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That only works if the fixed costs of a worker (benefits) are negligible at best. If employers need to keep on paying for health care, then it's always cheaper
by mahyarm 12y ago
That only works if the fixed costs of a worker (benefits) are negligible at best. If employers need to keep on paying for health care, then it's always cheaper to overwork a worker unless the overtime makes it more expensive. So you need govt. health care for one to get rid of a fixed cost of employees before it becomes feasible for companies.
Also a single worker can produce more work until exhaustion effects start kicking in than a single worker. That equilibrium is probably around 40hrs. Communication and management overhead alone adds more fixed cost to adding an employee.
But if you look at the charts of average work weeks, you'll notice that they are going down. In parts of europe, a full time worker is becoming something between 30-40 hrs.
- greggman 12y agoHow does gov health care change this? I pay $500 a year to health ins or $500 a year more in taxes. Either way I pay $500 a year. That's not an argument for or against gov health care I'm just asking for clarification why it matters for your point
- mahyarm 12y agoBecause it's based on a tax % rate vs a fixed cost of $2-5k/yr per employee. So if you want to hire 4 people for 10hrs/wk paying each of them $20/hr instead of 1 person at 40hrs/wk, it's not going to cost the company an extra $6-15k / yr to get equivalent hours of labor to do so. You need to reduce fixed costs and make them a cost that scales with the amount paid for the labor to make doing this more attractive for companies. Other benefits are pretty much nothing compared to health insurance, or only cost money when the employees are at the job site, so govt. healthcare is needed before 4 workers at 10 hours a week becomes more attractive to employers. Walmart & co make their employees work part time just to avoid paying mandatory benefits. Benefits are a big cost to companies.