The Recession and Work Time

[h9socialist]

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!

[CTyankee]

1. Well, it works for socialist European countries.

I love what you have laid out. It would be a dream come true, AFAIC.

[h9socialist]

3. Clarification

AFAIC? I live in Indiana, a bit of elaboration is necessary.

[CTyankee]

5. "As far as I'm concerned." It took me awhile to learn the lingo here on DU.

Some of it you have to figure out on your own. There are still a couple that I haven't deciphered yet, try as I may...

[h9socialist]

6. Actually . . .

. . . it looked like a pretty formidable acronym to me. (Edwin Newman was right -- we're killing the English language!)

[90-percent]

2. My solitary idea

Torches and pitchfork brigades at all gated American Communities.

I feel that if the rich and powerful accepted compensation levels at 60's era levels, then this could happen. Back then, a CEO made maybe 40 times what the floor sweeper made. Now it's something like 400 times what the floor sweeper makes. the rich and powerful want it all. They want your net worth, house, 401K and retirement. Rather than earning it by making better products, they just exercise their powers in government and get laws passed in their favor, at the expense of average working people everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident currently than in the Health care debate. In spite of 100% of corporate main stream media brainwashing us with corporate propaganda, the vast majority of Americans still want a public option. It is now utterly clear that the average American working person is no longer represented by their government.

The current state of America is why we had a revolutionary war in the first place!

-90% jimmy

[h9socialist]

4. And . . .

My idea is a safe, effective and non-violent way of helping to reverse the trend since the '60s. As Michael Moore's movie pointed out, the rich are the most afraid of 1 person, 1 vote. In my way of thinking, this proposal speaks to the daily lives of enough people to ignite a little "true democracy" against what Citibank calls "the plutonomy."

[northernlights]

8. you seem to have missed the revolution: it's buy or die

and it happened over the last 30 years. Especially the last 10. The elite really don't care what you or I want. They don't care what's fair or not. They don't care if we live or die. They truly don't. They don't even care about violence versus nonviolence. In fact, they may well relish the thought of violence to get rid of more of us "useless eaters." It's too late. They already own the government and, by extension, the military. Get your pitchforks and torches (or uzis and semi-automatic rifles). They'll come back with drones and tanks.

We are fucked. Truly and totally fucked.

They already own *everything.* That includes us. If you want a roof over your head and food to eat, you will do their bidding or die. That means work the hours *they* set for the slave wages that *they* set...and spend your money the way *they* say. Or go eat shit and die. That's really what it comes down to.

Seriously. I recently started working at a back-office financial company that services many of the really big names. They are trying to force us to buy health insurance, force us to buy mutual funds (via their 401K)...this is at $11/hour pay. Thank god I don't have a mortgage or rent, because that's not enough to pay either, plus food and heat and gas to get to the job. Yet out of that pittance, I'm supposed to pay a significant percentage to other financial institutions for services I'll never see and to help prop up a stock market I'll never benefit from, so that the CEOs can get their take.

Oh, and they deliberately lied to 2 of the new hires about our hours, to try to force us out of our "day jobs" (school, for me). I'm now in danger of failing out of school, and the other new hire spent a week in the hospital. :grr:

And I do mean they are trying to force these issues. x(

[h9socialist]

10. Yes . . .

. . . the system is revolting. Are you?????????????????

[northernlights]

13. trying to

need to sell my home for next step, to downsize possibly to a little off-grid cabin currently available and on my radar. Add windmill to solar (here in Maine, solar doesn't do much in the winter, but wind tends to deliver then). Or move to warmer zone (but one that still has copious, potable water) and do something similar. Replace things that are totally worn only, which is what I tend to do naturally anway. Already grow my own medicine, and with additional acreage will grow my veggies and possibly make and sell organic herb meds to others, like me, deemed unworthy of life by the health insurance companies.

Fortunately I never got into the buy, buy, buy mentality. For the better part of 50+ years I've looked around the stores -- mostly at christmas -- and been appalled by the piles and piles and piles of cheap junk, and its effect on the earth.

[h9socialist]

15. Good for you . . .

. . . I respect and admire that. I confess to being given to very bourgeois tastes. But then again, so was Marx -- although the history books don't delve into it very much.

[bob4460]

7. This is where free trade has taken us RACE TO THE BOTTOM n/t

[h9socialist]

9. Let's be more specific . . .

The problem is that the "free market" is anything but "free," and the race to the bottom has been engineered by the capitalist hierarchy in-order to keep that hierarchy in place. The result is always that common humanity is devalued on the altar of capital.

[Statistical]

11. Likely we should shorten the work week.

This has hurt manufacturing more than any other sector.

People cling to this idea that "US doesn't make anything" however manufacturing has grown substantially since the 1960s (US is the largest industrial power in world with output greater than China + Japan combined and the 3rd largest exporter). The problem is output has GROWN SLOWER THAN PRODUCTIVITY GAINS. So it takes less man hours to produce more goods today compared to 60s.

If number of hours per man stays fixed and number of required man hours goes down guess what has to shrink..... number of workers. That is main reason why manufacturing has been destroyed. Demand is growing and if productivity was flat it would result in more employment however productivity has outstripped grown in demand for US goods around the world.

Outsourcing has hurt also but productivity is a major killer. As world economy develops demand for finished goods will grow slower and slower and if productivity continues to gain either amount of work per person drops or the number of people working will drop.

[CanonRay]

12. Shit, we can't even get decent health care passed...

nice idea, ain't got a chance in hell, short of an armed Socialist takeover. Good luck with that.

:crazy:

[h9socialist]

16. I'm saying it's needed . . .

. . . not that it will be embraced anytime soon, and especially not in Congress. However, if technological coefficients continue to increase, and accelerating productivity puts more and more folks out of work, the social contract will have to be changed or society will flounder. As with healthcare, this is called pushing capitalism out of its comfort zone.

[New Dawn]

14. K&R

[lib2DaBone]

17. We need to fire the Fed, reign in the Banksters and quit NAFTA.

With an "America First" agenda and control of our own currency, we could stop the labor arbitrage casino while the country prospers in a high-tech , high-wage economy.

But that would take leadership (and leaders with cajones). I'm not holding my breath.



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