4 ms·

> First of all, the Phillips curve, really? That's a flawed boomer way to correlate inflation and employment Economics 101 always starts from the basics. It i

by stale2002 3y ago

> First of all, the Phillips curve, really? That's a flawed boomer way to correlate inflation and employment Economics 101 always starts from the basics. It is indeed the case that all things about the economy can get more complicated. But, when starting out from the beginning, it is important to learn the baseline foundations before moving on to more complicated special cases. Kind of like how in physics they start you off with frictionless, spherical cows. The same way of learning applies to economics as well. Also, if is important to note how wildly different your statements are from what you were saying at the beginning. If you agree that companies aren't just all deciding together to have layoffs at once, and it is instead a complicated result of interest rates (feel free to say it is the result of the models that come after the Philips Curve!), then I am glad to have moved you on your position.

ath3nd 3y ago
> If you agree that companies aren't just all deciding together to have layoffs at once, and it is instead a complicated result of interest rates (feel free to say it is the result of the models that come after the Philips Curve!), then I am glad to have moved you on your position. The companies did all decide to have their layoffs at the same time frame, it's a fact, because that's what happened. You can claim they all acted in unison, because they all faced the same macroeconomic environment so they were bound to make the same decisions. And I agree, partially. However, what I miss is the admission that the very same companies very much created the very same macroeconomic environment that now "forces them" to do the layoffs. They can't just simply claim it's the invisible hand of the market that makes them do what they do, and they are merely poor passive and unwilling participants. The whole idea of the free market is a funny one. There is no such thing as a "free market", there is already (not enough) a lot of governmental and financial institutions oversight, otherwise it all will collapse in days, just based on greed and speculation. Let me ask: - Who made them overhire? - Who made them overborrow? - Who led them to believe that free money is always going to be there? - Who made them chase potential growth instead of financial soundness? You can claim it's the market which caused all this, and that's partially right, but that kind of claim absolves their "leaders" of the responsibility for their lack of vision and foresight and putting their workers into unemployment, stagnating their wages, and having the ultimate effect of tanking the industry. My claim is that the same way the poor corps were forced by the almighty market to let go of their workers en masse and stagnating their wages, the almighty market's conditions are forcing us, the employees, to band together in unions so we can counteract that. If you replace "market" with "corporate greed", in my statement, it's all the same to me, it's what I meant. You can think that the robotic sameness with which they all played the same layoff playbook is due to it "being the logical thing to do at the time", but all I see is a bunch of stupid, amoral douches without any governmental scrutiny or oversight in search of a payout who wouldn't hesitate to use any opportunity for a buck. And yes, most likely they didn't have a Machiavellian meeting in the dark, behind close doors to discuss how to trod on the working class. The banal truth is probably that once the insane manchild Musk started trashing Twitter, the other ones just followed suit, simply because it benefited them at the time. This is still coordinated action from employers, and the best way to counteract that is government oversight, worker protection laws, and unions.
- stale2002 3y ago
  > You can claim they all acted in unison, because they all faced the same macroeconomic environment so they were bound to make the same decisions. And I agree Ok part 1 solved! People did layoffs exactly as econ 101 predicts, because of interest rates increase. Glad I got you there. Now on to part 2! > Who made them overhire? If interest rates being high, causes companies to do layoffs, well then we should also be able to figure out that interest rates being low (as well as injecting large amounts of money into the economy, like what literally happened), causes them to overhire. Part 2 solved! Exactly as Econ 101 predicts.
  - ath3nd 3y ago
    Exactly my point! When Econ 101 enters the room, humanity and morality are gone. reduced to mere numbers on a spreadsheet. The fact that you try to explain away some of the worst examples of human greed as the companies simply following the market shows that in your head following the market trends absolves one of any moral wrongdoings. While in reality, the companies you so staunchly defend suffer from the problem that their executives can make bets on the future without bearing the responsibilities of being wrong. That's the problem of not having your skin in the game (same as the cause of the 2008 financial crisis). - Overgrow? Stock goes up, cause we are growing. - Layoffs? Stock goes up, because we are streamlining. Nowhere in that cycle is the CEO held accountable or is the company inspected on actually being profitable or a bonus good for society. > Who made them overhire? Right, low interest and borrowing rates COULD be a great incentive if one wants to grow their company, but that's not an imperative, you don't NEED to do that. You can use the money for other things: as R&D or as part of a war chest, or simply raise the salaries of your workers (lol), or simply not borrow at all. You know one company that didn't overhire during the pandemic? Apple. Were they stupid? Did they not know about the wonders of economy 101? No. They simply were staffed enough, and knew there are other ways to bring shareholders ROI rather than growing like a bloated cancer. You know why the rest overhired? Because there were no repercussions for their executives if their bet went wrong. Money was basically free, so why not? Econ 101 says it's the right thing to do in the pre-2023 market where value of the company was determined by potential of growth, and not as it should: by the simple formula of revenue - expenses = profits. If their bet was wrong (and it was very wrong), nothing could go wrong for them. Why not have 3 rounds of layoffs after the overhiring, it's not like the executives are ever held responsible, and it really can bump up the stock price and leverage better negotiation position with those pesky expensive developers. And that, my friend, is why you need unions and heavy governmental oversight, to counteract that Econ 101 means all humanity out of the window. - Econ 101 would simply lead you to the conclusion that if your US workers are too expensive, the right thing to do is to replace them with cheaper overseas workers, UNLESS there is regulation or union stopping you to do so - Econ 101 will lead you to the conclusion that when your offshore support team can be replaced with a chatbot, you'd throw them under the bus within a second. - Econ 101 will lead you to the conclusion that overhiring to increase market value for shareholders is the right thing to do, despite you having no clear plan what to do with those workers, nor projects to put them on. "They'll figure out the details later, let's grow for now. Stonks go upp" - And when the balloon pops, econ 101 will lead you to the conclusion that it's time to cancel the visas and destroy the livelihoods of the same people they hired a year ago. All this in the chase of the dollar! It's disgusting. That's why we need far bigger government control over these companies, and stronger, multinational unions than we have now. Recently I've been very happy with the unions in the nordics sticking it to Tesla: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-should-reconsider-labour-union-relations-nordic-investors-say-2023-12-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-.... That's more of what we need to do, because it's better for us, the workers. Otherwise, left on their own within the invisible hands of the free marker (what a load of crap, conjured by a mentally limited, jealous, angry and totally inhuman Scotsman, no wonder economists are psychos), the megacorps will race themselves to the bottom and drag us with them.

ath3nd 3y ago

> If you agree that companies aren't just all deciding together to have layoffs at once, and it is instead a complicated result of interest rates (feel free to say it is the result of the models that come after the Philips Curve!), then I am glad to have moved you on your position. The companies did all decide to have their layoffs at the same time frame, it's a fact, because that's what happened. You can claim they all acted in unison, because they all faced the same macroeconomic environment so they were bound to make the same decisions. And I agree, partially. However, what I miss is the admission that the very same companies very much created the very same macroeconomic environment that now "forces them" to do the layoffs. They can't just simply claim it's the invisible hand of the market that makes them do what they do, and they are merely poor passive and unwilling participants. The whole idea of the free market is a funny one. There is no such thing as a "free market", there is already (not enough) a lot of governmental and financial institutions oversight, otherwise it all will collapse in days, just based on greed and speculation. Let me ask: - Who made them overhire? - Who made them overborrow? - Who led them to believe that free money is always going to be there? - Who made them chase potential growth instead of financial soundness? You can claim it's the market which caused all this, and that's partially right, but that kind of claim absolves their "leaders" of the responsibility for their lack of vision and foresight and putting their workers into unemployment, stagnating their wages, and having the ultimate effect of tanking the industry. My claim is that the same way the poor corps were forced by the almighty market to let go of their workers en masse and stagnating their wages, the almighty market's conditions are forcing us, the employees, to band together in unions so we can counteract that. If you replace "market" with "corporate greed", in my statement, it's all the same to me, it's what I meant. You can think that the robotic sameness with which they all played the same layoff playbook is due to it "being the logical thing to do at the time", but all I see is a bunch of stupid, amoral douches without any governmental scrutiny or oversight in search of a payout who wouldn't hesitate to use any opportunity for a buck. And yes, most likely they didn't have a Machiavellian meeting in the dark, behind close doors to discuss how to trod on the working class. The banal truth is probably that once the insane manchild Musk started trashing Twitter, the other ones just followed suit, simply because it benefited them at the time. This is still coordinated action from employers, and the best way to counteract that is government oversight, worker protection laws, and unions.

stale2002 3y ago
> You can claim they all acted in unison, because they all faced the same macroeconomic environment so they were bound to make the same decisions. And I agree Ok part 1 solved! People did layoffs exactly as econ 101 predicts, because of interest rates increase. Glad I got you there. Now on to part 2! > Who made them overhire? If interest rates being high, causes companies to do layoffs, well then we should also be able to figure out that interest rates being low (as well as injecting large amounts of money into the economy, like what literally happened), causes them to overhire. Part 2 solved! Exactly as Econ 101 predicts.
- ath3nd 3y ago
  Exactly my point! When Econ 101 enters the room, humanity and morality are gone. reduced to mere numbers on a spreadsheet. The fact that you try to explain away some of the worst examples of human greed as the companies simply following the market shows that in your head following the market trends absolves one of any moral wrongdoings. While in reality, the companies you so staunchly defend suffer from the problem that their executives can make bets on the future without bearing the responsibilities of being wrong. That's the problem of not having your skin in the game (same as the cause of the 2008 financial crisis). - Overgrow? Stock goes up, cause we are growing. - Layoffs? Stock goes up, because we are streamlining. Nowhere in that cycle is the CEO held accountable or is the company inspected on actually being profitable or a bonus good for society. > Who made them overhire? Right, low interest and borrowing rates COULD be a great incentive if one wants to grow their company, but that's not an imperative, you don't NEED to do that. You can use the money for other things: as R&D or as part of a war chest, or simply raise the salaries of your workers (lol), or simply not borrow at all. You know one company that didn't overhire during the pandemic? Apple. Were they stupid? Did they not know about the wonders of economy 101? No. They simply were staffed enough, and knew there are other ways to bring shareholders ROI rather than growing like a bloated cancer. You know why the rest overhired? Because there were no repercussions for their executives if their bet went wrong. Money was basically free, so why not? Econ 101 says it's the right thing to do in the pre-2023 market where value of the company was determined by potential of growth, and not as it should: by the simple formula of revenue - expenses = profits. If their bet was wrong (and it was very wrong), nothing could go wrong for them. Why not have 3 rounds of layoffs after the overhiring, it's not like the executives are ever held responsible, and it really can bump up the stock price and leverage better negotiation position with those pesky expensive developers. And that, my friend, is why you need unions and heavy governmental oversight, to counteract that Econ 101 means all humanity out of the window. - Econ 101 would simply lead you to the conclusion that if your US workers are too expensive, the right thing to do is to replace them with cheaper overseas workers, UNLESS there is regulation or union stopping you to do so - Econ 101 will lead you to the conclusion that when your offshore support team can be replaced with a chatbot, you'd throw them under the bus within a second. - Econ 101 will lead you to the conclusion that overhiring to increase market value for shareholders is the right thing to do, despite you having no clear plan what to do with those workers, nor projects to put them on. "They'll figure out the details later, let's grow for now. Stonks go upp" - And when the balloon pops, econ 101 will lead you to the conclusion that it's time to cancel the visas and destroy the livelihoods of the same people they hired a year ago. All this in the chase of the dollar! It's disgusting. That's why we need far bigger government control over these companies, and stronger, multinational unions than we have now. Recently I've been very happy with the unions in the nordics sticking it to Tesla: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-should-reconsider-labour-union-relations-nordic-investors-say-2023-12-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-.... That's more of what we need to do, because it's better for us, the workers. Otherwise, left on their own within the invisible hands of the free marker (what a load of crap, conjured by a mentally limited, jealous, angry and totally inhuman Scotsman, no wonder economists are psychos), the megacorps will race themselves to the bottom and drag us with them.