Probably European-style (un)employment subsidies that pay businesses to keep idle employees on payroll (much to the chagrin of new workers or other types of Creative Destruction)
Is there a snappy name for that program?
There's definitely been more interest towards Euro reforms such as subsidized childcare. The focus on this thread is more on wonkish ideas that seem more incomprehensible to Americans, and your suggestion here counts, but we just need a way to brand it.
The direct translation from German is "Short work" or from French is "technical unemployment", but having said that -
a. Is it really a gimmick? The practice has been in use in Germany since Bismarck, and has been used in Switzerland to get through a number of economic crisis over the last 70 odd years. So its hardly a new, or even untried and tested, idea
b. It differs from the other ideas in so far as it is a means of responding to a crisis. That is, subsidise wages for the short term until the employer is able to recover from whatever emergency it is facing. In that respect, it is a pretty classic ordoliberal policy aimed at helping private companies survive external shocks. That is quite different from all the other proposals, that are all aimed at strucutrally redesigning the way that the tax system or welfare state works or rebalance the distribution of wealth and income.
