’t freedom at all: from the lack of secure, affordable housing to growing job insecurity and rising personal debt, the individual is trapped. Nine decades ago, leading economists predicted that technological advances and rising productivity would mean that we’d be working a 15-hour week by now: that target has been somewhat missed.
   Here is the most malignant threat to our personal freedom, particularly as the balance of power in the workplace has been shifted so dramatically from worker to boss. A huge portion of our lives involves the surrender of our freedom and personal autonomy. It’s time in which we are directed by the needs and desires of others, and denied the right to make our own choices. That’s bad for us: it’s hardly surprising that over half a million workers suffer from work-related mental health conditions each year, or that 15.4 million working days were lost to work-related stress last year, a jump of nearly a quarter.
   Yes, there are those who, far from being overworked, actually seek more hours. But a shorter working week would enable us to redistribute hours from the overworked to the underworked. We need to look at ways of cutting the working week without slashing living standards: after all, the world’s workers have already suffered the worst deduction in wages since the early 1800s. And cutting the working week would be conducive to the individual, giving millions of workers more time to spend as they see fit.
Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.
19. What do people often feel guilty about according to the speaker?
20. What did leading economists predict 90 years ago?
21. What is the result of denying workers’ right to make their own choices?