It works like this: Because workers' salaries would remain unchanged as a result of the paid time off, aggregate demand in the economy would also remain unchanged or even rise because of greater leisure time for consumer and recreational activities. Therefore employers will have to maintain productivity levels by hiring more workers to make up for lost labor input. Not only would workers reap the rewards of more leisure time without penalty, but potentially millions of unemployed individuals would be put to work at relatively low cost. (If the French and the Germans can create more jobs this way, so can we.)
The plan would cost the government roughly $26,000 per new job created, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Notice that this is far less than the CBO-estimated average cost of as much as $200,000 per job created by the 2009 stimulus package. It's also far less than the average cost of more than $190,000 for every job created by subsidizing the fossil fuel industries.
In Germany, a similar tax credit in exchange for shortening work hours resulted in a steady unemployment rate of 7.6 percent throughout the recession, the same rate they had prior to the economic downturn. "Imagine if workers in the United States, like workers in Germany, were dealing with the recession by putting in four-day weeks (while getting paid for five) or getting an extra two weeks of paid vacation," writes Conyers. "This sure beats being unemployed."
Keeping the measure in place after the recession ends could very well turn out to be advantageous for the economy in the long run. "If the new arrangements prove better for workers and employers, then many employers will opt to keep them even after the tax credit has expired," says economist Dean Baker. "In this way, the tax credit may go far towards making benefits like paid family leave or paid sick days universal and moving the United States towards a shorter work year."
The 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps Act [H.R.494]
Sponsored by Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur, the 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps Act (CCCA) is a job creation program that re-establishes a Civilian Conservation Corp that puts to work unemployed and underemployed civilians to advance useful public works projects aimed at safeguarding natural resources and developing new transportation and infrastructure.
The original Civilian Conservation Corp, created in 1933, lasted for nearly a decade and was the first and most popular program of the New Deal. The February 6, 1939 issue of Time magazine reported that "more continuously than any other New Deal experiment, CCC " had the respect of foes as well as friends of Franklin Roosevelt." After only five years, the newly-employed workers of the CCC had built thousands of bridges and dams, planted 1.5 million trees in public parks and forests, re-vegetated hundreds of thousands of acres of land, put out fires and completed a hundred thousand miles of trails and roads.
Kaptur told The Nation she believes that, like the original, the CCC for the 21st century would produce enormous returns to society on the investment required.
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