Corporate profits are high? WHICH corporate profits? Those of SMBs, or those of multinationals that have the cash for lobbyists and revolving doors between themselves and their supposed regulators?

Loves2learn wrote..

Why does "you can't fix stupid" keep running through my mind?

Ignorant you can fix, but not stupid.

And it's just getting worse. http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012....

Capeman wrote..

Hmmmm... doesn't this inflation thing come from the unbacked emission of credit that has continued to happen for over a couple of decades now?

And what's the primary reason the government doesn't reduce its spending? That's right, it would make unemployment even worse. Unless you meant that inflation is due to banks lending to people who can't repay their debts, but I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Capeman wrote..

With your model we would become the USSR and with the incredible amount of entitlement present in this country we would get to the point of implosion incredibly faster than they did.

McDonald's had 1 million job applications on a single day for 50,000 job openings. Maybe you're just being exploited by your employer too... or maybe you're being paid enough that someone with only 1/8th your productivity would still be able to make minimum wage if you reduced your work load and they were hired for 1/8th of what you make.

Anyway, I hope you like supporting all the unemployed leeches on welfare with your hard work.

Wearedoomed wrote..

Corporate profits are high? WHICH corporate profits? Those of SMBs, or those of multinationals that have the cash for lobbyists and revolving doors between themselves and their supposed regulators?

Obviously the large corporations, and especially the financial sector. Since this is a finance forum I thought people would be aware of things like this.

And where do financial sector profits come from? Stupid customers and people forced to invest in the markets due to inflation, of course. The original topic of this thread.

I don't know about anybody else, but when I used to do the corporate workerbee ****, they paid me a salary for 40 hours a week and actually required my working 60+ hours a week. Any less and I'd have been fired...so yeah, this would be a GREAT plan...for the corporation. Get 2 people each being paid for 20 hours, and work them 40+ hours with no extra pay. Yay !

What an utterly stupid idea. Why is freedom so offensive to so many people like Misaki ? Those out of work can create their own ****** jobs - no one owes them a living if they have no skills.

Tesla wrote..

so yeah, this would be a GREAT plan...for the corporation. Get 2 people each being paid for 20 hours, and work them 40+ hours with no extra pay.

The original petition (quoted in first reply) might not have made it clear, but a subsequent post gave an example of how it would work. 1.2x a person's normal wage rate for the first 20 hours, 0.8x past that.

So you might get someone who is paid a lower base rate because they're expected to work 60 hours and would end up getting extra pay for it. If they can do their job in just 40 hours, they have a lot more free time even if they take a small pay cut.

For more on the topic of "time macho", see this very popular essay: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch....

As well as an example in academia: http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2009/07/2....

Tesla wrote..

Those out of work can create their own ****** jobs - no one owes them a living if they have no skills.

Or they can keep quiet and do what they're already doing: leeching off of the government. Since poverty affects everyone in society in the form of crime or even the costs of putting people in prison (it's what, $30~50k/year per person?), it makes to at least get some work out of the currently unemployed.

And "go to college" isn't a good solution with spiraling tuition costs and the lack of well-paying jobs. The percent of people who say that college is worth the investment is down drastically from four years ago. http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news....

Ah the threats, pay them or they'll make you pay.

"Wealth is redistributed constantly through normal market forces. It is the height of sheer laughable ignorance to suggest that terms such as "wealth redistribution" have anything to do with marxism, socialism or any other form of "forced wealth redistribution".

Utter bull****....That's not what history has taught most of us if anyone was paying attention.

How about we repeal minimum wage legislation along with unemployment bennies and the welfare lifestyle. No more unemployment.

Mrbill wrote..

Ah the threats, pay them or they'll make you pay.

Hello, the US federal government has had deficits of $800~1500 billion per year recently. Did you think this was unrelated to the economic crisis and high unemployment? You are already paying... though maybe you're paid so little that you don't even notice it because the government doesn't bother to tax you.

If people work less to create jobs, the government ends up spending less and you end up paying less via taxes or inflation.

(Unless, of course, you benefit from inflation. The topic of this thread.)

Obseedian wrote..

How about we repeal minimum wage legislation along with unemployment bennies and the welfare lifestyle. No more unemployment.

"The unemployed are just lazy!" ... http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012....

For anyone who thinks the argument in the original petition was unconvincing, what about this one:

Quote:

Let's get this straight: smart people are to blame for high unemployment because they have too much confidence in the current economic system.

The weak labour markets over the past few decades have led to a decreased share of national income going to wages. If, say, the top 20% of income worked half as much, this would instantly eliminate our unemployment problems and give employees enough bargaining power to raise wages for the 150 million workers in the United States by 10%. One person doing this might not have much of an effect, but this is because they would be influencing prices for the entire nation.

If it takes 12 million new job openings to go from 8.3% unemployment to nothing, this means a single new job that is created by employees at a company working less raises everyone's wages by 10%/12,000,000, or 0.000000833%. But since it affects 150 million people, the total increase is 125% of the average wage rate, while the business that does this pays essentially the same rate for the work that is done.

Since flexible work policies attract talent, individual companies have every reason to support this too. The only question is how to get people to work less without changing payroll costs, but this has an easy solution.

Think of what happens when someone works less with the current systems of monthly salaries or hourly wages and overtime. If someone takes a day off with the salary system, they're generally expected to make up for it another time or else it forces someone else to do the extra work. With hourly wages, if someone can't work it might force the company to pay someone else overtime wages and a higher total cost of the work.

A better way is to pay a lower rate for extra amounts of work so people will agree to do it without feeling that the extra income is required, but also use the same lower rate for decreases in the amount of work done. If employee salaries accurately reflect their productivity, then these adjustments exactly balance out and someone won't feel bad if they need to, for example, leave work a few hours early to attend a parent-teacher conference or go to a doctor's appointment.

Neither should they feel bad if they delegate tasks to other people and focus on their key responsibilities, because the system would recognize that no special privilege is involved and fairly decrease their compensation to match the lower contribution to the company.

This would end up helping workers in low-wage countries around the world while harming countries that sell luxury goods to the rich, but this is a feature, not a bug. It would also mean fewer people on food stamps or other types of welfare in the United States, and therefore lower government deficits and inflation, but this is also intended even if some people think that deficits lead to higher growth.

Copy and share this message. We create the story.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 immediately comes to mind after reading this thread.

Quote:

If, say, the top 20% of income worked half as much, this would instantly eliminate our unemployment problems and give employees enough bargaining power to raise wages for the 150 million workers in the United States by 10%.

Other than this being hopey dopey bull****, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Truly discouraging productive people from working is a really bad idea.

A good lot of the unemployed people just can't do what the upper tier of income earners do, bankers excluded (everyone can steal).

Unemployment in the US comes simply from people pretending, and the government spending as though, everyone in the US is an order of magnitude more productive than people elsewhere in the world.

It's not that the unemployed are lazy, but that they are legally prevented by the government from working at a price the market can afford to pay them. You don't like that? I guess you shouldn't have voted for those assclowns who sold your future to the Chinese.

So the people that are hired might need more time do the work of the productive 20% who chose to work less. You think this is worse than them lazing around on unemployment checks? (Though the people who move into the top 20% jobs would have already been employed, the unemployed just move up to retail as college students find better jobs.)

Misaki wrote..

So the people that are hired might need more time do the work of the productive 20% who chose to work less.

No, the simple fact is that some people have a talent that cannot be replaced by the less talented. You can complain about whether it's unfair or the luck of DNA replication or a bad society. But as Mrbill pointed out, no matter how much time or pay you give to the less talented, they cannot get the job done as well as those who have a knack for the particular job.

How about letting me job share with LeBron James? He'll play the first two quarters and I'll play the second two quarters, and we'll split the pay?

Quote:

So the people that are hired might need more time do the work of the productive 20% who chose to work less. You think this is worse than them lazing around on unemployment checks?

Like I said...eliminate the minimum wage along with the bennies and all those workers lazing around will have plenty of opportunity picking strawberries, washing cars, mowing lawns, waiting tables, pumping gas and so on. Many of these folks would be high school kids, or newly unemployed history majors who moved back with their parents already, and it would be a great opportunity to at least contribute to the household instead of twiddling their thumbs all day. As a bonus, this also fixes the illegal immigration problem.

By the way, your plan would probably increase inflation because you would decrease output but demand for many things would increase. Have you ever looked at the inflation statistics for those communist countries? Hint: they were the opposite of "low". So your plan would do the exact opposite of its stated purpose.

Spence wrote..

No, the simple fact is that some people have a talent that cannot be replaced by the less talented.

This is what an article intended for "CEOs and their colleagues in the C-suite" had to say about it:

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Recover....
"...leaders need to become more ruthless than ever about stepping back from all but the areas that they alone must address. There’s some effort involved in choosing which areas to delegate; it takes skill in coaching others to handle tasks effectively and clarity of expectations on both sides. But with those things in place, a more mindful division of labor creates more time for leaders’ focused reflections on the most critical issues and also develops a stronger bench of talent."

Professional athlete is a terrible example of a job that no one else can do. If a backup needs to enter the court/field because someone was injured, the national economy isn't going to implode. They might lose the game though.

Obseedian wrote..

will have plenty of opportunity picking strawberries, washing cars, mowing lawns, waiting tables, pumping gas and so on.

Or maybe (female, probably) being nannies for rich people's children! http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch....

Someone who makes $500k/year is not suddenly going to start hiring just because the asked wage went from $6/hour to $2. And the much larger numbers of middle-class people are already spending most of the money they take in. So no, it doesn't really fix anything.

Obseedian wrote..

By the way, your plan would probably increase inflation because you would decrease output but demand for many things would increase. Have you ever looked at the inflation statistics for those communist countries?

Where do you see decreased output? It might start to decrease if unemployment hits 0% and people still want to work less, but that would mean they can already afford everything they want at its current price. Inequality would decrease, true, so upper-class people might find certain things to be more expensive than they were before but this isn't true inflation.

I think the communist countries you're referring to relied heavily on government spending. The whole point of this idea is to reduce government spending as a way to create jobs and/or "growth".

you need to run the math on output if you think replacing the top producers with unemployed people will be positive. It defies common sense.

Misaki wrote..

This is what an article intended for "CEOs and their colleagues in the C-suite" had to say about it:

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Recover....
"...leaders need to become more ruthless than ever about stepping back from all but the areas that they alone must address. There’s some effort involved in choosing which areas to delegate; it takes skill in coaching others to handle tasks effectively and clarity of expectations on both sides. But with those things in place, a more mindful division of labor creates more time for leaders’ focused reflections on the most critical issues and also develops a stronger bench of talent."

Professional athlete is a terrible example of a job that no one else can do. If a backup needs to enter the court/field because someone was injured, the national economy isn't going to implode. They might lose the game though.

I totally disagree with you. I am myself a corporate leader, and of course I have higher leaders above me. I am always the go-to guy because I get it done. The leaders above me try to do what you say. "Give the task to Bob instead of Spence this time". Bob ****s it up. "OK, give the next task to Mary, she can do it". Mary ****s it up. OK, just have Spence do it, he'll get it done. These are very complex analytical tasks that you have to have a certain talent for. Not everyone can do these things. I see it every day. When I delegate a task, I make damn sure the person has the aptitude for it. When something absolutely, positively has to be done by 5 pm, you don't just assign it to anyone. A professional athlete is an excellent example of that.

Misaki Wrote:
"
Where do you see decreased output? It might start to decrease if unemployment hits 0% and people still want to work less, but that would mean they can already afford everything they want at its current price. Inequality would decrease, true, so upper-class people might find certain things to be more expensive than they were before but this isn't true inflation."

Judging from the statement above, I'm guessing you've never owned/operated a business. When ever you hire people with less ability or insufficient skill sets to perform the desired work to achieve the desired results your quality and productivity will most certainly suffer. Do this for any period of time and you won't have any business to worry about and you too will be joining unemployment line.

Quote:

The original petition (quoted in first reply) might not have made it clear, but a subsequent post gave an example of how it would work. 1.2x a person's normal wage rate for the first 20 hours, 0.8x past that.

So you might get someone who is paid a lower base rate because they're expected to work 60 hours and would end up getting extra pay for it. If they can do their job in just 40 hours, they have a lot more free time even if they take a small pay cut.

I'm laughing here - ever hear of "exempt" employees ? ...thought not... do you think all such exempt salaried employees WANT to work that many hours ? Time macho - another way of trying to blame the worker for the imposition of the boss. If you don't do what the boss expects, in the corporate world, you don't stay with that company for very long.

OTOH, there are folks, and this is probably more true of the newer worker to the workforce, who is so enthusiastic and motivated that they voluntarily put in whatever hours they deem necessary to get the job done. I was one of those way back in the day...before family commitments became a priority. But, putting in 60-70-80 hour and sometimes 100 hour weeks was one way I learned a lot of skills very fast and worked my way into a number of very interesting projects.

Quote:

Or they can keep quiet and do what they're already doing: leeching off of the government. Since poverty affects everyone in society in the form of crime or even the costs of putting people in prison (it's what, $30~50k/year per person?), it makes to at least get some work out of the currently unemployed.

And "go to college" isn't a good solution with spiraling tuition costs and the lack of well-paying jobs. The percent of people who say that college is worth the investment is down drastically from four years ago.

Clearly, you have no imagination. You think that the only choice a person has is to work for someone else, or to leech off the government ? Hell, when I was FIRED at 7 months pregnant for BEING pregnant, I could have become part of the welfare state or a family leech, but...having skills, I started my own business and grew it to what it is today. I made my own job, set my own hours and terms, and have never looked back at the corporate world since. Many people have done the same as I have, and so can those who think they shoud use the power of the state to force others to give them a lifestyle and pay/benefits at the point of a gun.

You want to know why we lose so many jobs to other countries - this stupid proposal is just another nail in the coffin of many jobs should it ever see the light of day in CONgress. Unless you outlaw outsourcing, this proposal if ever implemented will put a ****ton of people out of work.

Misaki - "So the people that are hired might need more time do the work of the productive 20% who chose to work less. You think this is worse than them lazing around on unemployment checks? (Though the people who move into the top 20% jobs would have already been employed, the unemployed just move up to retail as college students find better jobs.)"

This could be more easily fixed by requiring people to work for non-profits in order to collect welfare, unemployment, etc. I don't think you realize how much the top 10-20% are actually producing in this country.

if you want to see more people working less...look no further than the TSA.

there's your welfare in the form of jobs.

Why does Jamestown keep going through my mind?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/a....

Spence wrote..

OK, just have Spence do it, he'll get it done. These are very complex analytical tasks that you have to have a certain talent for. Not everyone can do these things. I see it every day.[...]

Then that type of task is your "the areas that they alone must address" in the quote.

Maybe everything you do is things that only you can do, and everyone else in your section is just not competent enough. But most companies do not have a lot of people in this situation; if they do, it's because they aren't bothering to train people or pay enough to recruit people at the appropriate level of talent. This might be becoming more common lately as companies have gotten complacent about having lots of good applications from the glut of talent caused by the jobs crisis. http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/why....

And if someone is paying well and still can't get talent, well.. maybe they need to look into "flexible work policies" as something which people see as having value beyond just the amount they're paid. The finance sector pays much more than most other jobs smart people can get, but many people would prefer a job with less demanding hours or that they see as having more intrinsic value to society if they can get such a job.

Tesla wrote..

Time macho - another way of trying to blame the worker for the imposition of the boss. If you don't do what the boss expects, in the corporate world, you don't stay with that company for very long.

Hiring and training more people costs money; importantly, people tend to quit a job if they aren't getting enough "hours" to pay their bills. Have you ever seen anyone volunteer to work less, and get paid less, because there isn't much work available to be done at the moment? Or are people more likely to just waste time and try to avoid getting noticed so they can continue collecting their full paycheck?

These impositions on workers are just due to the way the system works. If people thought their salary wasn't worth being forced to work 60 hour weeks, they would quit. Simple as that. The fact that they don't means they think their salary is worth it.

A system like the one described in this thread would make people more agreeable to being given reduced hours, so the business COULD hire a second person so no one is forced to work 60 hour weeks, and just reduce the hours of both of them when demand is back to normal.

Again, when the effective hourly rate is flat do you really expect anyone to volunteer to work less than 40 hours if they usually work that much? The reason that, for example, Germany is able to get away with reducing hours is that they are partially compensated for that lost time (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....)—exactly what this system does except without the "government welfare" component.

Training skilled workers is expensive, and talent is scarce. This system works well for skilled job occupations even if it doesn't work as well for unskilled work.

Magus wrote..

This could be more easily fixed by requiring people to work for non-profits in order to collect welfare, unemployment, etc. I don't think you realize how much the top 10-20% are actually producing in this country.

I don't think you realize how little relationship there is between ability and pay. People are very effective in what they do, but "unskilled" work is also necessary for society to function. If a CEO had to sweep floors, would they be any more effective than a minimum-wage worker? Maybe slightly (depending on their physical condition), but it would not be orders of magnitude higher. Or, for example, the speed at which Chinese workers work at very low wages:



If you meant something else, it isn't clear what. You might have heard about the 70 or so billionaires who promised to give most of their wealth to charity, but they aren't under the delusion that this will "calm the masses". http://www.economist.com/node/21555605

The fundamental problem with such a program (other than being another gov't intrusion) is that unlike money and many other things, neither people nor work-hours are fungible in the vast majority of cases.

This is why the fundamental concept of current union work rules and wages is flawed as well as why the business concept of wholesale offshoring, etc. is flawed. In a factory egg farm, one can replace an entire room of caged chickens with new ones and have no appreciable impact on either input costs or product output. This doesn't work for any but the most trivial jobs in our system, e.g., jobs consisting of taking a couple of sheets of paper out of an inbox, stapling them together without even reading them, and placing them into an out box. If the job requires reading what's on the paper and making a decision about which out box to put it in, the non-fungibility of people/work-hours enters the picture.

It's even worse for assembly-line jobs, as the line cannot move any faster than the slowest worker on the line - thus, the effects of a less-capable replacement worker has much wider impacts. Others have commented about how much worse the potential impacts are if a job requires significant thought, background knowledge, and/or ingenuity.

The implication is made that such a proposal would result in a more equal distribution of the economic pie - I would expect that the net result would be a more equal distribution of a much smaller economic pie. I doubt if such a plan would help things in a big picture sense.