Timesizing, Not Downsizing

Timesizing_® not downsizing
We offer world's 1st 500-year view, dot-com political party, design, consulting, & URLs to suit your mood: worstcaseplan.com, masterplan.tv, criticalpath.info

DEFINITION:
TIMESIZING is cutting the workweek, to spread employment & maintain markets, not cutting the workforce - which cuts markets. Timesizing means more jobs, shorter hours, same pay, cuz you've cut the labor surplus. Check out our timesizing blog and our time trilogy.

To "save the world," first we need the right ideas. We can't start with hunger, because no one with money is hungry. But we can't start with lack of money (poverty), because no one with a good job lacks money. We must start with jobs. This website creates jobs by economic design, which we define as the answer to the question, "What's the smallest change that would gain the greatest good for the greatest number?" The new design will be simpler than the tangled web we've woven and there will actually be a series of designs to satisfy ever-rising expectations. The first will answer the urgent question: How do we reverse our economic downspin? and the strategic question: Is there a point in the process of concentrating our national income and wealth in the top brackets where the process starts to undermine itself?
We also answer: How do we get wartime prosperity without war? Wartime prosperity depended on a labor shortage that harnessed market forces to raise wages, spread the national income to the bottom 80% who wanted & needed to spend it, and boosted spending=demand & marketable productivity=sustainable investments. But how do we get a labor shortage without killing people? We had actually found a way before the war interrupted and upstaged it = workweek reduction (1938-39-40: hrs/wk 44-42-40, unemployment 19-17.2-14.6%)? - Walter Reuther called it 'fluctuating adjustment of the workweek against unemployment.' Pursuing this strategy solves two puzzles:
(1) When introducing technology, how can CEOs, without makework, maintain or increase employment and markets instead of downsizing jobs & the consumer markets & investments they support and dragging government (& taxpayers) into the role of employer and charity of last resort? (Bonus question: Is there some way to check inflation under full employment - without checking growth by raising interest?) (2) How do we then shift from maximizing consumption to save our economy, to minimizing consumption to save our ecosystem? (Taboo question: How do we stop the unlimited consolidation of our national income & wealth among the top .01% of our population from proceeding beyond the point where it starts cannibalizing its own consumer base?)
Two answers, two 'gears': (1) Timesizing = switch from trimming the workforce and the consumer base to trimming the workweek as long as unemployment is too high or wages too low; make honest self-support easier, not taxpayer-support and charity and crime, and – crucial – automatically convert overtime into training and jobs. (2) Once everyone is included in the worksharing system, GDP growth becomes optional instead of systemically necessary, because for the first time, growth can be limited without starving the now well-employed 'poor' or clobbering the consumer base (and the economy that's based on it). So then we can cut the workweek further to downshift production & consumption and save the planet without killing the economy. (And then, based on this work-balancing program, we design programs to balance money.)
Use this website for worst-case planning, economic design, and news on the current economic "recovery" as spun by both Right and Left, critiqued from the 3rd way viewpoint of a student of ecology, linguistics and history.

Today, as the Great Depression of 1929-41 replays, we bring you

doom du jourtm

(below) and

hope du jourtm – 7/12-13/2009 sunday-monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -

Brother, can you spare a bolt? 7/13 NYT, A1 pointer to B1.
Even Japan's legions of robots are facing unemployment as consumers cut spending on cars and gadgets. Many could be out of work for a long time as investments are curtailed.
Robots unplugged - In Japan, machines for work and play are idle, target article, 7/13 New York Times, B1.
- see article under today's date.
[So even robots are getting timesized in Japan! cuz they're still right there in the workplace undownsized.]
Porsche, Volkswagen, Siemens, Infineon: German Equity Preview, 7/13 Bloomberg - USA.
..Siemens AG (SIE GY): Europe’s largest engineering company had unexpectedly weaker orders in its transmission unit in June and may extend shorter working hours, Euro am Sonntag said, citing works council leader Lothar Adler...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not the best way = by decreasing the "full time" workweek and with it, the labor surplus, and thereby harnessing market forces in increasing jobs, wages, spending and markets. And eighteen US states and lotsa countries, including Wales in the UK, have worksharing programs to cushion the transition.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
A new push to look back [and not just "look forward"] - Bush-era issues may force Obama's hand, New York Times, A1.
..to ramp up investigations into the Bush-era 'security' programs [our quotes], despite the political risks...
[No investigations? no finding out the corruption? Then corruption continues and INCREASES - and America has a faster trip to the great Dumpster of History. Thank you, Dickhead oops Dick Cheney - see story below.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution:

ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Job losses show wider racial gap in New York City - Blacks hit far harder - Numbers in City buck the national trend, puzzling experts, by McGeehan & Warren, 7/13 NYT, A1.
...From the first quarter of 2008 through the first three months of this year, the number of unemployed blacks in the City rose four times as fast [as whites].... By the end of March, there were about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites...even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks here.... Across the nation...the gap between blacks and whites has risen..at a much slower rate than in New York...
News of zoos' financial woes stuns - Residents cite long history in hub [city, Boston], by Moskowitz & Ulloa, 7/12 Boston Sunday Globe, B1.
..Franklin Park Zoo would have to lay off most of its 165 employees in addition to finding homes for more than 1,000 of its animals if it were to close. If zoo officials fail to find places to send the animals, they said state authorities might have to decide whether to euthanize as many as 20% of them, a prospect that disturbed many visitors yesterday...
[Every 50-70 years the superwealthy of many "advanced" economies forget their foundations in the employment and consumer bases and come to believe that they, the financial market players, The Investors, are the be-all and end-all. They start lobbying and litigating to pay less and less tax of all kinds, thus passing the burden down to their foundation. And recession begins, repeatedly reclassifiable as recovery, even the ridiculous "jobless recovery," but finally undeniably permanent as a depression. They starve their society and turn it into a primitive place of savagery, safe neither for animals nor even for the wealthy themselves. Timesizing and its successor programs, all gated and paced by public referendums, are designed to centrifuge the huge, dangerous and dysfunctional concentrations of money and power that arise along the Kondratieff Long Wave.]

A DELUGE OF DISABILITY & "disability" in the news (archives) - so-o-o unnecessary with the shorter workweeks of the timesizing program -
A backlog at Veterans Affairs, NYT, A1 pointer to A10.
As more and more veterans seek disability compensation, a backlog of claims keeps growing.
[Cap welfare and get more disability. We'll be paying for the Wars of Choice of Bush-Cheney forever. Boy, they - and the numbskulls that voted for them - and the scum that rigged the electronic voting machines - really did a job on America! Could be the end of our ride.]

ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
>Boiling the frog - Can our political system head off creeping disasters?, by Paul Krugman, 7/13 NYT, A17.
[quick answer = no - especially when right across the page, an editorial pleads for no immigration law enforcement -]
More immigration non-solutions, editorial, 7/13 NYT, A16.
..Pres. Obama's Dept. of Homeland Security announced last week that it was pressing forward with - and even expanding - old, bad Bush administration ideas about immigration enforcement...
[Bush's ideas on immigration enforcement were just about the only good ideas he had. Liberals are losing more street cred with their Save The World By Moving It All Here political correctness than anything else they're doing. It's high time to free police from the CIA-promoted "drug war" (they need the profits for their slush funds) and get police on the top-priority war against over-population and providing the American 'body economic' with a skin. No organism can exist without a skin.]
Jobless 'recovery' [our quotes] would call for nuanced investing, 7/13 WSJ, C1.
[I'll say, since there's no such thing as a recovery without stronger markets, and there's no such thing as markets without jobs.]
For Goldman [Sachs], a swift return to lofty profits, 7/13 NYT, A1.
..because [supposedly] of their trading prowess across world markets...
[or their prowess in creative accounting?]
...lawmakers and taxpayers..aided Goldman with a multibillion-dollar cushion last fall...
[so where's our 'cut'?]
CIT Group scrambles to survive, avoid a [bank] run, 7/13 WSJ, C1.
FDIC's challenge: Finding fit saviors, 7/13 WSJ, C1 pointer to C6.
Slump spreads to health care as Michigan loses auto jobs, by Kate Linebaugh, 7/13 WSJ, A1.
TROY, Mich. - The sputtering Michigan economy is dragging down the state's once-strong health-care system, offering a preview of how a lingering recession could corrode Americans' hospitals, savings and health...
Sick and getting sicker - Rising health-care costs are pushing entrepreneurs to the limit - Some are changing coverage - Some are eliminating coverage - And some are deciding not to go into business at all, 7/13 WSJ, R1.
[No entrepreneurs? Say goodbye to America.]
U.S. airlines fly into credit squeeze - Plunge in travel demand could result in bankruptcy filings by winter if conditions don't improve, 7/13 WSJ, B1.
[A-gai-ain??]
Cheney linked to concealment of CIA project - Antiterror plan was kept secret under his orders - The president must keep intelligence committees fully informed, by law, 7/12 BSG, A7.
[Dick Cheney is a lawless traitor hiding behind the "conservative" label. It is time to arrest him and all his fellow traitors from the Republican-camouflaged Bush regime, and make them feel the full weight of the law.]
A dog fight [ever seen a 'dog fight' with billion$ at stake?=bad metaphor!] Obama seems bound to lose,
by Bryan Bender, 7/12 BSG, A1.
..When it comes to the administration's proposal to end production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet to save billions of dollars over the next decade, the N.H. Democrat.\.Rep. Paul Hodes..has joined other members of the president's own party to insist the Air Force buy more of the planes despite fierce objections from the Pentagon and even the threat of a presidential veto...
[There certainly should be a presidential veto and a quick end to the political careers of all these prima-facie corrupt "representatives" representing nothing but the arms manufacturers - not their taxpaying constituents, not our already deeply indebted descendants, and not even the Pentagon!]
The next conservative thinkers - Many Republicans fret that the party of ideas [well, for their first 75 years anyway] has gotten stuck - Here are four who might help unstick it, 7/12 BSG, C1.
- see more of this article under today's date.
[Don't think so. One has nothing but Democrat ideas!]

Features: • missed recent hope/doom du jour? check out past hopes/dooms du jour
• bibliography • site map • links • time trilogy: • vol.I • vol.II • vol.III • the big question
• makework • the history of the American workweek • 30-hr. bill • business 'cycles' • courses
New features - class in America, growing disparity, worst case plan, economic design

Timesizing means full employment without makework or inflation.

How? By adjusting the workweek down & up - instead of firing & hiring - based on a comprehensive blueprint for a green economy & a new worktime economics where, 100 years from now, people will be...

repeating our basic economic slogan - "No Overtime Alone!" - in other words, if you opt for overtime, you make sure the skill bottleneck behind it gets opened up by mentoring a trainee

asking one another, "What's the workweek this month?" - in other words, work pressures are dynamically shared as incoming technology cuts their duration but boosts their stress

accommodating workoholics while blocking inflation, by unleashing "love to work" incentive (deflationary) while capping the money motive (inflationary), & balancing the two

For over six years (1999-2004 and 2009...), we at the Timesizing Wire have been tracking what's rancid beneath the "recovery" via America's top two newspapers, the Wall Street Journal on the right & the New York Times on the left (often from *Wainwright Bank reading room in hip Davis Square, Somerville, Mass.), with occasional input from the London Economist on the right & the Boston Globe on the left. We pick up timesizing stories wherever we find them, but mainly from Google News Search. Then we paused for four years to establish a Canadian branch when the USA failed to get rid of the suicidal Bush regime in 2004, and now that the US has gone back to the slower Democratic rate of self-deterioration, we've resumed our daily updates.
Timesizing’s 3rd way is centrist and deep green, not just light or pinkish green like the Green Party's grocery list of ad hoc, unintegrated & unprioritized issues. Timesizing satisfies the right with smaller government and bigger firmer markets & the left with a simpler stronger social safety net that makes the right clean up their own recessions instead of continuously inducing them by privatizing and concentrating profits & nationalizing and centrifuging losses. Our Timesizing solution is based on working models, American history (especially 1933 ), on economic design, on ecology, and on worktime economics, linguistics, Limits to Growth, and Buckminster Fuller. The deep green center is the future, and we strategize for the next 100-1000 years, not just the next three months (quarterly report) or four years (U.S. presidential term). And we are always and everywhere under construction, & asterisked links take you *outside our site.

the problem, vs.		the timesizing solution
(in deteriorating stages)		(in stepped enhancements)
long workweek; short vacation	clue 1	electronic democracy vs PACs & lobbyists
biz downsizing; govt makework		market reinvestment vs corporate welfare
takeovers; bankruptcy; prison	clue 2	job&wage insurance vs gov't jobs programs
unemployment; homelessness		geared to problem vs emotional guesswork
forced retirement; disability	clue 3	plugging leaks vs Stinnes and Malthus
suicides; headlines from hell		transitions vs abrupt cures worse than disease

Pie in the sky? Click on Design Solutions for rebuttals of Impractical! Unconstitutional! Socialist! Uncompetitive! Inflationary! Anti-small business! Lump of Labor Fallacy!... And did we mention the Working Models?

For details, see our social-software manual, in simple language -

This numbered, first edition is available from *Amazon.com.

More angles on Timesizing
(Join shorter worktime e-list by emailingswt-digest-request@swt.org with 'subscribe' as msg)

Bibliography | Audiences | Research Priorities | Phil's Bio
Politics |The Forgotten Republican Key to Small Government | Sayings
Investment Advice | Why should I be forced to stop work at a certain #hrs/wk?!
America's Massive Pervasive Makework | Letting off steam | Opus Errata
Timesizing Courses | Website History | Website Reactions | Guest Book
This website, best viewed with *Mozilla Firefox, *Netscape or *Explorer, is dedicated to the memory of John Kowal of Buffalo & Brookline, our feistiest friend. The website is under constant micro-enhancement & experimentation.
• basic setup was by John MacMillan of Billerica, Mass., USAF Ret. & Mass. GOP webmaster
• website-host & -registrar coach is Denise Traver, NPS Ret. & webmaster of *HitTheTrail.com
• logo scanning by Paula Archer Information Services of Belmont, Mass. (617) 489-7980
• tactics by *Lao Tzu and *'Obvious Adams' (Robert Updegraf)
• website hit-hiking by Addme.com - if you'd care to try it, click here
If we have more text & less graphics than you like, here's some background.

News tips, commentary requests, questions, comments? Email us at timesizing@aol.com, or Return to Top
* An asterisk (*) before a hotlink means *hotlink will take you outside our website.