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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you can infer causality here. There are plenty of countries with easy firing (think sweatshops) and abysmal wealth levels. The US is wealthy for a bunch of reasons, including being a superpower and controlling the global reserve currency.

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Easy hiring/firing of employees may not guarantee a robust economy, but we can see from the situation in Canada, for example, that harder-than-necessary hiring/firing can definitely inhibit an economy that would otherwise be much stronger if it didn't have to deal with such artificial obstruction.

The situation can vary by province, but hiring/firing employees in Canada immediately exposes businesses to significant government-imposed overhead (both administrative and financial) and risk.

Maybe this is somewhat tolerable for larger organizations with dedicated HR and accounting teams, but dealing with all of the unnecessary and pointless government-imposed overhead and risk definitely harms the productivity of smaller organizations. This is especially true for small businesses that may consist of just one entrepreneur, who's also possibly facing tight margins, who'd just like some additional help.

I know of a number of small business operators throughout the country who would love to hire a first employee, or additional employees, but can't justify it due to the overhead and risk that is unnecessarily imposed by government.

I also know of businesses who had hired employees, but eventually had to let them go because the overhead and risk couldn't be justified any longer. Frequent and substantial minimum wage increases can really cause problems, for example, especially when margins are tight to begin with.

Many jobs in Canada are definitely being lost, or not created in the first place, all thanks to government-imposed overhead and risk that supposedly makes workers better off.

Anecdotally, my wife and I are both small business owners here in Canada, and everything you say is spot-on.

I will almost certainly never hire in Canada. The next company I start will be in Delaware.

More tax and regulation is a moat for larger organizations who can afford to deal with it.

The US got to be a dollar-pringing superpower because of its commitment to economic growth.

If you look at places with easy firing, I think you’ll find they are growing extremely rapidly. Vietnam and China used to be the poster children for kids making sneakers and look at them grow today.

The US got to be a superpower because of 2 world wars and massive purchasing of US armaments by the allies, effectively transferring British Empire wealth across the water, kickstarting large local manufacturing, and being a safe production hub after the wars.

Only militarily did the US become a superpower in WW2.

I was an economic powerhouse long before then.

The 1930's US stock market crash brought down the entire world!

As another point, it's not possible to make a ton of money selling weapons if you don't already have a thriving manufacturing sector. You have to at least be doing well to begin with.

According to [0], the US reached parity with the UK (probably the richest country in Europe at the time?) in terms of GDP per capita in 1880!

[0] https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/relea...

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