30 HOUR WEEK IS NO PANACEA

Adoption of the 30 hour week in industry would not in itself solve the nation's post-war unemployment problems but under certain conditions might have a decided effect on the solution, agreed four of the College's top economists at a seminar Tuesday in the Littauer Lounge.

Participating in the informal discussion were Cottfried Haberler, professor of Economics; Alvin H. Hansen, Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy; Seymour E. Harris '20 and Wassily Leontief, both associate professors of Economics.

Professor Hansen emphasized that this is by no means the only means of attacking the problem and that he personally favored other methods of achieving full employment, enabling the worker to reach a higher standard of living. The question is, he said, whether or not the 30 hour week will do it if other methods fall.

Advancing the opinion that the shortening of the work day since the first World War was owing not to a desire for leisure-on the part of the working population but was rather the labor movement's attempt to secure greater employment, Professor Hansen said that without unemployment there would have been no decrease to 40 hours and will not be any sudden drop to 30.

What the wage earning class really wants, Professor Hansen believes, is a 40 hour week with gradual reduction later as real income increases. But if we do not reach a high level of employment, he added, there will be increasing pressure for a 30 hour week.

Cyclical Unemployment Unaffected

A shorter work week would have little effect on cyclical unemployment, he emphasized, as virtually all the factors contributing to these periodic declines in business activity would operate unimpaired under the 30 hour week.

One of the biggest problems in the country's adjustment to a postwar economy, Professor Hansen indicated, will be educating people up to higher consumption standards. It will take considerable time, he said, to teach the public to spend on a scale great enough to consume up to 50 per cent greater production.

Since adoption of a 30 hour week would provide increased leisure and an accompanying increased desire to spend, particularly on travel items, it would help solve this important phase of the economic problem. Efficiencies of the two shift system that the six hour day would necessitate would, said Professor Hansen, result either of which might in the long run contribute to demand.

Professor Haberler advanced the opinion that America in not yet wealthy enough to support the 30 hour week. Any decrease in hours of work, he said, must bring with it a decrease in the national income which the country can ill afford. One of the primary aims of the 30 hour week, according to Professor Haberler and his colleagues, is to remedy the paradox of "poverty amidst plenty," but said the former Austrian economist, to eliminate the plenty is not the solution