Here in Germany there’s a debate right now (again – it seems to pop up about every 3 months or so) about whether workers should lose a holiday, or whether they should work more; the later either in the form of additional workhours per week, or with reduced vacations. The argument brought forth for such plans is usually that this would “create more jobs”. In this debate a new argument was added this time; namely the ruling social democrats claimed that working a day more would result in more social insurance and tax income.
Of course these arguments are both fundamentally flawed; so flawed, in fact, that I fail to see how anybody could buy into them. Unless they are paid off in a big way, which probably is the state of affairs in Berlin anyway. But let us take a closer look at why the idea of people working more is a bad one.
First of all it seems quite unlikely that by further distributiong the amount of available labour among those who already have a job, we would create new jobs. It would maybe increase the efficiency of corporations. Why should they hire new people if their current workforce suddenly works more? Indeed, this would mean that the same work could suddenly be completed by less people. The result may very well be more layoffs.
The second argument, of raising social insurance contributions, fails just as flatly on its nose. Most people in Germany are not paid “by the hour”, but with a flat salary. While of course employment contracts include definitions on the amount of work to be done for this flat salary (for example in my case, this being not a big secret, these figures are 37,5h work/week and 30 days paid vacation/year). Now in theory, of course, the principle holds that you should get more money for working longer hours.
But anybody who seriously thinks the employers would not insist on the additional work being done without raising anybody’s salary is living in a dream world.
They’d put forth the arguments of the oh-so-bad economy, politely threaten anybody who disagrees, and in the end would probably get most people to agree to the new terms. Afterall, you gotta be glad that you _have_ a job, right?
So what would the net effect be? In both cases, the government would not see a significant rise in income taxes or contributions to social security; in fact they may even drop. We would see a reduction of available jobs, but most certainly not an increase.
And we haven’t even started to look at the fact that, by all that is good and true, the government is really already skimming off enough money from employees’ salaries.