An exercise in critical thinking

As everyone knows America has a high unemployment rate right now. This is clearly bad for the economy, both in the short term and long term. I would like to try and keep political ideology out of this as much as possible (for the record, I am a conservative libertarian).

In order to solve the nations unemployment problem, what if every employer doubled their work force, but cut workers pay in half. In other words, what if company "A' had 200 employees and they all made $20 an hour. Company "A' hires 200 more people for a total of 400 employees, but pays everyone $10 an hour. The company's labor costs would obviously stay the same, but there would be more people with jobs. What if this happened nation wide? Unemployment would be zero, but what would the repercussions be of doing this? I welcome your thoughts...

note * I do realize that the further down the pay scale you go it is impossible to cut pay in half without going below minimum wage.

edit * India has actually done this in many areas of their country.

Yes more people would become employed but then those who were already employed would be making far less than before. Also, please don't bash me too hard if I am wrong, wouldn't the taxes that the gov gets be increased with this change?

As a result more people would slip into that poverty level and be unable to better themselves. This would really help to eliminate the middle class from our society and then we would have the rich and poor.

reply to post by Vodo34861


then the people making 20 bucks an hour would probably quit..if cut to 10 bucks per hour...then you'd be at square one again..

why not CUT CEO pay instead of other employees!!!! when ceo's make 500/1 I think they can spare a tad bit dontcha think?


Why don't companies share more of their profits??? Greedy whores.

reply to post by OptimusSubprime


why do that when you can fire all your 20$ an hour workers and hire a bunch of illegals who will do it for 5$ an hour,they dont give a damn about anything but their own bottom end,they dont care about workers or their families,they only care about their own, but good luck finding a job that pays 20$ an hour these days, most jobs are minimum wage service positions and i highly doubt anyone would wanna take a pay cut from 8 to 4$ just so more illegals can have a job, we need to take care of this mexican invasion first, then there would be millions of freed up jobs for real struggling americans

Originally posted by CUJOCREEP
reply to post by OptimusSubprime

 

why do that when you can fire all your 20$ an hour workers and hire a bunch of illegals who will do it for 5$ an hour,they dont give a damn about anything but their own bottom end,they dont care about workers or their families,they only care about their own, but good luck finding a job that pays 20$ an hour these days, most jobs are minimum wage service positions and i highly doubt anyone would wanna take a pay cut from 8 to 4$ just so more illegals can have a job, we need to take care of this mexican invasion first, then there would be millions of freed up jobs for real struggling americans

Don't misunderstand... I'm not promoting this idea at all. In fact I think it is asinine, to say the least. I just wanted to have an interesting conversation