Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them).
Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society.
In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them.
The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal.
> Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them).
This is an overly coarse grained depiction of the situation. An individual is not blanket "bad employee" who can't be productive. I'm a good software developer, but if you hired me to be a concert pianist I'd suck at it. I'd say probably 5-10% of employees end up being under productive or non-productive at their jobs. This is consistent with the performance review scores I've seen.
When firing an employee is easy, employers are much more willing to hire because they know that they will be able to terminate employees that are not productive. When firing an employee is hard, employers will be reluctant to hire employees and will only hire the ones that they are confident will do well. This usually makes it very hard to get started in an industry, because companies are leery of workers without experience.
> Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society.
This doesn't seem to be the case seeing as how most of Western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US.
> In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them.
You're seriously saying that if we don't employ people who are incapable of doing their jobs, then the only other option is summary execution? This is absurd to the point that I can only assume this is a bad joke.
The much more likely approach is to let them continue to be unemployed and search for a job that they are capable of doing.
> The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal.
0% unemployment is a crazy goal and I don't know why you seem to think that making it harder or easier to fire employees will ever bring it closer to zero. Even in fields where the number of job openings vastly exceed the available positions, unemployment is still usually at 1-2%.
>This is an overly coarse grained depiction of the situation. An individual is not blanket "bad employee" who can't be productive. I'm a good software developer, but if you hired me to be a concert pianist I'd suck at it. I'd say probably 5-10% of employees end up being under productive or non-productive at their jobs. This is consistent with the performance review scores I've seen.
I explicitly defined 'bad employee' as 'takes many job hops to find a place'. It's coarse grained to make a point, which you perhaps missed.
My point is: There is a % of the workforce that could work, but it is economically more efficient for them not to.
> When firing an employee is easy, employers are much more willing to hire because they know that they will be able to terminate employees that are not productive.
This is a separate idea: The job market should be such that people are free to find the best place for them. It'd take multiple essays to cover all the angles on how to best do that, or why the US is as it is, etc. For example, different cultural standards play quite a role there.
> This doesn't seem to be the case seeing as how most of Western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US.
It is the case now. Check just about any european politician's speeches. Unemployment rates don't prove anything here.
> You're seriously saying that if we don't employ people who are incapable of doing their jobs, then the only other option is summary execution?
Not what I said. I said: If you want to make an economic argument, given the fact that there are a few people where it's economically more efficient to not employ them, one should accept this. Or take on ridiculous extremist positions such as summary execution, which I assume nobody wants to take.
> 0% unemployment is a crazy goal and I don't know why you seem to think that making it harder or easier to fire employees
You seemed to be making the point that gig economy jobs are a good solution for perennially bad employees because they can easily get these jobs and be easily fired from them. I was countering said point.
Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them).
Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society.
In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them.
The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal.