On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 7:56 PM, nathan tankus <[email protected]> wrote: > i suspect that an effective increase in wages per hour corresponding with an > enforced > cut in hours worked would lead to a large spike in productivity so > that not many more workers would be needed to produce the same amount > of output as before.
This may (or may not) be true in the long run, but I'd expect that in the short run a sharp cut in working hours without a cut in pay will simply lead to a wave of bankruptcies. After all, the economic benefits of shorter working hours will only kick in with a lag. Any such change needs to be done incrementally over a period of time - just like minimum wage increases. So there is yet another reason why this is no solution to the immediate unemployment problem, though certainly it is desirable for its own sake. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
