On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:14 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > There''s no job shortage at the macro level. The fixation on creating more > jobs is distracting us from the problem of a worker glut. > > In the "two blades of a scissors" image of supply and demand, the > conversation is always about one blade -- adding to the demand for people > willing to work. And so we ignore the real problem, the excess supply. By > focusing on only the demand side --- we end up only with a policy trying to > fix that problem. > > But there is a remedy for the glut of workers. Shorter working time. If we > adopt a four day week, 20 percent of the work-hours on offer in "standard > jobs" disappears. Supply drops, pay rises. Why won't Pen-l discuss this > beyond the sneer level?
I believe there is a consensus on the desirability of reduced labor supply (i.e. shorter working hours) on PEN-L. The problem is that it is utterly infeasible as in there is very little popular support for something like that. The few people I have discussed this with personally, consider any government attempt to regulate working hours a violation of their personal freedom. Such is the ideological brainwashing we are all subjected to.. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
