Unemployed need not apply

I think this is terribly bad business -- yes, it makes winnowing the pile easier, but it also raises the possibility you'll miss out on some real finds.

 

Do you think a well-tailored affirmative action program would make a difference? Or would businesses just go through the motions?

I don't like the incentives it would create. People might stay unemployed rather than underemployed because the former puts them in a protected class while the latter does not.

 

I would think, if you're out of work, that would be an awfully dicey proposition -- eschewing "underemployment" for a marginally better chance at a "better employment." It's a big economy, though, so there'd be plenty (in absolute numbers) who might play it that way.

But no, I don't think any program, no matter how well done, would be any help. We have ample evidence to suggest that if businesses want to be dumb, there's not much you can do to stop them.

 

I just don't see how this kind of affirmative action helps. I guess the goal would be that the people who have been unemployed the longest get to skip to the front of the line. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, if it actually worked and that's how we wanted to order or working force.

 

We've already committed tens of billions of tax dollars to retraining and supporting the permanent under- and unemployed left high and dry by the flight of US manufacturing and advances in automation.

Now we worry about how to handle all the folks we cut loose?

Sorry, but the debate over the ethical imperatives of private US enterprise - and the ringing bitch slap of the invisible hand we received in response - came and went three decades ago.

 

When we stop looking at it as an ethical and moral issue and start thinking about it as a policy issue, then we might have some success.

But by all means, everyone should keep trying to shame U.S. companies into not outsourcing jobs - against their economic self-interests. That really seems to work.

 

I can't help but to wonder what our local resident soccer expert Kermit thinks of all this.

 

You're going to argue that there is no such as ethical business practice?

 

He said if you look at it through lenses OTHER than ethical/moral, you might find better solutions.

 

I just think it's largely a waste of energy to kibitz about this as a moral issue. Businesses will follow their self-interest. We know that. Set policy incentives accordingly.

 

Also, please not that it's been addressed - repeatedly - as a policy issue, which accounts for the tens of billions in support and retraining I mentioned.

So we should be made to pay our taxes toward the re-absorption and feeding of Pillowtex employees cut loose when the company sent all their jobs to Matamoros and Guangzhou?

 

Yeah, bad policy. Policy that didn't work.

I tend not to think that the logical next step is, "Well, that policy didn't work. Let's wag our finger at them and see if that does the trick."