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Comment by delibes | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps they should, but I don't think they could from an employers point of view.

I'm over 40 and would love to work a 30 hour week. But there is a cost for hiring each employee and so it's better to have fewer employees working longer. The cost includes interviewing and recruitment costs, payroll systems, management time, IT systems (email, systems access, hardware and licenses).

If we could slash all these costs and make it easier and cheaper to hire people, the 30 hour week might work. It might also make it easier for companies to fire people though, so less good for the 'youth'.

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It's not necessarily better to have fewer employees working longer. When I cut back to part time, I thought it ended up being a pretty good deal for everyone.

* For them, a lot of my value is in what I know rather than what I do. Let's say it's half and half. So they were getting somewhat less of that first half (direct hands-on work) but darn near all of the rest (ability to solve certain problems or make certain connections instantly instead of spending half a day).

* For me, a significant part of my job's value is not salary but other benefits, plus the ability to tap into the collective resources of a team to get things done.

Thus, even though the deal was nominally 75% of the hours for 75% of the salary, each side was really getting way more than 75% of the value from that relationship (compared to when I was full time). In the end, neither of us were so easily or cheaply replaced. Employees aren't as fungible as many seem to think.

What would happen if it really cost zero to hire a new employee? Or if hiring cost less than zero?

Let's postulate an annual corporate tax deduction of $16015 for each employee working 30 or more hours per week. This would be compensated by increasing corporate tax rates until all changes are revenue-neutral.

This probably means that every last person able to work could get a job warming chairs at $7.25/hr for 30 hr/wk. What unforeseen consequences could that have on the labor market?

These costs are banal compared to what your usual medium to large enterprise is paying in bonuses,benefits and other.

I am coming from Europe and always admired capitalist systems but I think the americans and others are probably stressing it too much.

I have experienced large US corporations firing people that had 2-3 years till retirement, people that spent 30years with company and have been replaced with cheap offshore resources.

I think companies could keep these employees but incrementally decreasing their salaries and working hours. They could still earn more (overtime) but I would dynamically adjust the salaries.

I mean anyway...95% people are just slacking at their jobs

I vouched for this comment in spite of the idiotic assertion at the end, because I wanted to raise a question on this point specifically:

> I have experienced large US corporations firing people that had 2-3 years till retirement, people that spent 30years with company and have been replaced with cheap offshore resources.

Is there any capitalist argument that a company should hold on to someone who has become redundant because they have only a small period of time until retirement? My gut reaction as a capitalist to someone being outsourced at age 63 with 2 years to retirement is "so what" but of course when I think about it from the human perspective it seems horrible. They either need to find another job (very hard at that age regardless of the sector, but especially in tech) or cut their standard of living beyond what they expected for the rest of their lives.

At some level, maintaining a reputation for humane treatment of workers might help attract young talent.

In some sense loyalty begets loyalty.

Do you seriously believe young workers think about the old ones, or about themselves becoming old workers? If loyalty begets loyalty (to which I agree), I would expect it to appeal to those who understand what loyalty is all about. Young generation was told they will have 12 jobs over 40 years of career, and looks like they have internalised this.

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