re: #231 Ojoe

Jobs not there;

People able and willing to work are shat on by the elite power structure of this country;

damn them.

I’m thinking this may be about to get even worse.

The Administration has another “job stimulus” package about to launch. In this one, employers are “incentivized” to create jobs by receiving a complete break on their share of Social Security contributions for a year after hiring someone who’s unemployed, and they also receive a significant tax credit (not a deduction) for doing so, a thousand or a few thousand dollars per hire.

The problem is, there’s no provision against generating layoffs in order to create positions that can be filled with new hires. I expect the end result here may be to dump higher-paid workers and fill their positions with the new, tax-advantaged hires. The company saves money on both ends: they get significant tax breaks, and they pay the new hires less than those whose jobs they’re replacing.

Maybe this problem will occur to someone before the bleeding starts. But I doubt it. Heaven forbid that a requirement be inserted to insist on net job gains at a company in order for them to be eligible for the tax breaks, or that openings created by layoffs be older than, say, a year before becoming eligible.