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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

And ask an average person who might work for you why they should subsidize your likely-to-fail startup with their own health.

It seems like the general consensus on HN is that The Government should subsidize startups and small-businesses Just Because, but that it's evil when the same government subsidizes the employee that didn't work quite hard enough and needs to eat food and live in a house while they look for a job they can do better. I don't get it.

(I bet if I wasn't so sarcastic when I made the organ-harvesting reference, I would have been upmodded!)

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I can't speak for the rest of HN, but in my case I want no subsidies from the Government. What I want the goverment to do is get out of the way so I can get on with creating wealth for me, my family and any employees I hire. Having small companies grow into big ones is a net win for the government.

'subsidize your likely-to-fail startup with their own health' Not sure how to respond to that statement, but all paid employees are offered to exchange their time and effort for cash compensation. It's up to those individuals if the exchange is worth it or not. If there is a chance of a detriment to their health, then they'd need to factor this in.

I think you'll find that your downvotes are because you disagree with the majority of readers of this site, not because of tone or sarcasm.

>"I think you'll find that your downvotes are because you disagree with the majority of readers of this site, not because of tone or sarcasm."

If he argued that the article author was wrong in a civil tone with a thoughtful manner, I doubt he would have downvotes. There are highly upvoted comments on this very thread that disagree with the article author.

This isn't reddit. Disagreement doesn't equal downvote.

Having unemployment benefits is not optional. Even 3rd world countries have this. However, I don't know that charging the companies directly for the unemployment is the best. Where I live workers pay an "unemployment insurance". The employer pays it, but it's part of the compensation like vacation etc. So when an employee is let go he draws from this insurance, the company is out of it.

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