Posted on 08/26/2011 2:48:15 PM PDT by Kaslin
Yes, you read correctly.
“Spread the jobs around.”
You’re probably familiar with Barack Obama’s well documented intentions to “spread the wealth around.” In a discussion about his vision for economic recovery back during the campaign of 2008, he expressed that intention using those precise words (do a web search with the President’s name and the phrase, and see what pops up).
Today, the President struggles with the political consequences brought about by the stifled economy, which has been brought about his own “wealth spreading” ways. Yet within the Obama worldview, it makes sense that a President who has displayed no vision for wealth creation – he has only championed ways in which to re-distribute existing wealth – would likewise have no real vision for job creation, and would instead attempt to “spread around” the inadequate number of jobs that already exist.
Enter Dean Baker, an Economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. As if perfectly timed with the President’s upcoming address on the economy, Mr. Baker has proposed what he calls a national “work sharing” program, calling it a “quick route to full employment.”
A quick visit to the “Center’s” website provides a brief description of Mr. Baker’s academic paper on “work sharing.” Describing the overall program, the website indicates that what is being proposed is a “system of work sharing that would give employers an incentive to maintain workers on their payroll at reduced hours as an alternative to laying them off. The system would be attached to the existing system of unemployment compensation, with short-time compensation as an alternative to unemployment compensation. This means that work sharing would require no new government bureaucracy…”
While recently being interviewed about his “work sharing” concept on the Fox Business Channel, Mr. Baker further elaborated, stating “"...we're talking about a situation where workers would work somewhat fewer hours, and make somewhat less money…” As an alternative to being laid-off altogether, Mr. Baker surmises that “alot of workers would take that in a second..."
Indeed, what Mr. Baker is proposing is best described as a “spread the jobs around” approach to employment. And no doubt it has some of the same appeal, mostly emotional appeal, that candidate Obama’s “spread the wealth around” ideas did three years ago. But just because it “looks good on paper” doesn’t mean that it’s good, functional, or even “fair” public policy. In reality, the “spread the jobs around” idea is flawed on multiple levels.
For one, the idea of making public policy of this sort erroneously presumes that businesses aren’t already “spreading around” the workload at times. Politicians, government bureaucrats, and many academicians don’t understand this, but actual business owners and managers have to make difficult decisions with their staffs every day.
If one worker is productive and another is not, an owner or manager has to make tough choices to maintain and bolster productivity. If budgets shrink, a business must make move so as to maintain productivity while at the same time trimming expenditures. This may involve “spreading around” the workload and employee compensation, re-assigning workers to different tasks, or in some unfortunate cases laying-off workers. But when layoffs must occur, a business will generally try to retain the most productive workers, while sacrificing the least productive.
An arbitrary government policy that would force businesses to “spread the jobs around” would likely undermine businesses quite severely. Rather than prioritizing productivity, as business owners and managers must, “spread the jobs around” establishes as its goal the reduction of the unemployment rate. So what if the most competent and productive workers get their hours and wages cut, as a means of providing hours and wages to less productive workers? When desperate incumbent politicians are running for re-election, spreading the jobs around becomes an attractive policy idea if it can help reduce the unemployment rate in the short run. Thus the needs and interests of the politicians are dramatically different from those of businesses.
Another problem with “spread the jobs around” is that it begins with the wrong question in mind. Asking “why is the unemployment rate so high?” is worthwhile. But a better question is “why are so many American businesses experiencing strong profits and all time high levels of productivity, and still not hiring new workers?” Those questions are related, but they are not the same. Politicians and liberal think-tank operators don’t want to ask the “why no hiring” question, because the answer traces back to some of their favorite policy creations.
The worst part of “spread the jobs around” is that it makes mediocrity acceptable. It says “America can no longer create wealth and opportunity for all, so we must force some of that opportunity out of the hands of certain individuals, and arbitrarily place it in the hands of certain others.”
“Spread the jobs around” implies that for some people to win, others must fail just a bit. This is consistent with the Obama worldview, but it is repugnant to a majority of Americans.
spread something , going to need a shovel
Shovel ready job spreading...the new Dem slogan.
Does ANYONE believe that for 4 generations, “families” consisting of un-wed mothers, and multiple children, collecting State, City, County, and/or Federal “assistance” has ever really thought about being self-sufficient, when they can live off Whitey’s money (those rich bastards have more than they need)?
He already shares his job with Valerie Jarret, he get the perks ans privileges and she makes policy and executive decisions. Don’t doubt me!
This is about grinding people down and making them poorer. Fascism writ large.
You are correct. Watch for the Bill Daley resignation. That will be the tipping point moment. When Daley boots out of the White House the powers within the Democratic Party will have silently announced the end of Obama and Valerie in order to save the party even if it means decades of Republicans in the White House.
It sure sounds like it
Many business owners are working 85 hour workweeks because they dont want to hire anyone else.
Fascism is on the way.
Can one of the guys from the street corner handle my call on the VP of IT at a Fortune 500 company next week?
Taht sort of scheme wil lalso accomplish another very important goal for those behind 0bama: demoralization and the further destruction of trust. It will set people against one another. I’m exploring this methodology in one the chapters of my book.
I am by no means an anti corporate person.
Even I can see this being a complete disaster from the worker’s perspective. Many of us already work more than 40 per week as salaried employees. If they reduced pay 20% and hours to 32, that would mean I get paid less for an actual 40 hours of work. That doesn’t even touch the implicit threat that if you don’t do the free overtime, your entir job may go away.
In effect this proposal is to reduce ever ones pay so that a greater percentage of people have work. That is onemway to artificially reduce unemployment, I guess.
Another problem is fir the employer. Do they still need to offer ill time benefits for part time employees?
Yeah, that all sounds great. Fubo
What jobs? Oh yeah. The ones he makes up while Wookie Wide Load is guzzling the booze and eating her way through the world on our dollar.
A doctor from Israel says: “In Israel, the medicine is so advanced that we cut off a mans testicles, put them on another man and in 6 weeks, he is looking for work.”
The German doctor comments: “That’s nothing. In Germany we take part of a brain from one man, put it in another man, and in 4 weeks, he is looking for work.”
A Russian doctor says: “Russia has you beat, gentlemen. We take out half a heart from one, put it in another’s chest, and in 2 weeks, he is looking for work.”
The United States doctor answers and laughs: “You all are way behind us. 2 years ago in the USA, we took a man with no brains, no heart and no balls, put him in as President. Now, the whole country is looking for work!!”
Obama’s going to create the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to coordinate his new agencies, the CCC, CWA, and WPA, along with the PWA and NYA.
Man I hate iPad autocorrect.
ill time==full time
Or a push to turn everyone into pay per week contractors, on 5 months off 2 weeks on 5 months. Pay per the job, regardless of hours worked, then work them 40-60 hours.
Such ideas simply reveal the fact that this Administration and its advisers have spent more time reading Marx and Keynes than Jefferson and Adam Smith.
The question is not about "spreading the wealth" or "spreading the jobs," or even "alleviating the poverty" which results from those two repugnant ideas.
The question for America from its very beginning centered around securing "liberty for individuals," and it was that motivating passion that resulted in "creating the wealth" and the opportunities and jobs which resulted therefrom.
The only people who spend their time on this earth devoted to "spreading the wealth" by the use of the coercive power of government are those who either are ignorant of America's founding ideas of liberty or who have devoted themselves to a philosophy which leads to tyranny and oppression in every nation where it has taken root, and does it by allowing political elites to rob "the People" of their Creator-endowed rights to be free.
Hear Churchill:
"The difference between what is seen and what is not seen was often noticed by the old economists. What is not seen is the infinite variety of individual transactions and decisions which, in a civilized society, within the framework of just and well-known laws, insure the advantage not only of the individual concerned, but of the community, and provide that general body of well-being constituting the wealth of nations. All this is blotted out by an over-riding State control, however imposing some of its manifestations may be. It is the vital creative impulse that that I deeply fear the doctrines and policy of the socialist Government have destroyed, or are rapidly destroying, in our national life. Nothing that they can plan and order and rush around enforcing will take its place. They have broken the mainspring, and until we get a new one the watch will not go." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons, October 28, 1947.
" It is in the interest of the wage-earner to have many other alternatives open to him than service under one all-powerful employer called the State. He will be in a better position to bargain collectively and production will be more abundant; there will be more for all and more freedom for all when the wage earner is able, in the large majority of cases, to choose and change his work, and deal with a private employer who, like himself, is subject to the ordinary pressures of life and, like himself, is dependent upon his personal thrift, ingenuity and good-housekeeping." - Winston Churchill, speech, Blackpool, October 5, 1946
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