(un)Common Sense discussion of public policy in re: the economy.
[Read the whole article. This guy is dead on target with his analysis. Another gem from Dave Farber’s IP list. -Thomas]
The Economy Summed Up: Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden, to Avoid Creating Jobs
-http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2004/03/the_economy_sum.html
The political analyst Charlie Cook’s weekly column, available by e-mail
subscription http://nationaljournal.com/about/cookcolumn.htm is a real
treasure, and usually offers much more than just the horserace. There’s a
single paragraph in today’s column that I think sums up what we need to
know about the economy and jobs better than anything I’ve read:
In December, the CEO of a California-based high tech firm told me that
“there is no amount of overtime that we will not pay, there is no level of
temporary services that we will not use, there is no level of outsourcing
or offshoring that we will not do, in order to prevent us from having to
hire one new, permanent worker in the U.S.” As I travel around the country,
meeting with business leaders, I hear similar, though less succinct
thoughts in almost every sector and every part of the country. U.S. wages,
health care, and other benefit costs have gotten so high — and the press
by investors for high stock prices is so great — that the premium is on
wringing every last bit of work out of as few employees as possible, to do
anything but incur the costs of adding permanent employees. [emphasis added]
[see url above for full article]
