The Best Way to Create Jobs: Cut the Work Week

[Freeper]

Hannah Bell Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sun Dec-26-10 03:09 AM
Original message
The Best Way to Create Jobs: Cut the Work Week
   
A problem that has always been called a job shortage is rather a worker glut. Employers have been able to cut and hold wages down because there is an excess supply of trained and eager workers on the job market. The reasons for the surplus are mostly familiar. Corporations send production abroad to get cheaper labor. The total of U.S. jobs eliminated that way in recent years is disputed but is probably more than 5 million.

At the same time, we have added job seekers from abroad in significant numbers. Immigration of skilled workers on special visas lobbied for by high-tech employers and the more publicized large-scale immigration of documented and undocumented workers from distressed economies like Ireland, Mexico and other countries has added significantly to the labor surplus. The share of immigrants in the U.S. work force climbed steadily since its post-WW II low in 1970, and by 2007 reached over 15 per cent of the total, according to The State of Working America 2008-2009 and sources cited there.

Moreover, as family income stagnates and the very rich get more and more of the national income, women and other family members have chosen or been forced by necessity to enter paid work. In an attempt to sustain income, families send more workers into the job market or work longer hours. In this way, families achieve income gains that are ultimately self-defeating, as general wage levels remain depressed by the collective increase in labor hours on offer.

Finally, the unremarked elephant in the room: productivity gains. Productivity gains are seen as a blessing, raising the national income...The long-term trend in productivity growth in the U.S. economy is around 2 to 2.5 per cent a year, climbing to 2.7 per cent annually over the past decade.
Each decade at this rate results in elimination of a shocking 25 per cent of our jobs.

Our problem isn’t cyclical. It is chronic. A stimulus jolt won’t repair a dysfunctional economy. A different approach is required... At the end of the Great Depression, when the nation similarly faced a severe jobs issue, a new Wages and Hours law in 1940 cut the workweek from six to five days, the now standard 40 hours. Hours have not been reduced in the 70 years since, despite the relentless large gains in productivity.

http://www.counterpunch.com/coyle12242010.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x70732

So lemme get this straight. If we force companies to have people work only 30 hours a week and pay them for 40 that will create more jobs?

TBF Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sun Dec-26-10 08:16 AM
Response to Reply #5
9. Your solution, yet again, is out of the right wing play book.
   
My solution would be get rid of capitalism.

demandTheGoodLife.co (27 posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sun Dec-26-10 07:59 PM
Response to Reply #25
30. spreading the work also spreads the pay
   
When I go from working 5 days at my job to working 3, my employer is not going to continue to pay me the same amount. Why would a business pay me for the 2 days I am not working?

When I tell my boss tomorrow that I am no longer going to work 5 days, I am just going to work 2 but you have to pay me the same amount, I will get laughed right out of the office!

The only way to get control of how income is allocated is to tax it and then redistribute it. That is what a basic income accomplishes. Redistributing income so there is less income disparity will not pull down wages, it will give every single person a pay raise.

How would you force businesses to pay people the same wage for less work? Government has absolutely no say over wages other than a minimum wage.

Lets redistribute your wealth first and see how it works.
This primitive has a very telling name, Demand the good life.
He's another oxygen thief who thinks that just by being alive he is entitled to all the good things in life.

[compaqxp]

What a stupid idea. 

[VivisMom]

demandTheGoodLife.co (27 posts)           Sun Dec-26-10 05:05 AM
Response to Original message
3. that will just make people poorer
   
The only thing decreasing the work week will do is decrease worker pay.

We have to recognize it is no longer the 19th century. We should strive to INCREASE the unemployment rate. Machines should do jobs. People should do leisure activities. That is how we should measure progress. We shouldn't celebrate that we have relegated yet another human being to a mindless, soul-crushing job that a machine can easily do.

The only solution is to use existing taxes to pay people a $50k basic income so that working a job is optional. We have the technology to eliminate 55% of the work we do.

Jeff
↓ Read my sig. Turn the world into a paradise. ↓

He is either the dumbest human alive, or a brilliant mole.

[ScubaGuy]

He is either the dumbest human alive, or a brilliant mole.

Want a good laugh?  Go to his website: We can all be RICH!

[jukin]

1+1=POTATO.
POTATO+1=BLUE.
POTATO+BLUE=PROFIT!

[Carl]

Want a good laugh?  Go to his website: We can all be RICH!

How can anyone argue with his ironclad economic proposition that taxes collected should pay everyone 50,000.00/yr freeing everyone up to not work,which of course means no taxes collected...hey wait a minute!!

[NHSparky]

Newsflash, DUmmies--I work an average of 50-55 hours a week.  Why not hire more people so I only work 40, you ask?  Simple--because it costs LESS to pay me OT than it would to hire the people necessary to create a 40-hour average workforce with all the payroll taxes, etc., that employers are required to pay.

Oh, and I do recall having seen a story within the past few days saying that the current workforce is as lean/mean/productive as anytime in recent history.  Guess that's what happens when business can pick and choose who they get to hire.

[USA4ME]

Want a good laugh?  Go to his website: We can all be RICH!

This primitive has been on Skin's island before.  I don't remember if it was one where the thread was brought over here or one I just read there at some point, but I've seen it on DU before.

.

[LC EFA]

Want a good laugh?  Go to his website: We can all be RICH!

That's too funny to be real , right ? ...

[jukin]

How can anyone argue with his ironclad economic proposition that taxes collected should pay everyone 50,000.00/yr freeing everyone up to not work,which of course means no taxes collected...hey wait a minute!!

No.  You see under Obamanomics each dollar paid out by the government equals three dollars of economic activity. Tax those thee dollars at 50% and the government gets $1.50 back in taxes from the $1 it spent.

This is the greatest liberal gift to human kind the perpetual money machine.

[DumbAss Tanker]

It would still be cheaper to pay 10 hours of overtime to each three of them than to take on the admin cost of each additional 30-hour 'full-time' employee, you ignorant sot.

[Freeper]

  1. Make everyone in society independently wealthy
   2. Enable everyone to trade in their job for a more rewarding life of leisure
   3. Enable the ordinary individual to rule the world, not government or industry

Gee what could possibly go wrong with that plan?
If everyone could just trade in their job for a life of leisure who wouldn't?
I can see it now you go to the grocery store but, it's closed because all the staff decided to take up that life of leisure.

No biggie though you can just drive down to wal mart oops no one there either.

You look at your gas gauge and it's reading E well guess what? That's right the gas station is closed too.

Well at least you get that $50k from the govt every year. What was that we ran out of money and even if there was money there was no one to process the checks?

Yeah wonderful idea.
 

But, wait there's more. Click on the plan at the top of the page.

And it is going to deliver that standard of living after reducing our work week to just a single day.

 

[I_B_Perky]

Hannah Bell Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sun Dec-26-10 03:09 AM
Original message
The Best Way to Create Jobs: Cut the Work Week
   
A problem that has always been called a job shortage is rather a worker glut. Employers have been able to cut and hold wages down because there is an excess supply of trained and eager workers on the job market. The reasons for the surplus are mostly familiar. Corporations send production abroad to get cheaper labor. The total of U.S. jobs eliminated that way in recent years is disputed but is probably more than 5 million.

At the same time, we have added job seekers from abroad in significant numbers. Immigration of skilled workers on special visas lobbied for by high-tech employers and the more publicized large-scale immigration of documented and undocumented workers from distressed economies like Ireland, Mexico and other countries has added significantly to the labor surplus. The share of immigrants in the U.S. work force climbed steadily since its post-WW II low in 1970, and by 2007 reached over 15 per cent of the total, according to The State of Working America 2008-2009 and sources cited there.

Moreover, as family income stagnates and the very rich get more and more of the national income, women and other family members have chosen or been forced by necessity to enter paid work. In an attempt to sustain income, families send more workers into the job market or work longer hours. In this way, families achieve income gains that are ultimately self-defeating, as general wage levels remain depressed by the collective increase in labor hours on offer.

Finally, the unremarked elephant in the room: productivity gains. Productivity gains are seen as a blessing, raising the national income...The long-term trend in productivity growth in the U.S. economy is around 2 to 2.5 per cent a year, climbing to 2.7 per cent annually over the past decade.
Each decade at this rate results in elimination of a shocking 25 per cent of our jobs.

Our problem isn’t cyclical. It is chronic. A stimulus jolt won’t repair a dysfunctional economy. A different approach is required... At the end of the Great Depression, when the nation similarly faced a severe jobs issue, a new Wages and Hours law in 1940 cut the worthem?kweek from six to five days, the now standard 40 hours. Hours have not been reduced in the 70 years since, despite the relentless large gains in productivity

Didn't France try this a while back?  How did That work out for them?

Just another idiot proposal

[Revolution]

So lemme get this straight. If we force companies to have people work only 30 hours a week and pay them for 40 that will create more jobs?

Experts in crashing the economy. Unbeknownst to them, it seems. Their tune never changes. I believe that one song said "It just comes natural."

[Alpha Mare]

http://conspiracyscience.com/forums/topic/demand-the-good-life

Oh, so basically you're pulling things out of your butt and presenting them as facts until someone calls you out on it?

                               

[diesel driver]

Didn't France try this a while back?  How did That work out for them?

Just another idiot proposal

I believe that was the statis quo in the old Soviet Union a few decades back.  Nobody HAD to work, everybody got paid the same regardless.

[GOBUCKS]

Nobody HAD to work, everybody got paid the same regardless.

That's a democrat's definition of utopia.

[vesta111]

I believe that was the statis quo in the old Soviet Union a few decades back.  Nobody HAD to work, everybody got paid the same regardless.

Agree, back then the old Lady's that swept the streets clean were getting as much money as those who drove big road building equipment. 

Way back then while in Nursing School we were shown documentaries of medical care around the world. 
  Russia,

Starts with the supplies needed in any health care facility, getting the basics of equipment, huge shortages of everything as the manufactures went without workers for months as everyone just took off on vacation when ever they felt like it.

No hope for improved situation, schooling and training would not lead to a better life, a  skilled and senior brick layer could never get more money then someone just learning the trade.    There was NO reason to strive to better ones self when had no reason to.

No bonus for a job well done if done at all.    Two classes of people in that country, those that did in fact climb the ladder due to family connections and all the rest of the country.

All so anti-human thinking.   

We humans have the need to compete with each other to thrive, who bakes the best apple pie to who is the best in sports, who is the best in math and sciences.    Who can steal the most cars in one week and by luck and hard work who has the biggest boat or home in the neighborhood.

Socialism takes away from being all you can be, saps ideas and turns humans into dull plodding beasts of the field. 

I abhor these society's that take all the spirit out of peoples lives.    So here you are working your ass off to be able to afford a 1-2 week vacation once a year.  YOU HAVE PRIDE IN YOURSELF FOR DOING A GOOD JOB.   THEN THOSE THAT HAVE NOTHING TO BE PROUD OF, CAN GO ON VACATION WHEN EVER THEY WANT,  is this any better the slavery.???

[JohnnyReb]

The Best Way to Create Jobs: Shoot lazy,stupid liberals, then pass out the picks and shovels.

[VivisMom]

Want a good laugh?  Go to his website: We can all be RICH!

It's a DUmmie wet dream! $50K for doing nothing!

[Ballygrl]

1. Make everyone in society independently wealthy
2. Enable everyone to trade in their job for a more rewarding life of leisure
3. Enable the ordinary individual to rule the world, not government or industry

[jukin]

I believe that was the statis quo in the old Soviet Union a few decades back.  Nobody HAD to work, everybody got paid the same regardless.

I think that is wrong.  The two times I was in the USSR (84/87) Everybody HAD TO WORK.  There were all sorts of make work jobs. I saw a woman sitting in a chair watching an escalator everyday. The empty bread, vegetable, and staple stores had nothing to sell (well about the first twenty people in line in the am did get something) but stayed in the empty stores doing nothing. We had a welder and three other men that did nothing on our work crew.  So there was full employment but little real work was done. I do believe that they were all paid about the same in the useless script. Your position got you the perks. The manager of the PCB factory had a car and could shop at the foreign store.

This is one thing that the DUchebags would hate about their unicorn utopia og communist rule, everybody did something.  It may not have contributed but you got out of your shithole apartment and did something six days a week. There were no government checks going out to people that did not contribute to the mother land by working.

[Rebel]

TBF Donating Member (1000+ posts)Sun Dec-26-10 08:16 AM

9. Your solution, yet again, is out of the right wing play book.
   
My solution would be get rid of capitalism.

That's a big bucket of stupid right there.  What are the unemployment rates in all of those Socialist societies? You know, the ones that are hightailing it FROM Socialism?

[JohnnyReb]

.  but you got out of your shithole apartment and did something six days a week. There were no government checks going out to people that did not contribute to the mother land by working.

I think the DUmmies weren't listening, or didn't think she was reffering to them, when Me-Shall Obama said, "Everyone will have to work."

The only exception in that statement of course was her and Burr-rack.

[Karin]

USA4ME is right, he's been there before.  It was that same old shit, free money for everybody, party all day.  As a matter of fact, the thread was scrubbed for being too stupid for DU.  It was starting to go a little viral, I think, making DU and democrats in general look embarrassingly idiotic.