There is an important difference between people with high incomes and people with low incomes, which leads to misunderstanding: people with high incomes see money as a way to increase status, which leads to being happier. Some psychology research on the topic:
http://peerreviewedbymyneurons.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/how-money-can-buy-happiness-if-youre-rich/
http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.com/2012/07/happiness-chronicles-iii-does-status.html
Importantly, this causes people with high incomes to assume that making as much money as possible is the best way to make other people think they're happy. In contrast, people with low incomes are more likely to see money as the means to an end, and that there is little point in working more if you already have enough money to buy what you want. This leads to people with low incomes not trusting those with high incomes, but it also leads to a culture among highly skilled people where working more is seen as a positive thing regardless of actual productivity.
http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2009/07/27/on_work_and_time_in_science/
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/4/
Working more is not a selfish thing to do, even though it is the primary reason for high unemployment. It is bad for some groups of people but good for others. If we want to change this culture, people who can't find a job or whose job does not offer a fair wage, or those who just couldn't afford to complete college (see: http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_20051012/) need to say loudly and clearly that highly skilled people should help people by working less, instead of helping people by working more.
If this happens, we will see...
-lower unemployment
-less inequality due to more bargaining power for workers and purchase of luxury goods
But these groups will be 'harmed':
-owners of capital will have less income due to lower corporate profits
-people who sell to the rich will have less purchasing power
-the US as a whole will not benefit from printing money if the budget is balanced
-an end to inflation could lead to stock market prices falling and people who made poor investment choices will lose money to other people who made better choices
-lingering prejudices could lead to negative stereotypes of people who work less
Current stereotypes can be seen from these links:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/in-mike-bloombergs-nyc-white-felons-have-a-better-/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/1-percent-wives-are-helping-to-kill-feminism-and-make-the-war-on-women-possible/258431/
When someone who acts in a way which employers perceive a "good" worker would act it changes stereotypes of that person's race or gender. This is why people need to assert that fixing unemployment is important, so if a highly skilled person wants to work less their boss will not see it as reflecting negatively on people with similar attributes, but rather will see it as a positive thing.
The second, and possibly less important issue is that we don't need more education. If we say we do need more education, it implies that unemployed people can fix their own problems and other people do not need to worry about it. This helps people who already have a job, especially those with a well-paying job who could afford to pay higher taxes or work less. Conversely, if we agree that we already have enough people going to college it helps unemployed people by transferring responsibility for problems to the owners of wealth and capital and the highly paid workers who benefit from the existing ownership of wealth.
Proof we have enough education:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/reader_feedback/public/display.php?thread=746178&direction=DESC&column=rating
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for-more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.html
The reason this hasn't been fixed before is people are distracted by the national debt. Even the current President has implied in the past that we borrow most of the debt from foreign nations like China, when in fact China only holds 8% of the US public debt or a bit more than $1 trillion (see: https://www.google.com/search?q=
It isn't clear whether the message that people will say they support needs to talk about wage rates, or whether highly skilled people would be able to accept a linear reduction of pay as they work less. A new wage system seems necessary to make the idea of working less stable, instead of just an emergency response to high unemployment where people feel less need to use the concept as unemployment decreases. So imagine three graphs of time spent working vs total compensation received:
-on the first graph, you receive 1.0x the normal rate up to 40 hours, and then 0x after that so it becomes flat. Or it's just a flat line at a monthly salary no matter how much or little time spent working.
-on the second graph, it's 1.0x rate up to 40 hours and then 1.5x after that, with a sharp bend upward in total compensation.
-on the third graph, it's 1.2x rate up to 20 hours and 0.8x after that, or a smoother curve with the same general shape.
You can see how with the first two systems, people will tend to settle on 40 hours worked or maybe their employer will force them to work as much as possible. If working "full time" leads to benefits then compensation has a bump at that point and it's clearly the best for workers, which is why people generally want full-time jobs (see: http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2012/06/04/12049830-full-time-jobs-are-getting-harder-to-find?lite). But with the third graph, there is no way to agree how much time people should work.
It's a bit like the Sorites paradox, where you remove one grain of sand at a time from a heap of sand and are asked when it's no longer a heap. If a dictionary defined a "heap" as 1000 grains or more it would be easy to answer, just as the second graph lets people say that working 40 hours is full-time. But in the third graph, most people will just say they want to work at least 20 hours but less than 60, and so people can choose to work less without feeling like they're violating any convention. Maybe they feel they don't need the newest iPhone, or maybe they don't treat college like vodka, judging its quality solely on the price and brand (see: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/meet-the-high-priest-of-runaway-college-inflation-he-regrets-nothing/263032/).
The central message, again, is that "highly skilled people should help the unemployed by working less, instead of helping a different group of people by working more". Even people who are not unemployed or at risk of becoming so can support this message.
Since no one reads this site it would take more effort though. If more people had read this I wouldn't have talked about personal things. Since I am not contacting anyone new, no one I have contacted is willing to support it, and I am not discussing this on forums anymore either there is no chance that posting this will have any effect on the world. If anything, the purpose of this post is so that people like Fauna, and "person who deleted a blog", feel they would know how to get people to use this idea if they wanted to. (I feel a little like this person in saying that...)
And since no one reads this I'll link random videos.~
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