9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft. • Hacker News Board

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#251

Post by eli_gottlieb » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 9:37 PM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #170

sanderjd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that business shouldn't be expected to train its workforce is intriguing to me. This seems to be an underlying assumption in our society, but I don't recall ever having heard an argument for it one way or the other. Isn't a business that refuses to provide any of the necessary education for its employees profiting from a well-educated society without pitching in anything for the bill? If all governments worl…

People can leave their jobs at-will, which makes it is lower-risk to employ people your competitors trained than to train them yourself.

Well then businesses could just start offering contracted jobs with fixed lengths rather than "at-will employment" (aka: "leave/be fired for the lulz employment").

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#252

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 11:17 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #215

anigbrowl wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 40. My point is not that Thatcher was heartless, but that while she was busy privatizing a variety of state-owned UK companies (most of which desperately needed to be have their monopolies abolished), she also triggered a recurring asset-inflation/deflation cycle and popularized the idea of getting rich quick through trading up repeatedly. This culminated in a real-estate boom (& bust) after people were given per…

It was not just a mistake, it was a deliberate attempt to monkey with the unemployment figures before an election! One the electorate fell for. Of course you could make exactly the same case about Thatcher boosting her popularity by winning the Falklands War. The Nu Labour "project" was very cynically about power for the sake of power, using techniques hitherto reserved for selling consumer goods and pop music. Thatc…

Really? Have a look into Thatcher's pre-political career: her biggest achievement was finding a way to cheaply boost the volume of ice cream using an additive extracted from seaweed that was cheaper than using more milk. When you get into arguing about whether people were true ideologues or just going through the motions, you are essentially offering religious arguments. Being Irish and having later in lived in London for a decade, I have little sympathy for ideological purity as a political desideratum. All politicians are self-interested to some degree. It is naive to think you can discuss the quality of others' motives in objective terms.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#253

Post by billybob » Wed, Jul 20, 2011, 11:59 AM UTC

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #41

billybob wrote: post #22

"I know you want to be hired full time by me. And I want to be doing my part. But please understand: I’m running a business. I want to make profits. And these tools are letting me make more profits by employing people only when I need them rather than carrying them on my payroll." This is why every time I hear a politician talk about "creating jobs," I grimace. A business will hire someone if and only if they think t…

>Government cannot create jobs. It can make the cost of doing business less expensive by lowering taxes, or it can make the profits of a business higher by providing incentives. But for your average small business, those kinds of changes add up to much less than one person's salary, so it makes very little difference. It can also use monetary and fiscal policy to stimulate demand, increasing the amount of work that n…

If I do some work and grow some food from seeds, I have created actual value by my work. Monetary and fiscal policy does not do this. It creates or destroys currency, thereby either diluting or concentrating the value of dollars, creates temporary incentives to borrow or lend, which will be offset by the inevitable bounce-back. The end result is just a temporary fluctuation.