Serious about less unemployment?

The Daily Herald recently encouraged private industry to “take calculated risks to create jobs when they can.” This is not the way our economic system works. It’s not that bosses are evil people, but if a business were to take risks for the benefit of workers, they’d be liable to get sued by a group of diligent shareholders for not maximizing their short-term profit share, and precedent shows the shareholders usually win.

How to fix this? Use our democracy to compel the companies to hire more people. Paraphrasing the DH editors, “public officials should make incentives for job creation.” This shows how little creativity there is within public discourse these days. Political representatives are empowered to regulate commerce in the people’s interest. It is too wimpy to be demanding incentives only. Let’s reclaim creativity in politics and demand some real solutions.

To start off, institute a maximum wage for CEOs. Set a workers-to-profits ratio that mandates a minimum number of workers for companies based on how profitable the company is. And protect boards of directors from abuses of shareholder litigation.

If we’re serious about polishing off the 9 percent unemployment rate fairly quickly, we could require Congress to reduce the workweek from 40 to 36 hours a week, mandating overtime for anything over that. Full-timers would forgo 4 hours of pay per week (maybe making up for it after a maximum wage for CEOs). Combining the 4-hour workloads left over from each full-timer going down to 36 hours a week, a company could add one 36-hour “full-time” position for every 9 current employees, an 11 percent increase.

And by no means should it stop there. If you don’t like my suggestions, get creative and share some others.

Buddy Bell

Wood Dale