"Przemek Klosowski" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:05:37 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

The assumptions were that the work week would be shortened to four days;
eventually less. More people would be required to fill a certain number
of man-hours of work.

I read somewhere that in France it is illegal to work overtime, and
people who do are fined. The French reasoning is that overtime means
that someone does extra work, and as a result the state will have to
pay unemployment benefits to other people who didn't get the job.

If true it's a weird system, but at least it's internally consistent.
It reminds me of the movie 'Brazil', describing a future dystopia in
which labor is a precious resource that people have to 'steal'.

It sounded pretty reasonable back in the '60s, even though it was never
favored by many in the US. For what little it's worth, my own opinion is
that it's too utopian/ideological to be successful for very long.

But at least they addressed an issue that most of us either ignored or
daydreamed our way around. Welcome to reality running up against our
daydreams.

Employment can level off at several different equilibrium states, and
government labor policy is one thing that can set the equilibrium. But
economic facts and economic history can crush any good ideological idea.

--
Ed Huntress