Building support for a change that would revolutionize the world economy

Does this explanation make sense and should the world use this system?

  • It doesn't make sense. The issues it mentions aren't important.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • It makes sense, but the issues it mentions aren't important.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • It doesn't make sense, but the issues it mentions do need to be solved.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • It makes sense and the issues it solves are ones we should care about.

    Votes: 1 100.0%

  • Total voters
    1
The basic idea can be easily summarized: pay people a higher rate when they work less time. For example, 1.2x their normal pay rate for the first 24 hours of work each week, and 0.7x their normal pay rate for all hours after that, including hours beyond 40.

Previously, I had 3 workers at 40 hours a week, now I must have 5 workers at 24 hours a week.

All for a 20% increase in payroll expenses. More, when insurance is added. Where do I sign up?
This didn't fit in the original post because of Math™, but what do you think?


Analysis here. For businesses to support this system, they must benefit from it. The amount of work done per dollar paid to an employee must increase.

24 * 1.2 / 40 = 0.72, pay for 24 hours of work as a proportion of 40-hour work week
24 / 40 = 0.6 time worked

Work done would have to be above 0.72 in this example.

Simpler numbers: paid 20% less, do 10% less work. A business would like this.

Who would accept this deal? It seems no one would. However, if the work is completed in 30% less time, then the employee has more free time. This requires doing 90% of a standard workload in 70% of the time, a 29% increase in efficiency.

Businesses would like for everyone to be more efficient, all the time, and continue to work the same amount of time. Even if a new worker can be just as efficient as existing workers, there is still training time and other costs associated with hiring new workers. Workers must tie any increase in efficiency (working harder than other people doing the same job) to a reduction in total work done.

As described, this results in less money going to each individual worker and more money to the business's profits. Businesses and stocks are mostly owned by rich people, so rich people would seem to benefit. Even if the worker in question is a corporate chief executive officer who makes US$5 million per year, if they do 10% less work for a 20% pay cut, workers as a group are still losing money.

Workers win in two ways: more workers are hired, and spending patterns change when someone earns less money in a way that benefits workers. Total worker compensation is 4~5 times total business profits, so how workers spend money would still dominate economic outcomes even if slightly more money went to profits.

More workers hired means unemployment goes down. Even if unemployment seems low, some people still have a hard time getting jobs. People convicted of serious crimes are often denied employment. Others are forced to enter a new line of work. They may have worked for a newspaper and cheap online news has reduced interest in local news stories, or their factory got moved to Vietnam, or they were injured in a car crash, or they may be unable to continue their previous work such as online game streaming or dancing due to age. Whenever someone has a hard time finding work, they drive down wages for all workers.

9 people each doing 100% work, each paid 100%, while 1 is person unemployed.

9 people each doing 90% work in 70% of the time, each paid 80%, resulting in the hiring of 1 person to do the remaining work. Total payment is 800%, down from 900%, but now businesses give better wage offers to workers and wages goes up, either because workers find better-paying jobs or they get raises to prevent them from leaving.

The effects of modifications to spending are more difficult to understand. It relies on the principle that for two similar items, the more expensive one is likely to be more profitable and made by people with a higher total income.

As a generalization, there will always be counter-examples that make seeing the trend more difficult. Companies that sell expensive physical goods, like 'smartphones' or brand-name shoes, like to make their products using as cheap labour as possible. They may even be better at finding cheap labour, and securing good business deals that give very little money to the companies that hire people who do the actual work, than their competitors who sell less expensive and less-valued products. But lower wages for workers assembling a 'smartphone' means higher corporate profits, which illustrates the general principle: buying the more expensive product makes your money go to rich people, while buying the cheaper product makes your money go to poor people.

If poor people and rich people spent money the same way this would not matter. But they don't. Poor people are more likely to spend money that they earn (the highest quintile of households in the US, by income, don't spend a third of their income, while the lowest quintile spend more than they earn) and are also more likely to buy cheap things, causing that money to go to other poor people.

In a way that's considerably more difficult to quantify than "nine people work 10% less, one person gets a job", this altered pattern of spending that causes more money to go to poor people results in job creation.

___

"30% increase in efficiency is unrealistic!" Rather than show how a business and employee can still benefit with just 10% efficiency increase — since one might disagree with any efficiency-based arguments at all — I did a web search for "stay until boss leaves".
my boss makes people work late for no reason — Ask a Manager (and comments)
Do you leave the office before your boss? : korea Korean work culture was what I was thinking of.
Is it normal to have nothing to do at work 70% of the time? : jobs
my best employee quit on the spot because I wouldn't let her go to her college graduation — Ask a Manager
I can't leave 30 minutes early? Okay then, no more free labor : MaliciousCompliance (note community name)
What can I do at my office job when I finish my work early? : jobs
Are you too scared of being caught playing 2048 at work? Play it in Excel... and your boss will think you are working the hardest in your life;) : excel
To my boss who spent 45 minutes on Friday trying to get me to reconsider quitting : AdviceAnimals
Manager told me to clock out 30 min before my scheduled hours : Chipotle
stay until boss leaves "nothing to do" site:www.reddit.com - Google Search
stay until boss leaves "nothing to do" - Google Search (34 million results)
 
Not going to be told to work overtime by the boss and pick up everybody else's slack for 0.7X normal pay or be fired.
I won't say this is impossible. People get special advantages all the time, like having the opportunity to do overtime work or getting extra days off. A police officer talks about this on another forum:

If you're one of the mega-rich Golden Boys, you do whatever you want, get sneaky non-competitive OT, leave an hour or more before the end of shift because you answer to no one (and no one knows what you actually do when you are at "work"), you get "days due" out the a** for performing petty tasks that may take 2 hours (8 hours off for 2 hours "work"....not bad), which means you never have to use your vacation time, which you can then sell back for even more $$$, and God forbid you take a radio call.

Not to mention, they get every official (Christmas, Thanksgiving) holiday and non-official (Superbowl Sunday, Christmas Eve) holiday off, using their bulls*** "days due", no doubt. And whenever there may be something fun/interesting/different to do (assisting another agency with an arrest), they once again magically appear, leaving us mega-poor in patrol to deal with the drunks who s*** themselves, or applying for yet another emergency protective order.


But it happens already, and NOT using this system will not prevent it from happening now. Do you think the same people who get "sneaky, non-competitive overtime" would also get the special privilege of working and getting paid less if this system were used, when people like yourself aren't given that opportunity?
 
The basic idea can be easily summarized: pay people a higher rate when they work less time. For example, 1.2x their normal pay rate for the first 24 hours of work each week, and 0.7x their normal pay rate for all hours after that, including hours beyond 40.

Previously, I had 3 workers at 40 hours a week, now I must have 5 workers at 24 hours a week.

All for a 20% increase in payroll expenses. More, when insurance is added. Where do I sign up?
This didn't fit in the original post because of Math™, but what do you think?


Analysis here. For businesses to support this system, they must benefit from it. The amount of work done per dollar paid to an employee must increase.

24 * 1.2 / 40 = 0.72, pay for 24 hours of work as a proportion of 40-hour work week
24 / 40 = 0.6 time worked

Work done would have to be above 0.72 in this example.

Simpler numbers: paid 20% less, do 10% less work. A business would like this.

Who would accept this deal? It seems no one would. However, if the work is completed in 30% less time, then the employee has more free time. This requires doing 90% of a standard workload in 70% of the time, a 29% increase in efficiency.

Businesses would like for everyone to be more efficient, all the time, and continue to work the same amount of time. Even if a new worker can be just as efficient as existing workers, there is still training time and other costs associated with hiring new workers. Workers must tie any increase in efficiency (working harder than other people doing the same job) to a reduction in total work done.

As described, this results in less money going to each individual worker and more money to the business's profits. Businesses and stocks are mostly owned by rich people, so rich people would seem to benefit. Even if the worker in question is a corporate chief executive officer who makes US$5 million per year, if they do 10% less work for a 20% pay cut, workers as a group are still losing money.

Workers win in two ways: more workers are hired, and spending patterns change when someone earns less money in a way that benefits workers. Total worker compensation is 4~5 times total business profits, so how workers spend money would still dominate economic outcomes even if slightly more money went to profits.

More workers hired means unemployment goes down. Even if unemployment seems low, some people still have a hard time getting jobs. People convicted of serious crimes are often denied employment. Others are forced to enter a new line of work. They may have worked for a newspaper and cheap online news has reduced interest in local news stories, or their factory got moved to Vietnam, or they were injured in a car crash, or they may be unable to continue their previous work such as online game streaming or dancing due to age. Whenever someone has a hard time finding work, they drive down wages for all workers.

9 people each doing 100% work, each paid 100%, while 1 is person unemployed.

9 people each doing 90% work in 70% of the time, each paid 80%, resulting in the hiring of 1 person to do the remaining work. Total payment is 800%, down from 900%, but now businesses give better wage offers to workers and wages goes up, either because workers find better-paying jobs or they get raises to prevent them from leaving.

The effects of modifications to spending are more difficult to understand. It relies on the principle that for two similar items, the more expensive one is likely to be more profitable and made by people with a higher total income.

As a generalization, there will always be counter-examples that make seeing the trend more difficult. Companies that sell expensive physical goods, like 'smartphones' or brand-name shoes, like to make their products using as cheap labour as possible. They may even be better at finding cheap labour, and securing good business deals that give very little money to the companies that hire people who do the actual work, than their competitors who sell less expensive and less-valued products. But lower wages for workers assembling a 'smartphone' means higher corporate profits, which illustrates the general principle: buying the more expensive product makes your money go to rich people, while buying the cheaper product makes your money go to poor people.

If poor people and rich people spent money the same way this would not matter. But they don't. Poor people are more likely to spend money that they earn (the highest quintile of households in the US, by income, don't spend a third of their income, while the lowest quintile spend more than they earn) and are also more likely to buy cheap things, causing that money to go to other poor people.

In a way that's considerably more difficult to quantify than "nine people work 10% less, one person gets a job", this altered pattern of spending that causes more money to go to poor people results in job creation.

___

"30% increase in efficiency is unrealistic!" Rather than show how a business and employee can still benefit with just 10% efficiency increase — since one might disagree with any efficiency-based arguments at all — I did a web search for "stay until boss leaves".
my boss makes people work late for no reason — Ask a Manager (and comments)
Do you leave the office before your boss? : korea Korean work culture was what I was thinking of.
Is it normal to have nothing to do at work 70% of the time? : jobs
my best employee quit on the spot because I wouldn't let her go to her college graduation — Ask a Manager
I can't leave 30 minutes early? Okay then, no more free labor : MaliciousCompliance (note community name)
What can I do at my office job when I finish my work early? : jobs
Are you too scared of being caught playing 2048 at work? Play it in Excel... and your boss will think you are working the hardest in your life;) : excel
To my boss who spent 45 minutes on Friday trying to get me to reconsider quitting : AdviceAnimals
Manager told me to clock out 30 min before my scheduled hours : Chipotle
stay until boss leaves "nothing to do" site:www.reddit.com - Google Search
stay until boss leaves "nothing to do" - Google Search (34 million results)

This didn't fit in the original post because of Math™, but what do you think?

I think your silly idea is silly.
 
And you're free to go work at a job like the one he/she is describing. Let me know how it feels when you're doing eighty, of more, hour weeks while the boss and his/her favorites take off after the normal forty. Especially after the boss gives you all the collateral duties, that "need to be done", on top of your normal work instead of doling them out evenly amongst all the employees.

I'll stick with a job that guarantees time and a half to double time after forty.

:)
In a lot of jobs, it's the boss who stays late. Do you leave the office before your boss? : korea

I read a comment from a boss who said their employees were horrified when they learned this boss usually had to stay 4~5 hours later than their employees. Sometimes, the boss has to stay late because the boss's boss is staying late.

You're concerned about a boss leaving early. Other people are affected by bosses leaving late. What do you think of that?
 
Usually whenever government manipulates the economy, it only leads to bad things.

Just saying. :dunno:
What do you think about overtime laws? They don't work with this system, and using this system might even be illegal based on overtime laws. Should the current government interference remain as it is?
Minimum wage laws, overtime laws all of it, should probably be done away with.

All of these things should be negotiated between labor contracts and the employer, the government should be left out of it.
 
Sure. First explain why it's better than the current system.
I have written extensively on this topic, but most people find it hard to understand, even my brother who scored over 1500 on the 1600-point SAT.

At one level, it's better than the current system because it creates more jobs than the current system. (You might say the current system is the 40-hour work week with overtime; it used to be a 50 or 60-hour work week, with no guaranteed extra overtime pay.) The CEO of Gallup has said the world needs another 1.8 billion good jobs. This includes people with bad jobs like barely surviving based off their tiny farm, so the actual number of jobs that need to be created is lower than 1.8 billion, but he says it would lead to "worldwide peace, global well-being, and the next extraordinary advancements in human development". Do those sound like things the current system doesn't provide?

But it's arguable that world peace or eliminating starvation or poverty aren't all that important. If you think this, I can explain (or just link to existing explanations) of the more complex effects of this system. As an example, educated people and smart people work longer on average than the 50% of the population with below-average intelligence right now, and I would hope that this system is successful in reversing the intelligence vs work trend so that smart people work at least slightly less than less-intelligent people.
 
Minimum wage laws, overtime laws all of it, should probably be done away with.

All of these things should be negotiated between labor contracts and the employer, the government should be left out of it.
I don't think it really matters if the government gets involved with this system. It shouldn't need to, but you can imagine a hypothetical situation, such as the one envisaged by the Occupy Wall Street movement, where owners of capital ("the 1%") are at war with the rest of the country. The 99%, via government, would force businesses to use this system and give workers a right, sort of like maternity/paternity leave or paid vacation in European countries, to choose to work less using this system.

But I think owners of capital have the same general goals as everyone else. They want to make money, but who doesn't? Warren Buffett famously proposed increased taxes on the rich, and it was 'normal' people (maybe richer-than-normal people, but still the "99%") who let that proposal be forgotten, not the ultra-rich.

If government were to have a role here, it would be mostly to say "hey! Here's a thing, and it would be helpful to society if you used it! Our economists have done the math and it works."
 
This is so confusing.
I hope the post is clear enough that it can be understood though, even if it requires more than one reading. The hope here is that some people read and understand it, they vote in the poll, and then it's possible for someone to link to this and someone who hasn't read it knows that it works, because other people did read and understand it.
 
Sure. First explain why it's better than the current system.
I have written extensively on this topic, but most people find it hard to understand, even my brother who scored over 1500 on the 1600-point SAT.

At one level, it's better than the current system because it creates more jobs than the current system. (You might say the current system is the 40-hour work week with overtime; it used to be a 50 or 60-hour work week, with no guaranteed extra overtime pay.) The CEO of Gallup has said the world needs another 1.8 billion good jobs. This includes people with bad jobs like barely surviving based off their tiny farm, so the actual number of jobs that need to be created is lower than 1.8 billion, but he says it would lead to "worldwide peace, global well-being, and the next extraordinary advancements in human development". Do those sound like things the current system doesn't provide?

But it's arguable that world peace or eliminating starvation or poverty aren't all that important. If you think this, I can explain (or just link to existing explanations) of the more complex effects of this system. As an example, educated people and smart people work longer on average than the 50% of the population with below-average intelligence right now, and I would hope that this system is successful in reversing the intelligence vs work trend so that smart people work at least slightly less than less-intelligent people.

At one level, it's better than the current system because it creates more jobs than the current system.

Having more part-time jobs is better than having the current number of full-time jobs? Why?
 
Minimum wage laws, overtime laws all of it, should probably be done away with.

All of these things should be negotiated between labor contracts and the employer, the government should be left out of it.
I don't think it really matters if the government gets involved with this system. It shouldn't need to, but you can imagine a hypothetical situation, such as the one envisaged by the Occupy Wall Street movement, where owners of capital ("the 1%") are at war with the rest of the country. The 99%, via government, would force businesses to use this system and give workers a right, sort of like maternity/paternity leave or paid vacation in European countries, to choose to work less using this system.

But I think owners of capital have the same general goals as everyone else. They want to make money, but who doesn't? Warren Buffett famously proposed increased taxes on the rich, and it was 'normal' people (maybe richer-than-normal people, but still the "99%") who let that proposal be forgotten, not the ultra-rich.

If government were to have a role here, it would be mostly to say "hey! Here's a thing, and it would be helpful to society if you used it! Our economists have done the math and it works."

Warren Buffett famously proposed increased taxes on the rich

Taxes that he'll never have to pay. Whining liar that he is...……..
 
Are you requiring all workers to work 40 hours at the adjusted hourly rates? Or could workers work just 24 hours a week, maximizing their hourly compensation and perhaps freeing up enough time to get a second job that they could also work just 24 hours a week at the higher pay rate?
What if someone's boss says they can leave early if they finish all their work? (A lot of the time, people with salaries are discouraged from doing this.) Would they assume they'll always finish early and will always be able to reach their second job in time?

The argument also does not talk about efficiency losses from working long hours, especially for jobs that require complex thought or creativity. The poll has only one response as it is, and a longer argument would only further discourage participation. If someone works two jobs, it can affect their performance in both. Their bosses would notice this and they wouldn't get performance-based raises, cancelling out the 1.2x multiplier in the long term.
I'm trying to clearly understand your proposal. Is a 40 hour work week a requirement to make your 1.2x and 0.7x work week plan successful? Or could an employee have the option to work 24 hours on a fixed schedule, still get benefits (consistent with many current employee agreements) and then pursue a second job also at 24 hours per week on a fixed schedule?
 
Not going to be told to work overtime by the boss and pick up everybody else's slack for 0.7X normal pay or be fired.
I won't say this is impossible. People get special advantages all the time, like having the opportunity to do overtime work or getting extra days off. A police officer talks about this on another forum:

If you're one of the mega-rich Golden Boys, you do whatever you want, get sneaky non-competitive OT, leave an hour or more before the end of shift because you answer to no one (and no one knows what you actually do when you are at "work"), you get "days due" out the a** for performing petty tasks that may take 2 hours (8 hours off for 2 hours "work"....not bad), which means you never have to use your vacation time, which you can then sell back for even more $$$, and God forbid you take a radio call.

Not to mention, they get every official (Christmas, Thanksgiving) holiday and non-official (Superbowl Sunday, Christmas Eve) holiday off, using their bulls*** "days due", no doubt. And whenever there may be something fun/interesting/different to do (assisting another agency with an arrest), they once again magically appear, leaving us mega-poor in patrol to deal with the drunks who s*** themselves, or applying for yet another emergency protective order.


But it happens already, and NOT using this system will not prevent it from happening now. Do you think the same people who get "sneaky, non-competitive overtime" would also get the special privilege of working and getting paid less if this system were used, when people like yourself aren't given that opportunity?
th


Then why change anything?

*****SMILE*****



:)
 
And you're free to go work at a job like the one he/she is describing. Let me know how it feels when you're doing eighty, of more, hour weeks while the boss and his/her favorites take off after the normal forty. Especially after the boss gives you all the collateral duties, that "need to be done", on top of your normal work instead of doling them out evenly amongst all the employees.

I'll stick with a job that guarantees time and a half to double time after forty.

:)
In a lot of jobs, it's the boss who stays late. Do you leave the office before your boss? : korea

I read a comment from a boss who said their employees were horrified when they learned this boss usually had to stay 4~5 hours later than their employees. Sometimes, the boss has to stay late because the boss's boss is staying late.

You're concerned about a boss leaving early. Other people are affected by bosses leaving late. What do you think of that?

th


I've had lots of bosses that take off early. Then they bitch about the overtime they have to pay others.

*****SMILE*****



:)
 
Just get a different job if you are not appreciated- I left a job after 22 years.


th


What makes you think I don't find other employment?

But I'll tell you right now I won't work for the OP if that's how he/she thinks things should be run. The only incentive to get things done in the normal forty hours is to say everyone stays after forty hours.

*****SMILE*****



:)

Get another job-you sound too bitter to stay where you are.


th


And you're free to go work at a job like the one he/she is describing. Let me know how it feels when you're doing eighty, of more, hour weeks while the boss and his/her favorites take off after the normal forty. Especially after the boss gives you all the collateral duties, that "need to be done", on top of your normal work instead of doling them out evenly amongst all the employees.

I'll stick with a job that guarantees time and a half to double time after forty.

*****SMILE*****



:)

I left a job when I did not like the situation anymore-it beats complaining about it.

th


What makes you think I work for anyone but myself now?

NOTE: I'll never work a salary job again and I sure as hell wouldn't work for only about half the pay after the first forty hours. Bosses don't know how to estimate how long a job will take or how it should cost them that's their problem.

*****SMILE*****



:)

I don't know what you are trying to say or what you want.
 

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