If we'd do two things, employment would surge immediately:

Implement single-payer healthcare (this is the only issue I know where citizens & business' interests are overlayed so perfectly--so it IS "doable") AND mandate a 32 hour workweek.

Presto! Voila! An extra several MILLION decent jobs in the US.

I've heard it so many times and have been embarassed to ask. Is it as opposed to group plans?

And the 32 hours? I'M THERE, DUDE.

You would include teachers in that, right?

Haven't you?

Actually working. The whole time.

And worked and was paid 8.

Then they gave me a raise. They raised my hours to 40. They threw me a 1% "raise". When I did the math it turned out my hourly rate dropped by 6%. One of my co-workers was furious when I showed him his hourly rate was actually going down even though he was working more hours per week.

We'd be a year into the project if Kerry was President, and 5 years into it if the SCOTUS didn't install Bush in 2000.

They would be quality jobs and good for the environment.

:cry: I'll never forgive them for that and will always hate them! Self-serving jerks!

take away the tax cuts for the rich!

although I would push for 35 hours. However, most companies (think small-business, not Wal-mart) couldn't afford to lose 5 hours of productivity per week per employee. Yes, they could hire more people to make up the time, but that will cost them more money. Therefore, they cut the salaries of their employees to pay for the extra work force. Now you just have more people working for less pay per person. This doesn't fix the problem, only transfers it to someone else.

I do agree with single-payer healthcare however, can't find any holes in that one :D

The additional cost of 'extra' employees is mostly incurred in insurance!

Oh, and companies like mine that offer 401k's have other costs too.

FWIW, most small business owners like myself couldn't survive losing that kind of productivity. A change to a 35 hour work week would simply cause me to change my employees to some form of project based merit pay with a salary (You make X per week and need to complete Y projects...set your own hours). There's no way I'd hire additional employees.

Minimum wage type places would simply slash workers, or use the hourly reduction as an excuse to automate. Remember the outcry a few years ago when McDonalds announced that they were testing kiosk and central ordering systems to allow them to slash order takers? Public outcry is the only thing that stopped them. Cut working hours and you'll see ideas like that come back into vogue.

and not salary?

You cut my hours by 8 hours, I lose almost $100 before taxes. Losing that much money would make paying my rent, utlities and car payments a lot more difficult.

I'd rather keep my 40 hours a week.

edited for spelling

for our fam. of 4. No way single-payer couldn't beat that price.

and getting less for it...
Should tell the average American something's wrong.

Instead....the Repukes have convinced a vast portion of America it's due to incompetent government and liberals.

Man I never thought about it but working less hours is just like a typical DU answer to everything. All I have to do is lose my house and car so others can work. Brilliant idea!


Why is it that left wing ideas have to be devoid of reasonableness?

Also everyone who ones a big car, stop paying on it and buy a smaller gas efficient one. That way we will have less pollution.

Yeah, I'm an hourly employee and I'd be pissed if you cut me back to 32 hours.

I guess I could sell my newly acquired fuel efficient vehicle for something I could pay cash for.

Or, hey, I got it, move back in with my parents instead of paying rent.

Well, really, I'm sure my employer would be more than happy continue to pay me like I'm working 40 hours when I'm only working 32, well and not just me my co-worker and the other person they'd have to hire to make up when her and I can't be here.

work week is the norm. I think we, as a society in general, work too much. That's just my opinion however. If you want to work 80 hours, go for it, but I wouldn't mind seeing "full-time" dropped to 35 hours.

That being said, I realize there are economic repercussions to this idea, and that's why it is not some policy that should just be tampered with. I could see a gradual swing towards a shorter work week, but am in no way suggesting that we suddenly change to 35 hours. I can't speak for the original poster, but I've thought this through quite a bit, and to spout off that we should do it and "viola", more jobs are created is not putting nearly enough thought into the suggestion. The suggestion however deserves merit, just as does decreasing the size, fuel consumption, and pollution levels of our automobiles. To just legislate that idea however would be ludicrous :D

32 workweek, higher wages, etc. are all great. But if they are brought on by government fiat, employers would tend to locate elsewhere, if they have the choice.

Alternatively, we could make labor 'scarce' enough such that labor could demand higher wages, lower workweeks, and better working conditions.

Rather than random death squads, I propose merely removing the direct and indirect taxes from labor, eliminating the 'tax wedge' between the employees price (take home wages) and the employers price (cost of employment). Currently such a wedge represents at least 50% of a worker's salary.

Such a wedge against labor is much, much wider than the wedge against the other factors of production, Land and Capital, which face nearly no taxes.

I suggest the revenue lost from wage and low-level income taxes be made up with taxes against the ownership of land, pollution, corporate protection, etc.

It seems to me your whole post could have been made up of the last sentence. The first ones were just a set up to make it sound ok to hit someone else up with taxes.

Taxing people to force them to do some social good never works. Taxes should be collected to fund government not to punish people you don't like.

You didn't build it, or cause it to be created. Going back far enough, your land 'title' is based on theft or conquest.

Even if you disagree with that, you probably agree that you own yourself, and your claim to yourself is much stronger than your claim to the land you own. Yet you pay a third of your wages in taxes - put another way the government has a third share of your ass.

To rectify this, I think that a man's wages should be his to keep - they should not be taxed. Wages can be paid in kind - a self employed carpenter's wages are the furniture he builds. He can then trade his products for something more useful to him, usually money. This trade, this transaction, this sale should not be taxed either - any sales tax is merely an indirect tax on his labor.

Another indirect tax on his labor is a tax on the ownership of his products. If the tax man assesses a 1% personal property tax on building furnishings, that is an indirect tax on the carpenter's labor. If the carpenter is commissioned to build a mill for a bread company, and what that bread company earns from the mill is taxed, that too is an indirect tax on the carpenter.

All of these indirect taxes tend to detract from the carpenter's business - generally reducing the number of people employed, as carpenters or otherwise. The presence of unemployed people means that potential employers can offer low wages and poor working conditions - without many alternatives, people must accept them.

Conversely, if these taxes were removed, potential employees would become scarce, and they could demand higher wages and better working conditions.

Furthermore, if you consider the world the natural birthright of all mankind, the right to exclude people from a portion of it naturally comes with a price. It is far more just to pay that to the people, rather than the guy who happened to own it previously. Taxes on land values shift the payment from the previous owner to the public purse.

First off, repeal the tax cuts for anyone making over 50K per year. Madate a 30 hour workweek so that a hiring spree would be needed to make up for the demand. Increase gas taxes to punish the Hummer idiots. Increase land and property taxes based on real market values. With all this extra revenue, embark on a national infratructure renewal. Build mass transit, Fix the roads, schools, and other infrastructure items that have been ignored for 40 years. It will be the New Deal all over again. Implement single payer health insurance, and raise the minimum wage to a living wage of around 10-12.00 per hour.

Free Healthcare would sure be wonderful, but losing 20% your income would be a big hit for most folks.

pay the $18/week for health & dental, than lose the almost $100/week because of the cut in hours.

But what about the millions upon millions without it? I'm sick of this have/have not system and it's disregard for it's less well off citizens. I am more than willing to cut my hours, and increase my taxes if someone can get healthcare, and a job. It beats a mob of unemployed people loitering by the liquor store don't you think? We as a nation need to do what is good for the nation as a whole, and quit being so selfish. I'll gladly sacrifice that xbox 360 or other useless gadget so someone can have a better life.

Also, the giant health care industry will not ever let single payer health care pass. They have cyclopean walls built around their interests that you are going to keep banging your head against. The only way around it is to do a Trojan Horse and offer Medicare on the open market for anyone who wants to buy it for half of what regular insurance costs for the same benefits. This will eventually undersell the for profit health care industry, who will drop out of the market, then we can talk about real single payer health care like Canada has.

...are already going away from the 35 hour work week. It hasn't helped unemployment and has cost their companies productivity. With global competition productivity is at a premium.

Post your sources.

France Drops 35-Hour Work Week

PARIS, March 22, 2005

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/22/world/main682341.shtml


(AP) French lawmakers effectively abolished the country's 35-hour work week Tuesday by allowing employers to increase working hours — and pay — as the country struggles with high unemployment and stagnating living standards.

In a final vote, the National Assembly approved a government-backed bill permitting employers to negotiate deals with staff to increase working time to 220 hours a year in return for better pay.

The law effectively clears the way for the gradual erosion of the 35-hour week, a flagship policy of the former Socialist-led government that gave many people more time off but added to concerns about France's declining global competitiveness.

Please read my post #24

I wasn't commenting on the healthcare aspect. There's no doubt we need national healthcare. We can't keep spending 20% of GDP on something that should be costing us about 5%. By the '08 elections I see it as being THE biggest issue, and an issue we win.

(read: profits)

A consequence of reducing that cost is less health care coverage for workers. We can see how that works out in the US, and Europe is going down that road to.

Another of such costs is environmental protection.

The global competition the previous poster mentions means that workers in the West (US, EU etc) will have to compete with for instance Chinese workers, who are as cheap as they are because they work under medieval conditions, ie extremely low wages, virtually no workers' rights, no environmental protection. The conditions are such because of the laws (and lack thereof) that governments over there have created - often so on the advice Western corporate interests.

The only way for workers over here to compete with that is to accept the same labor and living conditions. And we're getting there, so there's no need to worry (for the corporations that is).

Of course corporate wisdom would have it that it's all for the better for anyone who's willing to "work hard".

I always felt it should work but haven't really worked out the details. This will help. I will study this.

I'll have to dig up all the studies PROVING that basic security in healthcare and a "reasonable" work week significantly improves productivity.

But the real world applications show something different. IMO, a shorter work week would do nothing but drive more jobs to foreign shores. We definitely need national healthcare, but the shortened work week has shown to increase unemployment in the EU countries.

They will never implement universal health coverage until we can get the medical industry out of their damn pockets.