Why Americans should work less – the way Germans do

[Capt Bringdown]

Dean Baker: There is a solution to unemployment: if we worked the same shorter hours as Germany, we'd eliminate joblessness overnight (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/03/why-americans-should-work-less-way-germans-do?)


The most important point to realize is that the problem facing wealthy countries at the moment is not that we are poor, as the stern proponents of austerity insist. The problem is that we are wealthy. We have tens of millions of people unemployed precisely because we can meet current demand without needing their labor.

This was the incredible absurdity of the misery that we and other countries endured during the Great Depression, and which Keynes sought to explain in The General Theory. The world did not suddenly turn poor in 1929, following the collapse of the stock market. Our workers had the ability to produce just as many goods and services the day after the collapse as the day before; the problem was that after the crash, there was a lack of demand for these goods and services.

...governments can certainly attempt to encourage employers to shorten workweeks and increase vacation and other paid time-off. In fact, this is the real secret of Germany's post-crisis recovery. Germany's growth has been no better than growth in the United States since the start of the downturn, yet its unemployment rate has fallen by 2.0 percentage points – while unemployment in the United States has risen by almost 4.0 percentage points. The difference is that Germany encourages firms to reduce work hours rather than lay off workers.

There is nothing natural about the length of the average work week or work year and there are, in fact, large variations across countries. The average worker in Germany and the Netherlands puts in 20% fewer hours in a year than the average worker in the United States. This means that if the US adopted Germany's work patterns tomorrow, it would immediately eliminate unemployment.

- more ->> (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/03/why-americans-should-work-less-way-germans-do?)

[ElNono]

I'll take a part time job as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, tbh...

[mavs>spurs]

it's the shareholder system which drives these quarterly profits and short term "hire and fire" strategies we see in the US. in other countries, they value their human capital and actually pay to train them, which leads to future economic success. here in the US, they will lay a ton of people off just so the company meets short term earnings projections. say if a company is expected to earn 2.2 billion last quarter and they only make 2.15, their stock price takes a hit. so they lay off people to cut costs and "manage" earnings so to speak. dumb system really.

[mingus]

If you live in the U.S and are employed, you are already on vacation.

[boutons_deux]

"shareholder system"

non-mgmt shareholders have no say in operations. but the mgmt as shareholders do. With the 1%'s policy of reducing capital gains tax to 15%, compensation of mgmt with stock has skyrocketed in the past 30 years.

eg, when HP fires 10Ks people "to increase shareholder value", it's really nothing but shifting employees' compensation into mgmt's pockets.

[boutons_deux]

Why We're Really Being Worked to Death



http://www.alternet.org/story/156166/why_we%27re_really_being_worked_to_death_?akid=902 0.187590.IwiSX6&rd=1&t=8

[boutons_deux]

We Were Supposed to Have a 15 Hour Work Week by Now! How to Stop Working People to the Grave

Keynes's reasonable expectation was that leisure would increasingly oust work from the centre of our lives. The rich never had to work for a living; Keynes thought that as societies got richer, this exemption from toil would spread to more and more people. Leisure would increasingly become the meaningful core of life; and work, in the sense of working for a living, would increasingly become a residual.

This line of thought has two implications. The first is that work and leisure should be spread much more seamlessly across life. The fact that work is much less physically demanding than it used to be makes this possible. There will be no need for the elderly (except for the very old and infirm) to "retire" from a three-hour-a-day work week; on the other hand, there will be no need for younger workers to work more than three hours a day. That is, they will be "retiring" from their work much earlier in their working lives. One of the worst things about dividing life into work and retirement is that it makes many of the elderly unsuited for the leisure that is so suddenly thrust on them when they reach the "retirement age".

The second implication is that we should aim for a much more equal distribution of wealth and income. The premise of the argument is that societies as a whole – and so far this applies only to western societies – are rich enough to afford all their citizens the material prerequisites of a good life. But the rich and super-rich have raced ahead from everyone else; and there are 13 million households, or 21% of the population, who live below the officially designated poverty line. This group cannot reasonably be expected to trade income for leisure. They must first have more income.

How to bring about those more equal conditions of life needed to realise the promise of leisure for all is the main social challenge facing advanced capitalist countries.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/156138

=======

Just another reason why the 1% HATES Keynes. The 1% needs wage slaves to be intimidated into life-long shitty work with no time off for leisure or self-amusement while transferring a huge portion of their wages to the rentier class.

[Clipper Nation]

No, people hate Keynes because the idea of printing and spending your way out of debt is a dumbass plan, tbh....

[CosmicCowboy]

Germany makes circumcisions illegal.

German unemployment goes down.

coincidence?

Kind of like having a shorter work week?

[Drachen]

Germany makes circumcisions illegal.

German unemployment goes down.

coincidence?

Kind of like having a shorter work week?

People don't want to work as much because they are enjoying their orgasms more. LOL

[leemajors]

Germany makes circumcisions illegal.

German unemployment goes down.

coincidence?

Kind of like having a shorter work week?

yeah it's been an amazing two weeks in germany!

[boutons_deux]

No, people hate Keynes because the idea of printing and spending your way out of debt is a dumbass plan, tbh....

Not spending your way out of debt, but spending your way out of a capitalism's instability, aka the business cycle, when the cycle is a recession or depression.

AUSTERITY, cutting spending, is the best way to get out the Banksters Great Depression. Austerity is working great, go ask the Irish just how great. So many of them love it, there leaving the country by the 100Ks.

[ElNono]

No, people hate Keynes because the idea of printing and spending your way out of debt is a dumbass plan, tbh....

People that hate Keynes because they think his proposed policy is only "printing and spending your way out of debt" don't know much about Keynes at all...

[boutons_deux]

Keynesian intervention is trashed by Repug/VRWC because their fundamental (dishonest) position is, as articulated by their silver-throated doofus St Ronnie, THAT GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM, never the solution.

[DMX7]

No, people hate Keynes because the idea of printing and spending your way out of debt is a dumbass plan, tbh....

Except that there's empirical evidence that Keynesian economics works - and there really isn't any that trickle down economics does.

[boutons_deux]

did somebody say "trickle down" ?

Low Capital Gains Tax Rate Rewards the Rich with No Discernible Benefit to the Larger Economy

http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/6/capital-gains-f04.jpeg

http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/6/capital-gains-f07.jpeg

http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/6/capital-gains-f10.jpeg

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/newsandviews/1019437

[Wild Cobra]

Who cares.

With the prospect of capital gains, is the possibility of losing principle. The more you make the risk taking more risky, the less of this activity you will have that provides jobs.