Lavorare meno! Lavorare tutti!

[eridani]

Everything sounds more operatic and revolutionary in Italian, no? (No time to Google? Work less, and everybody works.)



http://www.truth-out.org/jobs-mirage-how-much-more-work-do-humans-really-need/1314284068

While honest toil is honorable, a day to honor labor does make it easy to overlook certain realities, such as: Why do both left and right clamor for more jobs? Would those who get to opine for a living be willing to perform the jobs they'd impose upon others? And why jobs? If work is the only way one can be worthy of an income, why not also clamor for self-employment and start-ups? Must the jobless look forward to having a boss their entire lives? And are more jobs needed, or even possible?

Instead of clamor for jobs, why not clamor for a shorter workweek and divide the necessary work among more people? How'd 40 hours a week get to be some sort of magic number? Why aren't automation and globalization whittling that down to 30, 20, 10, going, going, gone? Juliet Schor in her "Overworked American" (1991) calculated that if increases in productivity (more output from less labor input) over the course of a baby boomer's career were applied not to things like fatter CEO salaries, but to shrinking the workweek, it'd now be 6.5 hours. Why isn't it?

<snip>

Now, days with billions of humans on the globe, land is not quite as accessible, but it could be made more affordable. When that happens, jobs sprout and wages climb, as has happened several times: In the 1960s and 1970s, New Zealand's employment rate averaged 99 percent for ten years. In the late 1950s, Danish workers received the biggest one-time raise in wages in Dansk history. And in the 1920s, New York City spurred the construction of numerous apartment buildings that provided jobs and slashed unemployment to negligible.

What was the one thing those places did in common? Their governments levied land. Whenever landowners must pay a heavier land tax, they eschew speculation and put their parcels to good use. The new construction puts people to work as do the resultant shops, offices and factories, as does the spending of wages by the gratefully employed workers.

[Electric Monk]

1. k&r

[Tx4obama]

2. Tu sei italiano? Da dove?

The Italian part of my family lives an hour or so east of Napoli :)

[eridani]

3. No, but the Italian slogan has caught internationally among advocates for reduced work hours

It goes pretty well with waving banners, no?

[Bluebear]

4. Tutti a tavola a mangiare!