Should America be trying anything along these lines? In a recent interview, Lawrence Summers, the Obama administration’s highest-ranking economist, was dismissive: “It may be desirable to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that’s not as desirable as expanding the total amount of work.” True. But we are not, in fact, expanding the total amount of work — and Congress doesn’t seem willing to spend enough on stimulus to change that unfortunate fact. So shouldn’t we be considering other measures, if only as a stopgap?
Or at least not obviously true. I mean, as a rough rule of thumb I wouldn't argue with it, but there are impacts if unemployment is geographically concentrated, there are impacts on individual long term employment prospects due to long spells of unemployment, etc. I don't think it's obviously true that more total amount of work is always more superior to slightly less but more spread out work.
But, more importantly, more jobs are needed. They aren't appearing.