This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: Dear Person Seeking a Job: Why I Can't Hire You
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Potential employers have to respond to the incentives and disincentives that exist in today's world, and those do not favor conventional permanent employees.
I know you're hard-working, motivated, tech-savvy and willing to learn. The reason I can't hire you has nothing to do with your work ethic or skills; it's the high-cost Status Quo, and the many perverse consequences of maintaining a failing Status Quo.
The sad truth is that it's costly and risky to hire anyone to do anything, and "bankable projects" that might generate profit/require more labor are few and far between. The overhead costs for employees have skyrocketed. So even though the wages employees see on their paychecks have stagnated, the total compensation costs the employer pays have risen substantially.
Thirty years ago the overhead costs were considerably less, adjusted for inflation, and there weren't billboards advertising a free trip to Cabo if you sued your employer. (I just saw an advert placed by a legal firm while riding a BART train that solicited employees to sue their employers, with the incentive being "free money" for a vacation to Cabo.)
The other primary reason is that there are few (to borrow a phrase used by John Michael Greer) "bankable projects," that is, projects where hiring another worker would pay for the costs of the additional overhead, labor and capital and generate a reason for making the investment, i.e. a meaningful profit.
There is very little real "new business" in a recessionary, deflationary economy: any new business is poaching from an established business. The new restaurant isn't drawing people from their home kitchens, it's drawing customers from established restaurants.
The only competitive advantage in a deflationary economy is to be faster, better and cheaper or have a marketing and/or technology edge. But marketing and technological advantages offer increasingly thin edges. The aspirational demand (driven by the desire to be hip or cool) for a new good or service has a short half-life. As for technology: miss a product cycle and you're history.
Put these together--higher costs and risks for hiring people, and diminishing opportunities for expansions that lead to profit--and you have a scarcity of projects where hiring people makes financial sense.
Faster, better and cheaper usually means reducing the labor input, not increasing it. In a deflationary economy, it's extremely difficult to grow revenues (sales), and as costs continue climbing inexorably, the only way to survive is to cut expenses so there is still some net for the owner/proprietor to live on.
Consider the tax burden on a sole proprietor who might want to hire someone. The 15.3% Social Security/Medicare tax starts with dollar one. After the usual standard deductions, the Federal income tax is 15%, and 25% on all earned income above $34,800. My state tax is around 5%. Since every other advanced democracy pays basic healthcare coverage out of tax revenues, the $12,000/year we pay for barebones healthcare insurance is the equivalent of a tax. That's 15% of our income. Property tax is also $12,000 annually, so that's another 15%.
Above $35,000 in income, my tax burden is 15% + 25% + 5% + 15% + 15% = 75%. You can imagine how much money I would need to clear to be able to afford hiring someone. The number of businesses that generate huge sums of profit are few and far between, and the number of businesses that scale up from a one-person shop to mega-millions in revenues is also extremely limited.
The potential employer is faced with this reality: the money to hire a new employee will come out of my pay, at least at first. Hiring an additional worker only makes sense if the new employee will immediately generate enough additional revenue to fund his/her own wage and overhead costs, the added expense of supervision and a profit substantial enough to offset the risks.
I should stipulate that my knowledge of hiring people and being an employer is not academic. My partner and I launched a business in late 1981, in the depths of what was at that time the deepest recession since the end of World War II. We had a very diverse ethnic workforce and did millions of dollars of work. Rather than make a fortune I lost $50,000 and had to mortgage the house we'd built by hand to make good all debts. I exited in 1987 with my personal integrity intact: nobody lost money working for us.
The losses were basically the result of me pushing the outer boundaries of my experience and thus my competence in an unforgiving, very competitive environment. The learning curve in business is steep and pricey.
I have also been involved in saving/managing a small non-profit organization that had expanded payroll far beyond what the organization's revenues could support.
What newly minted employers understand that employees rarely understand is that the overhead costs of hiring even one person do not scale at first. To hire one person, even part-time, the employer needs to set up a complex infrastructure to manage the payroll taxes and accounting, and comply with a variety of statutes. If the employer does not follow the many laws regarding labor, witholding taxes, workers compensation, liability coverage, disability insurance, unemployment insurance and so on, then the employer is at risk of penalties and/or lawsuits.
If a business does $1 million in gross receipts a year and already has five employees and a manager, it's not that burdensome to hire a seventh employee--the framework is all set up. But the cost of setting all that up for employee #1 is not trivial, especially when you realize the complex machinery all has to be overseen and managed.
In the Silicon valley model, a couple of guys/gals work feverishly in the living room/garage until they have a product/service to sell to venture capital. If the pitch succeeds, the VCs give them a couple million dollars and they hire a manager to sort out all the paperwork, management, etc.
Most small businesses/proprietors don't get handed a couple million dollars. They have to grow organically, one step at a time. Each expansionist step is fraught with risks, especially when opportunities to grow revenue are few and far between and are generally crowded with competitors.
Thirty years ago the employer's share of Social Security tax was not today's 7.65%; it was much less. Worker's compensation rates were lower, as were disability and liability insurance rates. Adjusted for inflation, healthcare insurance was half (or less) of today's absurdly expensive rates. To pay someone a modest $20,000 annual salary today would cost at least $30,000 in total compensation costs, and if the employee is middle-aged or requires family healthcare coverage, it could easily exceed $40,000. That sum many be trivial in the bloated $3.7 trillion Federal government or in Corporate America, but in millions of small businesses that $40,000 is the proprietor's entire net income.
In other words, as costs of hiring anyone to do anything have climbed while revenues have stagnated, the threshold to hire an employee keeps getting higher. Back in the day, I could hire a young person out of high school for a modest cost in overhead, and the work-value they produced to justify the expense was also modest. I could afford to hire marginal workers and as long as they didn't get in the way too much and ably performed basic tasks then I could afford to have them on the payroll.
The same was true of older workers, veterans living on the beach who wanted work, etc.--I could afford to give all sorts of people a chance to prove their value because the costs and risks were low.
That's simply less true today. The costs and risks are much, much higher.
Liability has become a lottery game where anyone with assets or income is a target for "winner take all" lawsuits. I would have to be insane to hire someone to work around my property on an informal basis: if the person injured himself, I would face the risks of losing my property to the legal defense costs and potential settlements that exceed the homeowners' insurance policy.
In an office environment, I could be sued for harassment or for engendering a "stressful work environment." If you think these kinds of cases are rare, you need to get out more.
Simply put, the feeble hope of increasing revenues does not even come close to offsetting the tremendous risks created by having employees.
There's a Catch-22 aspect to all this; small business can't expand revenues without employees, but the costs/risks of having employees makes that a gamble that is often not worth taking. The lower-risk, lower-cost survival strategy is to automate everything possible in back-office work and free up the proprietor's time to grow revenues that then flow directly to the bottom line.
Managing people is not easy, and it's often stressful. Once a proprietor hires an employee, he/she must wear a number of new hats: psychiatrist/counselor, manager, coach, teacher, to name but a few. Frankly, I don't need the stress. I would rather earn a modest living from my labor and avoid all the burdens of managing people. (In my case, that included bailing workers out of jail, loaning them my truck which was subsequently rolled and destroyed, and a bunch of other fun stuff.)
I am not embittered, I am simply realistic. I enjoyed my employees' company, even the one who rolled my truck and the ones who managed to get into trouble with the law. But I got tired of meetings and all the wasted motion of office management, and I got tired of taking cash advances on my credit cards to make payroll.
If anyone out there thinks being an entrepreneur/small business proprietor is easy and a surefire pathway to the luxe life, then by all means, get out there and start a business and hire a bunch of people. I applaud your energy and drive, and sincerely hope you are wildly successful.
I hope you now understand why so many businesses only want to work with contract labor/ self-employed people: having employees no longer makes financial sense for many small enterprises. What makes sense is paying someone a set fee to accomplish a set task, and that's it, the obligation of both parties is fulfilled. If the task isn't completed, then the fee isn't paid.
Revenues just aren't steady enough in many cases to support a permanent employee. When the work comes in, then contract labor is brought in to get the work done. When it's done, they're gone, and all their overhead costs are theirs.
It's extraordinarily difficult to generate revenue in a deflationary economy, and extraordinarily difficult to scrape off a net income as expenses such as taxes, insurance, healthcare, etc. continue climbing year after year.
Self-employment places a premium on professionalism and results. Unlike offices filled with managers and employees, nobody cares about your problems, conflicts, complaints about the common-area fridge or your attendence at meetings. Once you've been self-employed for a while, and you only hire/work with other self-employed people, then you look back on conventional work places as absurdist theaters of schoolyard politics, tiresome resentments and child-parent conflicts acted out by self-absorbed adults.
Once you're self-employed, your focus shifts to nurturing a productive network of clients, customers and like-minded, reliable, resourceful self-employed people who will give you work/work for you when you need help. Building trust and following through on what you promised to do become your priority.
The economy is different now, and wishing it were unchanged from 30 years ago won't reverse the clock. We have to respond to the incentives and disincentives that exist in today's world, and those do not favor conventional permanent employees except in sectors that are largely walled off from the market economy: government, healthcare, etc.
But these moated sectors cannot remain isolated from the deflationary market economy forever, and what was considered safely walled off from risk and change will increasingly face the same market forces that have changed private-sector enterprise.
If you want security and a steady income, it may be more rewarding to build it yourself via highly networked self-employment.
»
- 50603 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Cheap gas is the only redeeming feature of NJ, and it's because - wait for it - NJ has massive refining capacity (1/2 the reason it stinks to high heaven).
Revenues just aren't steady enough in many cases to support a permanent employee. When the work comes in, then contract labor is brought in to get the work done. When it's done, they're gone, and all their overhead costs are theirs.
______________________________
In the end, it all boils down to the same with US citizen economics: stealing the environment of other people has introduced a false perception.
As you keep stealing from people, well, the revenues are steady enough.
Run out of people to steal from and you are back to the starting line.
The contribution of US citizens to humanity is sumed up to the incredible mindless consumption level they have managed to achieve to finally end with being forced to see face to face with the faults they lavishly blamed onto others.
yeah, I was watching (on youtube, I don't own a tv) the "food shows" like Man vs Food. I was astounded at the gluttony that we have here in the U.S. The masses here live for reality tv/entertainment and tons of food.
A wake up call is coming.
those "reality" teevee shows are staged entertainment designed to stoke hatred of "others" - this is closer to the current truth,
http://www.newschannel5.com/story/18941878/19-children-found-living-alon...
The contribution of US citizens to humanity is sumed up to the incredible mindless consumption
...writes the Chinaman on a device developed by... US citizens.
And manufactured in China.
You know, as it relates to the topic, to produce an object, you need ideas, you need material and you need how to manufacture.
US citizens have sold the idea that their ways were better than anyone else, that they could overcome the environment, that they would make a better use of the environment than the legal owners of it.
See the result. US citizens are on the path of depleting the world resources. Just what kind of future can get out of this trend imposed by US citizens?
That is another legacy courtesy of US citizens.
You know, AnusAnonymous, you are a classic case of "Projection" --- the psychologic disorder of seeing in others, and attributing to others, the faults and sins of your own. In this case, the collective faults of your overpopulated, overpolluted, madly resource-depleting nation.
China is ALREADY the #1 polluting nation on earth --- and the rate of growth of its polluting keeps rising. China has the most polluted cities in the world, the worst air quality, the most toxic environment, the most deforestation compared to 100 years ago, emits far and away the bulk of environmental mercury (the Eskimos of Alaska thank you for their increasingly PCB and mercury-poisoned seafood), and on and on. They are STILL ripping up and toxifying hundreds of square miles of their own lands in the mad race to stockpile rare earth elements and sub-economic gold --- and you try to claim that your Borglike communist Chinese are just "small players". No, they are the LARGEST player!
Your hypocrisy, like the rapacious greed of your totalitarian overlords and paymasters, knows no bounds. None.
EDIT: Uh oh, AnusAnonymous did not instantly respond this time (anyone else notice the amazingly rapid, machinegun-like frequency of "his" posts?) --- I think I just might have stumped his preprogrammed troll algorithms here.
akak said:
It might just be time for a shift change at the trollyards.
Sometimes I wonder if certain comments are not allowed to pass through the Great Firewall by his/her/their masters and overlords, and so they don't see them much less respond to them. It's not a stretch, given the prevalent censorship by The Party. Certain buzzwords or lines of reasoning could possibly, possibly, get the trolls wondering, pondering even. And we will have none of that.
Sorry, but it's the Chinese merchantilism that ultimately sets the market value of a product. When all energy, raw material and other overhead is subtracted from the wholesale value of a product, what's left is wages and profit for the manufacturer. No profit then no product. If the available money for labor divided by required positions is less money per position than folks are willing to be paid, then no product. People who refuse to pay no more than X for a product have no place to bitch about how little workers get paid making that product.
My small business is being sued by a worker we fired (for cause, in an at-will employment state) for "racial discrimination" and is demanding $50,000.
Nevermind the fact that 55% of our new hires last year were minorities and 60% women. Or the fact that her boss is a minority.
The mere fact you're even aware they're a minority just proves you're a racist! And being aware that someone is a women is certain evidence you're a misogynist, too.
Gee, this employee law stuff is easy.
US citizenism includes racism.
From the start, the US of A has been a story of affirmative action programs.
Made me raff! A Chinese troll accusing anyone of racism...priceless!
From the start, the Middle Kingdom (halfway between the landfill of Hell and a truckstop restroom, to be precise) has been a story of affirmative roadside squatting action.
Speaking of racism, my dear hypocritical Chinese dishwasher friend, tell us all again how you bigoted Chinese (in a display of racism unthinkable and unseen in the USA) have for thousands of years routinely referred to ALL non-Chinese as "foreign devils".
Not to worry ... most of these cases settle between $25k to $35k.
you make good points, BUT you leave out some important ones
1) Corporate coffers are over running, many companies are making enormous and even record breaking profits
2) when they need to hire they simply OUTSOURCE, take advanatge of whoever the can, whereever they can.
3) its is true that start ups and truly small companies do most of the hring, but the large companies now own the govt, making it very hard for small companies to form , compete, exist.
4) while taxes are a problem, it is not THE problem, THE PROBLEM is large corps now own the govt, courts, and markets, leaving lil room for others to come in.
You've never worked for yourself have you Crawdaddy?
You know not of what you speak.
Looking back 30 years, I wouldn't be an employee in the private sector ever. It's a scam.
Yeah, if I wanted security and a steady income I would be in the public sector. But I have a conscience and would not work for the enemy. Each to hsi own.
I'd be a govt contractor, with all the security and 10x the pay.
"They who have put out the people’s eyes, reproach them of their blindness"
For decades those with the money and the businesses have refused to pay a fair share of tax to ensure the workforce they now need was provided. This is despite having almost all of the political system at their disposal!
If you continue to think that those with money are apart from society, can continue to take but never give and then bitch and whne when something doesn't suit eventually you're deluded.
Maybe it's yourself at the top that's the reason that you can't make any more money, maybe you cost too much, maybe your expectations are far too high and maybe a bit more self analysis is required.
Conclusion:
Stop fucking whinning, you've had a good run and you're not eating out of bins.
I used to have 6 employees. The complex machinery referred to consisted of filling out some quarterly and annual tax forms - about 20 hours a year.
Did all that. Employees worse and worse, they destroy assets then demand higher pay. Fuck them, I hired subs.
Corporations are like a tick on a dog.
Comrade you are CORRECT!
wonderful primer on micro economics.....
as bad as all of this is, it could have the salutary effect of engendering a much more independent contractor work force independent of the stultifying and mind dementing corporate world. that would be excellent progress and a reinvigoration of a work force which is dependent and compliantly worshipful of power....
This is a fucking disgrace, not a joke!
Allowing cheap illegal labor into the US did the same as exporting jobs to third world shitholes.
Didn't you hear? Obammy is going to hold a naturalizatoin ceremony for the soon to be amnestyed illegals for the 4th of July.
No, he wouldn't want to honor our troops that are sacrificing everything.
It's not so much they're allowed in, it's that they're allowed to keep working.
It's all about pursuit of the cheapest possible labor costs:
1) ship factories to where people work for less - first from the north to the south, then to Mexico, then to China, now to Vietnam or elsewhere as China's labor costs rise
a) this no longer applies to just manucfacturing. Data Processing and Systems work got shipped overseas a decade ago after all that surplus high speed communications was built by more than needed communications companies, tech support and corporate call centers went shortly therafter
NONE of this could have happened without all the surplus high speed phone/communications networks build in the frenzy of 'competitive' communications companies building duplicate (and expensive) systems after deregulation - note hoe many of those companies went bust and merged back together
i ) banks and Wall Street are now moving back office jobs in A/P, A/R and Purchasing overseas - despite taking billions in govt aid - no rewuirement to keep jobs in the US - or bring any back
ii) companies milk local governments for 'incentives' to bring jobs to an area, reducing their costs though still reducing overall numbers as they simply play musical chairs with the remaining jobs
'Free' trade is not free - some realized this early on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI2)
2) If you can't move the jobs overseas to cheaper labor, bring cheap labor in
a) H1B visas for tech workers - gaming the system allows this to occur even when US workers are available drive the cost of competing US labor down
b) illegal workers displace US wprkers in places like meatpacking plants that you can't move (Note that despite kabuki play INS raids, employers are rarely punished for employing illegal labor
c) illegal workers also aloow employers to evade safety regs and avoids paying benefits - look at the number of illegals in non-union construction
3) when you can't do 1) or 2) use technology to eliminate workers entirely
4) treat higher level workers as a higher form of indentured servants - demand 60-80 hours of work for the 'good' salaries they earn, make it clear that it is frowned upon to take vacations - and make them 'available' 24/7/365. Lay them off and replace them before 50 with cheaper younger workers. Your're seeing this model even in law firms now - no more senior partners playing golf
a) the unemployment ranks are full of 50+ yesr old executives let go and replaced with younger workers - people who will NEVER AGAIN work for the same salary level in corporate America. They are draining their 401K's to buy Subway, Kinko and Mailboxes Etc. franchises to try and earn a living to make it to age 65 (much of that 'small business growth' is desperation on the part of unemployed)
5) All the increased profits coming from the 'increased productivity' (cheaper labor) go to the top executives (NOT the corporate shareholder owners and certainly not to the workers actually procucing product)
to put it short - value added by an employee is divided into 3 parts:
1) government part (in the form of taxes)
2) employer part
3) employee part (net wages)
the problem is the part number 1) has grown too much so that it does not make sense other parties to struggle for 2) and 3)
If an employer has an idea that is expected to generate X profits but doesn't have time to do it himself, he will hire someone if he can pay them significantly less than X. Government regulations/taxes enter into the calculation but they do not mean employer will not hire. If one doesn't, competitor will. Employee status with presumed better job security and maybe cheaper group health insurance makes people willing to take lower salary than they would as a consultant, etc. That's why employers offer it. In reality, the benefits employers pay are not worth much and are declining and job security is hardly any better but most people don't realize this so it's a bargain for employers.
Business has always been about making money. Government has always been about taking it. Its never a good thing to be between those two forces. We all know that government has been busy for generations building barriers for business that deliberately give advantage to one over another. They use the public to create support so they can do more, but it only gets worse, and yet it is never their fault. They dam the river for our benefit. When it floods, its the rain's fault. When the dam fails its the contractors fault. As the Libs always say, the consequences are irrelevant, its intentions that count.
The Author is perpetuating the views of MBAs with short time horizons. Smart people, i.e. not MBAs, understand business cycles. The best time to hire really good people is when you are in a recession. The best time to do R&D and develop new products is when you are in a recession. When the business cycle comes around those who were hiring and developing during the last downturn will have the products, the personnel, and the lead-time orders to clobber the short-term thinkers. In the up-cycle you make huge profits and store them carefully for the next downturn. HP and IBM did this consistently and grew to dominate technology.
how about a Depression? How do you measure a business cycle when the whole kit and kaboodle is manipulated. That is if you don't have insider information.
Maybe in the old economy ... the point is that the hurdles put in place by regs, lawyers, etc. make it kind of moot to think in terms of business cycle. If you are running a small business, there is only one speed to the cycle ... you are constantly running for your reward, and if you try to work smarter by deploying capital to add labor, you will be whacked, because we cannot run the risk that you will compete successfully with connected political donors.
Just reading some history on Andrew Jackson. Seems in his time, if you had the ambition you could make a name for yourself, on your merit, unlike today with a bloated government and cronyism.
Legal and political career
Jackson began his legal career in Jonesborough, now northeastern Tennessee. Though his legal education was scanty, he knew enough to be a country lawyer on the frontier. Since he was not from a distinguished family, he had to make his career by his own merits; soon he began to prosper in the rough-and-tumble world of frontier law. Most of the actions grew out of disputed land-claims, or from assault and battery. In 1788, he was appointed Solicitor (prosecutor) of the Western District and held the same position in the government of the Territory South of the River Ohio after 1791.
Jackson was elected as a delegate to the Tennessee constitutional convention in 1796. When Tennessee achieved statehood that year, Jackson was elected its U.S. Representative. The following year, he was elected U.S. Senator as a Democratic-Republican, but he resigned within a year. In 1798, he was appointed a judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court, serving until 1804.[16]
In addition to his legal and political career, Jackson prospered as planter, slave owner, and merchant. He built a home and the first general store in Gallatin, Tennessee in 1803. The next year he acquired the Hermitage, a 640-acre (259 ha) plantation in Davidson County, near Nashville. Jackson later added 360 acres (146 ha) to the plantation, which eventually grew to 1,050 acres (425 ha). The primary crop was cotton, grown by enslaved workers. Starting with nine slaves, Jackson held as many as 44 by 1820, and later held up to 150 slaves, making him among the planter elite. Throughout his lifetime Jackson may have owned as many as 300 slaves.[17][18]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson
Well I own a corporation and have a small group of employees now, and I have run various companies on and off for 25 years. I want to comment on this.
It is not that expensive to hire people. I can hire an employee by using the various "Help Wanted" services, but finding a good employee is pretty hard. When I was a lot younger, in the 1980s, employees had more interest in coming to work to actually WORK. I am very discouraged by the American worker. I believe this is a phenomenon others have experienced.
Here are some employees I've had to deal with lately:
• The Computer geek, good with computers, age: early 20s. Is extremely "sensitive" and easily hurt feelings, any little thing and he's "hurt" poor little thing. He brings a blanket to work and does his code with his blanket on his lap. When he's feeling jovial he repeats quotes from South Park, and he spends all of his non-working hours playing video games. Many times he does not come to work, I think due to gaming all-nighters. He is a compulsive liar, always coming up with some story about why he can't come to work. I put up with it and finally he just quit without saying a word, will not answer his phone, will not return any emails. Did not even come get his final paycheck. He was probably hurt by something someone said. He lives with his mommy and daddy.
• Lady in 40s with kids, constantly texting and talking on cell phone at work. Serious text addict. I trained her and she was accurate at work but would go off and disappear and text and talk during the work day. When work slowed down she just pretended to work. A big pretender. I had to let her go.
• Well educated guy in late 30s who fashions himself as a real political expert, "plugged in" to all the phony right winger radio warmonger zionists. Has never heard of AIPAC but hey, he's plugged in, and always bringing up issues brought to him from his radio messiahs, and calling people "libs". Every thought in his head is about libs libs and libs this or that. What a waste! I told him to take a break for a few days because work got slow, and he immediately filed for unemployment. Some right winger eh.
• Lady with all kinds of food allergies and diets and phobias of every type, I could not keep track of all that. One day she was laying on the floor. I encouraged her to resign so she did.
My best employee by far is an African American very cool guy I trust 100% he is my age mid-40s and has a work ethic that is hard to come by. I'd love to sell my business, it is quite profitable, and give him a nice cut so we can both get out of the racket.
Good accounts, I hired an IT tech from a corporation and took him out on one job, I did the Job and showed him what I expected, he quit.
I caught another hire sleeping on the job while I was running around doing all the work.This was in my business.
Working for a Dr. as an office manager. Had a Latino, gay, tried to hit on me and he was accident prone and many times late with excuses. Fired him.
After having women working, I would not hire them again. Always having problems at home, have to pick up kids, kids sick. etc.
Glad I'm out of those businesses.
My sister is a nurse. She put in her 2 weeks and as a result, threw her employer into a hissy fit. Not only did they beg her to stay, But they gave her a huge raise.
Lets put her in charge!
;-)
'If you want security and a steady income, it may be more rewarding to build it yourself via highly networked self-employment.'
And then move to Costa Rica and get your medical treatment in Cuba.
The bankster NWO beast is ugly and stupid.
People are fighting now across the US and the World. It will cost the banksters everything they've stolen.
No market. I've got a reason to live, a sense of purpose -- my own f'n job. Arrest the authors of Agenda 21.
Dear prospective employee,
I was forced to hire you as a replacement. I am gaurenteed to loose money on you but my boss says it works strategically. The guy you will replace is light years ahead of you but he had funny ideas about right and wrong. Your credentials are suspect as is your demonstrated job fit capability. But hey, we are all globalists now. You leave your crony shit hole and relocate to mine. Hopefully nobody with any skill notices we are clueless sucktards.
Welcome to the crony mofo shithole thunderdome
deleted
so fucking true....
"Self-employment places a premium on professionalism and results. Unlike offices filled with managers and employees, nobody cares about your problems, conflicts, complaints about the common-area fridge or your attendence at meetings. Once you've been self-employed for a while, and you only hire/work with other self-employed people, then you look back on conventional work places as absurdist theaters of schoolyard politics, tiresome resentments and child-parent conflicts acted out by self-absorbed adults."
lol, have to strongly agree here.
"conventional workplaces. . ." are what conventional skool trains for - attendance to a "bell" time clock, assigned desks, assigned "work" and tests, all traffic going one way in the mornings, the opposite way when the timeclock bell lets out, in between, much playground jockeying for position, and oh yes, drama.
break the spell, buck the norm.
George Clooney to Host Another Obama Fundraiser — This Time in Switzerland
http://news.yahoo.com/george-clooney-host-another-obama-fundraiser-time-...
WTF
barklay's diamond to host fundraiser in the 'city' for romany.
http://billmoyers.com/2012/06/29/in-london-mitt-banks-on-the-wrong-horse/
that's the fuck.
you can skip the part about his 77000$ tax deduction for his horse.
I stopped reading this losers drivel at this
"Above $35,000 in income, my tax burden is 15% + 25% + 5% + 15% + 15% = 75%."
$12,000 for property taxes..... what is the value of the property that he owns that he is paying property taxes on, further how can he afford the P & I payments with a $35K income!!!!
My Bullshit detector just went off!
// Variable declarations - pull other variables from global scope
import 2012.Economy;
private var employees : int;
private var managers : int;
private var CEO : int = 1;
// Main process loop
function Update () {
while(2012.Economy.GDP < 2.0%)
{
if(profitMargin < minProfit && employees > 1 && managers > 1)
{
employees--;
managers--;
severancePackage.CEO++;
}
if(cumulativeProfit < severancePackage.CEO)
{
Debug.Log("I regretfully must leave the company to pursue other interests, you've
all been a pleasure to work with.");
CEO.bank.account += severancePackage.CEO;
peaceOut();
dissolveCompany();
}
}
}
+1 - Did you intentionally forget to set initial values for
(the private members) employees and managers
or does "global scope" => class level in this language?
Just asking ...
For comment psuedo-code sake, I didn't declare every possible variable and made the comment about them being initialized another way....
Good catch, anyway.
Like most of the reactionary eco-crap here, most posters have never studied "economics"...they scraped by the skin of their hairs in Daddy-paid U, and studied "status quo" Capitalism (Monopoly Capitalism).
This article IS "status quo" crap! Most who are unemployed are "more" than willing to be flexible, creative and contribute far more than the employer is willing.
Any very skilled labor can be had for peanuts these days by contract or consultant agreement. And Einsteins, if you haven't heard (re: the Meg Whitman's housekeeper comments) California suffers the "highest" inflation in the U.S.! $50k is almost poverty! In 2002 a Rand COLA study showed it requires $65k for a "living wage" to live in the Bay Area...that's 2002!
So, as usual, most of the Koch-paid posters here wont let "facts" get in the way of their pining for the "good ole' days" of the Robber Baron Era...except that most of them were born after 1980! Hey, Little Tykes...the world before Reagan was "built" on "demand-side", "Fiscal" policy!
And since then...we have been circling the toilet rim in a downward Republ-flush, by "re-architecting" the economy to suck the toes of wealthy (not you idiots, the "real" wealthy).
The difference between you and the true 1%, is that the true 1% understood what the end game is and therefore they crafted the "New Deal"..yeah, not the left...it was merely a bone thrown to halt the riots (that have mostly been erased from history books), bank runs and burgeoning criminal underworld (competition, that is).
The "truth" is that you don't "want" to hire, because, like most of yesterday's flashes in the pan, you have no ideas that anyone wants. You lack creativity, responsibility and entrepreneurial insight.
Since you cannot adapt to viewing yourself critically, or consider that the spectrum of economics is infinite in "both" directions...like all spectrums by definition, then you too will die out and go the way of the Do-do Talking Head. Your stale, musty, crusty call for going backward as a solution is hysterical...yeah..."less" regulation, less law..."free" markets....
I can't wait to see your face when the "free" market unleashes a riot or two your way! By then, your 180 will be a "me too", wanna-be hopeful cry that will be too little, too late. Bring it on!
It should be noted that the extinction of the Dodo bird was the U.S.govt. killing its habitat.
Anybody see a corelation?
Dodo's lived on a small island in the South Indian Ocean and were killed off hundreds of years ago by visiting sailors and the predator animals they introduced to the island.
The only potential correlation I can think of is to ask the question.........do you watch Fox News alot and depend on it for information?
I don't watch TV you stupid son of a bitch.
Poor poor James. I'd say the only one lacking intelligence would be, hmmmmmm, let me guess, uh right, you!
I'd kind of agree with you if you made a fragment of sense. And yes, I've studied econ. On scholarship.
Property tax is also $12,000 annually, so that's another 15%.
WTF does this have to do with labor costs? Belongs in another expense category my thinks. Which makes the math suspect.
Irrespective though: there is not enough money flowing through the hands of wage earners so business is rightfully reluctant to increase payroll. The "consumer" is not consuming much beyond necessity if at all on the aggregate. And American workers like to buy things.
This is just so fucking tired anymore.
Where's the damn alien invasion already?
Take me to the liquor store, I got some questions
~Ron White
Here in Greece, almost nobody pays taxes. Go visit a doctor, he will take cash and not give you a receipt nor declare his real income to the state. Same if you call a plumber, electrician, builder, private teacher for your kids. Same in many (not all) restaurants, shops, gas stations. Everyone who can steal from the IRS, will do it. Even public servants, who are paid by the state, if they have other sources of income except their salaries, they will try to hide them.
Perhaps Greece is showing the way to other peoples, shows what happens when a state grows so much that it destroys everything creative: people understand it and simply do not pay. Of course, the article implies that if you do this in America you might have serious problems with the law. In Greece this tactic works either because the judicial system is not really working or because everybody does it, or perhaps for both reasons.
You know, we don't complain about the size (read growth) of the state (especially in USA! USA! USA!) when its size matters and impresses us such as the WWII effort, and the GI Bill, the national parks system, the space program, etc..
I think the size/growth needs to be exchanged with something that better captures what we are (rightfully) pissed about.
oh, thats it:
Captured.
So, if I may: shows what happens when a state is so Captured that it destroys everything creative and encourages witholding of tax tribute to its treasury..
Fixed it?
The excellent article would be 100% A+ if it included a few supporting charts using the best available data to show sole proprietorship/partnerships are dramatically drying up as sources of job creation.
I met a guy on a cruise to New Zealand last year and he owned a refrigeration company. He had 49 employees, and had more work than he could handle, but refused to hire another. Ever. And this was pre-health Obama-scare. Looks like a lot of regs come into play when you go over 50 employees. I guess it's a magic number.
Long Legal Zoom..
True, one more number. There are lots of magic numbers. One can only manage six people at a time. There are thresholds for taxes, thresholds for worker's comp insurance, ROI for office purchase, depreciation of equipment. Who cares? There is a very good reason there are companies and employees. The company makes money off the employees, simple. You will see this clearly if you become full time self-employed:
Lots.
More.
Money.
Message to CORPORATE AMERICA:
Take your job and SHOVE IT.
There's a NEW WORLD coming.
And YOU ain't part of it.
Have a Nice Day.
Over.
Finally a bingo!
This whole fucking thread is like sitting in a fucking Oprah Winfrey ampitheatre...
95%+ of all laws are created by big biz, in order to gain advantages for themselves and cripple competitors.
In America the reasons you can't get hired are:
1) the slot's reserved for affirmative action hires, which are needed to fend off the lawyers
2) if you don't want to be a peasant like the Chinese and Mexicans, and actually be paid a living wage for something you are good at doing, you are considered "lazy" by the corporate masters and their MBA lackeys
Jim Rogers famously said, when you hire workers in China, they ask you how many days they can come to work in a year; but, in American, they ask how many paid days off instead.
and robots ask nothing.
Must have been a long time ago. No paid days off for part timers. Not sure about the Chinese serfs (and I would never aspire to become one) but according to Employee Benefits News
"It may not be so surprising to imagine that working Americans spend nearly 500 more hours a year on the job than their French counterparts, 260 more hours than the British and 137 more hours than the Japanese, according to a recent report attributed to the International Labor Organization. Americans also reportedly average just 13 days off a year compared with 30 paid vacation days in France and Finland."
Apparently the increased productivity being squeezed out of the lucky American jobholders comes at the expense of vacations, as 57% of employees didn't take an average of 11 vacation days in 2011, mostly because of workload and fear of not being able to catch up; a third of them were afraid to ask for vacation.
I'm sorry, but the article's math is poor, his catagories are duplicated, over simplified and erroneous. All of this makes a potentially reasonable article garbage.
In case your interested, he does not indicate his income, so his tax percentages have no reference. He includes taxes the employer pays mixed up with taxes the employee pays, which do not affect him, except MAYBE indirectly. He counts the higher Federal tax (25%) as if ALL his income is taxed at that rate. He lumps in health in health insurance (at a huge cost, well beyond my middle-aged pre-existing condition ass) as a tax, which may be reasonable as of this week, but is just a shift from his "discretionary" expenses with no actual increased cost. He refers repeatably to "us", suggesting he is including a working age or two (or three) adults in his expenses.
Unfortunately, judging from the emotional "ditto dude" comments, many here are swayed by his "logic".
Voodoo Economics and Fucking Red Meat!
The real factor is more like 1.2.
Not 1.75, on the wage.
Yep, the IRS is cracking down on all self employed people. Go ahead and try to arbitrage the status quo by hiring self employed people who ignore tax liabilities, insurance liabilities and every other liabililty BITCHEZ
Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. You are allowed to shoot four Politicians.
Of course, this means you will be sent to prison where you will get three meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating, air conditioning and all the health care you need. Need new teeth? No problem. Need glasses? That's great. Need a new hip, knees, kidney, lungs or heart? They're all covered.
As an added bonus, your kids can come and visit you as often as they do now.
And who will be paying for all of this? It's the same government that just told you that you they cannot afford for you to go into a home.
Plus, and because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any income taxes anymore.
Is this a great country or what? SOUNDS LIKE A WIN-WIN SOLUTION TO ME!!
You are dreaming... I have been to prison and they actually take perfectly good teeth and make them poor through malnutrition and strict rationing of clean water.
The prison system isn't any better than our healthcare system--everything is about profits.
They just need to tweak the system a bit. Give them a one way trip to Norway to commit their crimes, and they will be much better taken care of AND no longer be a burden to the American system.
Here's something for all you capitalist communist hating greed pigs.
Labor is a commodity, just like gold. The value of a commodity is only worth the means necessary to produce the commodity. Take for example gold. If It costs $460 to mine an ounce of gold and it is then sold for $1578, then the cost greatly exceeds the costs needed to generate the commodity. Funny how Communist countries like China buy gold at current prices. If it only costs me $460 to mine an ounce of gold when I can sell it for $1578 why would I want to either buy physical gold with my fiat, if the output of my labor exceeds the output to produce an ounce of gold, or number two mine the gold instead of simply purchasing the gold. Therefore the true price of the gold should be around $460 per ounce.
The rest of the money goes to the government and lazy welfare state.
Well it sure as hell don't go to gold mining stock owners.
Thats really dumb
Thats really true. Its called communism. You might want to read some Karl Marx. He pretty much predicted all the problems that Globalization and Capitilization has presented. We are now just a bunch of slaves competing for labor. And what makes you think Gold is worth anymore than the price it costs to produce it?
The system as we know it is shutting down, there is no more juice. Find alternate means of income, hunker down and collect what will survive. I don't know the date and time it will seize up, but that is not for conjecture anymore. I have a brand new grand son today, my heart is heavy with that thought, but if he has the DNA that bought him into this world, once he reaches maturity he will be fine. I just have to make sure he gets there. This is heavy. How much have the rest of you stacked?
4 to 5 years of normal life, might be 3 to 12 years of mad max world.
Stack em
Congratulations. He'll be fine with two generations looking out for him.
What we are going through seems pretty dire, but this is partly because we have had it pretty good as a nation since the Great Depression.
Three or four generations of prosperity have left most of us with no direct verbal family accounts of tough times. It's easy to forget that today's predicament is a pretty normal human experience, historically.
Many cultures have gone through fiat collapse, currency debasement, great wealth distribution inequities, clueless or corrupt leaders, and governments controlled by undemocratic influences. Yes, we are doing this round with greater electronic market speed and crazy derivative debt instruments, but it's pretty similar at its core.
We are not Pompei. We know what is coming, just not how it will play out.
Keep stacking and otherwise preparing. Who know, if extend and pretend is as successful here as it has been in Japan, the little one will reach majority under these circumstances that seem so epic to us now. Meantime, you have held a grandchild. Few other human events, and zero financial events, compare.
best wishes on the "brand new" family member. . . he is being born into a "brand new" paradigm emerging, globally - there is not much that can be done to protect him from the harm inherent in being human, but he comes with the advantage of intelligence within the family, and that's something increasingly rare, it gives him a head start over most.
just imagine, ten years on, and more. . . there will be a major shift that as a younger human, he can readily adapt to, not so easy for some older folks, with memories of "better times" - for him? it's all new, duck 'n' dive.
environmental factors beyond our control are the one thing that would worry me, but people want to have children, so obviously this consideration is adapted to.
as to the "stacking" question - I've stacked trusted peoples, all around me - some metals too, but more fiat gets invested in the living & growing spaces than the hiding ones.
"no one gets out of here alive" - jam today!
"I am not embittered, I am simply realistic." When this echos in more skulls then we can move forward. Not going to happen in red or blue for some time. "then by all means, get out there and start a business" Good luck and when you hit a level of scope they will walk in the door for a compliance audit.
Smith writes some good stuff, but be careful he leans marxist left. Can not be trusted ever...
The tax calculation isn't exactly right, some of the taxes are deductable against some of the others, but that's the weakest part of the argument. The overall assertion, that it's many times more difficult to hire someone then in previous decades is quite correct. I live in California. I know some general contractors pretty well. In some cases, they have to pay $30/hr for disability insurance for a $10/hr laborer. Unbelievable. So, everyone's going to have to become a 'consultant' or a 'contractor' so that they are allowed to be responsible for their own benefit structure. It's already happening throughout our economy. In this, the author is correct. Today, only the government, and of course GE, which said company pays no taxes, can afford to hire the old way. That too will change, and very rapidly unless I miss my guess.
Huh? Disability insurance is deducted from employees paychecks, not paid by employers. Deduction is 1% of income, maxing out at $954. So how do you get this crazy $30/hour? Bad second hand information?
The reality for Americans going forward is to get a passport, currently only 10% have one, and then travel to where the work is. This may be a BRIC country or it may be to the developing world. They may get lucky and get a job in a first world country.
The bottom line is they will have to travel overseas for work.
It was easy to figure out that US citizen economics would lead people to pay to work. It is what the self employment stuff is pushing for.
So basically, when working for a company, an employee rents in some sort of way the appliances, tools, the premises etc from the hirer.
Either the employee is not charged for that but pays lower or he is paid higher but charged for that.
Now, self employed personal. I know a number of former employees who turned self employed, contracting to their former hirer.
Have they got a pay rise for the job since they are now renting their work assets to the hirer? Not at all. They often get paid lower than they did.
In the end, they are now subsidizing their own job by offering for free what the hirer charged and paid for earlier: premices, appliances, work tools etc
US citizen economics.
A delicatessen to underline by the way to the US citizen sub tribe labelling themselves the capitalists. Very funny to do.
One Time Cartoon of the week:
http://img.timeinc.net//time/cartoons/20110916/cartoon_0916_01.jpg
ha!
up vote, "with sprinkles"!
Public servants are blood-feeding parasites that lived on the productive part of the economy.Tax are expected to increase...
With almost same title 1,5 years ago in an other country
This is why I don't give you a jobI could hire 12 people with €760 net salary, but I don't. I'll tell you why. You could work for my service provider company in a nice office. It's not telemarketing, it's not a scam. You would do serious work that requires high skills, 8 hours a day, weekdays only. I would employ you legally, I would pay your taxes and social security. I could give such a job to a dozen people, but I will not, and here I'll explain why.
Just try and fill out the NYC License Application for a lemonade stand. Then you will understand why the private sector is not creating any new jobs.
www.Fiverr.com
www.Elance.com
What more do you need?
Laws that make it optional to be temporary or self employed, not as a condition of performing work.
Great article and detail in your evaluation. I have been self employed for over 20 years. Eat what you kill. Way better than being told where to be, what to do, how much I get paid, what tax I pay, and all the drama you address in your post.
As an employer, I only engage people who work as independent contractors. I have had to hire, train, manage, babysit, and fire way to many employees. And one can never change that employee mindset. So my business partners and I engage top talent and pay them exactly what they are worth, tieing them into our planning, project management and customer support systems.
Not do our people all perform like owners, because they are owners of their own businesses really, but we drive way more productivity at higher, sustainable margins.
You are part of the problem in that you think everyone should be a madam or gentleman of ill repute - even if they are well-suited to secure, permanent, & directly-hired employment. If it takes government action to break you, then I have no issue with it aside from having to use a last-resort measure.
It must be a conscious desire to be self-employed and never under economic duress or market/politics-driven compulsion. Otherwise you are setting up things to be like lords and vassals, with all the unpleasantries.
Great article and detail in your evaluation. I have been self employed for over 20 years. Eat what you kill. Way better than being told where to be, what to do, how much I get paid, what tax I pay, and all the drama you address in your post.
As an employer, I only engage people who work as independent contractors. I have had to hire, train, manage, babysit, and fire way to many employees. And one can never change that employee mindset. So my business partners and I engage top talent and pay them exactly what they are worth, tieing them into our planning, project management and customer support systems.
Not do our people all perform like owners, because they are owners of their own businesses really, but we drive way more productivity at higher, sustainable margins.
Despite it being this far in:
People like him are what cause work arrangements to become more feudal -by structure of self/temp/agency employment - along with all the bad things with it.
Self-employment should at best be an option exercised by the few and not something forced upon the many - even if it takes legislation to disincentivize such work arrangements.