The Best Way to Create Jobs

CUT THE WORK WEEK

By EUGENE P. COYLE

We have been trained to think of unemployment and stagnant pay as a shortage of jobs. That fits the neoliberal sales message of endless growth and expansion. If we think of our problem as shortage of jobs and stagnant wages, the policy is always stimulus, more production, more consumption, more growth. In short, the treadmill the economy has been on for years. The stimulus is a high-energy drink to get us back on the treadmill. But if we think of the problem as a surplus of workers instead of a shortage of jobs, then a third tool beyond monetary and fiscal policy emerges – cutting the workweek. From that good things unfold...