Will the recession become a depression?

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We'll find out whether it will become a depression after November 2012, and perhaps it may only stay a recession or improve after the end of January 2013....

You seem quick to judge. I am not proposing stagnation. I am proposing a more balanced lifestyle. Being sustainable does not mean stagnation. It means modest growth. Conservation of resources includes technology like green technology.

To add on to the conversation, we are not getting out of this recession because people cannot afford to consume and this to fatal to the consumerism economy.

Recessions are the reality that there are a finite number of resources on this planet. Innovation and technology can only stretch it out so far.

Ever since we were able to harness the power of the hydrogen bomb the energy supply is now infinite.

Wrong. The total quantity of matter in the universe is finite and so even if we used annihilation reactions to liberate the maximum amount of energy from matter there would still be a finite amount of energy.

An enforced 36 hour work week, doubletime for overtime, and 10% more jobs are created.

With near 10% collecting unemployment, food stamps, it would lift the burden off of the state and national government, and off the currently employed who are being exploited.

It was a long hard fight to get a 40 hour week. There is nothing wrong with labor rights. Cutbacks of hours and pay are happening, so lets give them a dose of their own.

Factory hands and miners often worked six twelves, if left up to the bosses, we would be back there with a pay cut.

No one has had a raise since 1989. All the money goes to the top, the workers are losing everything. Taxes are the lowest they have been since 1917. The richest pay 18%.

What do you want, 75% tax, to pay for excess spending, or a pre tax deduction for higher labor costs?

I prefer labor costs, funding consumers, because all governments waste tax money.

In Germany the state pays employers to pay higher wages, and not out source to Eastern Europe, they also pay for worker training, out of the taxes paid by the employers. It works for everyone.

With 10% of the workforce in school, high pay for short hours, they are more productive.

Most people who have gone to a four day week say everything done in five gets done, and the workers are happy and have more energy.

Like prisoners, for every eight hours worked without problem, they get two hours good time, toward early release. It works.

With some job security, workers do not fear thinking up ways to do jobs better, faster, because no one will get fired. The business prospers, and the time saved can now be applied to new projects.

Demming in Japan worked out the system they used, It was a better deal than Americans got. Workers, owners, managers, and the town we live in are in this together.

Our major employers are minor, government is minor, the vast majority of jobs are local, in small business, most of whom employ less than five.

The way it works is if we each employ one, we have a 100% labor shortage.

This bottom level employment is Main Street, the first job at the burger stand, clerk at the drugstore, hardware, and these are the jobs we are losing. They take consumers, with cash. A third of our people are leeches, they go to grammer school, and expect an allowance. Full employment of adults, 20 to 60, supports the old and young, and makes them cash customers.

We claim 9.1% unemployed, the real figure is more than twice that, The self employed do not count, the business now losing money, Those who worked for cash, and those who never got the first job.

Creating more jobs by better working standards makes all the rest profitable. A 10% reduction in hours, produces 10% more jobs, and that feeds the self employed, those who work for cash, produces entry level jobs at the local burger stand, and gives out child welfare as allowances, to buy burgers, candy, toys.

It moves the cost from the government, our money, to the employers, larger tax deductions. It also produces a pool of trained workers, good for business, and consumers with money.

All it takes is making ten jobs into eleven.

Our employed workers are overworked and stressed. Give them a break, Labor costs go up 10%, but labor is a small part of most products.

The expanded consumer market will make it profitable.

More people paying into Social Security, paying local taxes, which pays for playgrounds where non working children consume burgers and candy and play with toys.

This is not a hard problem to solve.

In short you want 1.25 people doing what 1 person can do. This will increase costs and make U.S. goods and services even less competitive than they are now.

What you propose does not solve any problems. It only spreads the misery.

ruveyn

Math check, I want 1.1 people. Also known as 10%.

A four hour reduction in the work week, leads to more sleep, and lower stress, so all 1.1 people will become more productive.

This will lead to a lower cost per unit sold.

States run unemployment, badly, and put the charge on all employers. Full employment reduces the rate per employee. Tired workers get injured, Workmans Comp and Social Security disability costs are reduced.

This leads to a lower cost for employers.

Employed people spend more. The marginal dollar gets spent, which revives Main Street. It is also subject to sales tax, so it supports local services directly. While most do not pay income tax, they do pay sales tax and Social Security, and 10% more paying into Social Security keeps it funded long term.

For goods and services to be competitive, they must be up to date and forward looking. Doing what we did last year with less people does not work for long. Sure the people at the top get a bonus for good numbers, for a quarter or a year, but it comes with long term costs.

Laying off people, replacing them with cheaper workers, destroys the knowledge base of the company. The new hires are clueless, when things fail, they stand there waiting for orders. Worker education is seen as a waste, or worse, which is why burger chains went to pictures on the register, for anyone who could run a register could get a better job.

While it is true that trained workers can advance somewhere else, we are all in the same chain, and the burger stand and local drugstore do provide the first job, basic worker training, the transition from school to work in the real world, and what works at eighteen does not work at thirty with two kids.

To be competitive in the world we need well trained workers.

Under twenty-five now lead in unemployment. I see people of fifty working fast food, that used to be high school part timers. This is where they learned what is not taught in school. They were much better workers than people who got their first job after the university.

The mindset formed at a university where you pay to be there, is very different than working fast food at seventeen where you are paid to be there.

Top that with unemployed grads, and their lifetime earnings will be lower. Their potential skills are wasted because they never learned to work.

The result of 10% unemployment is decades of lower production, a massive loss of skills, which will not be transfered to the next wave of workers. New workers will not get the training of first jobs as teens, have the mobility of working in several fields, and self educate to the world of work in the real world.

Most people do not go to the university, 70% learn by working. It is our largest educational system. It is also the most productive. Most development is in small things, the mechanic who fixes cash register drawers who thinks up a better latch. There is a lot designed by a trained Engineer, and made to work by a dropout.

What I learned cutting lawns at thirteen had me working on cars by fifteen, and computers at eighteen. Everyone could run the machines, I learned to keep them running. I learned to spot problems before they brought a stop to a whole office. Dianostic troubeshooting is not taught. it is a self developed skill.

Full employment is not just economics, it is our main education. Skills lost, or never developed, reduce our competitive ability for generations, and reduce the quality of our goods and services.

They can also change the game. When IBM laid off a lot of badly dressed people in 1972, and kept the salesmen, in 1974 when the next boom hit, they were offered their old jobs back, but had started their own computer companies. IBM could have owned the PC market.

Xerox could have owned the market with GUI, but they reduced headcount and gave tours in Palo Alto, to Jobs, Gates, and other geeky kids that might clean up and become mail room employees when economic conditions improved.

Geeks and VC, have been replaced by geeks named Xi, and PLA funding.

In a global economy full employment is our Department of Defense.