How to make short work of unemployment

[CHIMO]

Washington always does a superb job of focusing intently on problems that are of little importance. The current, end-of-the-world debt/deficit negotiations is a great case in point. President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership are heatedly negotiating a deal on the deficit that has almost nothing to do with the country's real economic problem: mass unemployment.

The whole effort is a ridiculous charade that is intended to fix a problem that does not exist. There is no story of runaway spending or deficits, as everyone who has ever looked at the budget numbers knows. The deficit exploded, beginning in 2008, because the economy collapsed: end of story. Anyone who says otherwise either has never looked at the budget or is not being honest.

The longer-term deficit story is equally clear: the United States has a broken healthcare system. Since more than half of healthcare costs are paid through government programmes like Medicare and Medicaid, this translates into a budget problem. If we paid the same amount per person for our healthcare as any other wealthy country, then we would be looking at surpluses in the long term, not deficits.

If the economy were otherwise fine, the rest of us could just kick back and enjoy the theatrics. However, things are about as far from fine as they could possibly be right now, with close to 25 million Americans unemployed, underemployed or having given up looking for work altogether. While most of the routes back to full employment through increased demand appear blocked right now (largely because of the deficit fetishism), there is an alternative path. Instead of increasing demand, we can adopt a policy that promotes sharing of the work that it available. In other words, we have the same amount of work, but we have more people working.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/30/economic-policy-short-work

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. Our corporate overlords will gladly have 5 people share a job

as long as they can pay each of them 1/5 of the wages.

[Kat45]

2. Great idea BUT

it may work in Germany because they have universal health care; companies are not responsible for health insurance. In this country, companies prefer to have fewer workers and less health insurance expense. They also prefer part time workers for whom they do not provide health insurance benefits. Another negative because of health care/health insurance being tied to people's jobs

[Mad Machinist]

3. I could solve a vast majority

of the problems you post about tomorrow. But it would involve kicking alot of the rich directly in the balls. And that involves those on both sides, both republicants and democraps. It also includes alot of "so called" environmental groups.