BUSINESS RAMIFICATIONS

If we don't manage workers through the time clock, they will manage by crime and taxes.

Benefits of 24 in 4:

Personal and Family Safety ... Lower Overhead and Costs ... Safer, Saner Communities ... Global Competitiveness
Better Employee Moral ... Fewer Regulations ... Lower Taxes

Dear Fellow Business Decision-makers:

How many people really are on your payroll? More than you realize. Americans supported by taxes are indirectly on your payroll. Every time taxes increase, more phantom employees are placed on your payroll by government policies. We support "indirect" employees without any production benefit or management oversight. We are being used. Why?

Our habitual politicians foster unenlightened employment laws upon us. They force us to work fewer people for longer hours. Unfortunately, the benefits are short-term. The policies cause unemployment, taxes, crime, regulation and inflation. Money saved in the short-term is lost to these long-term, expensive problems. And, we live in a less safe and sane world, one dangerous to us and ours.

Russian Roulette: Dismissed Employees

On a personal basis, we business leaders face a situation similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its breakdown reduced the risk of organized nuclear war ... but not without a hidden problem. Now, we risk nuclear terrorism. Unemployed Russian scientists are selling their knowledge and materials on the world market. If they were gainfully employed, would they be new merchants of death?

America's business leaders play Russian Roulette each time a technological gain or government policy forces us to layoff employees. One need not seek far to find harm to executives and their families from discharged employees. More security is not the answer. Kidnappers or extortionists have often been former personal guards of the victims.

As middlemen between disgruntled employees and government policies and taxes, politicians force us to work for less income, with more stress and at more risk. Who do the employees blame when we dismiss them because government regulations and taxes eliminate profit margins? The politicians? No, employees blame business leaders--us.

Why are employees disgruntled? They are overworked or underemployed: America has record post-World War II levels of overtime and poverty. Unchanged, these trends will increase workplace and civil violence.

The solution to rising violence is not more security measures. Police are murdered in their cars and offices by the most innocent looking visitors. More thought-provoking: colleague killings. If the police can't protect themselves from violence, can you? The solution is solving the causes of violence.

Tax credits or deductions for security measures are a joke like tax credits for starting a business in a crime-infested enterprise zone. The tax-benefits are less than the costs of operating a company in a more dangerous environment. And, your life is at risk.

Where is the stress of overwork and underemployment coming from? From the combination of time-saving technology and necrotic employment laws. The latter forces businesses to convert time-savings into overtime and unemployment rather than a shorter workweek. A solution is 24 in 4. From the overall plan, business will gain from wage-based benefits, universal payroll, and shorter workweeks.

Less Mismanagement

Because of tax-transfers, companies are carrying more people on the payroll than officially listed. In effect, companies phantom manage people over whom they have no say and from whom they derive no benefit. How are these people managed through the tax-transfer system? Is it indirectly beneficial for business?

The tax-entitlement programs encourage people not to seek work. The tax-support programs encourage them to have more children. The tax-supported workers, bureaucrats and politicians both voice and vote their employment security when the benefit of these programs are discussed on the public stage. Regardless of what public servants say, their track record in managing others to be productive, not reproductive, speaks for itself.

Similarly, we are being taxed to train people who lack the skills and attitude needed by our business. Would our world not be better if we were taxed less and we trained more? Business input is under-appreciated.

It's time that businesses start directly managing these indirect employees who are on the payroll through the tax system. There will be fewer welfare mothers and less violence when business, for company benefit, directly pays and manages all employees. The only way to do this is through sharing the available, dwindling amount of work. Either we manage people through the time clock or they will be mismanaged through taxes and crime.

Wage-Based Benefits

Businesses are hard pressed to finance employee benefits. For this reason, businesses minimize benefits by working fewer employees longer. Or, they eliminate them.

Despite laws, businesses discriminate for sex, age, marriage and children. People are not hired for their ability to do the job. People are hired based on their ability qualified by benefit costs. To reduce job discrimination, we need to change employer paid benefits.

If employers don't support wage-based benefits they will be slowly squeezed out of business by the rising cost of benefits. Overworked employees produce less and/or rebel more.

If employees don't support wage-based benefits, benefits will become extinct. With wage-based benefits, employees will have more benefit and career security. Being overworked will be passe.

Universal Payroll

Many private payroll companies are offering time clock and payroll through the telephone system. To have portable wage-based benefits, America needs a universal payroll system. For what government loses in wage withholdings, it can provide a free payroll system with wage-based benefits. Participation would be mandatory only for companies with tax-payment problems. The system could easily serve as a real-time, on-line personnel and policy system for documenting employee performance.

Reduced Workweek

As business adapted from the near 80-hour workweek of the early 1900's so can business, if given reasons, adapt to a shorter average workweek. The alternative is the expensive costs of more unemployment and stressed employees. Both squeeze profits and survival.

Technology: A Trojan Horse

Business adopts technology to save time and money. If we convert time-savings into unemployment instead of a shorter workweek, business incurs long-term chronic costs. These costs erode the immediate savings: higher taxes, crime and inflation. Who pays for these problems? The unemployed? The politicians? No, you and I.

I will not insult you, a business leader, by pointing out the foolishness of thinking other businesses will pick up the costs of discharged employees--what if every business CEO thought this way? This is akin to the parents who think they don't have to raise their children to take care of them in their old age. Will the children of other like-minded parents take care of them?

If a generation of parents don't raise their children to take care of them, then they shouldn't be surprised when inter-generational tax wars break out. Who has the wealth to be taxed, the work ethicless young or the work ethic old?

Sufficient gold is not enough for golden years. Necessary respect is more valuable. Who suffers if fiduciary trust is misplaced when one becomes old and enfeebled. The parent or the child?

If a generation of businesses doesn't convert the time-savings of technology into a shorter workweek then they will bear the stress, violence and costs of the overworked and underemployed. As the parental factor in the workplace, we will suffer if we do not foster the work ethic in our charges. Spare the job, spoil your retirement.

Productivity Gains: False Profits

Should one feel good about monthly gains in productivity? No. Sadness and dread are more fitting. With our employment laws, higher productivity forecasts higher unemployment, taxes, stress, crime and violence. Misused productivity gains are false profits leading us down a deadly path. Our employment laws are killing us--necronomics.

Necronomics: The Killing Laws

By the year 2000, our unemployment laws will raise taxes, inflation, crime and unemployment. Necronomics gambles with the future like drinking a glass of AIDS-infected blood. Our economy is less immune to a stressful, unstable world.

A healthier approach is sharing employment. Let the unemployed feed, shelter and clothe themselves. Don't use taxes and deficits to support them. This feeds a fatal economic virus.

Fools attempt to redistribute wealth through taxes. Bigger fools use deficits. Wiser and fairer minds democratically divide up the work.

Healthcare and Community Service

The proposed universal healthcare system with a community service component will lower business costs and lower local taxes. As people are encouraged and rewarded for solving problems, the communities will become safer and saner.

Global Trade Leverage

Every product, good or service, has the cost of inefficient use of our human resources: crime, unemployment programs, security, etc. The 24 in 4 program will reduce this hidden marketplace tax for the costs of unemployment.

What Can You Do? 1st Support, 1st Financed

Support for better democracy and capitalism is recorded. When loans are refinanced at 1%, processing will proceed in order of support. To help others, your country and yourself, please adopt a new mental paradigm to reduce crime, taxes, and unemployment: work smarter and shorter, not harder and longer.

Sincerely,

Robert S. Barnett

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