There's more to at-will employment than just "unemployment kinda sucks." At-will employment is the reason there's no real workers' rights in the US. If the emp

There's more to at-will employment than just "unemployment kinda sucks." At-will employment is the reason there's no real workers' rights in the US. If the employer can fire you at any time on a whim and for no reason, it becomes impossible to enforce any other labor protection laws, from discrimination on down. Sure it was illegal for my employer to fire me from my job at a thrift shop in the States after I got injured on the job doing work I shouldn't legally have been expected to do alone. So they just found another excuse and fired me anyway (in this case, because I took a day off to mourn my dying father. Remember what I said about America?). This happens over and over, with racial, gender, disability discrimination, labor violations, and on and on. There's no real way to enforce the law when there's a giant loophole around it, and who do you think has more money to win a labor suit? The unemployed person, or the company who fired them? There's also the pressure and the power imbalance it creates. If my employer can fire me whenever they want for no reason, then I have basically no clout at all on the job. I'm under relentless pressure to just do whatever I'm told, because if I don't, then I'm out on my ass in a day. You make a normally small mistake on a day when the boss is in a bad mood? Disagree with the wrong manager? Decide to stand up when the corporation wants you to do something unethical, or even illegal? Tough luck. Better hit the dole queue tomorrow. It creates a constant, oppressive pressure on employees, because you will never have job security. You are always one bad day or one wrong move away from the unemployment line. And let's face it, the same kind of voters and politicians who say things like you do, are the same ones that aren't gonna be in a hurry to raise the unemployment benefit to actually fit the cost of living. The last time I lost my job in Finland I nearly wound up homeless (surprise! I was on the very probationary period the gov't wants to extend indefinitely, and got let go along with all the other new hires, so my startup could cook the books for the VCs). Helsinki benefits haven't been adjusted for cost of living since the 70s, and if you think the same government looking to toss more people out on the street is gonna be in a hurry to fix that, well then I have some very interesting cryptocurrency investments I'd love to show you. Part of having a strong safety net is employees having the security not to need it all the time. If anyone can just shit-can people for something as simple as fudging the budget for next quarter, then unemployment costs rise, and the response to that has consistently been to cut benefits, not raise them. For all the system is imperfect here, Finns need to understand just how good they have it already, and stop supporting people who want to drag us down to the Americans' level just to make a few more euros.