I've done a lot of work over the last 16 years on this question, Jim. And I've developed a spreadsheet model based on Sydney Chapman's theory of the hours of labor that demonstrates the plausibility of a scenario where current overwork actually depresses productivity and wages to the extent that total income for given hours may be LESS than it could be if people worked average annual hours more in line with the long term trend that prevailed up to the 1950s or even up to the 1980s.
Frankly, I've answered your question, Jim, unless it is a rhetorical one. I presented a Power Point of it an an URPE summer conference just about a year ago and I discuss it in narrative form in chapter four of my manuscript, Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line, which was featured today at the P2P foundation blog. http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/towards-a-labor-commons-considering-employment-as-a-common-pool-resource-through-social-accounting/2011/07/20 I would welcome a substantive critique of the arguments I've presented. It is not a question that can be answered with a sound bite. The answer has to swim upstream against a gaggle of implicit assumptions that are hardwired into conventional thinking about the issue but have absolutely no substance. On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > > When I read the discussion on Pen-l on the stimulus, frustration > overwhelms > > me and I respond with a question asking why the left is not pushing a cut > in > > the work week. > > And generally the response is the way you did recently. > > Okay, so how are you going to push for shortening the work-week (or > better, the work-year) without hurting worker yearly incomes? > > Or is shortening the work-year of some workers supposed to cut their > incomes but that's okay because it raises other workers' work-years? > In the latter case, the idea is one of burden-sharing, a form of > unemployment insurance (in which employed workers are helping the > unemployed). > -- > Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own > way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Sandwichman
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
