I'm curious as to the government-imposed hurdles to hiring new employees and what can be done to restrict these. Most of the talk on how to "get Americans back to work" seems to revolve around things that are either wholly impractical (eliminating the minimum wage) or fundamentally idiotic (more regulations will...help?)

I've bounced around some seasonal work waiting for the call from the Peace Corps, and I've noticed that even companies which are doing well, need a lot of people for seasonal demands, and can take advantage of a large and willing labor pool never hire as many people as they need to. From what little anybody will admit, it seems like hiring a new person is a huge pain in the ass that costs far more than just compensation.

So my question is: What can be done on the government side of things to make it easier to hire people?

Or is it less about the government and more about corporate incompetence?

4/6/2012 1:13:22 AM

-Increase taxes on the wealthy
-Decrease taxes on middle and lower class
-Use increased revenue from taxes to invest in education and infrastructure improvements
-Middle and lower class will reinvest their money into the economy
-Business will prosper and thus hire more people

4/6/2012 1:40:15 AM

Let's just say that there is more than enough work out there,

but profit margins are just too little between maintain a competitive price and profiting.


For instance, it take a minimum staff of three people to run a pizza place: Order taker, cook, and driver.

If I were to pay minimum wage to two of those employees, that's $14.50 per hour.
My store is open 11 hours a day for 30 days. That's 330 hours per month.
That's $4750.
Withhold tax states that for every tax dollar I take out of your paycheck, the business has to double it.
Gov't usually takes 30% of your check = $1583.33
Therefore, it takes $6333 to staff my store with only two people.

In order to make $6333, if I sell a pizza for $12.99, I'd have to sell 488 pizzas.
But wait... we don't profit $12.99 when we sell a pizza. we only profit ~$7, and that's WITHOUT a coupon.
So if we profit $7 a pizza, we'd have to sell 904 pizzas per month, or 30 large pizzas a day just to cover labor.

Rent alone is $2000/mo.
Then you have electric, water, repairs, advertising costs, another $4000

This is why I haven't had a day off in 5 years.
This is why pizza places fail so often.


I would love to hire more people. The problem is inflation.

Raw prices are going up (gas, food prices, utilities)
Competition is fierce (domino and pizza hut and papa johns $7 price war)
It's hard to sell a 14 inch pizza for more than $12.99

Small businesses are in a catch 22.

Like I said, I would love to hire more people. The money just isn't there.

4/6/2012 1:52:35 AM

I'm not talking about competition or the market. Sucks that you jumped into a saturated pizza market in a world where prices for raw materials fluctuate, but it isn't the job of the government to do anything about that. From the description you just offered, even the most radical government reforms wouldn't save your failing business.

God, in the best case your suggestions are medium to long-term.

I was hoping to hear about more immediate barriers, issues that came directly with hiring new people. What are the tax obligations? How much paperwork has to be submitted to put a new person on payroll? What are the liability issues to doing the same? Things of that nature.

No doubt the thread will take on a life of its own if it takes on any life at all, but essentially what I'm asking is this: If I owned a business and wanted to hire a new person this week, what barriers, speed-bumps, red tape, and other issues would I run into in the next week? (I'll even say the next month, allowing for bureaucratic fuckery)

[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 2:02 AM. Reason : ]

4/6/2012 2:01:49 AM

Nancy McFarlane, who is running for mayor, has said she wants to create a city office which deals with this exact issue and others like it. She wants to create an information center for anyone who is trying to start a small business to make it easier to obtain information like this.

I don't really know much about the specifics, I just thought this was interesting and somewhat related.

4/6/2012 3:13:06 AM

Quote :

"I'm not talking about competition or the market. "

Then I have no Idea what you're asking.

Quote :

"No doubt the thread will take on a life of its own if it takes on any life at all, but essentially what I'm asking is this: If I owned a business and wanted to hire a new person this week, what barriers, speed-bumps, red tape, and other issues would I run into in the next week? (I'll even say the next month, allowing for bureaucratic fuckery)"

none.



[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 3:49 AM. Reason : .]

4/6/2012 3:34:39 AM

Quote :

"So my question is: What can be done on the government side of things to make it easier to hire people?"

Do you want to do this over the short term or the long term? If you want to reduce unemployment in the short term, then reduce regime uncertainty by scrapping obamacare, and adjust wage expectations by eliminating the employer share of payroll taxes. Eliminating the minimum wage would help get the poorest among us employment.

Over the long term, you can make it easier to fire workers and curtail unions, which will directly lower the structural unemployment rate. Other than that, greater economic growth also reduces unemployment by increasing the spread between wages and productivity greater than it otherwise would be, increasing profits and making employers more eager to hire. Shrinking government payrolls also tends to increase productivity as workers and resources are freed up for use by the private sector and, freed of the need to pay for these, taxes can be lowered, reducing the disincentives for production and investment.

Quote :

"-Use increased revenue from taxes to invest in education and infrastructure improvements"

We already spend twice what other industrialized nations spend on education for far worse results. And what government infrastructure spending are we missing that is holding the economy back? Increased spending would just go toward boondoggles like high speed rail, diverting ROW and resources away from productive private investment.

[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 4:17 AM. Reason : .,.]

4/6/2012 4:12:02 AM

Quote :

" less about the government and more about corporate incompetence"

[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 8:35 AM. Reason : .]

4/6/2012 8:34:54 AM

Quote :

"What are the tax obligations?"

As genie sex boys said, employers generally have to match employee tax contributions, but if that's enough to put you out of business you weren't going to succeed anyway.

Quote :

" How much paperwork has to be submitted to put a new person on payroll?"

Government-wise, virtually none. Have the employee fill out a W-4 and an NC-4, copy that shit into Quickbooks (or give it to your accountant or whatever), and that's it. At the end of the year you might spend 30 additional seconds per person employed while doing your taxes.

Quote :

"What are the liability issues to doing the same?"

In North Carolina, virtually none. It's a right to work state, which is a hilariously named concept which means people can be fired at any time without providing a reason.

Source: I ran a small business with ~20 employees at any given time for 7 years.

4/6/2012 8:42:24 AM

I keep saying that I'm not a libertarian, but I'm going to have a hard time defending that after I write this

Government doesn't help commerce. Well, it does by creating a peaceful civil society. That's it. Once you have that established, commerce depends on contracts (both written and implicit) and movement of money. The easier it is to do both of these things (enter into contracts and move money), then the more hopping the "free" economy will be.

There is NO case that the government does anything to help these things. Government helps people consume (why thank you), it doesn't help people produce, and when it says that it helps people produce, it's all lies. Well, people actually believe it, they're just wrong.

Obamacare is a program to help you consume. Same with social security and everything else. Relax the idea that we are single individuals, and look at us as a collective. Any "redistribution" factors are aside my point. Government programs create mechanisms for a dollar to be paid and for someone to receive something. It's holding your hand as you hold out a dollar to pay a service provider.

Why is it this way? It's a whole lot easier to help someone consume than it is to produce. There is only one type of money we (or government programs) deals with. On the other hand, a producer or provider of services has to deal with an incredibly heterogeneous matrix of products and has to respond to constantly changing customer demands. Out of consumption and production, one is easy and one is hard. For the latter, I grant libertarian's their point. The problem is too hard for the government to solve, or even offer any meaningful contribution to.

4/6/2012 10:08:25 AM

Sorry, I'm going to double-post.

When's the last time any of you created a bank account?

More importantly, when's the last time any of you received payment?

Banks, or any outfit that fulfills banking purposes are heavily regulated. This isn't all to protect the economy from collapse. Most of it has to do with the government's ability to track you and limit your ability to organize with your peers under a common purpose (say terrorism, or free speech). All movements of money have to be defensible as legitimate. So what's the problem?

the alternative...

Imagine a world where Google had no restrictions on financial services they could provide to their users. No seriously, you have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. Imagine they didn't have to exercise "due diligence" and "know your customer" regarding movements of money. Imagine that every site you use, TWW included, had a banking system included as a part of it. If it gets hacked and qntmfred loses the records, oh well, your fault for giving your money to qntmfred, sucker.

Imagine a button right next to the PM button that let you send money. Yes, I know, you would create a FDT fund with 3rd party arbitration for the payout. I know, people are people. But that's still commerce. Commerce is very very tightly regulated. People don't even have a clear notion of what it would mean to live in a nation with unregulated commerce. It would be wild.

4/6/2012 10:17:18 AM

Quote :

"Gov't usually takes 30% of your check = $1583.33 Therefore, it takes $6333 to staff my store with only two people. "

Business's only have to match payroll taxes i.e. Sociali Security 4.5% and Medicare 1.?% not your state and federal income taxes n00b.

4/6/2012 10:45:53 AM

And like 1% for state unemployment insurance I think.

4/6/2012 11:18:21 AM

Quote :

"invest in education and infrastructure improvements"

This + less regulation/regulation reform where sensible (I still want an EPA type agency to make sure a neighboring state isn't polluting my state) is good for the long term. I don't know what could have a meaningful impact for the next week time scale.

Though I worry regulation reform is hard to do in large part because lobbyists/major corporate campaign donors are the first people to get consulted on this stuff, and then the reform is as apt to make it worse as it is to make it better.

So I think campaign finance reform, campaign disclosure laws, and lobbying disclosure laws are important.

4/6/2012 1:43:46 PM

I wish my home state (Pennsylvania) had better funding for education.

4/6/2012 1:54:09 PM

money doesn't teach kids.

people and parents do.

information is free.



hahahaha..... "was" free.

[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 2:11 PM. Reason : .]

4/6/2012 2:11:08 PM

Quote :

"(I still want an EPA type agency to make sure a neighboring state isn't polluting my state"

Oddly enough, the EPA could in some cases actually be more harmful to you in this regard:

http://www.invispress.com/law/environmental/illinois.html

http://www.invispress.com/law/environmental/international.html

[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 2:17 PM. Reason : sdfg]

4/6/2012 2:16:52 PM

eliminate fucking chains by creating a 1-site maximum for every business. This will increase quality and every owner would care about their workers/community.

4/6/2012 4:19:34 PM

and that also destroys economies of scale.

4/6/2012 4:26:11 PM

Quote :

"1-site maximum"

huh?

4/6/2012 5:08:40 PM

This thread has been informative. Apparently most of the bureaucratic fuckery I've run into at various jobs has been self-imposed by the employer.

I do wonder if some sort of reasonable tort reform might help...a LOT of what my training and procedures contain serves no purpose beyond "avoiding a ridiculous lawsuit."

For example, right now I have a seasonal gig at a major home improvement store. My job consists entirely of:

1) Getting carts out of the parking lot
2) Helping people lift heavy things

Even for a moron, training for this job should take about half an hour. "Here is where the carts go. Lift with your legs, not your back. Here's where you clock in, and here's where you get your paycheck." There. I've covered it. And yet training lasted for ~20 hours. It consisted of lengthy videos about not sexually harassing or racially discriminating against people, as well as a laundry list of safety rules that will never apply to me and which are normally followed with, "But you should really just get a manager to do it for you."

Well, shit, I would be loathe to hire people, too, if I had to pay them a couple hundred bucks (not counting the pay for the trainers) just to learn not to grab your coworkers' boobs or call people n*gger.

---

And in anticipation of someone asking why I work this shit job in spite of my multiple degrees from our fine university, I continue to blame the Peace Corps first and foremost, followed by the economy and the poor decisions of my youth, in that order.

4/6/2012 11:01:12 PM

^ yea I think some tort reform would do a lot of good in ways people don't realize in healthcare, business, engineering, and jobs. Fear of lawsuit probably motivates trillions of extra dollars of waste throughout all sectors. I just wonder what china thinks on lawsuits.

4/6/2012 11:20:26 PM

^^ Sure, a lot of that stuff is common sense, but some people still do it each year. We've all had those kinds of coworkers. They have to cover their asses.

Don't blame the government for that, blame our litigious society.

4/7/2012 12:15:18 AM

Quote :

"Don't blame the government for that, blame our litigious society."

That doesn't make much sense. The government makes the laws that govern the ability for people to sue each other and their employers.

4/7/2012 12:25:54 AM

Quote :

"Well, shit, I would be loathe to hire people, too, if I had to pay them a couple hundred bucks (not counting the pay for the trainers) just to learn not to grab your coworkers' boobs or call people n*gger."

How unrepresentative is this of our society's lowest common denominator? Honestly, you should feel undervalued to be treated as the LCD.

4/7/2012 1:41:51 AM

If you work hard to not hire a bunch of dirtbags you can skip all that bullshit.

4/7/2012 10:11:18 AM

Quote :

"Or is it less about the government and more about corporate incompetence?"

4/7/2012 11:33:25 AM

Quote :

"If you work hard to not hire a bunch of dirtbags you can skip all that bullshit."

Having never worked with a person who is applying to a job of yours, you can't guarantee you're not hiring a dirtbag until after you hire them.

To assume any different is ignorant.

[Edited on April 7, 2012 at 4:59 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2012 4:59:30 PM

Quote :

"And in anticipation of someone asking why I work this shit job in spite of my multiple degrees from our fine university, I continue to blame the Peace Corps first and foremost, followed by the economy and the poor decisions of my youth, in that order."

Lol

If I ran a successful business, I'd hire you and then find something for you to do.

I blame capitalism for your joblessness, because clearly the system is unable to recognize your talents

4/7/2012 5:07:35 PM

Quote :

"I blame capitalism for your joblessness, because clearly the system is unable to recognize your talents"

I assure you, capitalism is not the cause of joblessness.

I guarantee you, it's the corrupting and perverting of the economy under the guise of capitalism that causes your joblessness.

For example: Taxes and welfare and insurance aren't part of capitalistic society. The three very things that are plaguing our society

[Edited on April 7, 2012 at 5:16 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2012 5:16:31 PM

Quote :

"Having never worked with a person who is applying to a job of yours, you can't guarantee you're not hiring a dirtbag until after you hire them. "

Seriously? Every time my boss hired someone I thought was a dirtbag I warned him not to hire the person before hand...I've been right 100% of the time thus far. You fuckers need to learn how to read people.

4/7/2012 5:48:06 PM

That's funny jaZon because sometimes you only get to pick from the applications that are handed in.

Sometimes, what the person knows, along with timing, is more important than whether they're a dirtbag or not.



And I call BS on calling dirtbags out 100% of the time.

[Edited on April 7, 2012 at 10:21 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2012 10:20:10 PM

Quote :

"and that also destroys economies of scale."

thats the whole point. You would still use a few nationalized companies to do the things that must be large scale and partnerships between companies would be fine but no more a few people owning places they dont even know or care about. every owner is just like the geniousboy putting blood sweat and tears into their location with the 1-site maximum.

4/8/2012 9:23:57 AM

that works for maybe restaurants and small goods but nothing else. It would be the end of any modern technology development and production in the US, the 24/7 tech phone support everyone loves, any semblance of coordinated interstate commerce, etc.

4/8/2012 1:46:54 PM

you are wrong. tech support companies can work directly with the developers in partnerships. I don't understand why that is so difficult to understand.

4/8/2012 1:56:42 PM

as usual, God thinks that the solution to every problem we face is to raise taxes on the rich, despite the fact that taxing the piss out of the rich still wouldn't put a dent into the national debt. Somehow, more gov't is the answer, when it has consistently been gov't that has been the problem. Somehow, throwing more money at an already bloated and failing educational system will fix it.

[Edited on April 8, 2012 at 2:31 PM. Reason : ]

4/8/2012 2:22:00 PM

I don't think there should be any publicly funded schools. Why should we waste all that money educating people for 12+ years when some private company can just teach what's needed for someone to do their job?

Only nerds like history and social studies anyways. Fuck 'em.

4/8/2012 5:12:22 PM

Quote :

"That's funny jaZon because sometimes you only get to pick from the applications that are handed in. Sometimes, what the person knows, along with timing, is more important than whether they're a dirtbag or not. And I call BS on calling dirtbags out 100% of the time."

You'd be wrong.

Also, I find it hard to believe working at your fucking pizza joint requires anyone to know anything you can't tell them in 5 minutes.

4/8/2012 6:25:48 PM

Quote :

"Also, I find it hard to believe working at your fucking pizza joint requires anyone to know anything you can't tell them in 5 minutes."

You can teach people chess in 5 minutes, too. It doesn't mean anything about the way they play.





Anywho... jaZon is just trolling now, so on to more important things...

Quote :

"WASHINGTON -- A Wisconsin law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court was repealed on Thursday, after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly signed the bill. The 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating against certain groups by giving workers more avenues via which to press charges. Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/scott-walker-wisconsin-equal-pay-law_n_1407329.html?ref=mostpopular "

4/8/2012 7:04:42 PM

You continue to prove how big of a fucking moron you are

4/8/2012 7:09:41 PM

Another troll post. You know you're supposed to stop trolling after you get called out the first time.

4/8/2012 7:31:44 PM

ITT GeniusGuy doesn't understand what trolling is

4/8/2012 7:39:46 PM

Quote :

"-Increase taxes on the wealthy -Decrease taxes on middle and lower class"

well DUH! that's always the solution if you're a liberal

4/8/2012 7:53:24 PM

-Decrease taxes for abortions
-miniature American flags for others

4/9/2012 1:20:27 PM

Honestly, I think government does little to impede the hiring of workers. They can provide incentives, but companies are holding back primarily for business reasons: hiring an employee has a fixed cost (search, training, etc.), and if they're not confident the demand will be there, they're not going to drop capital to hire them.

The only things I can think of that the government can do are long term type things like schools, retraining support, etc.

4/9/2012 6:11:42 PM