Bits and Pieces - Are Socialists Nuts?

Bernie Sanders, the Senate’s, most prominent declared socialist, wants the government to require private companies, to reduce the work week to 32 hours for the same pay. A 32-Hour Work Week Bill has also been sponsored in the House by “progressive” socialists, such as Ilhan Omar, Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib, Elenor Holmes Norton, and old fire-alarm-puller himself, Jamaal Bowman.

Much of the royalty of the ancien régime media is all on board. CNN, for example, breathlessly touts that and “well more than two–thirds of Democrats [and] even a majority of Republicans support a four-day work week.” When questioned about its economics by a Fox News reporter, Sanders was defensive but aggressive.

Now, I know that there are many, particularly younger people who have zero experience in what it takes to create jobs for others, who think this is a great thing. This would be the same crowd that thinks that the rest of us should pay the debts of the youngsters who borrowed up $100K to get a degree in, say, feminist history in sub-Saharan Africa.

More free time, same pay! More free stuff! Who could object? More time to work out, to go to your favorite vineyard, or just hang out with the other Bernie bros. You will be relaxed, less stress and much happier. What’s not to like?

So, let’s take a quick look at it in simple, economic terms, shall we? Try it out on your “progressive “acquaintances or relatives.

If a standard work is 40 hours, a reduction to thirty-two hours obviously is a 20% reduction in output. If the pay remains the same, it therefore is effectively a government–mandated hourly pay-raise of 25% for all employees, irrespective of their performance, productivity, or ability.

Or, if you want to think of it another way, consider a company that has a standard policy of two weeks’ paid vacation. If that company were to go to a four-day work- week of eight hours a day, then Bernie would have the government command the employer to give away an additional 50 days of paid vacation. So, if your small business kept its standard two-week vacation policy, it would be forced by the government to grant employees a total of 60 paid vacation days instead of ten.

So, Ms. Small Businesswoman, how are you going to make up any shortfall in production? if you need to keep your workforce at the same level to meet customer and market demands, you are going to have to hire more people and pay more money, at least a quarter-million dollars per year, for our hypothetical small business, just to maintain your original production.

If you have been losing money or are just starting up, struggling to carve out a niche for yourself, so what? Pay up! If you or any employer wants to invest any available revenue in developing new products or markets so that you can employ more people? Well, that’s good, but you’ve still got to pay up.

What, you say your sales and revenue stream won’t support what amounts to an across-the-board pay raise? Suck it up Jack, you still must obey. Borrow the money, you greedy capitalist.

There may be a silver lining for non-greedy, civic-minded businesses that want to do the right thing but don’t have the money to do so. Raise your prices, dummies. Then you’ll have more money. But you say that customers won’t pay more? Your demand curve is going down while your cost and price curves are going up? That’s too complicated - just do it.

And if none of this works and you go out of business? Your employees lose their source of income? Well, as such progressive worthies as Lenin and Robespierre are credited with saying, we have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, don’t we? And both of those gents knew a thing or two about breaking eggs, so we would be well advised to learn from them. After all, they would tell us that this is for the greater common good, so suck it up. And if it causes you hardship, none less than Ilhan Omar and crew promise that the government will ask productive taxpayers to support you in your time of need.

What could go wrong?