[Cali Panthers Fan]

I don't know about any of you, but it's laughable to think that most Americans have only a 40 hour work week in any meaningful job that is salary-based. Responsibilities seem to be nearly constant in most jobs and people are often working into the evenings and on weekends with increasing regularity. Throw in the fact that vacation time is rarely used and people don't want to call in sick for fear of losing their jobs. If we started by simply scaling all jobs back to a 40 hour work week that was rigidly held to, we would actually employ more people overall to do the same work. That might hurt profitability, but it would go a ways to dealing with un/underemployment.

The lack of unionized labor in America has led to this, but to be fair, unions have hurt themselves so much over the years with bad politics, unethical practice, and downright criminal influence. Have well regulated unions and you likely fix many of the problems with economic disparity in the U.S.

Now, the only problem with that is outsourcing of labor in a global market...not to mention automation, both of which negate the effectiveness of unions. It's not an easy problem to solve.