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I would like to hear some thoughts on this from my fellow progressives . . .
I keep hearing the term "jobless recovery." Wall Street is re-firing its engines, while the working class loses jobs, suffers pay cuts, and generally falls into the pit of the capitalist purgatory called "unemployment and poverty." We are stimulating the economy but not creating jobs.
But has it occurred to anyone that there is some truth that jobs are disappearing and not coming back merely as a function of capitalist technological development?
I am a socialist. I am not trying to sound like, or sympathize with John McCain. I am merely identifying an observable trend.
In 1965, a futurist speculated that if productivity trends were maintained into the future that by the year 2000 (now almost a decade ago), we could maintain our standard of living on a 27 hour work week and 22 week work year. Hmmm? After 1965 productivity trends experienced ups and downs, but on average accelerated over that same period.
In April, 1933, the U.S. was only a reconcilliation vote away from the 30 hour work week. Panicked, that vampires' consortium known as the United States Chamber of Commerce, went to work pressuring President Roosevelt and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. The legislation fell into the graveyard of good ideas. By 1935, Roosevelt worked out a compromise in which labor was given the right to organize, and the U.S. work week was codified at 40 hours. The result was the Wagner Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Yet, with productivity accelerating in the past several decades, with computers and machines replacing human brain and brawn, we have not addressed the length of the work week in over 75 years! Does it take great mathematical ability, or intuitive insight, to recognize the prima facie case for reducing the work week, and spreading the work?
I advocate an arrangement which establishes a constitutional right to a meaningful employment at a living income based on a reduced work week. The model would be a 30 hour week, 7.5 hours per day, four days a week, with a guaranteed six weeks paid vacation for all workers in the United States. This would be supplemented by national health insurance and a national child day care system. If human beings are required to work for a living, then the system making that requirement is obligated to make sure that jobs are available. It is also, I believe, morally obligated to not turn those jobs into the wage slave's yolk. I also believe that this is the century in which we will have to learn to cope with a steady state economy, and be able to pursue full employment policies with or without economic growth. Without shorter work hours and job guarantees, the capitalists will deal with this problem with higher and higher levels of structural unemployment and poverty. That is the choice of the 21st Century.
I'd love to read your ideas!
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