Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job • Hacker News Board

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#501

Post by craftyguy » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #496

lostlogin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were in China would you really find it insulting that Tibet is considered by some to be its own country? It was invaded, and I can’t really see any other way to characterise what happened.

So what's your stance on Hawaii and Puerto Rico? Or for that matter, Florida, Texas, Florida, California, New Mexico, and Arizona? Or for that matter the whole of the US land where Native American tribes lived.

Texas, after revolting and winning independence from Mexico, chose to join the US after a short jaunt as an independent nation.

The rest, yea, pretty much forcefully taken in one way or another.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#502

Post by _ptgt » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #378

_ptgt wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the issue is Chinese culture, but it is Chinese leadership--which, admittedly, has encouraged and created a culture of concerning nationalism and subservience to authoritarians with no respect for human rights or rule of law. If you look back in contemporary Chinese history, there are several episodes where influential groups were openly supporting a more democratic society. It wasn't Chinese culture th…

It wasn't Chinese culture that stopped them. It was Mao, the CCP, the tanks in Tienamen Square, and the more recently the ubiquitous propaganda and censorship (...) the brainwashers (...) In the last four decades, the poverty rate in China has fallen from over 90% to below 10%. http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/images/ChinaSpecial... Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, most people h…

Who said anything about revolution? Mainland Chinese hold unnatural views on many issues that are shared essentially nowhere else in the world and are easily traceable back to the CCP's interests and propaganda.

China's claim to Taiwan is the same claim that the UK has to Australia. Most mainland Chinese still think Falun Gong was a bunch of crazies and are unaware of the government crackdown of them. The details of the Tienamen Square Massacre are not well known. Mao is still a hero in the eyes of hundreds of millions. Mainland Chinese are mostly unaware of the human rights abuses occurring among Tibetans and Uighurs. The continuing extreme mistrust of the Japanese hard to explain in a world where Israel is friendly with German--unless you have an authoritarian power seeking to whip up nationalistic support to maintain its control over society.

These views (literally forced upon them, in a collective sense) result them condoning massive human rights violations, mercantilist trade policies, increased risks of war and conflict with major powers, and other societal negatives.

Those risks are exclusively attributable to the CCP, whereas economic growth in a country like China likely does not exclusively require said rulers.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#503

Post by ptaipale » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #491

ptaipale wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you have misunderstood your friends. The Danish system is different from other Nordic countries in that dismissal is quite easy from legal point of view (even if for someone running a small company, it may still be psychologically very difficult). The unemployment benefits are good, although the officials monitoring it also force the unemployed to be quite active to find a new job.

This was his complaint 10 years ago, from an earlier time (perhaps 20 years ago?) he was considering starting a business. I probably have misunderstood his complaints, as you and Tehnix both point out; I'll reach out to him to get the details right...

Perhaps that experience is more than 20 years old. Denmark started to implement a thorough labour market reform in 1990's and coined the term "flexicurity", to denote a system where hiring and firing are extremely simple, but employees have good unemployment benefits and receive active guidance by authorities for re-employment. This has been created since then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#504

Post by ptaipale » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

JetSpiegel wrote: post #119

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing employers to keep employees they don't like, for any reason beyond discrimination, isn't the answer. The better answer is, IMO, better social safety net so people making $14/hr don't end up on the streets just because their job goes away.

The Flexi-Security approach to social security. The hard part is making sure companies pay their dues.

How come? AFAIK there is no big problem in Denmark (which has the flexicurity approach) to collect social security payments. All employees have a person number registered at the civil registration system. Companies pay the social contributions and tax withdrawals with the PAYE system.

The only exception is perhaps "shadow economy" of immigrant-dominated areas in some cities where rule of law is weaker and restaurants and other local businesses may use undocumented employees. But these cannot be very big business.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#505

Post by Tehnix » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #477

Tehnix wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing to Denmark, which has way better employee laws than the US, is weird regardless because of the difference in unemployment benefits and general safety net there is in Denmark. Free hospitals, free education, etc.

"Free?" The personal income tax rate averaged 60.45% in Denmark from 1995-2018. Those are some of the most expensive "free" hospitals and universities I've ever heard of.

If you want that view, then I guess nothing is ever free then, and it's a pointless word, so why even bother?

Also, the tax is more complicated than simply throwing out 60.45%. It goes:

- From 0 - 50,000 you pay 0% tax - Everything above you first pay 8% work market tax, and then from the leftover you pay - the amount you earned above 50,000 - 498,900 is 37% - the amount you earn above 489,900 is taxed 52,2%

So you don't pay 60.45% of the full amount. Never. You pay progressively as you go up.

Monthly that'll go something like, deduct 5,000 form your paycheck, deduct 8% of the remaining amount, and then 38% of the remaining amount of that. Now, what you have left is the remaining amount + the 5,000 tax free. And of course a bit more of the amount if you go into the top tax bracket.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#506

Post by coldtea » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC

craftyguy wrote: post #501

coldtea wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's your stance on Hawaii and Puerto Rico? Or for that matter, Florida, Texas, Florida, California, New Mexico, and Arizona? Or for that matter the whole of the US land where Native American tribes lived.

Texas, after revolting and winning independence from Mexico, chose to join the US after a short jaunt as an independent nation. The rest, yea, pretty much forcefully taken in one way or another.

Seems like this was the Mexican's mistake: "In the hopes that an influx of settlers could control the Indian raids, the bankrupt Mexican government liberalized immigration policies for the region. Finally able to settle legally in Texas, Anglos from the United States soon vastly outnumbered the Tejanos. Most of the immigrants came from the southern United States. Many were slave owners, and most brought with them significant prejudices against other races, attitudes often applied to the Tejanos. Mexico's official religion was Roman Catholicism, yet the majority of the immigrants were Protestants who distrusted Catholics"

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#507

Post by Tehnix » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

ceras wrote: post #454

Tehnix wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>simply won't hire them in the first place Except that is simply not true, and very easily proven false simply by showing countries with actual employee protection and unions like e.g. Denmark.

It's easy to fire employees in Denmark. That's one reason why it's economy and employment rates are quite good for Europe, and while you think it proved your point, it's evidence of the opposite. See [1][2][3]. If you're interested in the academic research, someone above in the thread posted research links on the relationship between ease-of-firing and employers' willingness to hire. If you find those unsatisfying, t…

Except the reality is that most people are in unions, covering them quite well (around 1.8 million[0] out of 2.7 million[1] in the job market).

Many jobs have a firing period of 1, 3 and 6 months, rising with the time you've been there. Sickness is a legal absence. Maternity and paternity leave is a legal requirement along with at least 5 weeks of vacation a year.

[0] https://www.business.dk/arbejdsmarked/flere-bliver-medlem-af...

[1] https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/nyt/NytHtml?cid=24821

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#508

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 8:18 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #472

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want to put you on call? No extra pay required. Change you to the night shift? You still have a job, that’s sufficient. How is it not? You can always threaten to quit if they don't give you a raise. The only way that doesn't work is if they can easily replace you with someone willing to work harder for less money. And in that case that's what they're supposed to do. You would only be willing to quit if you had…

I keep seeing this "supposed to do" tossed around when it comes to companies abusing their employees (and yes, changing an employees contract without more consideration than "keep working" is abusing an employee) like it's some kind of divine directive that drives capitalist corporations. It's not. A company can treat its employees well and still be profitable. There is no law that says the only job of a company is t…

> and yes, changing an employees contract without more consideration than "keep working" is abusing an employee

How is it abuse when it's entirely voluntary? The employee is not a slave. They can walk away at any time, or threaten to in exchange for concessions.

> There is no law that says the only job of a company is to maximize profits for shareholders

Nobody is claiming that here. You're assuming the only reason companies ever do this is to screw people over, when just as often it's caused by the company's revenues declining or costs increasing, requiring the company to do more with less or go out of business.

If the company can't keep paying you the same money for the same work, the only available options are to take what they're offering or leave your job. It doesn't help anybody to take away the first option.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#509

Post by darawk » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 8:21 PM UTC

your-nanny wrote: post #427

gbacon wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist must consider both the seen and the unseen. Yes, people have jobs in Denmark 🇩🇰, but there are employment positions and opportunities that do not exist because firing regulations price them out of the market.

Possibly true, though nonexistent jobs must surely be a difficult thing to count. But at will employment also imposes economuc costs, which economists don't really care to count, like economic security, health and psychological well being, mutual respect between companies and their public, and the opportunities to do stupid image damaging life-harmful shite like Marriot did to this man.

Indeed that is true. But stories like this have emotional salience, because they happened to real people. The jobs that didn't get created in the first place don't have that same resonance, because they're for theoretical people. But the harm is no less real. And the important question is that we at least try to empirically evaluate the question of which is worse, rather than simply indexing on the emotional resonance of anecdotes like this one.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#510

Post by darawk » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 8:23 PM UTC

narag wrote: post #394

Tehnix wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>simply won't hire them in the first place Except that is simply not true, and very easily proven false simply by showing countries with actual employee protection and unions like e.g. Denmark.

The effect of workforce excesive protection is not the same on individual companies as on a country as a whole. Individual companies won't hire if some law hits them specifically, the same as if they're cash strapped, lost a big customer or some raw materials they need raise their price. For a country it's loss of competitiveness and more long term. The questions are more like: can we as a country afford this law? is…

"Wealth created" though hides some of the reality. That 'wealth created' consists also in jobs for individuals. So, a better question might be: Is the suffering alleviated by allowing easy firing greater than the suffering alleviated by preventing easy firing? And that is an empirical economic question, which is difficult to answer.