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Comment by bildung | Hacker News Reader

Please take a look at the following graph: https://sturdyblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-workin...

All your listed countries have higher working hours than Germany. In fact, the working hours in Greece are 50% higher than in Germany.

Annual working hours are highly correlated with unemployment rate. Note I'm not saying that a causes b, but the correlation is obvious.

On the other hand, there is no empirical evidence of workers' rights protection causing unemployment. That narrative often gets repeated, but that doesn't make it true.

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> Annual working hours are highly correlated with unemployment rate. Note I'm not saying that a causes b, but the correlation is obvious.

Interesting... but like you said, it's just a correlation. Could as much be that people are less likely to work many hours when there's full employment, or when a country is richer.

> On the other hand, there is no empirical evidence of workers' rights protection causing unemployment. That narrative often gets repeated, but that doesn't make it true.

As a business owner, every additional regulation regarding employees is increasing my cost. (And it doesn't matter if I would have agreed anyway with what the law says; I still have to waste time learning it, more paperwork, less flexibility.) So I know that the more regulation there is in this field, the less I'm inclined to hire. It's not a narrative, that's my reality.

> As a business owner, every additional regulation regarding employees is increasing my cost.

My point was that it doesn't matter if every other business in your industry bears the same burden, too. Your competitive position stays the same. No profit opportunities are lost.

This. There is an American mindset which needs to change. We have a lot of businesses complaining about regulations, yet other countries with more regulation seem to conduct business in a profitable manner. In fact, it could be argued that the businesses operating in a more regulated environment, are probably more robust than their American counterparts because the regulations add stability and reduced uncertainty.

A lot of American business owners complain that their business is "hanging on by a thread". This is because they are operating at the lowest energy state which provides little safety margin for failure. If there were stronger regulations in America, then fragile business models would not be able to attract investment.

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