Timesizing, Not Downsizing

Timesizing_® not downsizing
We offer world's 1st 500-year view, dot-com political party, design, consulting, & URLs to suit your mood: ShorterWorkTIme.com, SWT.me, HopeDuJour.net, DoomDuJour.com, worksharing.biz ...

TIMESIZING is the missing plan of the Occupy movement (video). It means cutting the workweek to spread employment (& markets), instead of cutting jobs (& markets!). Its emergency form WORKSHARING is already saving jobs. Timesizing means more jobs, shorter hours and higher pay cuz you cut labor surplus. See our time trilogy & blog.

Unemployed? POed at the older generation for leaving you with all these megaprobs? Bored with the same ol', same ol' "crises"? Well here's one fully developed solution, the Timesizing Program. Its 5 phases provide a pattern for upgrades and an improving regional, national & global future of 500+ years. To save the world, you can't start with hunger - no one with money is hungry. You can't start with poverty (lack of money) - no one with a good job is poor. It all comes down to jobs, & jobs come down to time on the job. Mess up your time arrangements & you mess up your whole society, cuz time counts it all. This is the biggest website on worksharing in English, with over 8 years of quantitative and anecdotal data. We're retro & text-heavy but we load fast. We strive for a commentary "voice" somewhere between Dave Barry and Gilbert&Sullivan. Timesizing is an economic design for sustainable, market-based jobs by making the workweek lower while making high tech higher. Don't miss ironfoot444's *video.

Friday, June 1, 2012

, while the realization dawns that the Great Depression Revisited today is being spun as an endless 'stumbling recovery' after a mere 'recession,' we reverse the poles and first bring you small beginnings of a real solution (but see doom du jour below in case you still think this recoverup is a real recovery) -

hope du jourtm

– TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) -

(free consulting to writers interested in setting a scifi novel or play in a shorter-hours scenario, 617-620-6851 x.Phil Hyde)

Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - here's our latest ranking of leading countries - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it is the world's most common (but least publicized and never fully exploited) response to downturn, that's reinvented thousands of times a day in every recession by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Wash. State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' - in each case, more jobs would have been lost without the hours-cuts or furloughs -

Wanted: A More Radical Plan to Reduce Unemployment, Daily Beast via thedailybeast.com
NEW YORK, N.Y., USA - In the face of worsening economic news, it's time to start thinking about some more radical approaches to reducing unemployment. The German practice of "work-sharing" has been endorsed by both Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research... - see whole article under today's date.
[...tho' worksharing is hardly "radical" - we only DID IT for over 100 years when we cut the workweek in half between 1840 and 1940.]

Animal Welfare, Human Welfare Linked, HuffingtonPost.com
NEW YORK, N.Y., USA - ...The worst sight is another animal control truck lumbering through the parking lot, bringing new lost, neglected or abused creatures to the shelter. ...Trucks from the most impoverished towns in my area were much more prevalent than those from better-off areas... We can help [shelters] who need government help, all in an effort to get them on their feet again and able to provide for themselves and their animals. We can do so by coming up with structural ways to provide for them and then have them provide for themselves. Such schemes include more investment in job-training, work sharing and counseling to deal with the strong and often violent emotions that come with living in poverty... - see whole article under today's date.

Important Change to Unemployment Comp On the Way, American Society of Employers via ASEonline.org
LIVONIA, Mich., USA - ...The philosophical argument against Work Sharing is that it reduces the level of marketplace churn that ends up creating new jobs and workers qualified to perform them.
[Well, we haven't been doing much worksharing yet in the USA and so we have had a lot of "workplace churn" in terms of downsizing - great according to this philosophical argument, right? - but WHERE is all this new job creation? WHERE are all the new jobs? This argument is just a little too "philosophical" for practicality. And the ASE is smart enough to drop it -]
The more practical form of opposition is likely to come from veteran employees, especially in a union environment, who would otherwise escape being laid off because of their seniority... - see whole article under today's date.
[Believe it or not, almost half the union movement has been unifying enough to fight for all employees in terms of peferring shorter hours for all instead of layoffs for a few, and a few more, and a few more... But suicidal veteran unionists certainly exist who prefer layoffs and unemployment and their long-term wage-depressing effects than take a short-term hit themselves, however small.]

PV equipment manufacturing: Komax Solar to lay off 70 workers, solarserver.com
LA CHAUX-DE-FONDS, Switzerland - ...Additionally, Komax will also introduce short-time work during the month of June at its Medtech division in Switzerland... - see whole article under today's date.
[This isn't "additional." This is why they didn't lay off over 100 workers.]

Shorter hours are happening anyway, but not the best way which maintains personal income and vital consumer spending via emergency worksharing and sustainable timesizing. We simply can't perpetuate a pre-computer 40-hour workweek forever into the age of robotics. It may be fun to sneer at those who believe in the "fixed lump of labor fallacy" based on the obviously infinite amount of work to be done, but there ain't an infinite amount of money to pay for it, and without pay, it ain't work - it's just hobby. We need to take charge of this workweek-trimming process, systematize it and make sure it happens in a way that absorbs the surplus of jobseekers, gets employers bidding against one another for good help, thereby harnesses market forces to flexibly maintain and raise wages and spending, leeches money out of the huge black hole of income and wealth in the top 0.01%, and gets those trillions back into circulation. Shorter hours is a strategy that is reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
- face the bad news here in the context of a sustainable solution (see hope du jour above) -
- editor's comments in [square brackets] – editor: Phil Hyde ecdesignr@yahoo.ca -
- today's headlines from Tufts' Tisch Library & updating from that cluttered kitchen in Somerville MA -

spiraling ECONOMIC DECLINE via $$$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Stocks fell, with the Dow Jones industrials capping [capping?? capping is for something going UP!] their biggest monthly decline in two years on downbeat readings on the labor market and business activity, WSJ, A1 pointer to C4.
The Dow slipped 26.41 points or 0.2% to 12393.45, leaving it down 6.2% for the month.

Vital signs - ...U.S. bond yields have tumbled...,
WSJ, A1.

US recovery doubts play on [ie: increase] investor fears - GDP growth revised down,
Financial TImes, 22.

U.S. GDP "grew" [our quotes] at an annualized 1.9% pace in the first quarter...amid continued weakness in the job market, WSJ, A1 pointer A6.
[Again, the GDP joke = now designed to go up even through the Great Depression.]

The U.S. government argued it has the right to place GPS tracking devices on cars without obtaining a warrant despite a high-court ruling, WSJ, A1 pointer to A2.
[And this used to be the Land of the Free. Have we really got beyond the Bush regime? And here's another such -]

When the President orders a killing, letter to the editor by Exec.Dir. Anthony Romero of the ACLU, NYT, A22.
[Re Bam's taking personal control of the CIA's hit list.]
"...No President should be given that breathtaking level of power..."
[The Executive Branch is out of control - as in Canada - and the "balance of powers" with the Legislative and Judicial Branches is history. The father of the Constitution, James Madison, would be depressed - he tried sooo carefully to avoid this. It starts with secrecy (CIA, or corporate anti-espionage depts.) which oozes into unaccountability...including unanswerability to any court of law...and spreads to slime the chief executive, and gunk the nation, and pretty soon, we're indistinguishable from Iran or Israel, against whom, and us, Isaiah, Jeremiah and all the Hebrew prophets, if alive today, would be railing, calling for investigation and cleanup ("repentance"), else doom - and we all know about the weep-in beside the rivers of Babylon after the bards' target was wasted and their favorite places ruined.]

Investor hazard: 'zombie funds', by Pulliam & Eaglesham, WSJ, A1.
...A near-dead fund that ties up investors' money and continues charging them fees even as hopes of profiting from its remaining assets has faded... Of the roughly 10,000 private-equity funds raised [=established] over the past decade, at least 200 now qualify as zombie funds, accounting for as much as $100 billion of the $1.5 trillion currently invested in these vehicles, according to consultants Torrey Cove Capital Partners LLC...

Multi-national companies are preparing for the worst amid feelings about a Greek exit from the euro, with many focused on retrieving their cash from the troubled country, WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.
[Rats abandoning a sinking ship - purely out of self-preservation, of course. But only Europe's over-reached finances and premature currency unification are sinking. With reduced worktime per person, less hidden dependency and desperation, and fuller employment and respect for self-support, the concept of work and inclusiveness in job market participation - and consequently higher and steadier domestic consumption per capita, northern Europe is even now, much solider and more sustainable than the USA. And the "islands of observers in the midst": Switzerland, Netherlands and Scandinavia, have a better chance of learning the lessons playing out around them and upgrading their economic cores than the giants. But as little Iceland demo'ed, it can still take outrageous gullibility by a few to wake up the many and get them out on the streets or snowbanks screamingfor and settinggetting LIMITS.]
General Electric is aiming much of its cost-cutting program at Europe,
WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.

Asia strains under euro crisis - Declining European demand for region's exports compounds sputtering growth, WSJ, A1.
[Blame someone else? Or blame yourselves for your lack of self-sufficiency, your failure to build your own anchoring domestic consumer base with full employment via overtimeTOjobs conversion and workweekTOunemployment trimming?]
The economies of Asia are being hit by a double whammy of slowing domestic growth and the impact of the European debt crisis on exports and finance, WSJ, A1:1 pointer to A1:2.
India's economy grew at its slowest pace in almost a decade in the first quarter amid global unease and failure to push through reforms, WSJ, A1 pointer to A8.
[Gee, just like the USA!]

The segmentation century - How do you govern a diverse world?, op ed by David Brooks, NYT, A23.
[Ah, another articulation of The Big Question. First, "you" as in currently-suicidal Wall Street via puppet "USA" don't unless you're really determined to set back "intelligent" life on this planet. Second, each of the great integrating mechanisms thru the five accelerating ages of social evolution generalized-on and specifically deconstrained the previous one(s). In the 100,000s of years of the Anthropological Age, language released the constraints of the ca.1000-signal-max of pongid semiology - and tightened up the ambiguity thereof. In the 10,000 years of the Sociological Age, agriculturalcalendar oraltraditions released the constraints of pastoralism and hunting-gathering and focused our common interest in the farming schedule. In the 5200 years of the geoGRAPHic Age, writing released the constraints of memory and constrained our intolerance with the knowledge of how differently WE did it in the past. In the 1,720 years of the Political Age, built-in competition between two or more levels of impatience released the societal-adaptibility constraints imposed by "killing" the messenger of bad news (when Anthony of Thebes hit the desert of Pispir in a blanket rejection of society and started the monastic movement, neither the monastics nor the clergical/clerical stickinthemuds could walk away completely or kill each other off cuz they were "parts of the same body" - of Christ, dammit, and had to develop the political tools of courtesy-rhetoric/persuasion-negotiation-compromise-diplomacy/twofacedness-backtocourtesyagain) and tightened the constraints on violence. In the 322 years of the Economic Age (The Political Arithmetick), mathematics as a second language released the constraints of dramatic, inflammatory rhetoric and numb(er)ed-out the presentation of more-wide-ranging alternatives. Now burdened with the inertia/momentum of economese, we face the need to transcend the social sciences, balance social and natural, and burrow into the Ecological Age by automating a series of fundamental balances, starting with labor and employment, jobseekers and jobopenings, overemployment and underemployment, overskilled and underskilled - the first of the unpackagings of the great imbalances tween too much and too little, excess and scarcity, luxury and poverty... In other words, we are beginning the move from economic seniority to ecological versatility and irrelevantization of age, whether onthejob or off - and the serious accessing of voluntary mortality (and immortality), which can never happen while we demonize Kevorkian and keep silent about the Bush and Harper regimes, whitewash the Obama administration, desperately need military-industrial jobs, go easy on ethnic cleansers like Idi Amin, Miloševic, Hutus, Netanyahu... Now our common interest must anchor in a common weekly range of working hours per person. There is no soiid general servo-mechanism that can integrate more potentially harmonious diversity than this. But note that its prerequisites are a common language, a common calendar, a common script (and literacy to read it), a common polyparty system, a common mathematics-statistics (and numeracy to reckon it), and a common extension of self-interest to complete ecotomes and the whole biosphere. We are not going to get there with one person working 70-80 hour workweeks nextdoor to someone about to get foreclosed cuz they can only find 10 or 20 for peanuts.]

Features: • missed a recent hope/doom du jour? check out past hopes/dooms du jour
• design features • bibliography • site map • LINKS • time trilogy • I • II • III • the big question
• makework • the history of the American workweek • 30-hr. bill • business 'cycles' • courses • legislation
• contradictions in mainstream economics • class in America • growing disparity • worst case plan • economic design

Timesizing means full employment without makework, falling wages, or rising price levels.

How? By adjusting the workweek down & up - instead of firing & hiring - based on a comprehensive blueprint for a green economy & a new worktime economics where, 100 years from now, people will be...

repeating our basic economic slogan - "No Overtime Alone!" - in other words, if a manager 'needs' overtime (OT), s/he either hires temps or makes sure the skill bottleneck behind the OT gets opened up by setting up OT-targeted training

asking one another, "What's the workweek this month?" - in other words, work pressures are dynamically shared as incoming technology cuts their duration but boosts their stress

accommodating workoholics while blocking inflation, by unleashing "love to work" incentive (deflationary) while capping the money motive (inflationary), & balancing the two... - meanwhile, if you're a night person preferring work after normal business hours (and you're in the UK), *evening jobs that suit your lifestyle still exist and may exist in your area

For over eight years (1999-2004 and 2009-), we at the Timesizing Wire have been tracking what's rancid beneath the "recovery" via the top 2 U.S. newspapers, the Wall St. Journal on the right & the New York Times on the left with occasional input from the London Economist on the right, the Boston Globe on the left, Canada's national paper, the Toronto Globe & Mail, and regional papers around Ottawa & Québec. We pick up timesizing stories mainly from Google News Search. From 2005 to 2008, we paused to establish a Canadian branch when the USA failed to dump the kamekazi Bush regime, and now that the US is back to the slower Democratic rate of self-deterioration, we've resumed our daily updates.
Timesizing’s 3rd way is centrist and deep green, not just light or pinkish green like the Green Party's grocery list of ad hoc, unintegrated & unprioritized issues. Timesizing satisfies the right with smaller government and bigger firmer markets & the left with a simpler stronger social safety net that makes the right clean up their own recessions instead of continuously inducing them by privatizing and concentrating profits & nationalizing and centrifuging losses. Our Timesizing solution is based on working models, American history (especially 1933), on economic design, on ecology, and on worktime economics, linguistics, Limits to Growth, and Buckminster Fuller. The deep green center is the future, and we strategize for the next 100-500 years, not just the next quarterly report or four-year presidential term. Our site is always under construction. *Asterisked links take you *outside our site.

the problem, vs.		the timesizing solution
(in deteriorating stages)		(in stepped enhancements)
long workweek; short vacation	clue 1	electronic democracy vs PACs & lobbyists
downsizing; makework		market reinvestment vs corporate welfare
takeovers; bankruptcy; prison	clue 2	job&wage insurance vs gov't jobs programs
unemployment; homelessness		geared to problem vs emotional guesswork
vanishing retirement; disability	clue 3	plugging leaks vs Stinnes and Malthus
suicides; headlines from hell		transitions vs abrupt cures worse than disease

Pie in the sky? Click on Design Solutions for rebuttals of Impractical! Unconstitutional! Socialist! Uncompetitive! Inflationary! Anti-small business! Lump of Labor Fallacy!... And did we mention the Working Models?

For details, see our social-software manual, in simple language -

This numbered, first edition is available from *Amazon.com.

More angles on Timesizing
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Bibliography | Audiences | Research Priorities | Phil's Bio
Politics |The Forgotten Republican Key to Small Government | Sayings
Investment Advice | Why should I be forced to stop work at a certain #hrs/wk?!
America's Massive Pervasive Makework | Letting off steam | Opus Errata
Timesizing Courses | Website History | Website Reactions
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