Unemployment solved: 20-hour work week

While watching yet another presidential candidate promise how he would stimulate the economy to create more jobs, I found myself wondering why nobody is talking about an obvious solution: restricting the supply of labor by cutting the working hours.
 
Given the current productivity levels and 5 billion people of working age on the planet, it does not seem possible to give everyone a 40-hours/week job doing something useful.  There is a precedent for reducing working hours.  We went from 70 or more to 40 a while ago.  We also eliminated child labor.  Was it a coincidence that real wages went up and the middle class got created since then? 

Why is 20-hour work week a bad idea, or a good one?

>>43
I assure you I am quite comfortable and happy in my trailer far away from you.  But let me explain to you and other Adam Smith and Ayn Rand worshippers, who don’t give a f**k about anyone else outside of their immediate family or church or tribe, how a global job-sharing scheme would save you some hard cold cash.

Think about all the money you spend directly and indirectly on “security.”
 
At the local level: the police, the prisons (the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the “developed” world), the alarm system in your McMansion, the private guards in your gated community, the 2-hour commute from your McMansion in the “safe” suburb to your job in the city, etc.

At the national level: Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, NSA, the military (the U.S. spends more on military than all of its potential adversaries combined), the 700+ military bases around the world, the veterans who come home psychologically and physically disabled for life from wars on the other side of the world.

What portion of your weekly wages pays for all that? 10%, 20%, 50%?  Search for “National Priorities Project” to find out.

Would you be better off (strictly money-wise, of course) if you took a pay cut by splitting your 40 hour/week job with a jobless person next door or on the other side of the world instead of paying for “protection” to make sure that person, jobless and desperate, does not show up at your door with a crow bar or an explosive vest?