In his column today -- "Free to Lose" -- Paul Krugman comes out in favor of trying a job sharing program. Let me suggest an alternative: paid training time. As I've suggested a couple of times before, we should be paying workers to be in training programs. The job sharing programs compensate workers for lose wages due to working fewer hours. Rather than reduce their hours, we should use those hours for training. It can be on-the-job training or classroom training.
This would have the dual effect: It would increase our human capital -- a major input to the innovation ecosystem. And it would immediately increase consumer demand as companies would use the funds to pay workers to take classes (thereby creating more employments slots for others to fill the working hours of those in the classes).
As I have said over and over again, rather than pay workers to stand in unemployment lines or stay at home, let's pay them to sit in a classroom.
This would have the dual effect: It would increase our human capital -- a major input to the innovation ecosystem. And it would immediately increase consumer demand as companies would use the funds to pay workers to take classes (thereby creating more employments slots for others to fill the working hours of those in the classes).
As I have said over and over again, rather than pay workers to stand in unemployment lines or stay at home, let's pay them to sit in a classroom.
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