THE 24-HOUR WORKWEEK

Subsidize the Employed By Refinancing Loans to 1%

America needs a new approach to solving unemployment problems. Political pork that only helps re-elections is not working. This fat wastes taxpayers' currency and time. From each hour taxed, few minutes help the unemployed. Why? Dilution by politicized bureaucracies. Worse, it discourages self-responsibility. Why not cut the taxpayers' work time so the unemployed can have a full hour of income instead of diluted minutes?

How can we divide the work with the minimal hardship and sacrifice? The 1st step is refinancing loans to a 1% interest rate. Let's recapture the lost savings that the Federal Reserve wasted by fighting inflation with high interest and unemployment.

Current workers will have the same disposable income after taxes and interest. They have bills to pay including loans: home, cars and cards. Why not refinance loans to lower interest rates on the condition that they work fewer hours? The software exists to manage individual overtime at less than 40 hours.

Before going further, it is necessary to clarify "disposable income." Which workweek would you rather have, a 40-hour workweek in which you have four hours of disposable income or a 24-hour workweek in which you have more than five or more hours of disposable income? In other words, suppose your hourly wage is $5. After expenses (taxes, interest, etc.), would you rather work 40-hours with $20 of disposable income or 24-hours with $25 of free money.

Time is the measure by which you should be gauging the quality of your life. Time is money. Disposable income and money are one and the same. If you are working more each year with less disposable time and money then you are suffering from necronomics: laws that are killing you. You are not working more for yourself but for others through taxes, crime, interest and inflation.

Aid to Families with Dependent Children Community Services Block Grant
Earned Income Tax Credit Economic Development Administration
General Assistance Homeownership Help, Low-Income Families
Interest Reduction Payments Job Opportunity and Basic Skills Training
Job Corps Legal Services
Low-Rent Public Housing Lower Income Housing Assistance
Maternal and Child Health Services Block Medical Assistance to Refugees
Medicare for Poor Persons Migrant Health Centers
Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers Program Public Housing Expenditures
Rental Supplements Rural Housing Loans
Rural Rental Housing Loans Rural Rental Assistance Programs
Social Services Block Grant Summer Youth Employment Programs
Training, Disadvantaged Youth and Adults Urban Development Action Grant

Part of underemployed tax-supports are the defense programs that the Pentagon does not want into which habitual politicians waste money to keep 40-hour jobs back home. Re-election pork attempts to fix joblessness with taxes rather than the simple expedient of cutting the workweek. The world really is upside down.

Refinancing Sequence and Precedents

If you could save 8 hours of wages by refinancing home, car, installment, bankcard and student loans to 1%, would you willingly work 8 hours less? By working fewer hours, you will have the same or more pocket money after taxes and interest.

Most homes were refinanced in the last decade without a dollar of tax support. Lower interest actually increased taxpayments. Don't disasters prompt low interest government loans? If the problems, crime and taxes of unemployment are not our #1 disaster, what is? Politicians refinanced the savings and loans to save the economy (and campaign donors). Why not refinance loans for more jobs and less crime? Banks would benefit: more loans, savers and borrowers. Participating companies would be eligible to refinance their loans at 1%.

Two benefits immediately result from sharing work by refinancing loans. One, working taxpayers have the same or more disposable income of taxes and interest costs while working fewer hours. Two, real job openings are immediately created.

A one-hour reduction in the workweek creates 140,000,000 hours of labor shortfall, or 3.5 million jobs. Which is faster and more lasting in creating jobs: dividing the work, or, waiting for politicians to fabricate jobs with taxes?

Other Steps to a 24-hour Workweek

The below reforms would reduce the workweek by the estimated time listed in parentheses. We would have a shorter workweek with more disposable income.

Youth Employment: We waste billions trying to entertain bored kids. Why not let them work cleaning graffiti and litter? Or, work in childcare and eldercare? Seeing life without an education will prompt young minds to be serious about education. Let them learn the work ethic, a win-win situation: less taxes and crime. The worst child abuse? Deny a willing youth an opportunity to work. We imprison them to an unproductive and frustrating life, ruining their careers and our retirements. (2 hours saved)

Welfare and Unemployment: End free payments. Give limited loans requiring repayment. With 24 in 4 full employment, people can find work. (2 hours saved)

Prisons: Let criminals pay their debt to society by rebuilding our infrastructure, e.g., roads and housing. (2 hours saved)

Payroll: A universal telecommunication payroll system with benefits can fulfill requirements for less than the wage taxes lost due to non-payment. (.5 hour saved)

Taxes: Our politicized tax system consumes 6% of the GNP. A real-time, flat tax would consume 1% or less. The banking system can manage it. (2 hours saved)

Healthcare: Enhance free-market system with universal wage deduction and community service. (2 hours saved)

Self-Service: How many services do you buy because you lack the time to self-provide them, e.g., child- and eldercare? You will save money and have a richer life if you self-provide them. Time savings increase as more free time helps you develop home, auto and family skills to save further time and money.

Promotions

With workweek reduction achieved by refinancing loans, your boss will work less. Business needs and outlays will not change--Business Ramification chapter. A 40% reduction in the workweek in 4 years means 40% promotions. With 24 in 4, business costs will decline, not rise.

Wage-Based Benefits

For business owners to support workweek reductions, benefits must become wage-based. When employers calculate benefits per employee, they are forced to employ fewer workers for longer hours. Wage-based benefits will encourage employers to hire more employees.

Universal Time Clock & Payroll

The treasury loses billions each year from uncollected wage taxes. For far less than this loss, we can have "e-mail" timeclock and payroll. Some companies already use credit card machines for this. With this system, benefits could be universal and wage-based. It would manage individual overtime and debit 1% loan payments.

Parallels and Parables

A number of parallels--or parables, if you will--exist for rationalizing a shorter workweek. These provide insight into why one should not work overtime when there are able-bodied people without jobs.

"Overtime" is not a matter of working more than a prescribed, arbitrary number of hours, e.g., more than the traditional forty hours. Overtime is relative. Overtime is when a fully employed person works hours that should be worked directly by the unemployed. As such, overtime fuels the fires of inflation and violence.

In the following parallels or parables, consider how the person who works overtime (instead of compressing his workweek) ends up with both lost work and gained violence.

Fisherman

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime--if you provide him an opportunity to fish. If you hog the fishing pole, hole, or boat, you must expect to give some of your catch (i.e., your time) to those denied fishing opportunity Or, if you plan on hogging the catch as well, plan on spending more time guarding yourself, both on and off the job. The rising hunger and anger will make your life worth less.

Wouldn't it be better to share the fishing time? You'll have more leisure time, and your leisure time will be carefree. Or do you measure your wealth solely in fish rather than in time? Of the two, which is the commodity of your very existence?

Company in a Small Town

If a depression on the scale of the 1930's Depression returns, do you think that people will quiescently accept poverty as they did in the 1930's? No. Even if people do not lose their decency in the face of hardship, would you really want to work in a company-owned town where your friends and relatives come begging for food? Or would you rather let them work the very hours you spend earning the money to buy the food that you "must" share with them? Worse, are you going to deny them some of your food and time so that your friendship vanishes?

Will you become a roadblock to their employment? After all, if you hog a job and don't share your earnings, your death would create a job opening for someone who might be more humane. Wouldn't the most productive action be to work less, rather than have the value of your workweek cut by unnecessary charity or demise?

Seniority: An Ignorance Tax?

During times of unemployment, every hour of overtime or seniority stokes the flames of inflation, taxes, and violence. These fires of inflationary suffering haunt the elderly more so than the young. Hardship rises within the family. Abuse--aged, spouse, and child--rises with unemployment. Tragically, many senior citizens brought on their feared problems by trying to beat inflation in the wrong way.

Wouldn't the most productive path be worksharing? If work is shared, the younger generation will be less violent. They won't prey on the old. If the young have opportunities to learn and to produce, the aged will have less to fear. All will have needed goods and services at lower prices.

Clearly, in the big picture, unions are counterproductive in defending seniority privileges. Do union officials really believe that they can continue to draw fat salaries while the rank and file are reduced by unemployment? Seniority and overtime abuse is no good to anyone.

Military

Would the allies have won the Second World War if the career personnel had decided to fight the whole thing alone? Imagine where we would be today if the career military personnel had argued that they were more productive per worker than an army of trained civilians! What if they had argued that winning the war required the highest productivity per worker, even if it meant an army of one person?

Similarly, the war against inflation, unemployment, taxation, and violence cannot be won by fewer and fewer trained workers thinking that they can beat inflation and turn the economy around. And, a group of habitual politicians cannot turn the country around by increasing their salaries, freebies and terms.

The available work--whether in war, factories, or policy-making--must be optimally divided among the able-bodied, able-minded citizens. We need higher productivity per capita in all these endeavors. We need workplace democracy.

World

A growing global friction exists between the "have" and "have-not" nations. Behind the material wealth is employment opportunity. What are the results if the "have" nations do not directly share the available workhours? A loss of the workhours through futile combat can be one result. International terrorism will increase.

International tension and violence will increase with global unemployment. If the people and the politicians of the Northern Hemisphere do not directly share the opportunities to produce, the problem of chronic unemployment will continue to drain both hours and wages. If world-wide essential production lags, the stimulation of non-essential production by the "have" nations is nothing but momentary inequity.

Ironically, the "haves" foolishly gloat over their abundant wealth. They do not realize the wealth they would have if worksharing had started long ago. At this late date, worksharing would enable workers in the major industrial nations to work less and have more.

The United States stands alone in its ability to lead the world into worksharing. With global worksharing, we can be the managerial and educational center of the world. The U.S. worker would work less but have more disposable time and money.

Summary on Worksharing Concept

With underemployment, if the employed do not directly reduce their workhours, they will face indirect reduction through inflation, taxes, and violence. Overtime is self-destructive.

The work that is available each week, month, or year should be consciously divided among the available, able-bodied persons. If there is enough work to keep all the work force employed forty hours per week, then the forty-hour week is fine. However, if there is only enough work to keep half the work force employed at forty hours, then a twenty-hour workweek should be the maximum. If worksharing is not done in a conscious, peaceful and organized way, the workweek will be violently reduced as a result of rising inflation, unemployment, taxation, and tension.

Warning: Anyone found stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards of Better Democracy and Capitalism.
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