Back in 2010, and amid a particularly difficult stretch for the economy, a conservative economist teamed up with lefty economist Dean Baker in support of what they referred to as “work sharing.” As the duo put it at the time, “Under a work-sharing program, firms are encouraged by government policy to spread a small amount of the pain across many workers. In a typical arrangement, a worker might see his weekly hours go down by 20%, and his salary go down by about 4%.”