leff@smu.UUCP (11/28/83)
#N:smu:16500011:000:5053 smu!leff Nov 27 15:28:00 1983 A new way of stabilizing the economy: We can't seem to get the economy stable because of the Philips curve. If we try and cut unemployment we heat up the economy creating inflation. If we try and cut inflation, we have unemployment. The government should cut all government salaries by about half and set a maximum salary of $20 to 30,000.. This would include government projects such as the defense industry. (The defense industry creates the least number of jobs per dollar spent because of the high wages because there are too many jobs.) As the economy improves the people in government jobs would leave to take jobs in private industry that would be paying better. Thus inflation would be decreased as wages could not go up as fast. When the economy turns sour, there would be a large number of vacancies to be filled in the government which would take up the unemployment. Granted the people in the government service won't like it. But, a data entry operator has more stress than an air traffic controller. Why should one make *five* times the other? Even after PATCO was defeated, they still are. Notice how many people lined up for those jobs. (THe information about stress levels came from a recent NIOSH study.) Sure, policemen get killed in the line of duty. However, in New York City, the police deparment boasted that the chances of dying on the job was the average for all professions. This information came from their insurance company! Although a politician or political party advocating such a scheme would lose the votes of the people currently in the job, they would gain the votes of a) the additional people that would be hired. Since the salaries are lower the government would hire more people. b) Since there would be more people in various jobs so more services could be provided. More cops, smaller class size, more inspectors to prevent people from being frozen to death by greedy landlords. Instead of unemployment insurance, one would work in a government job until they find a suitable job elsewhere. Night shifts would be reserved for this purpose so that people could still interview. I know many people who either never seriously looked or at least were more picky while getting unemployment insurance. Welfare would be eliminated except for severely disabled people. Some people of course would be assigned to providing day care for others who were working in jobs. Government would thus return to its role of being the employer of last resort. Also those people who were dedicated to a particular role (being a teacher, fighting air pollution, stopping drunk drivers or whatever) could find an opening doing what they wanted to instead of being kept out by senior people holding on to a high paying and secure job via seniority. We probably would still be in Viet Nam if our soldiers weren't drafted but were fairly high paid civil service workers whose jobs depended upon the continuance of that war. How would you reward good people under such a system you might ask. Allow the manager to vary the individual work week from 30 to 80 hours for each worker as long as the average for the people under them remains under 40 hours. What better incentive to get your work done than a three day weekend. If you didn't get anything done then you could stay twelve hours a day every day in the week in a bleek office provided for the purpose. Practically anybody but the most dedicated shirker would decide it would better to be moderately productive for fourty hours than to sit in a room doing nothing for eighty hours. Those who refused to stay in the room could forfeit their check for that week. Managers who failed to maintain proper productivity would be sent back to the ranks to work. They wouldn't get any more pay. The sole reason for being a manager would be to have control over one's destiny. They couldn't be too favoristic since that would ruin productivity. People who didn't like their manager could transfer somewhere else 'if somewhere else ' wanted them. Managers couldn't be too fussy because of the intentional chronic shortage of employees. Thus managers in the government would be forced to walk the fine line between being too lenient and not getting any productivity and being too harsh and losing all their workers. A manager would not have the right to fire but could choose who to hire. Likewise, a person who is a moderate troublemaker or iconoclast could still get hired. Someone totally uncooperative could not. Thus a bright, hard working, trouble maker could get a job in the government but lose the money or go to private industry and 'behave' themselves. As Friedman said about printing stuff, people would have the freedom to be trouble makers but it would no be too expensive. Of course the system of seniority, unions etc. now prevents any efficiency in most governmental operations today anyway. Even though government jobs tend to be relatively high paying in many cases, government workers are notorious for inefficiency.
wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) (11/29/83)
Yes, it sounds great. Maybe we could from some kind of plan in which we could review everyone every five years to see if they are putting out enough effort? We could call it a "Five Year Plan". Those who are not performing up to some set of standards could be sent to someplace like the Alaskan frontier to to contemplate their lack of productivity. We could even form groups or cells where we could discuss current events and government supplied literatue. I think if we were to do this, we would have to close off our borders so that outsiders who would be fighting to get in would not be able to do so. We might even let Canada and Mexico into our new way of life. On second thought, we would be better off if we just made them join us. That would give us a buffer against all those other countries. Besides, what better way to get their raw materials away from them. Why, by adopting this grand suggestion, we could probably do away with political parties and those elections that seem to cost so much. I can see it now. No more unemployment, except for those who would refuse to do the jobs they were assigned(they can just starve). No need for newer consumer goods as everyone would be paid the same. There would also be no need for wasteful incentive plans as we could eliminate incentive altogether. Perhaps we could convince other nations to follow our example? Nations like Britian or Japan would be easy to convince. All we have to do is send over about 200,000 troops and I'm sure they will be glad to join us. Ah Utopia, are you really that near?