There are three glaring inconsistencies in ministers' plans to dragoon part-timers into longer hours of paid work. First, it threatens to take valuable hours out of the informal caring economy. This would heap more costs on to the welfare state, just when the government is trying to cut public spending. Second, it leaves less time for voluntary work and citizen action – crucial building blocks for the government's much-vaunted "big society". And third, every extra hour worked by a part-timer is an hour that can't be worked by a jobseeker. This undermines the prospect of cutting unemployment: much needed if we're to keep a lid on the benefits bill and help the economy struggle out of recession.

Of course there are part-timers who genuinely want more hours of paid work. But clearly this ploy is aimed at those who don't – otherwise why threaten them with loss of benefit? People who choose short hours usually do so because they need time to care for children and other family members. This is time well spent – not just for them, but for all of us. The value of unpaid home-based work has been estimated at more than 20% of gross domestic product. And that's when hours are valued as if paid the national minimum wage, which scarcely reflects the real value to society of caring work.

The uber-inconsistency lies in the way this government – and the last one – values different uses of time. Paid work is good. The more we do, the better. Hard work makes families "decent". The harder, the more decent. Working hard for no money is not valued at all. That includes all types of home-based care, provisioning and housework, as well as all voluntary work and local neighbourhood action, and all unpaid creative endeavours – wherever they lead, whatever they produce. It is often pointed out that the formal economy could not function for a single day without all this informal, unpaid activity.

Yet policy makers turn a blind eye. They paint insulting pictures of "skivers" on sofas. They vilify and threaten those who do paid work for few hours, instead of recognising the value of what they do in the hours that are left. They pay no attention to the fact that other European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, work fewer hours on average and have more robust economies.

And yet at the same time they are cutting back public services and shifting responsibilities from the state to private individuals, families and communities. The inevitable result is that more people will have to do more unpaid work – or suffer the consequences: more distress and neglect, more physical and mental ill-health, more family breakdown, more social unrest and conflict.

So, instead of forcing part-timers to work longer hours, the government should get real about the value of unpaid time. And, since it still claims to favour equal opportunities, it should recognise that men must do their fair share of unpaid work. All of us – men and women – should be moving towards a shorter paid working week, leaving hours free to care for each other, to feed and clothe ourselves and our families, to tend the frail and sick, to bring up our children and grandchildren, to go on learning and creating and inventing. Suppose 30 hours, rather than 40, became the new standard working week: there would be more work to share around, more jobs for the jobless. And more time for us all to be active citizens, campaigning (among much else) for a decent hourly wage.

Guardian