[torben-friis]

I know HN is mostly against regulation, but I'm very glad my country restricts mass firings, and particular stricter rules apply for companies that turn a profit.

If you're generating benefits, there should be very few reasons you need to let go people massively.

[vanrysss]

I have a cousin in Belgium who was laid off following some restructuring and her severance was 52 weeks. Not out of the goodness of the company's hearts, but mandated by law since they gave no notice and she had accrued seniority. US labor laws are a joke in comparison.

[Matticus_Rex]

I'm sure that level of overhead has nothing to do with the reason Belgian incomes, standards of living, and business outcomes are worse.

[trgn]

vacationing/digital nomading in belgium atm, it looks erhm rich. traveling between brussels, leuven, ghent, bruges, soon antwerp... people dress well, never been anywhere with so many german luxury cars on the road, meals cost about the same as US.

I'm sure statistics this and that, but something doesn't translate, sanguine reality is different.

[HatchedLake721]

Reminded me of https://youtu.be/ML3qYHWRIZk

[ecshafer]

His little rant about "freedom" ended up aging poorly as most of the countries he lists as being more free have put serious limits on free speech since then. The most Soorkin screed he has written, might as well be John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged for how much its just the author inserting his political views.

[FireBeyond]

> standards of living

As measured by ... purchasing power.

Let's take a look, Safety Index - US 50.8, Belgium 50.6. Health care index - Belgium 75.9, US 67.8, Pollution Index - US 36.7, Belgium 49.2, Climate index - Belgium 86, US 78.5.

As it stands US standard of living is better really only in "you can buy a larger house" (shocking, giving the relative size), and "it'll be slightly cheaper".

Not by any other metric.

[KittenInABox]

How do you want to measure standards of living here?

[ozgrakkurt]

It is a delusion that US is rich because of capitalism.

It is an insult to the people that founded the country and people that developed science/tech/finance etc. in it. And ofc the space, natural resources and isolation from wars.

Saying US is rich because capitalism is about as accurate as saying it is rich because it is christian

[matchbok3]

Do you think those natural resources would have been taken advantage of as well in some other system? Same with the geography and isolation.

You are talking about entirely different things. Makes no sense whatsoever. You could make your same argument about any economic system. The natural resources are inputs, not the outcome.

[callmeal]

>Do you think those natural resources would have been taken advantage of as well in some other system?

Yes. See Norway for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

[ozgrakkurt]

> Do you think those natural resources would have been taken advantage of as well in some other system?

What I mean is those factors can obviously effect a country's success. And can be argued that that do much more easier than arguing about religion or ideology.

Similarly it is easier to argue that proper nutrition, sleep, drug usage etc. can effect an athlete's performance very positively. But you would find it much harder to argue on their religion, place they live, how wealthy were their family etc.

As another example I think it is pretty easy to argue that the Jewish scientists going to US because of Hitler was a massive gain for US and a massive loss for Germany. And there are so many concrete factors like this that, all things considered, ideology seems irrelevant in comparison.

You might say "this is all because US is capitalist in the first place". I want to point out how similar this kind of thinking is to the way some religious people think and how inconsequential it is in real world.

[NetMageSCW]

When people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs say they couldn’t have done what they did anyplace else in the world, capitalism seems like it is working.

[yamillove]

Now compare your cousin’s yearly salary in Belgium with the average salary of a US employee doing the same job.

[callmeal]

>Now compare your cousin’s yearly salary in Belgium with the average salary of a US employee doing the same job.

Take home is about the same after including health insurance and all the myriad taxes that US employees are subject to.

[heylook]

Now you compare the all-in cost of living across salary, taxes, housing, healthcare, and everything else.

[infecto]

Really depends on the type of job. Software? You are making bank in the US and partly because companies in the US can move quick because of their labor laws.

[para_parolu]

This also a reason why starting a business in USA is usually better.

[torben-friis]

Economics is hardly a reproducible science, but an American company has basically instant access to 350 million consumers (and workers) with no language barrier and little inter-state red tape.

It's hard to imagine that this isn't a larger differentiator than the ability to fire hundreds at will.

[infecto]

You would be surprised. Don’t think about it as firing but also being overly cautious. If you run a division in the EU you are overly thoughtful for every single HC you add. You don’t take risks because that HC at minimum is going to cost a year of severance. It’s a balancing act, maybe less new jobs but you get less layoffs.

[bunderbunder]

Perhaps, but one does have to wonder why the US favors making life easier for founders and venture capitalists over making life more livable for people who aren’t already rich.

Like, a while back my employer had 10% layoffs, and their most profitable year ever, in the same year. There’s a real reason why that happened, ans the reason is that the C suite seriously fucked up on managing the company’s finances. In a sane world they should be the first to bear the consequences. Instead they got fat bonuses while hundreds of people who had no part in creating the problem lost their jobs. And the moral justification for a society that allows this is somehow, “But isn’t it great that it’s easier for privileged people to play fast and loose like that?” That is, at best, circular reasoning.

[matchbok3]

Would you rather they never hire those people? Because that is one option.

[callmeal]

>Would you rather they never hire those people? Because that is one option.

Yup, and that way those people should be hired by companies who are in it for the long term and not looking just at the next quarter (and using hiring as a way to deny employees to competitors).

[infecto]

This is a tough problem because it’s not always great. There is a reason companies largely (not all!) think twice about innovation, hiring and building out new facilities in European countries and part of that are those labor laws. So you miss out on upside but maybe it evens out on average.

This is not me advocating for either side but it’s one of the reasons most startups exist in a country like the US.

[PowerElectronix]

And people wonder why there are zero companies in europe competing with american ones in the tech sector...

[tracerbulletx]

Tell that to ASML.

[joe_mamba]

ASML is over 30 years old. It also has a massive IP and financial moat that's impossible to replicate by start-ups competitors seeking to disrupt it. Labor laws don't matter at this point as that's not the limiting factor, it's IP and capital.

But SW can be much more easily disrupted, and if you can move faster and stay leaner than your EU competitors due to laxer laws, then you will win. SW success is often about time to market, not IP, since a lot of companies and countries can build a Airbnb, a Booking.com, a Spotify, etc there's no rocket science, they dominated because they were first to market but they can also be easily disrupted by other SW companies if they drop the ball and piss off their userbase as the cost of building SW is much cheaper than building an EU machine.

Also, there's a reason people can only name ASML as EU's shining examples but nothing else.

[joe_mamba]

>since they gave no notice

WHy wouldn't they do that? What type of notice ado you mean in this case?

[wbl]

The Nordic countries provide income replacement and retraining instead. Labor market inflexibility locks out younger unproven workers.

[ronnier]

HN is very much pro regulations of all types.

[ReptileMan]

Limit mass firings and you are also limiting mass hirings.