But, then I suppose it would be an obstacle to companies using the opportunity to permanently trim staff. Hmm.
This is why German unions say in the early 2000s during Germany's "sick man of Europe" period, negotiated stalling pay raises to maintain employment.
In the US (and also often here on HN) this will just be described as inefficient, ignoring market signals or something like it. I don't think it's even possible to coordinate the economy like this in the US.
As far as i know, this has grown historically out of a post world war 2 tendency to keep a fragile balance between the various organisations in society as a method to prevent the enormous turmoil of the pre world war 2 period.
It’s similar if you compare Seattle with Vancouver, BC - it’s only a 2-hour drive away, but salaries for the same work are around 50-66% of Seattle’s.
You may be doing the same work in Copenhagen or Calgary, but most likely for a company that generates way less money from that work.
Silicon Valley is unique even in the US in that the companies see developers as revenue sources rather than costs.
What about non-software engineers?
US FAANG employees are paid highly so that they do not look elsewhere. The better for the FAANG companies to hoover up any opportunity that another industry could conceivably address.
USA-ian in Canada here, still technically a WA resident too -- compensation isn't normally that bad, the ~40% currency difference is what really hurts. Normally the Vancouver-Seattle difference isn't as pronounced, though it's still skewed heavily towards Seattle.
The biggest difference, IMO, is that housing in the Vancouver area is crazy expensive, way more than Seattle, and completely out of sync for local salaries.
In anycase, perfect egalitarianism is probably not possible. But for an excellent work on the subject, see John Rawls' work Justice as Fairness. As political philosophical texts go, it's fairly accessible to outsiders to the field, and it is comprehensive on the topic.
From what I can tell corporate induced bs* laws seem to be more common there than here. (i.e. caused lobbying, not in the interest of the population)
Today, I can't help but think the super rich of America (at least those not slaves to ideology themselves) must be rethinking their support for extreme polarizing positions and "market fundamentalism" as the Federal government abjectly fails to meet the challenges of unified approach to disaster and conflict that is it's overall purpose.
The term for that is corporatocracy, among other things.
Maybe it just goes to show to show that corporations can not control themselves. They need to be guided.
In the US, corporations fight with the state. In most Nordic/North European countries, corporations are the state (the history is just totally different, large corporations have run those countries for decades).
I will give you an example: Germany we can agree is a fairly rich economy, the average German citizen has the same net wealth as a Greek citizen...a country where the economy basically doesn't function, unemployment has been in the high teens for two decades, etc.
I also knew someone who run a chemicals business in Europe. In the UK, unions fought every step the way, they negotiated huge salaries for members, they would make threats, they would strike. In Germany, they just rolled over. As long as you paid the right people off, low wages, subsidised loans, etc. They just did whatever management told them (I think people who talk about worker representatives on boards assume that there is some scrutiny going on...I have never seen this occur).
The closest comparison is probably China. Very similar.
Unions and other left winged organisations played a major role in german history. Germany was the first country with a state supported pension and healthcare system. The SPD has been in power for a majority of germany's post-ww2 history together with CDU in the grand coalition and the average greek does not have the same net wealth as the average german.
Seems pretty easy for some industries. After years of demonizing OPEC we essentially joined them in "OPEC+" after just a short time of being a net exporter of oil.
(well before the TRC, Rockefeller bet heavily on Pennsylvania oil. Luckily for him, no one found oil outside the state until after he'd cemented his monopoly)
Crude Rules Everything Around Me (barrel, barrel oil, you all)
Crude Rules Everything Around Me (barrel, barrel oil, y’all)
The US certainly manages to allow (some) employers to organize their operations for their maximum convenience, with the conditions of the workers essentially the workers' problem.
This indeed allows efficiency - but only in the short term. In the long term, this effectively generates an ethos that some portion of people are disposable and this destroys society. Which is literally what can be seen in America today, the debt coming due in a multitude of ways.
Not judging the practice, it’s just such a very different concept to think about since a lot of my US friends are switching jobs like every 1.5-2yrs on average to play the game of “corporate ladders maze” as they say. I think if I challenged one of my friends to stay at an employer for 10 years, they would have a very hard time doing that without feeling like they are missing out on more money.
Personally, I've been working for ~9 years now, I worked for my first employer for a bit more than 5 years, my current job being the second job in my professional life. And I have a few friends still working for my first employer and who started there at roughly the same time as me. IIRC, my team leader actually started working for this company the same years I was born.
In my current job, I think I'm the only one in my team without the "5 years reward trophy".
At the same time, I've seen a few friends switching jobs every 2 to 3 years, but it tends to be more an early career thing and they settle after 2 or 3 jobs.
You have people who are jumping from job to job, but it's not the majority (at least for profession like Engineering, fields like Retail or Logistic is another matter).
Meanwhile, I'm glad I'm a citizen of a place that values people's lives over "the economy" or a "more optimal allocation".
Someone that's happy to grow potatoes somewhere can now trade their labor for yours via money.
Only if the resources are allocated to a person. If alternative is homelessness or being part of one or another inefficient enterprises, most people would inefficiency.
Inefficiency has its own problems but we have acknowledge that just efficiency by itself isn't going to create universal happiness.
No economy? No social safety net.
What about if 50 years ago the government paid you to create typewriters, and because there is no change and everything is static, they are still paying you to make typewriters? Except now they go straight into the trash.
The march of progress is important. Jobs need to be destroyed if they are no longer necessary. Paying people with tax dollars to continue to do the same thing for life is absurd.
That makes sense as an overall trajectory in normal times. Much less in the middle of a pandemic, where every country decided to pause their economies to save lives. Jobs are put on life support, because otherwise they'd all die and would have to be recreated from grounds up. We're not talking about keeping people doing the same thing for life, just paying them so that they can go back to doing the same thing few months from now.
Neither is Germany "paying people with tax dollars to continue doing the same thing for life".
Can we move on from the empty talking points? Can we talk about how the social security measures in Europe ensured that, as opposed to the US, we won't see 50+ million people suffering hunger later this year? Can we talk about the oh-so-beautiful paragon of capitalism has gleefully murdered 10s of thousand of people for the sake of the economy? When that "economy" really is only propping up Wall Street?
I realize that nearly everywhere else on the internet is burning with these flames, but that makes it more important, not less, to prevent HN from destroying itself in this way. The idea here is to have at least one place on the internet that's organized around intellectual curiosity. We can't do that and also be a political flamewar site, for the same reason that you can't have a tank battle in a park or a museum, or a good hike in a forest fire.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
It's anti-democratic because it's suggesting dissenting or minority views should be pushed out and not have a voice.
It's nationalistic because it's sugsesting there is one political view which is associated with belonging to the country, and anyone who doesn't agree with it is not part of that national identity and doesn't belong there.
I admit my penchant for democracy might have coloured my language when I called it 'disgusting', though. I wasn't engaging in any way with the substance of their comment.
>I was shocked and dismayed by the level of accountability and by the way it targeted throwing money at places that less need it and not spending it on places that do need it or in the most direct ways. If you want companies not to fire employees, you can look at examples in Europe like Denmark or England or Germany. You take over the payroll. You do not say to a hotel chain "Oh, do me the favor and don't fire the people." Just say "You know what? You can go and renegotiate your debt contract, you can renegotiate your rent," which is what every small business has to do anyway, "We will pay your employees right now, because they can't work, okay?"
...
>There are a lot of people suffering in the economy that were just living paycheck to paycheck, and that includes small businesses. So the way they target the support even for small businesses is so cumbersome, is so inefficient, is so misused and abused and is so poorly governed, it's really, for somebody who's interested in governance in general for all institutions, private and government, I was shocked and dismayed by the level of accountability and by the way it targeted throwing money at places that less need it and not spending it on places that do need it or in the most direct ways
> So some colleagues and I organized a letter, signed now by over 230 academics from law, economics, and finance, saying that this targeting to large corporations is completely misguided,
That's not even a controversial idea. The post office is meant to deliver mail to any American home (the value of the post office is probably much larger than any subsidy they receive (which is unfortunate in a small way, most of the post office budget problems are pension based. They can get away with it because they really are not worth failing)). The post office was also a nationwide bank for awhile.
I also think that subsidizing payrolls was the better way to approach this problem. The PPP was a limited pool of money and favored businesses with the best relationship with their bankers. A simple approach of "I will pay you 25% of your annual income based on last years taxes plus inflation" is much easier.
This is the bargain we've made though isn't it? The US is more OK with creative destruction. The question is how creative the destruction from covid is. How quickly do you need to liquidate a restaurant's assets to improve capital allocation?
The answer to that might be "quicker than people form restaurants." Which suggests to me that just replacing service worker income is probably more efficient.
Or simply have your tax agency send the cheques or direct deposit (like Canada), instead of going through banking middle-men:
* application time <10 minutes
* e-deposit in <5 days
Many US states make in hard to apply for unemployment benefits on purpose:
* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/24/21225254/c...
* https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/03/its...
* https://www.marketplace.org/shows/the-uncertain-hour/unemplo...
I don't get it, isn't sending checks/direct deposits still going through "banking middlemen"? AFAIK the stimulus checks are direct deposited by the IRS/treasury, unemployment benefits are paid through checks/direct deposit as well.
> The Trump administration has also put private banks in charge of doling out $349 billion in loans for the Paycheck Protection Program, which are meant for small businesses suffering from the Covid-19 recession. But struggling small-business owners are running into bureaucratic roadblocks put up by some of the world’s wealthiest financial institutions, like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.
* https://www.barrons.com/articles/cares-act-workers-companies...
That means that furloughed staff can be paid their full salary,but the company is only on the hook for 20% of it.
Anecdotally, smaller companies with few members of staff (who are financially able) are paying 100%, while most large businesses are paying 80%.
The only big difference is that once the federal grants are withdrawn much of Europe will have a much better social safety net to fall back on.
From https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relie... :
> Forgiveness is based on the employer maintaining or quickly rehiring employees and maintaining salary levels. Forgiveness will be reduced if full-time headcount declines, or if salaries and wages decrease.
Incidentally the same is true for companies: keeping structurally healthy businesses afloat means society doesn't have to deal with the loss of organisational knowledge.
The different approaches taken by the US and Europe might reflect priorities in the respective societies.
On the other hand, the US did spin up a payroll program, which seems to just have been rather unsuccessful, with lots of money going to big businesses. So this may just the effect of a less competent government.
Look at it this way, people always hate to change jobs. Particularly in a time of disruption. But a time of crisis is exactly when people need to change what they are doing for the good of society. So maybe it is exactly the right thing to do, to provide a safety net for people out of work, rather than try to keep everyone doing what they were doing before.
At least not for smaller businesses. Remaining fixed cost and no income are still often enough to give a reason for layoffs, in some case also a true and honest reason.
It's more like doing so doesn't fit well with (parts of) the way the US handles employment.
In Europe, you have companies that are functionally insolvent, that will never trade profitably again, and which are being paid not to close. I know of companies where I am that are starting to look at letting hundreds of people go...those people were paid for two months by the govt.
And why? A good chunk of these people needed no help at all. The point of an unemployment system is that you focus payments on people who actually need help (btw, you can run an insurance system too...but some European countries that went this way don't have the tax base or economic structure for a true, income-substitution system). It is a typically European solution which is why some countries in the region regard 10% unemployment as a huge triumph.
What most European countries have done is fire all the bullets in their gun in the first 10 seconds of a battle that will go on for a long time...this is particularly foolish given how much debt some of these countries need to roll over this year.
Also, the US "money for everyone" program was equally stupid for the same reasons.
https://promarket.org/2020/03/24/economics-and-finance-profe...
True.
The income cutoff for Trump Bucks for a working single person was about what Facebook pays interns in the Bay Area.