Yeah, the "just increase salaries" thing is one possible hack. Ideally, it would be good to exclude that; in practice, I'm not sure how to do so without making monitoring significantly more complex. It isn't clear to me whether this is a major problem to be dealt with, or simply an irritating edge case to ignore.
I'm deliberately aiming for simplicity here, rather than the usual overcomplicated Washington mess that turns out to be worse than the problem it's trying to solve. The cost of that is that there are certainly rules-hacks possible. The question is, which ones are bad enough that they *must* be addressed? Some, certainly, but I'm not sure offhand which. (This would, no doubt, be much of the legislative argument, as it is for any new law.)
Similarly, the reason for suggesting total payroll as the metric is that it is very objective and easy to measure. Limiting to "new hires" introduces possible risks of companies churning employees, which is a real danger: illusory progress that doesn't really help. It might work, but I'm not sure I understand the process as well.
And yes, it's possible that a less-radical solution might suffice. I'm deliberately putting a dramatic stake in the ground, which I'm pretty certain would work. I'm open to arguments for something milder, but the key is to avoid half-measures that are too wimpy to make a real difference. If it doesn't really move the unemployment needle significantly (1% at a minimum), then it doesn't produce the psychological feedback effects that are at the heart of the solution. (Also, it's easier to argue for a less-dramatic solution to become permanent, which probably isn't a great idea in the long term. This is all about turning around the current downturn, and then returning to normalcy.)
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Date: 2010-10-15 05:49 pm (UTC)I'm deliberately aiming for simplicity here, rather than the usual overcomplicated Washington mess that turns out to be worse than the problem it's trying to solve. The cost of that is that there are certainly rules-hacks possible. The question is, which ones are bad enough that they *must* be addressed? Some, certainly, but I'm not sure offhand which. (This would, no doubt, be much of the legislative argument, as it is for any new law.)
Similarly, the reason for suggesting total payroll as the metric is that it is very objective and easy to measure. Limiting to "new hires" introduces possible risks of companies churning employees, which is a real danger: illusory progress that doesn't really help. It might work, but I'm not sure I understand the process as well.
And yes, it's possible that a less-radical solution might suffice. I'm deliberately putting a dramatic stake in the ground, which I'm pretty certain would work. I'm open to arguments for something milder, but the key is to avoid half-measures that are too wimpy to make a real difference. If it doesn't really move the unemployment needle significantly (1% at a minimum), then it doesn't produce the psychological feedback effects that are at the heart of the solution. (Also, it's easier to argue for a less-dramatic solution to become permanent, which probably isn't a great idea in the long term. This is all about turning around the current downturn, and then returning to normalcy.)