,Maddus Mattus wrote

@ScanIAm: The damage done by the government is much much larger then the damage done by worker efficiency,. And I don't even think that increased worker efficiency leads to less employment.

That's like saying that IT kills jobs. It just doesn't. It creates them as-well.

Sure. IT creates some IT-related jobs. But how many non-IT-related jobs get eliminated as a result?

Also, if it is true, worker efficiency improvements go slow over time. Government regulations can change over night.

Efficiency of individual workers may improve only slowly over time, but technology allows organizational efficiency to improve quickly. IT is what makes outsourcing of labor seamless enough to avoid disruption. Why have people on the payroll for a whole year when the work they do is only seasonal? Outsource it to a company that employs a workforce to service multiple client companies simultaneously. Without technology, the disruption of paying somebody else do your work wouldn't be worth the savings realized.

On the other hand, government regulations could introduce new requirements that force companies to hire new people to do the work to meet those new requirements.

Look at the carbon tax we have to pay here in the EU. Doesn't do anyone any good and all the jobs move to India or China,. British steel, for instance, (owned by TaTa) closed down in GB and TaTa set up a new plant in India. There they don't have to pay high wages, co2 taxes and they have less regulations.

The only ones we have to blame for our predicament, is ourselves.

It doesn't do anyone any good, eh? I guess you don't enjoy clean air. If you're a true believer in free markets, then companies should be able to find ways to become more efficient despite the government regulations. Taking your ball somewhere else and crying about big, bad government is the lazy way out. Laziness and greed are the only reason you have companies shipping jobs overseas instead of doing the hard work of making themselves more efficient or just biting the bullet by hiring more people to do that work and taking less profit.