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©2004-12 Phil Hyde, ecdesignr@yahoo.ca, The Timesizing Wire™, Box 117, Harvard Sq PO, Cambridge MA 02238 USA 617-623-8080
past hope/doom du jour’s
- underlying stories, if hotlinked, are still available under their individual dates -
    hope du jourtm  – TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) -
            (free consulting to writers interested in setting a play or novel in a futuristic work-balanced or money-balanced society, 617-620-6851)
    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 -
  1. Push for shorter work hours gets lukewarm response - Many workers prefer fatter paychecks to more leisure time [and thereby guarantee a future of labor surplus and thinner paychecks], The Korea Herald via koreaherald.com
    SEOUL, S.Korea - The government’s latest drive to reduce working hours is facing reluctance from workers who fear an impact on their paychecks. Yet, experts see it as inevitable that the country tackles the ingrained culture of long hours to boost productivity, improve workers’ quality of life and create new jobs... - see whole article under today's date.
  2. Why Work-Life Balance Isn't Balanced - It's necessary, but not sufficient - Here's why focusing on wellbeing makes more sense, Gallup Management Journal via Gallup.com
    [Here's some whining that the mainline of progress in our lifetimes doesn't do absolutely EVERYTHING.]
    WASHINGTON, D.C. - ...France has mandated a 35-hour workweek, for example. ... A person may spend 35 hours a week at work, but if that worker, like Sheela, has an abrasive boss... - see whole article under today's date.
    [The course of true progress never runs smooth. There are always people who want the impossible, such as this woman who wants not only all employees' main need satisfied but each employee's EVERY need satisfied, regardless of personalities (many of whom may actually like this boss). And shorter hours would solve that anyway by making it easier for "Sheela" to find another good job if she quit. Then there's the next story which can be solved much easier by a government campaign to educate employees to the fact that shorter hours reduce labor surplus and thereby creates an overriding trend for higher paychecks, not lower. The disinformation spread by mostly American CEOs and their media that pay rises or falls by hours or productivity is nonsense at the macro level. The Chinese are working megahours for peanuts, and productivity has grown exponentially since 1970 and real wages have slipped. What's the shorter-hours "win" for employers and The Onepercent? Vastly stronger domestic markets and commensurate marketable productivity to invest in.]
    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.



    Wednesday, February 1, 2012, while the Great Depression replays today as the 'great recession', and lest you think there's been a recovery, we bring you first a dose of -
    doom du jour    tm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
    - face the bad news here in the context of a sustainable solution (see hope du jour below) -
     - editor's comments in [square brackets] – editor: Phil Hyde ecdesignr@yahoo.ca -
    - headlines in Cambridge from *Porter Sq. Books & updating from Cate's Café in Boston secteur-Somerville MA -

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

  • Vital signs - Americans' confidence in the economy inched downward in January, after climbing late last year,
    Wall Street Journal, A1 graph caption.
    The Conference Board index of consumer confidence fell more than three points to 61.1 in January...
  • Downbeat economic data pushed the Dow industrials down 20.81 points or 0.2%...,
    WSJ, A1 pointer to C4.
  • Nuclear reactors in the central and eastern U.S. face previously unrecognized earthquake threats, the NRC said,
    WSJ, A1 pointer to A3.
    hope du jourtm  – TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) -
            (free consulting to writers interested in setting a play or novel in a futuristic work-balanced or money-balanced society, 617-620-6851)
    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 -
  1. Right-to-Work[-without-joining-a-union] Laws Are A Waste of Time for Politicians and Unions: View, Bloomberg.com
    NEW YORK, N.Y. - ...Germany’s unions also play prominent roles when the economic cycle turns down. One example is the “Kurzarbeit” plan, or short-work system, in which companies temporarily move employees into shorter workweeks during downturns. Companies pay only for actual hours worked, and the government provides as much as two-thirds of the remainder... - see whole article under today's date.
  2. Jobs saved at Heron after working hours change, PrintWeek.com
    [We're going to take a flyer here and guess that part of the change involves a reduction...]
    HEYBRIDGE, Essex, U.K. - ...Wyndeham Group entered into consultation with 86 of the 300 employees at its Heron plant in response to a cut in capacity at the site. However, according to Unite, pressroom staff have agreed a change in shift pattern, which could reduce redundancies from 86 to 79. Unite national officer Steve Sibbald told PrintWeek: "We have negotiated a deal there for a more flexible shift pattern. It is designed to take into account specific contracts and has saved a number of jobs... - see whole article under today's date.
  3. Monti takes on lobbies in fight to modernize Italy, Scientific American via AP via CBSnews.com
    ROME, Italy - ...Powerful lobbies...have stifled economic growth by keeping swaths of the economy in the hands of insiders. These groups have long behaved like Medieval guilds — regulating standards, working hours and prices — and Monti now has a lengthening list of enemies that include bakeries, taxi drivers, pharmacists, lawyers, notaries, railroad workers and newsstand dealers... - see whole article under today's date.
    [The fact that vital working-hour regulation is still on the problem list here and not yet singled out as the Kurzarbeit kin of timesizing and the other balancing programs that guarantee higher quality-of-life, weights the odds here in favor of the race to the bottom.]
    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.