The head of the Federal Reserve Board said yesterday that the not only was the US Economy weak, it would stay weak for another two years.
On the other hand a few hours before that Standard and Poor's basically told the Federal Government that it could not spend a cent to try and stimulate the economy or they would down grade our credit rating to the point that it would probably destroy the financial community of the world.
Sounds like an impossible predicament to be in but actually there is a very simple way out of this mess. And in fact it is a way that will not cost the Federal Government one red cent while it will reduce Federal Expenditures at the same time that it adds millions of tax paying workers to the work force. thus increasing Tax Revenues at the same time..
What is this magnificent idea?
Simply reduce the standard work week from the current level of 40 hours by 10% to 36 hours or roughly 4 nine hour days.
Follow below the fold for more details.
If this sounds like something that can't be done for some reason go here
http://www.gobankingrates.com/...
and you will see that changing the length of the work week has not only been done before, but that both Herbert Hoover and FDR tried to do it during the last great economic meltdown. Hoover even got the idea ( 30 hours not 36 ) through the Senate but ( shades of 2011) couldn't get it through the House.
When FDR tried it the idea was over ruled by the same Supreme Court that once ruled that a Minimum Wage Law was unconstitutional.
Here is the underlying math.
There are currently 139.3 million people employed in the US and 13.9 million or 9.1% unemployed with another 9 million or so under employed.
If the length of the work week is reduced by 10% or the equivalent of 13.9 million workers, obviously our very efficient free market system will have to make up the lost labor by hiring an additional 13.9 million currently unemployed or under employed Americans.
Simple as that the problem is solved.
13.9 million people stop receiving benefits and start paying probably something on the order of 50 billion dollars a year in new taxes ( with no changes to the tax code ).
The only ones that could possibly be against this idea of course will be corporate America but realistically it was their off shoring of jobs ( without ever achieving the reciprocal jobs that this process was supposed to create ) that caused the unemployment problem in the first place and they reaped huge profits and bonuses for doing so.
It is only fitting and proper that they pony up a little of that 2.5 trillion in excess profits now on their balance sheets to help right the wrong that they have done.
Besides since corporations always pass their costs along to the consumer they will actually come out ahead in the long run and any short term cash that they have to expend in reality is simply an investment in their long term future.
It is actually win win for all concerned.
Feel free to start shooting at any time.