Month: November 2016

Death by HR: Progressive Dirigisme Takes Over the US
Unhappy college grad working at Starbucks

Unhappy college grad working at Starbucks

Labor lawyers and labor economists have historically been supported by labor unions and their cooperating Democratic legislators, who fund labor-leaning academic institutions. As a result, HR degree programs and faculty begin with a bias toward the labor laws and union-style thinking of academics in the field.

Social scientists generally lean left. Industrial Relations (IR), the field of labor-management studies, also leans sharply left.[1] Social science professors are overwhelmingly Democrats.[2] And the faculty in most HR degree programs are similarly biased, which means the typical new graduate from these programs has been indoctrinated to accept the necessity and essential fairness of the labor laws and regulations they will be expected to help enforce in their postings in private industry or government agencies. While we have seen that these new graduates tend to be tempered by exposure to real workplace life and management influence, they retain their political affiliations and continue to lean toward progressive causes and regulations.

Verdant Labs’ survey of political affiliation by occupation based on FEC campaign contribution reports doesn’t separate out HR staffers, but does cover HR execs and similar functions:

HR Executives 66% D, 34% R
Compliance Officers 72% D, 28% R
Administrative Manager 70% D, 30% R[3]

It’s easy to see why people whose careers involve administering government rules would tend to support the party that maintains that even more regulations are useful and necessary, because no one would want to work at something useless or even counterproductive. People who want to work long hours and enjoy the freedom to run risky but successful enterprises aren’t likely to be found in HR degree programs. This political tendency is valuable in cooperating with government overseers, but can cause HR staff to overlook the need for the organization they work for to improve productivity and compete with overseas firms not so hampered.

What is the leftist tendency? It is the view that people’s economic decisions are to be supervised and regulated by the state for the common good. Communists and Socialists took the simplistic extreme form, taking direct ownership of the means of production—factories, farms, and businesses — to be managed by the workers collectively or the larger state. Every country that tried this failed eventually because it turns out self-interested management by owners is vastly more productive, and no collective can decide as well as an owner with direct access to local and market information.

The leftist fallback position — after millions of deaths and multiple failures of true Communist and Socialist states — has been to leave property and the means of production in private hands, but thoroughly regulate and control what the owners may do with it. This leaves at least some incentive for owners to produce and invest in production facilities, but puts many important investment and employment decisions in the hands of a political body — a legislature, or agencies given power to oversee employers. And while some socially-harmful decisions (like pollution of the common air and water, discrimination against black people in employment and accommodation, and tolerance of dangerous working conditions in mines and factories) are thereby prevented, many other decisions are made poorly by collective bodies with little or no knowledge of local conditions. The freedom of both worker and employer to balance their interests and negotiate the most favorable contract is often limited by rigid labor regulations, as when workers who would like to work more hours to make extra money are not allowed to do so.

Union labor views were an offshoot of the socialist ideal, where the management of a business — the employer — is viewed as the enemy of the workers, constantly trying to cheat and enslave them. Enlightened managers, of course, have a much broader interest in the health and welfare of employees, and know that respect for their needs and independence makes for a happier, more productive, and loyal workforce ideal for long-term competitive advantage. But the cartoonish 1930s views of oppressive, wealthy capitalists still live on in many minds.

The labor laws dating from the progressive New Deal era embody the dirigisme (French for top-down direction of the economy) of that era, and are still with us, though many reforms have taken place. The US is now a patchwork of different labor regimes in different industries, as some unionized manufacturing has become less so, while public employee unions have grown in strength and power. Meanwhile, “right to work” laws in some states limited private sector union power and encouraged more foreign investment like the auto plants now dotting the South.

To see the negative results of heavy regulation of labor, one only has to look at parts of Europe that went all-out to protect and micromanage employment by heavily regulating hiring and firing. As an example, look at France — a highly-developed mature economy with heavy regulation of labor and so much legal job protection that employers are reluctant to hire any long-term employees for fear they can never be let go. Youth unemployment hovers around 25%, and the economy has been stagnant for decades. The BBC reports:

France has a lot going for it. It has “an enviable standard of living”, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Inequality is not excessive and the country has come through the [financial] crisis without suffering too heavily,” it says….

But all is not well. Unemployment is high and the government’s finances are weak. “France’s fundamental economic problem,” the OECD says, “is a lack of growth.” The latest figures for economic activity (gross domestic product or GDP) for the first quarter of the year show growth of 0.5%. That’s better than was expected though it’s probably best described as reasonable rather than strong. The longer term picture is more downbeat.

So what is the French economic problem? The most obvious social and economic evidence that something is amiss is unemployment. About three million people are unemployed—10.2% of the workforce. That compares with a figure of 4.3% across the border in Germany. The rate in France is almost the same as the average for the eurozone. That really is nothing to be proud of when you consider that the average reflects some jobless nightmare stories such as Spain and Greece. The French figure is also the second highest among the G7 leading developed economies. Youth unemployment is a particular problem, as it is in a number of other European countries. Almost one in four of those under 25 who want a job don’t have one.

The government’s finances are also in indifferent shape. France is also in the throes of an EU procedure that tries to impose discipline on governments’ finances. The annual budget deficit and the accumulated government debt are both higher than they are supposed to be under the rules…. Behind the problems lies persistently weak economic growth. Gross domestic product per person—a rough and ready indicator of average living standards—grew more slowly between 1995 and 2007 than in any other OECD country (mainly the rich nations) except Italy [which also overregulates labor.]

By the end of last year, economic activity was only 2.8% up from its peak level at the onset of the financial crisis. Why then is France struggling? Many younger people get work on a short-term basis only…. The view of many, including the OECD and the European Commission, is that the labour market is at the heart of the problem, though it’s not the only factor. That reflects a persistent complaint from business: that it’s too expensive to hire workers and to fire them or lay them off if they need to. France is a prime example of what is known as a “dual labour market”: insiders have higher pay, job security and often promotion prospects, [while] others, especially younger people, get only short-term work or none.

The OECD says in its assessment of the French economy: “To reduce the duality of the labour market, the procedures for laying off employees, particularly those on permanent contracts, need to be simplified and shortened…. France ranks among the countries with the strictest legislation of dismissal for open-ended and temporary contracts.” The cost of labour to employers in France also includes social security contributions that are higher than in most other countries. There is a catalogue of other issues, including welfare, that is alleged to discourage people taking low-paid work, and extensive regulation of business. The result, it is argued, is a persistent unemployment problem….

President Hollande has accepted the case for labour reform, and his Labour Minister, Myriam El Khomri, has introduced legislation intended to address some of the things that business voices say make it too expensive to take on new workers. The reforms would: lower existing high barriers to laying off staff; allow some employees to work more—far more—than the current working week, which is capped at 35 hours; give firms greater powers to cut working hours and reduce pay. That has met protest and the provisions have been amended in response. One supporter of reform said it was turning into a “veritable catastrophe”.[4]

Compared to France, the US has a free and dynamic labor economy,[5] but the signs of the Eurodisease are starting to show — an inflexible labor market with few professional openings for young people. The common joke about children returning to live in their parent’s basements is becoming a way of life for many. Increasingly, new college graduates are forced to take low-paying, unskilled jobs in service industries when they find work at all:

Recent college graduates are ending up in more low-wage and part-time positions as it’s become harder to find education-level appropriate jobs, according to a January study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Jeanina Jenkins, a 20-year-old high-school graduate from St. Louis, is stuck in a $7.82-an-hour part-time job at McDonald’s Corp. that she calls a “last resort” because nobody would offer her anything better.

Stephen O’Malley, 26, a West Virginia University graduate, wants to put his history degree to use teaching high school. What he’s found instead is a bartender’s job in his home town of Manasquan, New Jersey.

Jenkins and O’Malley are at opposite ends of a dynamic that is pushing those with college degrees down into competition with high-school graduates for low-wage jobs that don’t require college. As this competition has intensified during and after the recession, it’s meant relatively higher unemployment, declining labor market participation and lower wages for those with less education….

“The underemployment of college graduates affects lesser educated parts of the labor force,” said economist Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a not-for-profit research organization in Washington.“Those with high-school diplomas that normally would have no problem getting jobs as bartenders or taxi drivers are sometimes kept from getting the jobs by people with college diplomas,” said Vedder…

The share of Americans ages 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor’s degree in jobs that don’t require that level of education was 44 percent in 2012, up from 34 percent in 2001, the study found. The recent rise in underemployment for college graduates represents a return to the levels of the early 1990s, according to the New York Fed study. The rate rose to 46 percent during the 1990-1991 recession, then declined during the economic expansion that followed as employers hired new graduates to keep pace with technological advances….

“College graduates might not be in a job that requires a college degree, but they’re more likely to have a job,” she said. Less-educated young adults are then more likely to drop out of the labor market. The labor participation rate for those ages 25 to 34 with just a high-school diploma fell four percentage points to 77.7 percent in 2013 from 2007. For those with a college degree and above, the rate dropped less than 1 percentage point, to 87.7 percent.

“At the complete bottom, we see people picking up the worst types of jobs or completely dropping out,” Beaudry said. The share of young adults 20 to 24 years old neither in school nor working climbed to 19.4 percent in 2010 from 17.2 percent in 2006. For those ages 25 to 29, it rose to 21.3 percent from 20 percent in that period, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston report in December.

Those with the least education have trouble securing even the lowest-paid jobs. Isabelle Samain looked for work in Washington from April until September of last year. As prospective employers continually passed over her applications, the 40-year-old mother of two from Cameroon realized she was missing out because she lacked a U.S. high-school diploma. “I don’t even remember how many places I applied,” Samain said of the “frustrating and discouraging” search. Samain passed the General Educational Development test in December and recently started working at Au Bon Pain in Washington for $8.50 an hour for 36 hours a week.

A year-long survey ending in July 2012 of 500,000 Americans ages 19 to 29 showed that 63 percent of those fully employed had a bachelor’s degree, and their most common jobs were merchandise displayers, clothing-store and cellular phone sales representatives, according to Seattle-based PayScale Inc., which provides compensation information….

The share of recent college graduates in “good non-college jobs,” those with higher wage-growth potential, such as dental hygienists, has declined since 2000, according to the New York Fed study. Meanwhile, the portion has grown for those in low-wage jobs paying an average wage of below $25,000, including food servers and bartenders.[6]

The Party of Government perpetually campaigns on “doing something” about the problems of the little people. Meanwhile, the agencies of the administrative state, like all bureaucracies, keep busy and justify their growth by proposing additional and extended regulations. When regulations address a real problem—some externality requiring private parties to be restrained from damaging a common good or harming each other through force or fraud—there is an optimal point where the additional costs of more regulation are greater than the likely benefit. In labor regulation, the pols and regulators rarely consider the collateral damage they are doing by narrowing the freedom of contract—labor laws are always behind the curve of technology and custom, impeding creative solutions that both employer and employee would benefit from.

This “it’s always good to do more” mindset results in laws that are simply propaganda exercises, like the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which extended the statute of limitations for equal pay suits to make it a bit easier to file suit against ongoing patterns of pay discrimination against women.[7] Unequal pay for women was actually outlawed in 1963 by the Equal Pay Act, but Democratic politicians in pursuit of women’s votes continue to promote the “pay gap” myth and then offer to “do something” about this imaginary unfairness. Each time they pass a new law or regulation, one might expect improvement in the unfair situation they claim to be addressing, yet the problem remains for the next election, when they will promise to fix it again.

The latest example of harming many by ratcheting up the regulations is the Obama administration’s enlargement of the number of employees covered by the Dept. of Labor’s overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), increasing the salary limit for exemption from $23,660 to $47,476 per year, which vastly increases the number of workers covered. At first glance, this sounds good for those employees — time-and-a-half for overtime, baby! But that ignores the likely response of managements to the new rules:

If an employer could pay Jim, a frontline manager at a retail store, for a 50-hour workweek—40 hours at his regular hourly rate and 10 hours at time-and-a-half—or, instead, pay Jim and Jane 25 hours each at straight rates, what would the employer do?

Unless the business is a philanthropy, or unless Jim exhibits pure brilliance in directing rank-and-file employees to stock shelves, the employer is going to choose lower labor costs over higher ones.

This is precisely the question raised by, and the likely effect caused by, new overtime rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Given the basic economics of the workplace, the new rule—which raises the salary threshold under which an employee is entitled to overtime—is just as likely to create less work for individual employees as it is to increase the amount of overtime American employees collectively earn.[8]

The required estimate of costs of the new regulation was lowballed, pulled out of thin air by the DoL under orders from the union-friendly administration to further cripple nonunion businesses by increasing their costs. Independent calculations of the cost were more realistic:

How reliable are projections from the Department of Labor about the cost of the President’s ambitious new extension of overtime entitlements to salaried workers ….? The “administration refuses to allow others to check its math. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, the state agency that I lead, in August requested the specific data and methodology the Labor Department used to calculate its estimates. Our request was denied.” So the department went ahead with its own analysis. “The rule will supposedly cost $2 billion the first year. Our math shows $1.7 billion for Florida alone.”[9]

Even House Democrats found the new rules damaging:

It’s not clear whether the Obama administration’s forthcoming edict on overtime will apply to legislative staffers, but House Democratic leadership decided it would be prudent for their members to at least gesture toward the spirit of the controversial rule by preparing for compliance. Now “the rule is creating administrative headaches” and more:

“We don’t have a set-hour kind of situation here; some kids work 12, 14, 16 hours a day, weekends, and I feel terrible that I cannot afford to give raises to the staff,” Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 11.

With $320,000 slashed from members’ representational allowances (MRAs) over the past four years, “I don’t see how we could pay overtime” for the “17 or 18 people that each of us is allowed to have—that’s problematic for me,” added Hastings, a senior member of the House Rules Committee.

Some members fear that an overtime mandate will result in having to send staffers home at 5 p.m., leaving phones unanswered and impairing constituent service. “Most members are of the sentiment that it’s impractical to be paying overtime,” said former Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran, now a lobbyist, who suggests that members choose to close one of their district offices or reduce constituent correspondence to adjust to a smaller staff number.

If only there were some way for the U.S. Congress to influence federal labor law![10]


[1] “The data suggests that the ratio of Democratic-to-Republican voter registration among participants in IR is roughly 10 to one. I find a similar ratio when looking at those who have made contributions to Democratic and Republican candidates for office. I also show that Democratic lopsidedness at the three mainstream IR journals becomes more extreme at the higher stations (officers and editors, as opposed to ordinary members and authors). Also, I analyze the content of the 539 articles for union support and regulation support; the mainstream IR journals are overwhelmingly pro-union and pro-regulation.” From article “The Left Orientation of Industrial Relations,” by Mitchell Langbert, Econ Journal Watch, Vol 13, No. 1, Jan. 2016. https://econjwatch.org/articles/the-left-orientation-of-industrial-relations
[2] “Daniel Klein, one of the authors [of the study] and a professor of economics at George Mason University, said that it demonstrated ‘solidly’ that most social science professors are ‘leftist and statist, and that they have a narrow tent.’” From “Social Scientists Lean to the Left, Study Says,” by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, Dec. 21, 2005. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/21/politics. Also see: “Economists’ policy views and voting,” Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern, Public Choice 126:331-342, 6 Dec 2004. http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/KS_PublCh06.pdf
[3] “Democratic vs. Republican occupations,” Verdant Labs chart, 2016. Data source: FEC campaign contribution data. http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/
[4] “What is the French economic problem?” by Andrew Walker, BBC World Service, 29 April 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36152571
[5] French leftists sniff at the US and its Anglospheric cousins because the US economic model (the “Anglo-Saxon model”) is more liberal—less protectionist and dirigiste. The cultural backdrop is the French intellectual distaste for crude money-making and égoïste neglect of collective opinion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model
[6] “Low-Wage Jobs Displace Less Educated,” by Katherine Peralta, Bloomberg, March 12, 2014. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/college-grads-taking-low-wage-jobs-displace-less-educated
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_of_2009
[8] “Deep Impact: New Overtime Rules Will Change Work, Not Overtime Pay,” by Mark A. Konkel and Barbara Hoey, Inside Counsel, August 31, 2016. http://www.insidecounsel.com/2016/08/31/deep-impact-new-overtime-rules-will-change-work-no
[9] “Lowballing the cost of junior-manager overtime,” by Walter Olson, Overlawyered, November 19, 2015. http://www.overlawyered.com/2015/11/lowballing-the-cost-of-junior-manager-overtime/
[10] “Overtime Brings House Democrats Woe,” by Walter Olson, Cato at Liberty, April 13, 2016. http://www.cato.org/blog/overtime-brings-house-democrats-woe

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. 

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 

More reading on other topics:

Jane Jacobs’ Monstrous Hybrids: Guardians vs Commerce
The Great Progressive Stagnation vs. Dynamism
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action is Crippling America
Death by HR: The End of Merit in Civil Service
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Public Employee Unions
Death by HR: History and Practice of Affirmative Action and the EEOC
Civil Service: Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Dream
Bootleggers and Baptists
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Justice Dept. Extortion
Corrupt Feedback Loops, Goldman Sachs: More Justice Dept. Extortion
Death by HR: The Birth and Evolution of the HR Department
Death by HR: The Simple Model of Project Labor
Levellers and Redistributionists: The Feudal Underpinnings of Socialism
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
Trump World: Looking Backward
Minimum Wage: The Parable of the Ladder
Selective Outrage
Culture Wars: Co-Existence Through Limited Government
Social Justice Warriors, Jihadists, and Neo-Nazis: Constructed Identities
Tuitions Inflated, Product Degraded, Student Debts Unsustainable
The Morality of Glamour

On Affirmative Action and Social Policy:

Affirmative Action: Chinese, Indian-Origin Citizens in Malaysia Oppressed
Affirmative Action: Caste Reservation in India
Diversity Hires: Pressure on High Tech<a
Title IX Totalitarianism is Gender-Neutral
Public Schools in Poor Districts: For Control Not Education
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Child Welfare Ideas: Every Child Gets a Government Guardian!
“Income Inequality” Propaganda is Just Disguised Materialism

The greatest hits from SubstrateWars.com (Science Fiction topics):

Fear is the Mindkiller
Mirror Neurons and Irene Gallo
YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
Selective Outrage
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
“Tomorrowland”: Tragic Misfire
The Death of “Wired”: Hugo Awards Edition
Hugos, Sad Puppies 3, and Direct Knowledge
Selective Outrage and Angry Tribes
Men of Honor vs Victim Culture
SFF, Hugos, Curating the Best
“Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?”
Science Fiction Fandom and SJW warfare

More reading on the military:

US Military: From No Standing Armies to Permanent Global Power
US Military: The Desegration Experience
The VA Scandals: Death by Bureaucracy

Death by HR: Affirmative Action and Hiring
Death by HR

Death by HR

Affirmative Action and Hiring

We reviewed Affirmative Action (AA) in the US and elsewhere and its negative effects, both on those who were intended to benefit from it and on the organizations that have implemented it. As time has passed, the original AA programs — meant to give a temporary boost to the prospects of black people damaged by slavery and a century of Jim Crow and racial discrimination — have broadened to include other protected classes like Latinos and women, and narrowed to exclude most Asians and other minorities that have succeeded without assistance despite past discrimination. AA programs in college admissions have been legally attacked and reformed in some places, but AA continues to influence hiring in many workplaces, especially in those subject to intensive government regulation like banks, schools, and hospitals. By continuing to put diversity goals above competence and efficiency, organizations have damaged their effectiveness and decreased accountability — protected classes are less likely to be disciplined or fired, and as a result every employee senses that merit is less important and the best are rewarded less while the worst performers are retained and promoted if required to meet diversity goals.

As a result, the least-efficient sectors of the economy are either government-funded or regulated. But corporations have copied the Civil Service-style job categories and hiring mechanisms, especially those larger corporations which have adopted the Federal government’s General Schedule (GS)-style level system specifying job responsibilities and pay levels. Workers below top management are hired under the organization’s general contract provisions as written in both labor law and specific policies documented in company handbooks, while higher executives may have specially-tailored contracts with provisions like golden parachutes (contract-cancellation bonuses), noncompete agreements, and custom deferred-compensation and stock option plans. We won’t look at executive hiring, which is rarely influenced by HR screening and qualifications.

Until recently, private employers were relatively safe in choosing objective criteria for judging job applicants so long as no protected class members were being discriminated against — judged improperly based on skin color, national origin, sex, religion, or other irrelevant factors. That changed in the government sector when courts began to outlaw examinations and other requirements that they said had a disparate impact on protected classes — in other words, if the supposedly objective criteria did not pass the same percentage of protected classes as other applicants, it was deemed improper even if evidence pointed to its validity as a measure of future job performance. Most private industries ignored this and continued to hire on a combination of merit and personal recommendations, knowing that evaluations of job candidates from previous managers and industry contacts were likely to be more trustworthy and end up adding value to the company. Lawsuits made giving a negative recommendation hazardous, though, so many companies changed their policy to prohibit managers and HR from giving out any opinion on performance records of past employees — which led to today’s kabuki dance where a troublesome employee is either damned with faint praise or blackballed in informal tone of voice phone calls, but never in writing.

As companies have grown and HR departments gained influence over hiring processes, most companies have tried to find ways to screen outside candidates that reduced the time-consuming and distracting work of resume evaluation and interviewing by hiring managers and team members. Recessions and slowing growth made hiring less frequent and many hiring staff and outside recruiters were eliminated as cost-saving measures. Personal recruiting was replaced by Internet sites and recruiting boiler rooms where low-paid recruiters cold-called prospects to almost accidentally match them with openings. That was a waste of everyone’s time, so now companies are trying out services that purport to automate resume screening and interviewing, presenting hiring managers with supposedly qualified candidates and prepackaged video interviews for quick evaluation.

But any centralized scheme for pre-screening new hires is subject to political influence — HR can bias the screening to boost AA candidates and blackball competent candidates of undesired classes, like whites, Asians, and older people. When a non-technical 30-year-old female HR screener sees a resume from a 58-year-old white male engineer, she can dismiss it based on her bias against a man she would probably have trouble controlling — and this bias in hiring is every bit as bad for the organization as a previous era’s bias against competent women and homosexuals. And no one is keeping statistics which might demonstrate how she is preventing some highly-competent candidates from being reviewed by the hiring manager and team.

There are several negative consequences. First, hiring managers may be unhappy with all of the candidates presented, unaware that some likely good fits were never allowed into the process. As a result, positions may stay open for long periods and much time is wasted rejecting inappropriate candidates who pass AA and HR screenings but can’t convince the team they’d be right for the role. Another negative is a tendency to stick with internal candidates, who are known quantities from internal word-of-mouth and detailed records available to the hiring manager. But fewer outside hires means less new and diverse process knowledge being added to the company, and the Silicon Valley-style cross-fertilization of innovation between companies in a hot new field can’t happen.

Hiring managers are aware of this, and the smart ones do their own search and bring in new people by effectively bypassing HR. The larger and more bureaucratized companies make this more difficult, which tends to slowly degrade their competitiveness; think of a regulated utility’s staff versus a growing software company’s. An older company in a regulated business will always be less dynamic, but can do well staffing an internal center for process and technology innovation by giving its manager complete staffing freedom and ignoring the usual rules.

In the reverse situation, many an innovative, fast-growing company has been gutted after an acquiring company begins to impose its own HR and personnel policies. Not only do innovators sense a loss of freedom to act without a committee’s permission to get things done, but the new hires vetted by the acquirer’s HR department are more likely to be clock-watching rule-followers who don’t want to be responsible for success or failure of their teams. Gradual decline ensues, and after the frustrated innovators leave, the slow-to-catch-on will dutifully work at their jobs until the parent company gives up, then move on to the next slot.

HR can resist this tendency, but only with leadership from the top — both CEO and a carefully-chosen head of HR can choose and groom HR staff to avoid this mistake.

Thought leaders in today’s HR specialize in jargon and “aspirational” BS — they want HR heads to be seen as visionaries leading their companies to a Nirvana of fulfilled, productive, and most of all diverse staff. Plenty of lip service is paid to productivity and beating the competition with quality and service, but the focus is more often on community feeling and fulfilling interpersonal relationships. That there might be some value in interpersonal conflict and disagreement over technological and market development doesn’t enter their discussions.

But as we will see later, surveys show the most productive and best teams are those whose members feel they have been able to demonstrate their talents. A team that is always harmonious may not last long if their products are the result of groupthink unchallenged by the idiosyncratic few — it’s hard to be happy when your company is losing its market share and your team is laid off. Diversity of opinion and good management judgement are key to being right and besting your competitors, who may have been forced to spend too much time watching diversity training videos and became cynically detached.

Here are some HR thought leaders, excerpted from the book The Rise of HR: Wisdom From 73 Thought Leaders,[1] published by the HR Certification Institute and obviously meant to be a sales tool for their services:

…We have always provided employees with talent development opportunities in compliance with affirmation action and equal employment opportunities. However, a clear and unabashed focus on diversity and inclusion to advance organizational excellence and success may be unfamiliar to some. HR must help instill a new mindset—one that goes beyond merely complying with non-exclusionary laws, but truly commits to core values and believes that, with guidance, every employee has the capacity to perform at high levels.[2]

This is “No Child Left Behind” view of staffing. Leaving behind the old view where the best candidate should be hired or promoted regardless of race or class, in favor of the social work view of HR: that candidates can be chosen for inclusion and groomed, trained, and managed to be great performers regardless of native talent and background. Businesses that can afford to view staffing as a kind of social uplift effort are few—mostly government agencies where there’s guaranteed funding and no competition is allowed.

Anyone who wants to see the trends in HR should skim this book. It’s full of uplifting visions and short on accounting and business nuts and bolts. Those visions are lovely aspirations — but demonstrate how easy it is to make pretty speeches or TED Talks disregarding the realities of human nature and competition in teams.

Not everyone is an airhead, however. China Gorman writes:

The best way to protect your culture’s integrity is to be meticulous in only hiring people who fit within it. Yes, it will be tempting to hire people who have amazing skills but may not fit your culture. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it! Just as one bad apple can spoil the bunch, so can one bad hire throw a wrench in all the hard work you and your company have invested in creating a unique and wonderful culture. Always remember that skills can be taught, but culture fit is like style—people either have it or they don’t. Great culture is about never settling. It’s about doing the right thing, even when it’s hard. So wait for the right person. You’ll be glad you did, and so will everyone in your great workplace culture.[3]

This is true. If your workplace culture is focused on winning and growing in a free market, hiring those whose values are centered on whining about grievances and collecting rent on the value of the work of others through political power is going to poison your workplace culture and reduce morale. Now when HR managers in Silicon Valley talk culture fit, this is code for under 30, no family responsibilities, can work over 60 hours a week, and will put up with the preferred sports, progressive causes, and after-hours socializing of the other low-level staff. And not-so-subtle discrimination against even the most productive who don’t fit this mold is common in startup culture. But a culture which encourages employees to have rich family and personal lives away from the workplace doesn’t have to be less competitive — just smarter. Your best workers don’t work the longest or stay at the office until 10 PM; they’re experienced and knowledgeable enough to get their work done in less time, and your company won’t sink when your junior employees grow up enough to realize they’ve been cheated out of a life and leave for more sustainable workplaces.

Fortunately, hiring managers aren’t stupid, and (except in highly-regulated industries) they have resisted the HR pressure to hire too much diversity deadwood. And companies are still free to discriminate against people whose culture won’t be helpful — which is why management needs to be careful not to hire those gender and ethnic studies graduates who seem to want to be social justice activists on someone else’s dime.


[1] The Rise of HR: Wisdom From 73 Thought Leaders, edited by Dave Ulrich, William A. Schiemann, GPHR and Libby Sartain, SPHR, published by the HR Certification Institute, 2015. http://www.octanner.com/content/dam/oc-tanner/documents/ebooks/HRCI_TheRiseofHR-dual.pdf
[2] “HR as Organizational Leader and Champion of Diversity and Inclusion,” by Andy Brantley, from The Rise of HR, p. 217-225
[3] “CEOs Want Better Performance. Great Culture Can Make It Happen,” by China Gorman of Great Place to Work, from The Rise of HR, p. 179-188

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 

More Reading:

Death by HR: Biased HR Degree Programs Create Biased HR Bureaucracies
Death by HR: Pink Collar Ghettos, Publishing and HR
Death by HR: Who Staffs HR Departments? Mostly Women…
Death by HR: The Great Enrichment to the Great Slackening
Death by HR: Good-Enough Cogs vs Best Employees
Death by HR: EEOC Incompetence and the Coming Idiocracy
Death by HR: The End of Merit in Civil Service
Death by HR: History and Practice of Affirmative Action and the EEOC
Civil Service: Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Dream
Bootleggers and Baptists
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Justice Dept. Extortion

On Affirmative Action and Social Policy:

Affirmative Action: Chinese, Indian-Origin Citizens in Malaysia Oppressed
Affirmative Action: Caste Reservation in India
Diversity Hires: Pressure on High Tech
Title IX Totalitarianism is Gender-Neutral
Public Schools in Poor Districts: For Control Not Education
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Child Welfare Ideas: Every Child Gets a Government Guardian!
“Income Inequality” Propaganda is Just Disguised Materialism

The greatest hits from SubstrateWars.com (Science Fiction topics):

Fear is the Mindkiller
Mirror Neurons and Irene Gallo
YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
Selective Outrage
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
“Tomorrowland”: Tragic Misfire
The Death of “Wired”: Hugo Awards Edition
Hugos, Sad Puppies 3, and Direct Knowledge
Selective Outrage and Angry Tribes
Men of Honor vs Victim Culture
SFF, Hugos, Curating the Best
“Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?”
Science Fiction Fandom and SJW warfare

Death by HR Introduction: HR Pushes Damaging Regulations Into the Enterprise
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[The Introduction from Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, available now for Kindle and in trade paperback.]

Introduction

This book is about the new Age of Incompetence, with brain-dead, unaccountable employees holding sinecures at the heart of our government agencies and regulated institutions like banks and hospitals, protected by affirmative action and union policies. The rot is spreading as pressure from state and federal regulation of companies has increased, empowering an internal compliance bureaucracy — Human Resources (HR) — that has devalued the best job candidates and employees and promoted affirmative action and diversity over team productivity.

The result has been ever-more-costly failures and a steep decline in organizational performance. From the mortgage meltdown that brought down the world’s economy in 2008, to the disastrous launch of the healthcare.gov website for Obamacare, major segments of business and government in the US have grown more expensive and less competent over the past few decades. Billions of dollars of waste in government contracts for IT projects, boondoggle weapons systems, and deadly service failures at the VA are in the news every day. Public schools are widely seen as mediocre, and in the poorest urban districts they are failing to provide a decent education for the students who need good schools the most to make up for bad family backgrounds. Costs for regulated services like schools, colleges, medical insurance, drugs, courts, prisons, and infrastructure like roads and bridges rise far faster than inflation, while time to complete major projects stretches out to decades, and many fail completely and are cancelled after billions have been spent. And the rot is spreading as government pushes businesses to adopt similar employment policies, with HR enforcing government mandates that compromise competitiveness and give overseas companies the advantage.

This book will trace the factors that have hobbled growth and damaged organizational competence. Government regulation has led to HR departments that actively sabotage the hiring of the best candidates for jobs, with by-the-book mediocrities placed in positions of responsibility.

Silicon Valley and the tech industries are the next targets. If you’re a manager at a tech company, I’ll suggest some ways to protect your people from HR and its emphasis on credentials and affirmative action (AA) over the best fit for a position. Corporate leaders need to be sure their HR departments are managed to prevent infiltration by staff more interested in correct politics than winning products. And I’ll show why appeasement of diversity activists is a dangerous strategy that may make your organization a target for further extortionate demands….

Affirmative action policies have placed mediocrities at major decision points in most large companies, government agencies, and highly-regulated institutions like schools and hospitals. A small percentage of deadwood can be routed around, but over time feedback effects from the generalized lack of accountability and lowered standards for performance cripple the institution. This is the cause of the failure and extreme cost overruns of almost all large government projects and a tolerance for incompetence so long as policy manuals are followed to the letter. This effect is largest in government and public education, but also visible in larger companies where HR departments are coming to be staffed by progressives who believe in removing non-progressive thoughts and people from the workplace. In high tech, women and minorities dominate HR in part because companies wanted to balance their male-and-Asian-heavy engineering staff to make their numbers look better, but now are just realizing they’ve created an internal enemy to product quality and excellence in staffing engineering teams. (A corporate manager comments: “How do you know HR is lying? Their lips are moving…”)

This book will focus on the situation in the US, which was until recently more resistant to the bureaucratic disease and thus had a healthier economy and a more dynamic labor market than Europe. The onset of top-down sclerosis by Federal regulation and micromanagement has reduced US growth to the same stagnant levels seen in Europe, for much the same reason: educated by public schools to believe they need permission to do anything, young people stop trying to do anything, and wait for someone to help them. The increasing numbers of untouchable diversity hires in positions of responsibility has inhibited accountability, and the inability to fire employees after even the most egregious malfeasance has spread from civil service and union shops into major corporations —s ince some cannot be held accountable for incompetence, no one is; and the continuing presence of employees who coworkers know are shirkers, incompetents, or even criminals reduces the morale of those who are good at their jobs and work hard. The dysfunction varies by industry and company, with the worst-hit in heavily-regulated sectors like banking, education, and healthcare, where government either controls every element of the business or pays for most of the product. Sectors which until recently were relatively free of deadwood, like high tech, are now under attack by the diversity activists, who want more hiring of less qualified people to make high tech workforces more representative — which would mean discriminating against better candidates who are white, Asian, Indian, male, etc.

This book will also look at a few other countries that have tried various forms of affirmative action policies to demonstrate that while these places are culturally very different, the divisive and socially damaging long-term effects of AA preferences are visible in every country where it has been in place for longer than one generation.

Affirmative action — which substitutes the lower standard of “good enough” for “best” in hiring new employees, setting the bar low enough so that affirmative action hires can meet it instead of seeking out the most qualified candidate — is not the only labor regulation crippling organizational productivity. State and federal regulation and micromanagement of economic activity continues to increase, complicating and delaying every public and many private projects. Whole sectors of the economy are weighed down by regulation; new medical devices and drugs cost $billions to get through corrupt and scientifically-antiquated FDA studies and approvals processes, which results in high prices for new medical technology. Routine services like dental cleanings and hair braiding are illegal in many states unless done under supervision of a cartel of state-certified practitioners; four states even outlaw residential decorating services unless licensed. Hazards of toppling armoires aside, the state is easily captured by motivated business groups to outlaw new competition for their business, and under the pretense of protecting consumers, allowing professional cartels to charge much more for services.

Labor laws are similarly gamed by politically-influential unions and power-seeking bureaucrats. Minimum wage laws outlaw lower wages for unproven or new workers, and restrictions on firing as in Europe make it less likely companies will take a chance on hiring a full-time worker rather than a temp or contractor. The long-term result of Euro-style labor protection is Euro-style high unemployment, especially in young, inexperienced workers, who are thereby kept from ever gaining the experience that would make them valuable enough to hire despite the additional rules and costs imposed by the laws. People accept that education costs money and that students may be paid less for internships or even pay outright for classes, but forget that most occupational skills are acquired in the workplace, in the first years of employment. By outlawing lower wages and at-will employment, labor laws are keeping young people from important learning experiences and ruining their chance to start on a career ladder.

Until the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal, the Supreme Court had held back many attempts to regulate private business, ruling them unconstitutional overreaches. But after Roosevelt threatened to pack the court with new justices who would approve his regulatory agenda, the Supreme Court bowed to his wishes. In a series of cases, the newly Progressive-leaning Court expanded the Commerce Clause to allow federal regulation of almost all economic activity. In Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), the court ruled that a farmer could be fined for growing wheat on his own land for his own animals’ consumption because he would otherwise have had to purchase wheat in the market, which a 1938 agricultural control law regulated. After this, the court rarely found any Federal regulation of contracts or commerce to be unconstitutional, despite the clear intent of the framers that such Federal power over commerce was intended to prevent states from creating trade barriers and discriminating against the products of other US states.

As a result, laws and regulations on commerce of all kinds — and labor specifically — have expanded, and the staffing levels of Human Resources departments and administrations at colleges and hospitals have ballooned to meet bureaucratic requirements. Federal fingers are now in every pie, wasting resources and deadening initiative, since a lawsuit or negative attention from the NLRB, EEOC, Dept. of Education, HHS, EPA, and other enforcement agencies can destroy or damage a company or institution. HR and administrative staff approve of the progressive control agenda—which gives them power and status—and when free to drift leftward serve as an internal fifth column dedicated to enforcing progressive standards on their own organization and its workforce.

Companies serving an international market find themselves battling foreign companies who don’t have as many burdens, especially in Asia. The US advantage of a productive workforce and innovative technology is gradually worn down by the time and money spent fighting bureaucrats. Mediocre managements take current rewards for themselves but ignore the future, eventually failing. Foreign companies take over markets, one by one, as US companies dragged down by unions and mediocre key employees lose revenues and eventually abandon markets.

Governments have expanded the areas they control while the Civil Service, union, and affirmative action rules imposed on their workforces have reduced their effectiveness in their most critical functions. From deaths caused by bureaucratic malfeasance at the VA to killer cops rarely punished and kept on the payroll by the efforts of police unions, this lack of accountability makes it difficult to remove incompetent or criminal public employees and makes it impossible for even motivated elected officials to reform public services. The rising debt and costs for every public project mean failing services, rampant injustice, and decaying infrastructure are not being addressed. As a result, US competitiveness is declining vs. countries with better-managed public services. And public anger and cynicism as the years pass and each new group of elected officials fails to fix any of the problems they promised to fix is leading to a dangerous disregard for the law and a desire for a dictator who will sweep aside the checks and balances of a Republic.

Because there are so many examples of malfeasance and incompetence in government’s control of commerce and labor regulations, I was forced to leave most of that material for the next book, which will focus on government. Entire books have been written about the costly failures of the Drug War, public schools, affirmative action, and police militarization. This book will focus on the creeping spread of this atmosphere of consequence-free failure. The hubris of central planners and their capture by special interests, acting in concert with well-meaning but naive do-gooders who think they can vote their way to a better world, has brought us the diseases of socialism by taking away authority and accountability that let businesses succeed or fail. The pleasant-sounding ideal of equality of outcome — which killed hundreds of millions of people as the activating principle of Marxism-Communism — is actually the enemy of individual freedom, accountability, and achievement. The decline of excellence as a primary goal leading to profit and growth has not come because people like failure and mediocrity, but because they were sold a fairy tale about how government could make everything fairer and make everyone happy through the workings of laws and regulations. The result has been a lot more unhappiness and civil strife as the unintended consequences have swamped whatever good was intended. And the level of hypocrisy has risen as politicians promote the message that everyone is a victim and that someone else — “the 1%,” corporations, Republicans, foreigners, Muslims, blacks, the Koch Brothers, the Jews, whoever works as a scapegoat—is responsible for keeping them down.

High tech, one sector where the US led the world and generated immense new wealth, has now been targeted as the next area to be regulated. Activists and demagogues are attracted by money, and with more than half of the US private economy now controlled by government regulators, it was inevitable the parasites would look toward the remaining healthy sectors for their next fix. Calls for diversity quotas in tech company workforces, video game characters, and open-source software projects are early warning signs. HR departments in most tech companies serve as the political commissars of regulation, and HR departments in tech are staffed by lower-paid employees who have little understanding of the technology but a lot of interest in screening out even the best prospective employees who don’t fit the narrow diversity mold. Managers who want the best teams and the fastest, coolest products are resisting these HR apparatchiks, and I’ll show what you can do about it if you work in tech.

The next battlefield after high tech is discretion in hiring — which the activists believe must be limited to force employers to hire any candidate “qualified” for a job as soon as they apply. Only a few radicals are proposing this kind of blind hiring now, but continuing successes in getting firms to bow to their diversity demands will result in a list of new demands. Seattle has already passed an ordinance requiring landlords to rent apartments to the first applicant who qualifies — next what counts as qualified will come under their control, and government-sponsored Section 8 and protected class tenants will be deemed qualified no matter what their credit reports and criminal records show. And similar movements in hiring — supposedly to prevent discrimination by eliminating management choice of who to employ — are coming soon.

There are many people working hard in HR to promote the interests of their organization, but their efforts are often blunted by the prevailing HR culture that substitutes buzzwords and feel-good social goals for promotion of productivity and excellence:

…Most HR organizations have ghettoized themselves literally to the brink of obsolescence. They are competent at the administrivia of pay, benefits, and retirement, but companies increasingly are farming those functions out to contractors who can handle such routine tasks at lower expense. What’s left is the more important strategic role of raising the reputational and intellectual capital of the company — but HR is, it turns out, uniquely unsuited for that. Here’s why:

HR people aren’t the sharpest tacks in the box. We’ll be blunt: If you are an ambitious young thing newly graduated from a top college or B-school with your eye on a rewarding career in business, your first instinct is not to join the human-resources dance. (At the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, which arguably boasts the nation’s top faculty for organizational issues, just 1.2% of 2004 grads did so.) Says a management professor at one leading school: “The best and the brightest don’t go into HR.”

Who does? Intelligent people, sometimes—but not businesspeople. “HR doesn’t tend to hire a lot of independent thinkers or people who stand up as moral compasses,” says Garold L. Markle, a longtime human-resources executive at Exxon and Shell Offshore who now runs his own consultancy. Some are exiles from the corporate mainstream: They’ve fared poorly in meatier roles—but not poorly enough to be fired. For them, and for their employers, HR represents a relatively low-risk parking spot.

Others enter the field by choice and with the best of intentions, but for the wrong reasons. They like working with people, and they want to be helpful—noble motives that thoroughly tick off some HR thinkers. “When people have come to me and said, ‘I want to work with people,’ I say, ‘Good, go be a social worker,'” says Arnold Kanarick, who has headed human resources at the Limited and, until recently, at Bear Stearns. “HR isn’t about being a do-gooder. It’s about how do you get the best and brightest people and raise the value of the firm.”[1]

[1] “Why We Hate HR: In a knowledge economy, companies with the best talent win. And finding, nurturing, and developing that talent should be one of the most important tasks in a corporation. So why does human resources do such a bad job—and how can we fix it?” Fast Company, August 1, 2005. http://www.fastcompany.com/53319/why-we-hate-hr

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. 

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat…. It is time to turn the tide against this madness and Death by HR is an important research tool…  All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

More reading:

A Clinton Christmas Carol
“High Tech Under Diversity Pressure
Ban the Box, Credit Scores, Current Salaries: The Road to Hiring Blind
HireVue, Video Interviews, and AI Job Searches
“Death by HR” – Diversity Programs Don’t Work

Election 2016: Clinton vs Trump vs ?

I discussed the corrupt and incestuous media-government revolving door problem in Journalism or Government Propaganda? The Revolving Door.

With less than a week to go before the election, I’m watching lots of thoughtful friends struggling with the choices, and they are unhappy about having these candidates to choose from. It helps to remember that one person’s vote makes almost no difference, especially if you live in one of the populous states that is likely to vote overwhelmingly for one major party candidate. So do your best and don’t feel responsible if your chosen candidate wins and turns out to be a disaster — you’re not at fault.

I will make this meta-point: we’re heading for financial meltdown no matter who wins, since the demographic bomb of pensions and Medicare is about to go off and the central bankers are unable to safely end their ZIRP policies which must eventually end. It’s going to get ugly.

Similarly, the administrative state has become a parasite which can increase its share of national wealth indefinitely only when a robust economy supports it. Stagnation from ever-increasing regulation means that tax rates or deficits must rise to continue the bureaucracy’s expansion, further impairing growth and leading to a death spiral. Hard work and deferred consumption to invest in the future are already punished, and that negative feedback will only increase.

Clinton would be a continuation of the special-interest looting of the middle class, with cable TV and media combines supporting her through propaganda-news. Trump disrupts that cozy machinery, and while he has no policy solutions for the collapse to come when ZIRP finally ends catastrophically, a President Trump won’t be defending the administrative state when the freed-up Congress and states rise up to reform and shrink it. Clinton would continue the flogging until morale improves…

Smashing the Democratic Party’s corrupt feedback loop supported by public employee unions and government-funded academics will give other interests a chance to be heard. That is one of the better arguments for what would otherwise be an irresponsible decision to vote for Trump.

Peter Thiel had this to say:

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR HAVING ME HERE.

EVERYONE KNOWS WE HAVE BEEN LIVING THROUGH A CRAZY ELECTION YEAR. REAL EVENTS SEEM LIKE THE REHEARSALS FOR SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

ONLY AN OUTBREAK OF INSANITY WOULD SEEM TO ACCOUNT FOR THE UNPRECEDENTED FACT THAT THIS YEAR, A POLITICAL OUTSIDER MANAGED TO WIN A MAJOR PARTY NOMINATION.

TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE USED TO INFLUENCING OUR CHOICES, THE WEALTHY PEOPLE WHO GIVE MONEY AND THE COMMENTATORS WHO GIVE REASONS WHY, IT ALL SEEMS LIKE A BAD DREAM.

DONORS DON’T WANT TO FIND OUT WHY WE GOT HERE, THEY JUST WANT TO MOVE ON. COME NOVEMBER 9, THEY HOPE EVERYONE ELSE WILL GO BACK TO BUSINESS AS USUAL. BUT IT IS THIS HEEDLESSNESS: THE TEMPTATION TO IGNORE DIFFICULT REALITIES INDULGED IN BY OUR CITIZENS THAT GOT US WHERE WE ARE TODAY.

A LOT OF SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE ARE TOO PROUD TO ADMIT IT SINCE IT SEEMS TO PUT THEIR SUCCESS IN QUESTION. BUT THE TRUTH IS, NO MATTER HOW CRAZY THIS ELECTION SEEMS, IT IS LESS CRAZY THAN THE CONDITION OF OUR COUNTRY. JUST LOOK AT THE GENERATION THAT SUPPLIES MOST OF OUR LEADERS. THE BABY BOOMERS. THEY ARE ENTERING RETIREMENT IN A STATE OF ACTUARIAL BANKRUPTCY. 54% OF THOSE OVER THE AGE OF 55 HAVE LESS THAN ONE YEARS WORTH OF SAVINGS TO THEIR NAME.

THAT IS A PROBLEM, ESPECIALLY WHEN THIS IS THE ONLY COUNTRY WHERE YOU HAVE TO PAY UP TO 10 TIMES AS MUCH FOR SIMPLE MEDICINES AS YOU WOULD PAY ANYWHERE ELSE. AMERICA’S OVERPRICED HEALTH CARE SYSTEM MIGHT HELP SUBSIDIZE THE REST OF THE WORLD, BUT THAT DOES NOT HELP AMERICANS WHO CANNOT AFFORD IT AND THEY HAVE STARTED TO NOTICE.

OUR YOUNGEST CITIZENS MAY NOT HAVE MEDICAL BILLS, BUT THEIR COLLEGE TUITION KEEPS ON INCREASING FASTER THAN THE RATE OF INFLATION, ADDING MORE EVERY YEAR TO OUR $1.3 TRILLION MOUNTAIN OF STUDENT DEBT. AMERICA HAS BECOME THE ONLY COUNTRY WHERE STUDENTS TAKE ON LOANS THEY CAN NEVER ESCAPE, NOT EVEN BY DECLARING BANKRUPTCY.

STUCK IN THIS BROKEN SYSTEM, MILLENNIALS ARE THE FIRST GENERATION THAT EXPECT THEIR OWN LIVES TO BE WORSE THAN THE LIVES OF THEIR PARENTS. WHILE AMERICAN FAMILY EXPENSES HAVE BEEN INCREASING RELENTLESSLY, THEIR INCOMES HAVE BEEN STAGNANT. IN REAL DOLLARS, IMMEDIATE HOUSEHOLD MAKES LESS MONEY TODAY THAT MADE 17 YEARS AGO. NEARLY HALF OF AMERICANS WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO COME UP WITH $400 IF THEY NEEDED IT FOR AN EMERGENCY.

YET, WHILE HOUSEHOLDS STRUGGLED TO KEEP UP WITH THE CHALLENGES OF EVERYDAY LIFE, THE GOVERNMENT IS WASTING TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON TAXPAYER MONEY ON FARAWAY WARS. RIGHT NOW, WE’RE FIGHTING FIVE OF THEM. IN IRAQ, SYRIA, LIBYA, AND SOMALIA.

IN THE WEALTHY SUBURBS OF WASHINGTON DC, PEOPLE ARE DOING JUST FINE. WHERE I WORK IN SILICON VALLEY, PEOPLE ARE DOING JUST GREAT. BUT MOST AMERICANS DON’T LIVE BY THE BELTWAY OR THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY. MOST AMERICANS HAVE NOT BEEN PART OF THAT PERSPECTIVE. IT SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISING TO SEE PEOPLE VOTING FOR BERNIE SANDERS OR DONALD TRUMP, WHO IS THE ONLY OUTSIDER (VERY FEW PEOPLE WHO VOTE FOR PRESIDENT HAVE EVER THOUGHT OF DOING SOMETHING SO EXTREME AS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. THE PEOPLE WHO RUN ARE OFTEN POLARIZING).

THIS ELECTION YEAR, BOTH MAJOR CANDIDATES ARE IMPERFECT PEOPLE TO SAY THE LEAST. I DON’T AGREE WITH EVERYTHING DONALD TRUMP HAS SAID AND DONE, AND I DON’T THINK THE MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE VOTING FOR HIM DO EITHER. NOBODY THINKS HIS COMMENTS ABOUT WOMEN WERE ACCEPTABLE. I AGREE, THEY WERE CLEARLY OFFENSIVE AND INAPPROPRIATE. BUT I DON’T THINK THE VOTERS PULL THE LEVER TO ENDORSE A CANDIDATE’S FLAWS.

IT IS NOT A LACK OF JUDGMENT THAT LEADS AMERICANS TO VOTE FOR TRUMP, WE ARE VOTING FOR TRUMP BECAUSE WE JUDGE THE LEADERSHIP OF OUR COUNTRY TO HAVE FAILED.

THIS JUDGMENT HAS BEEN HARD TO ACCEPT FOR SOME OF THE COUNTRIES MOST FORTUNATE, SOCIALLY PROMINENT PEOPLE. IT CERTAINLY HAS BEEN HARD TO ACCEPT FOR SILICON VALLEY, WHERE MANY PEOPLE HAVE LEARNED TO KEEP QUIET IF THEY DISSENT FROM THE COASTAL BUBBLE. LOUDER VOICES HAVE SENT A MESSAGE THAT THEY DO NOT INTEND TO TOLERATE THE VIEWS OF ONE HALF OF THE COUNTRY.

THIS INTOLERANCE HAS TAKEN ON SOME BIZARRE FORMS. THE ADVOCATE, A MAGAZINE WHICH ONCE PRAISED ME AS A GAY INNOVATOR, EVEN PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE SAYING THAT AS OF NOW I AM, AND I QUOTE “NOT A GAY MAN” BECAUSE I DON’T AGREE WITH THEIR POLITICS. THE LIE IN THE BUZZWORD OF DIVERSITY COULD NOT BE MADE MORE CLEAR. IF YOU DON’T CONFORM, THEN YOU DON’T COUNT AS DIVERSE, NO MATTER WHAT YOUR PERSONAL BACKGROUND.

FACED WITH SUCH CONTEMPT, WHY DO VOTERS STILL SUPPORT DONALD TRUMP? EVEN IF THEY THINK THE AMERICAN SITUATION IS SERIOUS, WHY DO THEY THINK TRUMP OF ALL PEOPLE CAN MAKE IT BETTER?

I THINK IT IS BECAUSE OF THE BIG THINGS THAT TRUMP GETS RIGHT. FOR EXAMPLE, FREE TRADE HAS NOT WORKED OUT WELL FOR ALL OF AMERICA. IT HELPS TRUMP THAT THE OTHER SIDE JUST DOES NOT GET IT. ALL OF OUR ELITES TREAT FREE TRADE AND EXPLAIN THAT CHEAP IMPORTS MAKE EVERYONE A WINNER ACCORDING TO ECONOMIC THEORY. BUT IN ACTUAL PRACTICE, WE’VE LOST TENS OF THOUSANDS OF FACTORIES AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO FOREIGN TRADE. HEARTLAND HAS BEEN DEVASTATED. MAYBE ELITES REALLY BELIEVE NO ONE LOSES OR MAYBE THEY DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT TOO MUCH BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY ARE AMONG THE WINNERS….

TRUMP VOTERS ARE ALSO TIRED OF WAR. WE HAVE BEEN AT WAR FOR 15 YEARS AND WE HAVE SPENT MORE THAN $4.6 TRILLION. MORE THAN 2 MILLION PEOPLE HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES AND MORE THAN 5000 AMERICAN SOLDIERS HAVE BEEN KILLED. BUT WE HAVE NOT ONE. THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION PROMISED $50 BILLION COULD BRING DEMOCRACY TO IRAQ. INSTEAD, WE SQUANDERED 40 TIMES AS MUCH TO BRING ABOUT CHAOS. EVEN AFTER THESE BIPARTISAN FAILURES, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS MORE HAWKISH TODAY THAN AT ANY TIME SINCE IT BEGAN THE WAR IN VIETNAM. HARKING BACK TO THE NO-FLY ZONE BILL CLINTON ENFORCED OVER IRAQ BEFORE BUSH COSTS FAILED WAR, NOW HILLARY CLINTON HAS CALLED FOR A NO-FLY ZONE OVER SYRIA. INCREDIBLY, THAT WOULD BE A MISTAKE EVEN MORE RECKLESS THAN INVADING IRAQ. SINCE MOST OF THE PLANES FLYING OVER SYRIA ARE RUSSIAN PLANES, CLINTON’S PROPOSED COURSE OF ACTION WOULD INVOLVE US IN A MESSY CIVIL WAR — IT WOULD RISK A DIRECT NUCLEAR CONFLICT.

WHAT EXPLAINS THIS EAGERNESS TO ESCALATE A DANGEROUS SITUATION? HOW COULD HILLARY CLINTON BE SO WILDLY OVEROPTIMISTIC ABOUT THE OUTCOME OF WAR?

I WOULD SUGGEST IT COMES FROM A LOT OF PRACTICE. FOR A LONG TIME, OUR ELITES HAVE BEEN IN THE POWER A LONG TIME, OUR ELITES HAVE BEEN IN THE HABIT OF DENYING DIFFICULT REALITIES. THAT IS HOW BUBBLES FORM. WHEREVER THERE’S A HARD PROBLEM BUT PEOPLE WANT TO BELIEVE IN AN EASY SOLUTION, THEY WILL BE TEMPTED TO DENY REALITY AND INFLATE A BUBBLE. SOMETHING ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF THE BABY BOOMERS, WHOSE LIVES HAVE BEEN SO MUCH EASIER THAN THEIR PARENTS OR THEIR CHILDREN HAS LED THEM TO BUY INTO BUBBLES AGAIN AND AGAIN. THE TRADE BUBBLE SAYS EVERYONE IS A WINNER. THE WAR BUBBLE SAYS VICTORY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER, BUT THESE OVEROPTIMISTIC STORIES SIMPLY HAVE NOT BEEN TRUE AND VOTERS ARE TIRED OF BEING LIED TO.

IT WAS BOTH INSANE AND SOMEHOW INEVITABLE THAT D.C. INSIDERS EXPECTED THIS ELECTION TO BE A RERUN BETWEEN THE TWO POLITICAL DYNASTIES WHO LET US THROUGH THE TWO MOST GIGANTIC FINANCIAL BUBBLES OF OUR TIME. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDED OVER THE INFLATION OF THE HOUSING BUBBLE SO BIG THAT IT’S COLLAPSE IS STILL CAUSING ECONOMIC STAGNATION TODAY. BUT WHAT IS STRANGELY FORGOTTEN IS THAT THE LAST DECADE HOUSING BUBBLE WAS JUST AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE UP FOR THE GAINS THAT HAVE BEEN LOST THE DECADE BEFORE THAT. IN THE 1990’S, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON PRESIDED OVER AN ENORMOUS STOCK MARKET BUBBLE AND DEVASTATING CRASH IN 2000 JUST AS HIS SECOND TERM WAS COMING TO AN END. THAT IS HOW LONG THE SAME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN PURSUING THE SAME DISASTROUS POLICIES.

NOW THAT SOMEONE DIFFERENT IS IN THE RUNNING, SOMEONE WHO REJECTS THE STORIES THAT TELL US EVERYTHING IS FINE, HIS LARGER-THAN-LIFE PERSONA ATTRACTS A LOT OF ATTENTION. NOBODY WOULD SUGGEST DONALD TRUMP IS A HUMBLE MAN. BUT THE BIG THINGS HE IS RIGHT ABOUT AMOUNT TO A MUCH-NEEDED DOSE OF HUMILITY. HE HAS QUESTIONED THE CORE CONCEPT OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM.

HE DOESN’T THINK THE FORCE OF OPTIMISM ALONE CAN CHANGE REALITY WITHOUT HARD WORK. JUST AS MUCH AS IS IS ABOUT MAKING AMERICA GREAT, TRUMP’S AGENDA IS ABOUT MAKING AMERICA A NORMAL COUNTRY, A NORMAL COUNTRY DOES NOT HAVE A HALF TRILLION DOLLAR TRADE DEFICIT. A NORMAL COUNTRY DOES NOT FIGHT FIVE SIMULTANEOUS UNDECLARED WARS.

IN A NORMAL COUNTRY, THE GOVERNMENT ACTUALLY DOES ITS JOB. TODAY, IT IS IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE THE GOVERNMENT HAS A JOB TO DO. VOTERS ARE TIRED OF HEARING CONSERVATIVE POLITICIANS SAYING GOVERNMENT NEVER WORKS. THEY KNOW GOVERNMENT WAS NOT ALWAYS THIS BROKEN. THE MANHATTAN PROJECT, THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM, THE APOLLO PROGRAM, WHATEVER YOU THINK OF THESE VENTURES, YOU CANNOT DOUBT THE COMPETENCE OF THE GOVERNMENT THAT GOT THEM DONE, BUT WE HAVE FALLEN VERY FAR FROM THAT STANDARD. WE CANNOT LET FREE-MARKET IDEOLOGY SERVE AS AN EXCUSE FOR DECLINE.

NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS ELECTION, WHAT TRUMP REPRESENTS IS NOT CRAZY AND IT’S NOT GOING AWAY. HE POINTS TOWARD A NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY BEYOND THE DOGMAS OF REAGANISM. HE POINTS BEYOND THE REMAKING OF ONE PARTY TO A NEW AMERICAN POLITICS THAT OVERCOMES DENIAL, REJECTS BUBBLE THINKING AND RECKONS WITH REALITY. WHEN THE DISTRACTING SPECTACLES OF THIS ELECTION SEASON ARE OVER AND THE HISTORY OF OUR TIME IS WRITTEN, THE ONLY IMPORTANT QUESTION WILL BE WHETHER OR NOT THAT NEW POLITICS CAME TOO LATE. THANK YOU.

(Transcript courtesy Zerohedge.) As one commenter said, it’s a shame it’s not Peter Thiel running for the office.

So there are reasonable people supporting Trump, not because of his repellent behaviors and supporters, but in spite of them — because it may be the only chance to limit the power of the Democratic-bureaucratic alliance for another long four years.

Good luck, everyone!

—

 

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. 

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 

For more reading goodness:

Death by HR: Biased HR Degree Programs Create Biased HR Bureaucracies
Death by HR: Pink Collar Ghettos, Publishing and HR
Death by HR: Who Staffs HR Departments? Mostly Women…
Death by HR: The Great Enrichment to the Great Slackening
Death by HR: Good-Enough Cogs vs Best Employees
Death by HR: EEOC Incompetence and the Coming Idiocracy
The Justice is Too Damn High! – Gawker, the High Cost of Litigation, and the Weapon Shops of Isher
Regulation Strangling Innovation: Planes, Trains, and Hyperloop
Captain America and Progressive Infantilization
The Great Progressive Stagnation vs. Dynamism
FDA Wants More Lung Cancer
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Public Employee Unions
Unrealistic Expectations: Liberal Arts Woman and Amazon Men
Stable is Boring? “Psychology Today” Article on Bad Boyfriends
Gaming and Science Fiction: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again