{"article":{"id":247559,"heading":"Work Sharing is the Answer","author":"Dean Baker","created":"2011-08-29 22:08:56","modified":"2011-09-19 22:47:10","last_modified":"Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:47:10","article":"

The best way to create jobs would be to boost demand with another round of stimulus. Any serious stimulus, though, seems to be off the table at this point. If it is not possible to increase demand enough to bring the economy back to full employment, we can go the opposite route of sharing the work that does exist.

\"The basic point is simple. If we encourage employers to deal with reduced demand by shortening work hours rather than laying people off, we can get back to full employment relatively quickly. Every month, firms lay off or fire roughly 2 million people. If this figure can be reduced by 10 percent through work sharing, it would be equivalent to creating 200,000 additional jobs a month.

A work-sharing policy uses the money that would otherwise go to unemployment benefits to compensate workers for part of their reduction in hours...\"

to read Dean Baker's \"Work Sharing is the Answer,\" August 12, 2011, click on

http:\/\/www.zcommunications.org\/work-sharing-is-the-answer-by-dean-baker<\/a><\/p>\n","contact":"mbatko@yahoo.com","link":"http:\/\/www.therealnews.com","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":""Even before the market turmoil took over the news, the economy was largely dead in the water, expanding at a pace too slow to even keep up with the growth rate of the labor force, much less to make up for the 10 million jobs lost due to the downturn."","numcomment":8,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2011\/08\/247559.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":247565,"heading":"no","article":"Shorter working hours? \r\n Another 'stimulus'?\r\nWow.\r\nLook here, I see every once in a while, another injection of pure noise about our economic solution.\r\nWhat we need are more jobs and more hours and more production to pull ourselves out of this trap NAFTA, GATT and all the other job killing strategies that the overclass instituted through their bribed minions, have put us.\r\nWe could all work in rebuilding this crumbling nation, retooling our raped industries and engaging in the kind of R & D that America was always known for. It's just that the corporations and defense contractors and banking interests has stolen our common treasury for the enrichment of a few criminal families.\r\nAnd to cripple the last great threat to their continued power.\r\nIt's a race between the rate of awakening and the closing darkness of engineered chaos brought about by these overclass, degenerate, inbred families.","author":"Wrong...","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-08-30 14:07:28","modified":"2011-08-30 14:07:28","fileurl":""},{"id":247627,"heading":"Work sharing isn't stimulus - it's a way to reduce unemp.","article":"Work sharing isn't stimulus, but it will reduce unemployment.\r\n\r\nPeople being unemployed for long periods of time tends to change society. Some say it's positive - because it encourages more people to pursue unemployment. Some say it's negative for the same reasons.\r\n\r\nRight now, it would have a positive side effect of bolstering wages for the already employed. It would also reduce the amount of money spent on unemployment benefits.","author":"mous","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-09-06 00:35:38","modified":"2011-09-06 00:35:38","fileurl":""},{"id":247628,"heading":"One other thing...","article":"Dean Baker rocks. He cuts to the chase pretty quick. He had solutions to the housing crash that were ignored - until last year when some of them bubbled up as possible solutions to the foreclosure crisis.\r\n\r\n","author":"mous","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-09-06 00:37:48","modified":"2011-09-06 00:37:48","fileurl":""},{"id":247635,"heading":"again, wow","article":"what the hell are you talking about, mous?\r\nWork sharing? What part of no jobs available [ save military sacrifice\/ service to the overlords ] are you having trouble understanding?\r\nWe need full time, union wage jobs; period. And we need a shit load of them. Now.","author":"huh?","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-09-06 14:23:10","modified":"2011-09-06 14:23:10","fileurl":""},{"id":247876,"heading":"Unemp is over 10%","article":"That means that the real rate is around 20 to 25%. 75% of working people have jobs.\r\n\r\nIf you reduce the work week by 30%, you can encourage full employment again by forcing companies to hire people to avoid paying overtime to the existing staff.","author":"mous","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-09-19 05:12:49","modified":"2011-09-19 05:12:49","fileurl":""},{"id":247878,"heading":"so...","article":"so you want the American workforce to accept lower hours in order to 'force' the corporations to hire more workers?\r\nYou're on crack.\r\nWe need public works projects, full time to repair\/rebuild the crumbling infrastructure here. Nothing else will do.","author":"Full Time Union Wage Jobs!","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-09-19 05:42:37","modified":"2011-09-19 05:42:37","fileurl":""},{"id":247884,"heading":"We need something fast","article":"I wish I were on crack, but I'm living drug and alcohol free lately.\r\n\r\nOf course we need infrastructure repair. The problems are political: there is no political will to do a couple years of deficit spending, which is what it would take. The only way to develop the political force to push for deficit spending would be a large popular uprising that demands deficit spending for job creation.\r\n\r\nAnd even if we did get that money, it wouldn't address unemployment for everyone. It takes a year to train anyone to do anything major.\r\n\r\nRedefining the work week down to something like 32 hours a week would reconfigure work and reduce unemployment quickly.","author":"mous","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-09-19 13:19:46","modified":"2011-09-19 13:19:46","fileurl":""},{"id":247887,"heading":"no political will?","article":"the real reason we are in this mess is the simple fact that the Wall Street and their banks have looted us. We need to force them to give some of the trillions they have stolen, back.\r\nThere is huge popular will.\r\nwe need to mobilized this into political will.\r\nLike a nationwide general strike.\r\n","author":"tax wall street per transaction","parent_id":247559,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-09-19 22:47:11","modified":"2011-09-19 22:47:11","fileurl":""}]}