More appropriate is the "law of extremely large numbers". The vast majority of people will not resort to homicide over a layoff, but 1 in 500,000 might, so when

More appropriate is the "law of extremely large numbers". The vast majority of people will not resort to homicide over a layoff, but 1 in 500,000 might, so when you have a few million layoffs, bad news like this occurs. I think people are more freaked out about the economy than is necessarily reasonable. It's very bad, but it's not like the entire technology sector is in a hiring freeze. There are still good jobs available; it's just harder to find them. I actually think that this upcoming decade-long crisis will be good, in the long run, both for technology people and average Americans, because the bloat and parasitism of the corporate/managerial/financial class has essentially starved the real economy and those who work within it, and this crisis stands to bring about their demise.