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Forum Post: LAST CHANCE for anyone who wants Republican President!

Posted 11 years ago on Aug. 19, 2012, 11:32 p.m. EST by Misaki (893)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Working less can create jobs and fix unemployment and inequality. http://occupywallst.org/forum/capitalism-for-the-workers-and-a-new-global-econom/

So far no one has really supported this. If we frame the issue as "Republicans are t3h ev1L", then any government support of the idea would probably cause the current President to be re-elected.

On the other hand, if people are willing to support it as a non-partisan issue, then we will be able to discuss the election on things other than the economy if the idea is used to fix unemployment and the Republican candidate will still have a chance.

There is a non-zero (between 0.000000000000001% and 50%) chance that people will be willing to support "working less" as a partisan issue. So this is a sort of advance warning.

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8 Comments


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[-] 2 points by gestopomillyy (1695) 11 years ago

there are about 20 million people who have been working less for the last 4 yrs.. how has this helped?

[-] 1 points by Mooks (1985) 11 years ago

If people want to work their ass off, even if they don't have to, I don't think anyone should tell them not to. Some people like to work.

[-] 1 points by Misaki (893) 11 years ago

Other people would like to work less, but feel the system doesn't allow it. This includes people who think that "leaders" should be the people who work 80 hours/week, instead of the most competent people. In actuality people can learn to delegate. More examples of people who would like to work less: http://www.theatlantic.com/debates/women-workplace http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/between-overworked-and-out-of-work

Consequences when not enough people are working less: high poverty, crime, millions of people in prison at high costs to the state, people on welfare instead of having jobs, etc. Many of these issues affect everyone; the "time macho" culture is really the only thing in the way of people working less. And people do think that unemployment is the most important issue in the US: http://www.gallup.com/poll/149453/Unemployment-Emerges-Important-Problem.aspx http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2012/05/29/nobody-really-cares-about-deficits-its-the-economy-stupid/

[-] 1 points by gestopomillyy (1695) 11 years ago

so your thinking those delegating would also be splitting the pay? lol right. for instance.. suppose you make 1 million a year.. but you work less.. and delegate off the work to 900k people.. you are going to have to pay them so that leaves you with only 10k a year income.. and you are not planning on food stamps and welfare to prop you up? plus the food stamps and welfare for your delegatees or.. does this delegation some how magically generate an additional 900 million so everyone makes a living?

[-] 1 points by Misaki (893) 11 years ago

So just delegate $500k worth of work and keep the other $500k to yourself?

(Actually a Nobel-prize winning economist suggested people do exactly this.)

[-] 1 points by Mooks (1985) 11 years ago

I am not saying working 80 hours a week is a good idea. Personally, I only work 32. I think people should have the freedom to do what they want though.

Instead of looking at labor as a set number of hours that should be divided up more equally, we should strive for things that increase the total number of hours available.

[-] 1 points by Misaki (893) 11 years ago

The government could easily do that by redistributing money... but people who do have money are already spending as much as they can. The thread linked at the top suggests the top 20% of income working less; this is because of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/sales-of-luxury-goods-are-recovering-strongly.html

“If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?” said Arnold Aronson, managing director of retail strategies at the consulting firm Kurt Salmon, and the former chairman and chief executive of Saks.

“This group is key because the top 5 percent of income earners accounts for about one-third of spending, and the top 20 percent accounts for close to 60 percent of spending,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “That was key to why we suffered such a bad recession — their spending fell very sharply.”

Part of the demand is also driven by the snob factor: at luxury stores, higher prices are often considered a mark of quality.

(Most of the 1% work; only 5% of them don't work.)

So bumping the price of a shoe from $1500 to $2000 might lead to more revenue and profits, but it doesn't really increase the number of jobs or the hours of work required from employees. Since companies have no reason to share high profits with their employees (look at Apple, with $30 billion in profit last year but retail employees were paid just $12/hour) this doesn't really "trickle down" very well into additional consumption.