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Comment by grobaru | Hacker News Reader

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

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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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