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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

One way is to lower the expense of hiring people in the US. An obvious one would be lowering payroll taxes for certain types of jobs. Another way is to simply lower the corporate tax rate, which would have the additional benefit of repatriating tons of money that is sitting offshore because of American tax rates.

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And what when the robot goes to $4/hr? Eat less expensive food? Have fewer children? What when the robot goes to $0.02/hr?

I've never run a company so this may be naive or uninformed on my part, but I get the impression that hiring and firing people, at least here in California, can be a costly process with regards to unemployment insurance, litigation for wrongful termination, etc. Again, I may be overestimating this burden on businesses so please correct me if I'm wrong.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that despite how good your interview/hiring process may be, you always end up with some hires that don't work out which lead me to believe that you probably turn away a near equal amount of applicants that would have been great employees. It's just very difficult to evaluate someone over the course of a few interviews. For entry level positions this is even harder since you may not have much professional experience or reputation to go by.

I've always thought it would be interesting if companies would run a kind of tryout phase of employment, say 1-3 months, paid of course, at the end of which the top performers would be given permanent employment. This way a company might be willing to take on more marginal applicants with the knowledge that it will be very easy to terminate them. I'm sure there are negative aspects of such a system that I'm not considering, but as a person working in aerospace doing manufacturing/skilled labor and without any formal education beyond high school to fall back on, I always thought such a system might be a good way for someone like me to get their foot in the door.

It is true that lowering the employment "friction" (i.e. cost of hiring and firing) means that employers will be more willing to take risks on new hires.

Some european countries make it difficult to fire people, with the unintended consequence that companies become very reluctant to hire in the first place.

Probation? I thought companies already did do this. In many instances the labor laws have more leeway in the initial stages of employment.

"Another way is to simply lower the corporate tax rate, which would have the additional benefit of repatriating tons of money that is sitting offshore because of American tax rates."

That worked so well the first time.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702036331045766237...

A one time tax break does not change the fundamental incentive structure, as building a significant business operation is a long term investment.

Corporate cash reserves are at record highs currently [1], wouldn't a tax break on the demand side likely have a greater impact on velocity of capitol as it would likely be spent rather than remaining static?

[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2015/05/08/u-s-com...

Well, I don't know how it is in other states, but in Kansas, only the first $12k of payroll per employee is taxed per year. The rest is exempt from tax. So, if you pay someone $10 an hour or $25 an hour for a full-time job for the year, the payroll tax is still the same for that employee.

How would lowering the corporate tax rate make or facilitate a corporation to hire people in the US/Canada?

Lowering the cost of doing business in the US makes it more favorable for companies to locate their operations in the US.

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