The 'work-spreading tax' I proposed (in my contribution of 24/5/98 and in
my paper at: http://www.democdesignforum.demon.co.uk/unemp.nexus.html) is a
change of the present income tax and social security tax paid by the
employees, into a tax paid by the employer. WST is such that any individual
employer pays less tax on a given total amount of wages, if he spreads the
work between more workers. Thus it seems reasonable to expect that, when
there are unemployed persons available who can do the work, the change to
WST will result in more people being employed. No prediction is made about
any change in the total number of hours worked, in the whole economy. In
view of this, the lump of labour fallacy does not seem relevant.
********************************************
Dr David Chapman
Email: chapman@democdesignforum.demon.co.uk
Democracy Design Forum
Coles House, Buxhall, Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 3EB, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1449 736 223
Fax: +44 (0) 1449 612 274
Website: http://www.democdesignforum.demon.co.uk/index.html
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