| "We're talking about thousands of people losing their jobs. These people then go into a smaller labour market where they compete with other vulnerable retail workers, affecting far more people." Expand your time horizon a bit. Having freed up the malinvested resources, other enterprises will arise which will hire them, at jobs that are now almost by definition more solid than the one they left behind, since the one they left behind couldn't sustain itself. "But what if they can't wait around?" They don't necessarily have to. The job market is not so tight that one job has to instantly open up as soon as one person is fired. There is some fluidity in it. The only place there will be any particular trouble would be around the HQ of Toys R Us; the individual stores are going to be in economies where the store going out of business is just a tiny blip hardly affecting the local retail employment environment. "But what about the permanently unemployed?" Well, if you're used to the "new normal", be sure to have a look at the current unemployment trends before getting too far into that sort of argument. And you have to consider the flip side as well. What if you got to go to work for Toys R Us, and it was guaranteed that you would be employed indefinitely there no matter how badly things went for Toys R Us? Sweet deal, right? Well, sure, but it's not going to be unique to Toys R Us, right? It's going to be the deal for everybody. We've got experience with what that "sweet deal" produces; read about the Soviet Union's economy. Would you rather have to find a new job every so often and live in the US, or be stuck in the Soviet Union? We don't have to hypothesize the answer to that; people are still falling over themselves to get into the US. It is vital that people understand that creative destruction trades some short-term inconvenience for massive long term wins, lest we foolishly legislate short-term conveniences for massive long-term losses because we collectively stopped understanding the full story. |
Continue piling onto the stash already very wealthy people have is primarily all this economic activity is accomplishing now as they crater retirements, cut healthcare or inflate prices out of the reach of the majority (which globally ~80% lives on ~2.50/day.)
What’s the point of 40-50+ hrs a week for me now if some whithered old geezer can change a law and flush the effort down the drain
How about meet basic utilitarian needs of food and healthcare, common ones of all humans, in the domain of the government
And what we spend on time on otherwise is up to us. Let’s all punch a clock to make earrings and baubles to support the ephemeral economy? Why does one need to be compelled to make consumer garbage? Oh cause stock prices or we can’t anger a small portion of the population: rich people
They have no divine right to wealth you know?
It’s self eating shitshow of stupid ideas that reinforce stupid ideas.
Steve Jobs is right: none of the rich are any smarter or more capable than your avg college grad. They just got lucky sooner