Last week my wry wit TPM Cafe editor, Boyd Reed, gave me a Friday deadline for converting a long-winded comment I made on Aunt Sam's blog into three separate blogs on the concept of sharing  -- which is, in my opinion, not only a practical, but also a pleasurable way for us to move forward with increasingly limited resources.  (When I countered with a Monday deadline -- as any self-respecting journalist or author would do -- Quinn cut me a break and said two on Friday and one on Monday. Well, you can reform some of the procrastinators some of the time, etc..)

So here, on Sunday morning, is the first of three. I have to work most of the day, so please don't be offended that I'm leaving the topic for y'all to augment, footnote, discuss, refute or ignore. I'll check in  as I can. But I hope you enjoy yourselves in the meantime:

1) Job Sharing. As someone who works an average of 72 hours per week, I'd be delighted to job share, which I think is a really positive idea.
Someone without a job gets one, and thereby immediately increases his, or her stability; and the person who had the full time job to begin with immediately gets more time for whatever. Job sharing strikes me as a genuine win/win/win; the employer also benefits from this arrangement, as employees are surely more focused and productive when they are stimulated by outside interests and more physically rested.
The hitch to job sharing in America is, of course, health insurance and reduced income per person.
Most employers in America do not offer health insurance at all to personnel they categorize as being part-time. How, then, under the current system,can two unrelated people share one insurance policy? If we could fix that, by passing universal health care legislation, then job sharing would take off in no time... if other resources -- housing, transportation, etc. could be shared to lower individual cost.