Fifty years ago futurists were saying that by the year 2000 man would be working 10 to 20 hours a week because of increased productivity and automation. Here we are in 2009 and we are still working the same forty hour week that people did in the 1950’s.
I have a novel idea which I am sure government will have to propose sooner or later as unemployment plagues the land. In this great or greatest depression the government should spread the jobs around through a national four day work week. Obama’s plan to spread the wealth around by robbing the productive will just cause a revolution. It has failed everywhere it has been tried.
Official unemployment numbers will almost certainly reach 10 percent this year and it would be 20 percent if the government actually still counted all the unemployed and it would be much higher yet if they counted the underemployed. Obama and the legislators way of handling this is by throwing money at government funded make work projects, tax rebates, extending unemployment benefits and then passing the costs on to the next generation.
It seems to me that there a much better way to go about this. It is time to initiate a four day 32 hour work week and maybe a 30 hour week for those employers and employees that agree to three ten-hour days.
With democrats running the show, destroying our cheap energy sources, taxing those who create jobs, piling up big government debt there is not going to be any substantial recovery. With the surplus production capacity all over the world we are simply not going to see any significant rebound in jobs in the United States before a world war. Here is an article that will explain why there will be no recovery soon.
We cannot have twenty percent of our population sitting idol losing their homes and standing in soup lines. There will be riots before long so wouldn’t it just make more sense to go to a four day work week?
The downside is twenty percent less pay but for many about half of that would be taken by the federal state and local governments in taxes anyway. So for about a ten to 15 percent reduction in take home pay you get another day off each week and you do not have to pay the costs associated with going to work for one or two days a week.
What about your benefits? Those who get them will have to pay about a fifth more of the costs but less and less people get benefits and those who still get benefits will increasingly lose them. Some employers have already stopped or will stop contributing to your IRA. In the near future medical costs will become socialized and probably all of it will be payed through a payroll deduction just like Social Security. As soon as Senator Kennedy dies you can be sure his whole socialized health program will be passed.
If you really need the money a three or four day week would make it much easier for you to find and work a second job. Employers could still pay overtime if they did not want to hire additional help.
Here are some of the upsides of a four day work week in America.
- Full employment
- Much lower burdens on government and taxpayers for benefits for the unemployed
- Wages would not be bid down by the increasingly disparate unempl0yed
- More incentives for employers to automate and increase productivity
- Less sick and vacation days off will be needed, increasing productivity
- More time off to enjoy life
- A boom in the recreation and travel industries
- More time to do some hobby or charity work
What a great idea, but do you think it will ever happen? Americans are just about as addicted to being “busy” as they are material wealth. In fact material posessions and personal identity (through their jobs) have become the golden cow of our time. I’m not sure if I would want people of that mindset to have time to spare…let them stay “busy”.
Due to ecomomic hardship in the company I worked for (construction -driven) I have been “unemployed” since August. But I have not collected a check since I filed. I have managed to make an income selling online, doing odd projects and providing services. And I have been making more money than my previous income.
I fear many with time to spare will just become idle.
If it does not happen by next year or even sooner we will have riots. Unemployment here just went up 2 percent in just one month. The official rate here today is 9 percent and that is based on data almost two months old. I see much higher unemployment coming than most people are talking about. The government said we might have 9 percent unemployment by the end of this year but 9 percent is already here. The GNP fell 6 percent in the last quarter of last year and it will probably fall another 6 percent in the first quarter of this year. It is falling even faster all over the world. This is looking like a worldwide depression not a recession. I think a few countries in Europe already have a 32 hour week.
I am fraid you are right. These days I consider myself blessed that I know how to do without, and that I am a “Jane-of-all-trades”. I used to lament the fact that I never was able to go to college, and have a “real” career.
I think it is a good idea to cut hours instead of laying people off, but at the end of the day, I am furious to know that many corporate bigwigs are still getting bonuses that far exceed the employees salaries they have laid off. It is only a matter of time before there are riots.
The bottom is near, and people are going to get angry, and desperate…all the while our present administration continues to drive this economy to the ground. I wish it was only the poor and uneducated that buy into the propaganda, but there are still many people I know who still think everything’s gonna be OK, and I live in a mostly middle class area. Here in Southeastern PA, the economy is struggling, but not as badly as many other areas of the country. But the signs are there. Long standing companies are cutting back hours, laying off and cutting benefits.
I keep following the news, but lately I sound like my husband when he’s watching the Eagles play. Then I have to turn it off.
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France used to have a 39-hour week until it was changed to a 35-hour week by the Left. The work week is still from Monday to Friday. From what I’ve read the change in the working hours hasn’t lead to an increase in employment. Also, workers in France, or any Western European country for that matter, demand the same pay for working 32 or 35 hours a week as they would (or used to) earn for working 38, 39 or 40 hours a week. Those on the Left also refuse to accept raising the retirement age while in order to sustain the economy and all the socialist government services they are addicted to, that would be absolutely necessary. Even more so because of the aging of the population and the drain of immigrant minorities that are only good at “producing” offspring, violence and welfare addicts.
If you were to introduce your proposal in pretty much any Western European country, they would simply lynch you. So I’m not really sure there’s much point in comparing because the work ethic in Europe is too different and labor is far more organized than in America. Way too organized, if you ask me. France and Belgium are practically owned by the labor unions, and the same probably goes for the UK and Germany and others as well (I’m not as well informed about that particular situation in those countries). People here can barely imagine working two or more jobs. Also, many women here decide they want to work only part time after a number of years but many still want the same pay as they would earn if they worked full time.
So, will Americans put up with 20 percent less pay and having to work an additional job to maintain their current lifestyles when some are already having problems today? Wouldn’t you be putting your competitiveness at risk by introducing a four day work week while in Europe and other countries the work week remains five days?
I’m by no means an expert on economics but I’d just like to hear your opinion on that. Too me, lowering the working hours and shrinking the work week seems contradictory to increasing productivity, unless of course people would be more productive in a shorter time period by working more efficiently. I’m not sure whether that’s applicable to all professions.
There is no free lunch. If people less work they will have to get paid less. We do not have the socialist worker unions that demand something for nothing in the United States although the Obamanation plans to move unions in that direction.
Where we do have strong unions the companies are going bankrupt because of the costs of the benefits they demanded when there was no competition. It actually turns out that more and more those in these union members no longer collect what they were promised all their lives. Either the company goes out of business and defaults on the promised benefits or the benefits are drastically reduced. A prime example in the near future will be our auto companies. Unions will either have to voluntarily reduce their benefits or the companies will file chapter 11 bankruptcy and the workers will be given no choice.
Retirement at 65 in this nation will soon be a luxury that most will not be able to afford. Half the investment wealth in this nations has already been lost and few can live on Social Security even if it survives. So even those who would retire will now no longer retire making unemployment even worse.
The main reason European countries will not adopt what I say right now is that they do not care if they are unemployed. They get almost full benefits when they are unemployed and doing nothing. Sounds great, but like I said there is no free lunch. That is why the government takes over half of your pay in Europe and why they ration your medical care. It is also why much of Europe is now in worse shape than the United Sates in this depression and it is also why Europe has never paid the full costs of their own national defense since the second world war.
As I said the real take hope pay reduction will be 10 to 15 percent not 20 percent. The difference would to to federal and state taxes. If people could not make it on 15 percent less then they can work another part time or full time job. People can work as many hours as them deem necessary for the lifestyle they want if there is full employment but they cannot work if there is no employment.
I know of people who would prefer to work a 3 or 4 day week but their employers do not allow them to do so. Those who do most often pay no benefits at all because under forty hours a week is consider part time work in the US. Places like Wal-Mart purposely only allow a four day week for most employees because they pay no benefits to part time workers. Basically they are getting a free ride on the back of part time workers. All jobs benefits should be prorated according to the hours you work. It should not be that a worker who works 40 hours a week gets full benefits and those doing the same job working 30 hours a week get absolutely nothing.
In this article I listed reasons why a four day week would be more competitive than those working a five day week. Also you are assuming that Europe and the rest of the world can remain on a five day week while unemployment in those nations also rise to 20 percent. I say they cannot. If nations do not reduce the hours your going to have twenty to thirty percent of the people idle and the rest paying taxes to pay for all those that are idle.
That is the making of two revolutions. The idol will soon look for scapegoats and join radicals and elect leaders who tell people what they want to hear. Just like back in the 1930’s and the other Revolution will come from those that are forced to pay the taxes for the unemployed.
So nations can have have full employment by spreading the jobs around or they can have 3/4 of the people working and the other 1/4 idol. But take the road they took in the great depression in modern times with a people without moral roots and I guarantee riots, looting, martial law and new police states.
Thanks for taking the time to explain to this puzzled European. I guess this shows just how different Europe and America think in this regard. Or used to. Anyway, I fully agree about what you said on those socialist benefits. If we in Europe want to get out of this mess and introduce a plan like yours to tackle unemployment then we would first have to do away with all of our stinking socialism. Of course that’s not going to happen because that would mean half of the government workers get out of “work” and then they will go on strikes for a change. That’s what Belgium, France, Italy and so on are like. France has been having huge strikes. Italy counts more governments than it the number of years their republic exists. Belgium has been in political crisis ever since the last federal elections. This country is going to have to explode sooner or later. The conflict between the two communities is pretty much about the enormous wealth transfers from Flanders to Wallonia, where bureaucracy and socialism reign and any sense of work ethic is lacking. I often think it is a little caricature of the state of the Western world at large. However, in Flanders corruption and bureacracy are also commonplace. Federal government has seized control of our banks and is now running the show. Thus far it has lead to absolutely no improvement. Everything just keeps going downhill. There’s no sense of entrepreunership, innovation, competition, and all we hear is about the former bankers getting sued, while we are also having numerous political scandals where high-ranking elected officials are involved in violating the principle of the division of powers. That’s funny because that happens everyday and nobody seems to have noticed until now. Banks with political ties. Government officials in the banking business. Government taking over banks. Big business making deals with government. The ties between the ruling political parties and the unions. We should have none of that. As a general rule I think that the economy and government should not mingle. The reality is that we are now owned by the government and they are not likely to reprivatize the banks any time soon. In the meantime, the people foolishly stick to their socialistic ideas about wealth redistribution while that is the very problem of Europe. Instead they all blame America for what’s happening to the economy while the situation here and in East Asia is even worse. Instead of cutting back on the benefits they are allowing new immigrants to come here while the natives’ unemployment rises. Then again, without a change of mind, many of these unemployed with prefer to remain unemployed, as you said. So then do we have to force them to work? “Arbeit macht frei?” The more I look at it the more I think we truly are just that – slaves.
Problem is that there are about twenty percent of the people in the United States that wants a system just like Europe and that twenty percent is now in power over the whole country. These communists want to turn the whole world into a ant farm with elite queens controlling everyone and everything. They are worse than the Borg of Start Trek. It is much like insects secretly invaded the earth and replaced human minds with the minds of ants.
I am under no illusion that we will go to a four day week here either before the massive riots and looting that will require a solution.
Yes, or as “Takuan Seiyo” from the Brussels Journal would put it – Body Snatcher society…. trying to turn us into their Pods.