Doubling your writing material by cutting your paper in half; or how the British have solved unemployment

Doubling your writing material by cutting your paper in half; or how the British have solved unemployment

A Power Trip Commentary

Put down those want ads, get off Monster.com, and get ready to stop handing out your resume on street corners. A British "think-tank" called the New Economics Foundation claim to have solved unemployment.

And it's so simple, too! You see, all you have to do is mandate that nobody work more than 21 hours a week. No, really.

"Marketplace anchor David Branaccio says that, if the usual workweek was brought down to 21 hours and strictly adhered to, many companies would find that they need to hire many more people. At the same time, prices would start coming down because everyone with a job is earning less; in many cases, people would probably make half of what they currently make."

But wait! There's more!

"[The 21-hour work week] would also address problems of being overworked, such as low employee morale, poor work-life balance, and more ... The much shorter workweek, the NEF argues, would lead to more sustainable lifestyles and economies, because we would no longer be living to work. We’d be working to live. In the U.S., the live-to-work mentality is quite pronounced in our lack of willingness to take vacation time or sick time, and where we don’t even have laws mandating time off for anything. But that means a lower quality of life overall, less time with family, less time spent actually living. So there are benefits to shorter work weeks for everyone that extend beyond bringing down the unemployment rate."

*sigh* Where to start...

1 ÷ 2 = 1

First and foremost, this is the problem with treating "unemployment" as a statistic. Not only does it ignore the actual people who are unable to earn their existence (more on that later), reducing them to a number, but quantifying who is employed and who isn't, and desiring that number to be as low as possible, turning employment into a "get as many asses into those seats as possible" mentality.

Yes, cutting the number of work hours basically in half will cut the work output in half, causing many employers to hire more people to get the rest of the work done, but you've done nothing to solve the underlying issues. You've taken the workforce, put in a box, shook it from side to side, and claim to have created mobility.

That's like if a student says that they don't have enough paper to write their report, the teacher tells them to just tear their paper in half, and bingo! You've doubled your paper! Then when pressed as to how to fit their words on reduced pages, telling them to just write smaller.

"Quick, tear their signs in half and give them to the people without so everyone's holding a sign!"

Next... I can't even type this quote without internally facepalming:

"At the same time, prices would start coming down because everyone with a job is earning less; in many cases, people would probably make half of what they currently make."

If this came from a college freshman Poly Sci or Econ major, I would call it adorably naive. But for a supposed "think-tank", this is downright depressing.

Companies - corporations in particular - have a commitment to their stakeholders to make money. Does anyone legitimately think that any company will lower their prices by one iota - let alone cut them by half - just because people don't have the money to pay for it?

Because I've got news for you: a growing number of people can't afford things NOW, and I don't see prices being lowered as a result of that. Food prices, gas prices, utilities, housing, the necessities for survival, all of them are going nowhere but up. Cutting wages in half won't stop that.

What's more likely to happen is that people, suddenly faced with the prospect of having to live on half their income will either have to work another job (or two, or three) just to stay above water - meaning that the new jobs created would be filled by those already working, and thus defying the purpose of the whole exercise - or will have to get government assistance to make up the difference.

Note: Both of these situations are actually happening now. This Idea would increase the number of people doing so. Hell, most major service companies (sales, service, fast food, etc.) already work people effectively part time. So for the majority of people, not much will have changed. It'll just bring the rest of the population to their level.

We'd be increasing the number of working poor in exchange for lowering the unemployment numbers.

Yay us.

So, in response to this "think-tank" (using the term looser with each invocation of it), I would like to make this suggestion:

If you really want to cut people's work hours, I say, you first.

Cut your own work hours.

As much as possible.

Please.