vygramul: What were we doing in 2000?

Um... having issues with employment rates related to another speculation crash?

//Albeit a smaller one at the time, a similar tech crash today would hurt a lot more.

Snotnose: FTFY

No, this one is 100% on the GOP. Unless the Democrats recently started screeching that "GAY RIGHTS, WOMEN'S RIGHTS, WORKERS' RIGHTS AND TAXES ARE ALL COMMUNIST NAZI SOCIALISM AND THE BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE WILL TAKE YOUR GUNS AND REPLACE AMERICA WITH SHARIA LAW" and I missed it.

Quite a few of my friends have been told they wont hear anything on jobs until after tax season for places they applied to, but a lot of places are taking applications and interviewing

Why hire employees when you can make your money through speculation instead.

Well of course they're keeping the labor market tight. Business owners are probably scared shiatless of what employee's are likely to do to them should workers ever gain the upper hand again in this economy.

Payback is a biatch.

If we shift more taxes from employers to employees, shift more taxes from the 1% to the 47%, eliminate more regulations and oversight, and throw in some more million dollar ceo bonuses, perhaps they'll consider ending our current wage deflation program and returning to the more stable wage stagnation policy we've enjoyed for nearly half a century. But we'd better not ask for clean air or affordable healthcare, because that would introduce uncertainty and require more wage deflation.

WhyteRaven74: Nothing says people have to just accept how things are, Americans have in the past moved to change things. Plenty of things that could be done now to move things along. Like get rid of all exemptions to overtime pay and mandate all hours over 40 come with overtime. Oh sure Goldman and Sachs will cry like a spoiled brat but that's hardly a downside.

Class warfare!

Corporations have a right to bilk their workers out of fair pay for their labor.

impaler: Snotnose: 2wolves: If anyone knows fear mongering it's today's GOP politicians.

FTFY

Both sides are badbought!

simply...management is cowardly.

The good news is that a sudden upswing in the economy and concurrent downswing in the unemployment rate would probably convince employers that hiring someone qualified, rather than waiting for a Nobel laureate to apply for that position, isn't such a bad thing, because soon you might have a whole bunch of competition for skilled workers.

The bad news is that austerity fever is busy kneecapping the economy such that it won't happen.

Albino Squid: The good news is that a sudden upswing in the economy and concurrent downswing in the unemployment rate would probably convince employers that hiring someone qualified, rather than waiting for a Nobel laureate to apply for that position, isn't such a bad thing, because soon you might have a whole bunch of competition for skilled workers.

The bad news is that austerity fever is busy kneecapping the economy such that it won't happen.

My employer has enjoyed hiring Nobel laureates for a few years now. The mid-level managers who make the hiring decisions walk around with their chests puffed out, bragging about how they hired someone with a Master's degree for a job that doesn't even require a Bachelor's degree. On the one hand, that new hire leaves quickly and my employer wastes a lot of time and money on turnover, recruitment and training, and lost productivity. But on the other hand, a few mid-level managers get to walk around with their chests puffed out. You've got to have priorities.

We need to go back to the tax rates of Reagan.  It pays companies too much to just sit on cash right now.

Old enough to know better: Well of course they're keeping the labor market tight. Business owners are probably scared shiatless of what employee's are likely to do to them should workers ever gain the upper hand again in this economy.

Payback is a biatch.

Everybody is waiting for the other guy to make the first move. Employees have been overworked for the better part of a decade and they're getting worn out. What's going to happen is a few companies are going to decide that it's a good time to get a permanent increase in market share at the expense of their frightened competitors. To do that, they're going to have to hire. Those who do will be able to expand while the rest will have to play catch up.

Once the hiring frenzy gets started, things are going to get really crappy for employers as employees bitter about the way they've been treated jump ship. The company they go to probably will be just as guilty as the company they left of mistreating employees but they won't know that or won't care since it didn't happen to them (no bad mental associations everyday going to the same office). This will be really bad for employers because a huge amount of institutional knowledge will be walking out the door. If a few people leave, new people can be hired and they can learn from those still around. Large numbers of people leave and that knowledge is gone forever and will have to be rediscovered at a high cost.

Productivity numbers are likely to take a nose dive and there will be nothing employers will be able to do to get it back since employees will be able to leave if the employer tries to whip them into higher productivity. It's not a situation where you want to be the employer trying to keep up with a competitor who is taking your market share and racing away. It's unlikely these trailing companies are going to understand why this happened to them. I foresee lots of middle managers who have spent the last half a decade crapping on employees getting the boot as they're not mentally able to adjust to not having the power in the employee relationship anymore. It's also going to be funny to watch HR departments get overworked trying to replace the people they spent much of their time telling "shut up and get back to work, you're lucky to have a job" when employees complained about poor management behavior.

I opted out of the labor market a little over a year ago. It's interesting to see my former employers reaching out to try to hire me even though I haven't so much as posted a resume. The dumbest is my last employer who I left because of poor treatment. After six months of searching they hired someone to replace me and three months later ran the guy off. According to my former co-workers, the guy was a good worker, he just wasn't willing to put up with the department manager treating him like dirt. They simply can't figure out why they can't keep people around, blaming the labor market instead of their own stupidity. The next five years is going to be fun to watch as companies have to tear themselves apart to remake themselves or die when their competitors grab market share that use to belong to the dysfunctional company. Maybe they'll try staffing up with "do the needful" visa holders.

NewportBarGuy: Tax and spend seems to have worked and we've never incurred as much debt as with tax CUT policies. Why don't we go back to what worked before?

Because your reality only exists in the fictional bounds of your own mind?

vygramul: What were we doing in 2000?

Watching the tech bubble burst.

But the job losses that resulted from that along with the 9/11 attack in 2001 should be no excuse... All the job losses from 2001-2005 were Bush's fault. The DNC campaign ads in 2004 told me this so it must be true.

But nothing is ever Obama's fault, particularly not the economy since he took office so you can't blame him for the record high number of people on welfare or the 20-30+ year record for lowest labor participation rate. You certainly can't blame Obama for insisting come hell or high water on a tax increase at the start of the year, nor can you blame him for proposing another 700 billion in tax increases in his budget, nor can you blame him for the boondoggle known as ObamaCare which is making companies less willing to hire.

I own a small company that sells to small companies. I've been in this business for twenty years, and I've seen things slowly change over those years. You want to know what the future is as I see it? Well small business in farked. Why? Because large corporations are crushing the small businesses that they can't buy. They use the legal system, they use government, they use competitive practices, both legal and illegal, that the small guy can't compete with. Big corporations have written our laws, and at the same time have the staying power and resources to ignore the law when it suits them. For every time a big corporation gets caught, they get away with breaking the law countless times. And I'm not even talking about skirting the laws they helped write. I'm talking about the outright breaking of laws.

So I see the future, and it's one where a handful of mega corporations act as a shadow government, and no small business can exist that they don't allow to exist. The new royalty in this system will be the ultra rich. Not just the 1%, but the 1% of the 1%. And the rest of us will be the plebes, the serfs, that dutifully serve our lords and masters.

Also, the companies can make you work the equivalent of three positions and when you complain they can point to the open position req and tell you that it is only "temporary". As long as they can keep it going, they get the same work done for much less money.

vygramul: BunkyBrewman: NewportBarGuy: Tax and spend seems to have worked and we've never incurred as much debt as with tax CUT policies. Why don't we go back to what worked before?

Spend on credit seems to have worked as well, hasn't it?

Please enlighten us... WHAT exactly worked before?

What were we doing in 2000?

Creating a bubble? Propping up our standard of living with debt and accounting fraud? That's what got us into this mess.