http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/110113/how-the-rich-are-winning?mod=family-love_money

seems relevant.

Businesses don’t exist to provide jobs. They exist to make money. They don’t hire people to try to create demand for other businesses, or just because some people could use jobs.

This is quite true, though they might also create demand for themselves along with others, and vice versa. But it still doesn’t work that way in reality. Individual spheres of self-interest don’t magically merge into a great oneness of systemic interest, at least not outside of John Lennon’s former head.

Talk about the GIMME mentality! Cluelessness.

I’m not sure what this was specifically addressing, Tully. But the “GIMME” can be taken from “GIMME a job so I can support my family.” A lot of people need and want work, not a handout. It may be unrealistic to think that companies will hire simply because they have the money to right now, rather than because they think they will need the output to make more money later, but wanting a job isn’t a particularly contemptible sentiment, I don’t think.

captcha: motives considered

That’s exactly what Henry Ford did.

I think the problem is that a large part of modern American business management just doesn’t care about decent personnel management. They don’t think about what overloading the current staff does to morale and productivity.

Business management is VERY good at measuring productivity. And I think most managers have a good sense of how many folks they need to get a decent job done. Does that include prevailing upon illusory loyalty and “you’re lucky to have a job” to get employees to work harder and/or possibly accept lower pay? Absolutely.

And that’s where morale comes in to play. And I agree that management really doesn’t care that much about morale. I think it’s quite naive to think they do. Surely some do, but they’re the exception.

They also don’t look at the long term and see that the resentments building up now will cost them good employees when/if the job market improves.

This strikes me as further naivete. The trend is definitely towards “just in time” labor provision, meaning you staff up with contract workers on a by-project basis and so on. My sense of human nature is that most folks don’t battle inertia. Resentful employees are seldom actually driven to move on unless they experience a situation where their skills are in high demand and the labor supply is short. How many folks out there have a reasonable expectation to experience that in their industry over the next 5 to 10 years?

People will grumble, and enough of them will stay put to keep the enterprise afloat. Some folks will go, but no one is irreplaceable. If anything, older skilled employees with a high self-value on their worth as an employee are more likely than ever to find themselves competing with someone who will work hard to learn quickly for lower pay. If you want to lie to yourself about the truth of that, you go ahead. I’m too kranky and skeptical a guy to waste my time consoling myself with unrealistic illusions about how the world should be.

So while there may in some senses be truth to what you are saying, I think you really should consider whether you are tempering you perspectives with a realistic sense of the world as it is. I wonder what world you live in where you expect people in top management to reward labor more generously than circumstances dictate. Where you say “the problem is that…” I just accept that’s how the world functions. If you are personally motivated to make that different, the only plausible real-world solution is to start your own enterprise and find a way to beat your competitors while being more “fair” and generous to your employees.

That’s not the kind of stuff that can be legislated or regulated into being. Like the late Joe strummer once sang, “you don’t face your demons down, you gotta grab ‘em Jack, and throw ‘em to the ground.” You can’t just face these corporations you don’t like and dictate how they should behave. That never works. Human nature flows through the loopholes. But if you can wrestle a bad corporation by leading a “good” corporation, then you prove the superior merit of your approach.

Businesses don’t exist to provide jobs. They exist to make money. They don’t hire people to try to create demand for other businesses, or just because some people could use jobs.

If you don’t like it feel free to start your own business based on such philanthropic principles. Let me know when you’ve got that IPO ready … so I can short it.

I think the problem is that a large part of modern American business management just doesn’t care about decent personnel management. They don’t think about what overloading the current staff does to morale and productivity. They also don’t look at the long term and see that the resentments building up now will cost them good employees when/if the job market improves.

I’m unemployed right now, and I sure want a job. Hopefully whoever hires me knows how to run their business. You hire folks when you think it will improve your bottom line. I’m ok with that.

In other words, they’re willing to put up with short term pain (if that’s the right word for sitting on piles of cash but not hiring new staff), in order to let their political friends make hay off the resulting high unemployment.