JOB DEMOCRACY: WHY SHARE WORK?

Sharing work is a win-win situation. Both billfolds and morals benefit. When people realize they can increase money and time by sharing work, they will champion job reform. Is it something for nothing? No. Solving the chronic problems from bad employment laws will give us more time and money.

Does Crime Share Work Time?

If a jobless person robs you of $100, he shares work time. How long do you work to earn $100? You shared that time via crime. When you pay inflated security prices for crime prevention and losses, you share work through crime and inflation. To stop sharing your work time through crime, support timeclock sharing of work. Or, risk more than your work time: your work life.

How Do Taxes Share Work Time?

Taxes take your currency. Currency comes from "I'll pay you what your time is currently worth." In symbols and substance, taxes take our time. Since 1980, taxes annually rose 1%--you have worked 1% more each year for others. To maintain a 1980 lifestyle, you need to work six more weeks each year ... five hours per week. Ironically, the average workweek is 40+5 hours, a record high.

When taxes rise, you work less for yourself and more for others. Taxes take 40% of a workweek--2 days or 16 hours. Each week after taxes, we only work 24 hours for ourselves.

What Is the Cost of Unemployment?

Most taxes are for underemployment problems--see box next page. Unemployment fuels violence, inflates prices, begets subsidies, raises fears, and deters freedom. People act out their job anxieties on the road with tailgating, lane-weaving, rude gestures and more accidents. A 1% rise causes 33,000 suicides. What's the rise in child, spouse, drug and alchohol abuse.

The FED Grimly and Indirectly Cuts The Workweek

Why does the Federal Reserve System raises interest rates? To fight inflation with unemployment. Jimmy Carter's late 1970's high inflation prompted a record prime interest rate. It produced high unemployment and record economic recession that elected Ronald Reagan.

A FED-induced 1% rise in unemployment means a 1% reduction in the average workweek for all Americans. For still-employed Americans, it means higher taxes for the newly unemployed or underemployed. An employed person either loses buying power or works more hours. Life's quality decreases for employed, underemployed and unemployed Americans. In surgically fine-tuning the economy with interest rates, the FED wields a machete on individuals.

The FED's cure to cheapening currency cheapens human time. Why? Its board members don't understand time. They manipulate the symbols of our time (currency) instead of the substance of our time (current work). So, they actually cheapen our time to prevent cheapening time symbols.

If the FED directly reduced the workweek, we would have productive deflation and a 24-hour workweek. Raising interest rates destroys businesses, jobs and homes. Reducing the workweek shares initial hardships without raising unemployment, crime, stress, violence, taxes and inflation. The FED destroys jobs and lives; 24 in 4 improves the quality of life. The FED begins a new cycle leading worsening conditions ... like applying leeches to an anemic patient.

As the misuse of interest rates causes higher taxes, crime, inflation and unemployment, so can enlightened interest rates quickly re-capture our lost progress toward a better life. This enlightenment is the 1st step to a 24-hour workweek in 4 years. Let's refinance loans to lower rates.

Would Job Loss Raise Taxes and Crime?

You can bet on it. 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. Why teach another to fish if you don't share the fishing hole? Like most people, if you don't let me fish to feed my family, you'll fish for me through the tax system. Or, when you aren't looking, I'll hit you over the head. I'll take your fish, your gear, and, maybe, your life. If we don't share fishing via the timeclock, we will share it via taxes and crime.

Is Underemployment Slavery?

In essence, slavery exists when one works without hope for a better tomorrow. It is not a legal condition. A new slavery stalks us: underemployment. For 1994 college graduates, 35% have no hope of a career: they studied four years and invested $100,000. Teenage unemployment is a cliche. Discharged workers, young and old, are underemployed with few benefits.

With record levels of poverty and overtime, our employment laws enslave many to dreadful underemployment and enslave others to stressful overworking. The new slaves ranks increase daily due to our deadly economics.

Is Ballot Democracy Enough?

Political enfranchisement is not economic empowerment nor personal security. Ask African-Americans. Black-on-black crime from economic roots kills more Americans than white lynchings did when slavery was the law of the land. Economic slavery is worse than political slavery. Are Americans, black or white, safer on the streets of today than 1860? A new slavery strangles all hope.

Will economic empowerment and public safety come from tax-supported job programs that bend or break with political winds? No. Enlightened employment laws will emancipate us from the 40-hour workweek which enslaves and kills us.

Why So Much Underemployment?

The technology of computers, automation and information saves time. Economic laws convert the time savings into unemployment instead of a shorter workweek. Each minute and penny saved from technology become wasted hours and dollars when converted into unemployment.

In 1900, our ancestors worked almost 80 hours a week. They turned the time savings of the agricultural revolution into a shorter workweek for a better life. We turn time-savings into more unemployment for a lesser life.

Are Productivity Gains Good News?

How do you feel about monthly gains in productivity? Good? Or, dread? With our employment laws, higher productivity means higher unemployment, taxes, stress, violence and crime. Our employment laws kill us--necronomics, bad economics. Productivity gains are Pyrrhic victories ... Trojan Horses destroying our cities.

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