Originally Posted By: Tempest
Those 10K a day moving to SS is at a great, and unfunded, cost to the government. This, combined with the lower tax receipts (due to lower earnings) of new job seekers will result in a higher national debt spiral.
The prime reason people, especially youth, don't have jobs is due to the minimum wage. It discriminates against those with few skills and that is exactly what most new jobs seekers are.
Other regulation increases the cost of employment as well, so the brake even point of a new employee is moved ever higher. This is one reason why technology to make any given employee more efficient and moved so rapidly the last few decades. It has become necessary due to the mandated high cost of labor.
The lower the cost of doing business, the easier it is to hire new people and get them job experience so they can more easily move up to higher paying jobs. Unfortunately, there are many third party mandates that interfere with this.
What you mention is completely political and biased, and not true.
Retirees typically have higher cost to a businesses due to health care and higher salary / wage. Their retirement is also not completely a drain on the society as most of them will start consuming their savings after they stop working completely. This is a continuous process, although it is bumped during a recession. The only way around it is to discourage child birth and increase retirement age, and have an older population and work force.
I cannot believe you said the primary reason for people without job is due to minimum wage. How many people out there are unemployed because McD is paying $6/hr instead of a market rate of $3/hr? Will the economy be better off when everyone lower their standard of living to China (heck, even they have minimum wage now)? Most of the job lost to outsourcing and technologies are way higher pay than minimum wage (i.e. auto jobs starting at $14 / hr) and the alternative is even lower (i.e. China at $3 / hr for the same job, $1 / hr minimum wage, and a server replacing customer service rep at 1 year salary as fix cost and only electricity thereafter). These jobs are just eliminated no matter how low you set the minimum job at (even slaves need to be fed).
Lower cost of doing businesses (i.e. regulations, insurances, health care, management, work space, etc) are good but they are a necessary part of the businesses in a developed society. You can do it like 3rd world country do with no work place safety or accidental insurance, no health care, no limit of work hours, dumping all pollutants in the ground water and the air, etc. But that's going to cost you over time. There are now lots of protest in China for rare earth mining and they have the highest death toll in the world for coal mine accidents, but hey, they have cheap coal and cheap rare earth minerals, and their lives are cheap. Why don't we do this here and we'll get all the jobs back and more?
