Opportunity for Everyone and a Chance to Fail

Who stands to gain from the current situation? As previous posts have shown it is not really the human race. To the extent that people don't want to be killed, it is not the middle class. Some wealthy people might prefer the current high inequality for some reason, but others think it isn't healthy for society and reduces their own opportunities to associate and identify with other people. The middle class benefits to an extent from inequality but there are social stigmas that make it difficult to exploit this for things like child care.

When it comes to politics, the Democratic party does not benefit from continuing high unemployment. In the short term, the Republican party of the United States is much more likely to win in elections if unemployment is high with the Democratic party controlling the executive branch of the federal government.

Republican party members say they want to fix high unemployment, but also seem willing to take advantage of the desire of the average citizen to avoid additional taxes by pretending that higher spending would not create more jobs. No one seems interested in sharing the ideas on this blog... so anyway while the idea on this site satisfies all major demands of the conservative movement, by creating jobs without more government spending, they have not been willing to support it.

The logical conclusion is that either people who have been exposed to this idea do not care which party wins the upcoming US Presidential election, or they do care and think that high unemployment will help the Republican party win, or they just don't understand this idea despite wanting to.

There are quotes about the Republican party's primary goal being to prevent our current President from being elected which supports the second possibility above. Anyone in the third category has made themselves irrelevant as of now. If there is anyone in the first category they are implicitly authorizing people who understand this idea to ascribe harmful or deceptive intentions to anyone who opposes measures that would create jobs, such as higher taxes and spending or using the idea on this site.

More links:
The President usually has very little effect on the economy but still takes responsibility for it.

We don't buy that much from other countries, but it includes foreign luxury goods and since the bottom 80% of income only make up 40% of all spending, it's reasonable that so many things seem to come from overseas.

The wealthy were not taking OWS seriously. I also like the quote about how making money is just a game, and it's more fun if you win.

I could link to stuff about flexible work policies attracting talent, that many people would be willing to work less if it seemed like there was a realistic option for doing so, or positive reactions to the assertion that inaccurate standards have made people feel more special than they really are... but anyone who could use that information productively doesn't need those links.

I think that's about it. Thank you to everyone who argued with me. As it turned out I didn't really use the notes attached to the image at the end of this post. The ending is a bit lame but I have no idea how to get people to use social media for constructive change; I think I created a page to contact a creative designer for an MMO that ended up failing, but I used a picture of a kitten, licking itself, when one was requested and did not take it very seriously.

Let's get this straight: smart people are to blame for high unemployment because they have too much confidence in the current economic system.

The weak labour markets over the past few decades have led to a decreased share of national income going to wages. If, say, the top 20% of income worked half as much, this would instantly eliminate our unemployment problems and give employees enough bargaining power to raise wages for the 150 million workers in the United States by 10%. One person doing this might not have much of an effect, but this is because they would be influencing prices for the entire nation.

If it takes 12 million new job openings to go from 8.3% unemployment to nothing, this means a single new job that is created by employees at a company working less raises everyone's wages by 10%/12,000,000, or 0.000000833%. But since it affects 150 million people, the total increase is 125% of the average wage rate, while the business that does this pays essentially the same rate for the work that is done.

Since flexible work policies attract talent, individual companies have every reason to support this too. The only question is how to get people to work less without changing payroll costs, but this has an easy solution.

Think of what happens when someone works less with the current systems of monthly salaries or hourly wages and overtime. If someone takes a day off with the salary system, they're generally expected to make up for it another time or else it forces someone else to do the extra work. With hourly wages, if someone can't work it might force the company to pay someone else overtime wages and a higher total cost of the work.

A better way is to pay a lower rate for extra amounts of work so people will agree to do it without feeling that the extra income is required, but also use the same lower rate for decreases in the amount of work done. If employee salaries accurately reflect their productivity, then these adjustments exactly balance out and someone won't feel bad if they need to, for example, leave work a few hours early to attend a parent-teacher conference or go to a doctor's appointment.

Neither should they feel bad if they delegate tasks to other people and focus on their key responsibilities, because the system would recognize that no special privilege is involved and fairly decrease their compensation to match the lower contribution to the company.

This would end up helping workers in low-wage countries around the world while harming countries that sell luxury goods to the rich, but this is a feature, not a bug. It would also mean fewer people on food stamps or other types of welfare in the United States, and therefore lower government deficits and inflation, but this is also intended even if some people think that deficits lead to higher growth.

Copy and share this message. We create the story.