The choice happens at a higher level than such context is available. It's more like "encourage a philosophy of cost-cutting, which might be what saves us if a big, efficient rival comes up behind us too fast for us to begin cost-cutting in response—or allow for a culture of slack and waste, which will become very hard to change if we're ever in such a situation."

> "It's profitable now but it could be even more profitable if we did something that incurred job losses."

If keeping someone's employed is making the company less profitable than it could be if it fired him - why would the company keep paying this person money?

The argument being presented, is that a job is - to one degree or another - a right or entitlement. The argument is: while yes, that job is of low productive output and it may be questionable as to whether it serves any purpose or needs to exist, it employs someone and therefore should exist specifically for that employee's benefit as opposed to the benefit of the owner of the business who provides said job.

That's an emotional argument without any factual or rational merit to support it. It's meant to arrange the 'working class' as the rulers of the means of production. Standard labor vs capital debate.

No, a job is not a right or entitlement, but then again, that wasn't my argument. In the case of Carrier, they were trying to move part of their most profitable divisions to Mexico. It wasn't a case of employing people for charity, it was literally a case of adding more zeros to an already fat bank account.

> It wasn't a case of employing people for charity, it was literally a case of adding more zeros to an already fat bank account.

I don't understand, why is adding zeroes to already fat bank account is morally different from pulling the account from negative to positive?

I'm not understanding, could you clarify? Thx. Oops, I think we're too far down the rabbit hole for "reply" to work. I'll take a stab at answering but forgive me if I'm answering the wrong question.

When a business is losing money, paying employees is a charity. When the business is making a great profit and decides that it could make even more by hurting/laying off some employees, that is a choice with moral implications.

When there is plenty of ice cream bars for everyone but the first guy who arrives at the cafeteria grabs all of them out of the freezer and proceed to sell them to everyone who comes later, the first guy didn't earn them. He didn't actually increase the amount of ice cream. He only captured the value.

It is possible to not grab every single ice cream bar especially when you have more than you can ever eat. People and companies do this all the time. As a businessman, I don't find it necessary to screw every other party in a transaction in order to feel successful.

None of this addresses the question. We have the highest standard of living in history because businesses relentlessly increased productivity, in both good and bad years, and this eliminated unneeded low value jobs. It also creates more valuable new jobs.

If they hadn't done so, 95% of Americans would still be doing brutal farm labor.