Alpha 
Post by fretslider on Jun 13, 2019 4:07:54 GMT -5
Think the madness is confined to one side of the pond? Think again....
Britain’s Labour Opposition Party, which has a real chance of winning the next UK election, is seriously considering a think tank proposal to radically cut working hours and wages to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint.
Plan for 10-hour working week with 75% paycut under Labour
Martine Berg Olsen Monday 10 Jun 2019 7:54 am
The Labour Party is discussing plans to bring in a 10-hour working week and slash pay by 75 per cent to tackle climate change. The radical report titled The Ecological Limits of Work by the Autonomy Group states unless current carbon emissions are cut there would be an ‘unprecedented decrease in the economic activity’.
It says the sustainable work week would likely be ‘well below 10 hours per week’.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who has previously backed a four-day working week, said: ‘This is a vital contribution to the growing debate around free time and reducing the working week.’ Leo Murray, adviser to Shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis, said: ‘I like this take a lot.’
Lewis has previously backed another controversial report from the group on reducing the working week.
…
Read more: metro.co.uk/2019/06/10/plan-10-hour-working-week-75-paycut-labour-9878450/
Under the topic “other considerations”, the report authors express concern that their proposed cut might not be deep enough, because people working shorter hours might be more productive during the time they do work, which would cancel some of the ecological “benefit” of a shorter working week.
This is not a fringe proposal. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who praised the proposal, is a senior figure in the Labour Party, and has a real chance of being put in charge of Britain’s banking system and economy after the next election.
The report kind of skips over issues which might concern some workers, like how British workers already suffering fuel poverty are supposed to warm their homes and feed their families with 75% less money, and how they are supposed to pay their mortgages and bills (maybe all mortgages will be forgiven?), but I doubt the politicians considering this radical policy proposal have ever personally experienced real hunger, poverty or cold.
wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/12/proposal-75-wage-cut-to-combat-climate-change/
autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-Ecological-Limits-of-Work-final.pdf
Also in the report...
the climate crisis forces us to change the conversation and raise the question: provided current levels of carbon intensity of our economies and current levels of productivity, how much work can we afford?
...
“Reducing Growth to Achieve Environmental Sustainability: The Role of Work Hours” Knight et al. (2012) predicted that a 1 percent decrease in working hours could lead to a 1.46 percent decrease in carbon footprint and 0.42 percent decrease for CO2 emissions.
Which sounds very much like...
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970, p. 323
I think it's fair to say that this is every bit as loony as the Green New Deal, possibly worse: The aim is to get rid of as many of the population as they can.
Remember Dr. Paul Ehrlich?
Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed.
The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.
www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/26/world-population-resources-paul-ehrlich
Still as mad as ever.
