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Shortening the work week?

Should the work week be reduced?


  • Total voters
    27
Any company that wishes to allow it's employees shorter hours is presently at liberty to do exactly that.

The government has no business imposing any such absurd regulations on business.

As far as addressing the unemployment issue, it could only make things worse. Assume a job that current takes 40 hours per week is split into two half-time shifts filled by two men.

Neither man will take home enough pay to live on, thus both men and their families will be requesting support from taxpayers where only one was begging before.

The cost of any ancillary benefits like health care won't be cut in half, so the two employees either jack up the employer's premiums, boosting his cost of goods per man-hour, or they pay a larger share of their health insurance, further reducing their take-home pay, or the employer drops the policy completely, and more families become wards of the state's public medical system.

No, forcing employers to cut work hours is silly.
 
Any company that wishes to allow it's employees shorter hours is presently at liberty to do exactly that.

The government has no business imposing any such absurd regulations on business.

The government already regulates the length of the work week, so it's not a question of giving the government some new power, it's just a question of how many hours is best from a macroeconomic perspective.

Mayor Snorkum said:
As far as addressing the unemployment issue, it could only make things worse. Assume a job that current takes 40 hours per week is split into two half-time shifts filled by two men.

Neither man will take home enough pay to live on, thus both men and their families will be requesting support from taxpayers where only one was begging before.

Agreed, but no one is suggesting the work week be reduced to 20 hours. If it was reduced to, say, 35 or 36 hours, you would raise the overall well-being of society because each marginal hour worked brings diminishing returns. In other words, the unemployed person who gained 35 hours benefits more than is lost by the full-timers who lose 5 hours each. This will reduce unemployment roles, reduce poverty, and reduce the need for government anti-poverty programs.

Mayor Snorkum said:
The cost of any ancillary benefits like health care won't be cut in half, so the two employees either jack up the employer's premiums, boosting his cost of goods per man-hour, or they pay a larger share of their health insurance, further reducing their take-home pay, or the employer drops the policy completely, and more families become wards of the state's public medical system.

Why wouldn't the health care costs be cut by a proportional amount? Granted, there might be a time lag of a year or two, but in the long run the prices would adjust. Health care is part of compensation just like salary, and there is no reason to think that companies couldn't drop to a policy that was 7/8 as costly, if the workers were working 7/8 the number of hours as before.

No, forcing employers to cut work hours is silly.[/QUOTE]
 
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