But in the USA, we insist that the unemployed suffer to fluff the moral vanity of the wealthy. It is the flip side of "meritocracy" -- wealth is evidence of moral superiority while poverty is evidence of moral inferiority, and more dramatic the comparison the stronger the proof that success is deserved.

"There but for my own prodigious talent and relentless drive to succeed go I."

>>Forcing employers to keep employees they don't like

Many jurisdictions allow firing without cause - they just make the employers pay (significant) severance, often related to the length of service of the employee. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "I don't want you in my company any longer", I just happen to think it might be reasonable to pay for that privilege.

What a strange use of the word privilege.

Seriously though, if everyone paid into strong safety net, all the time, not just when they fire someone, the result for fired employees is the same and the lack of bureaucracy will probably make that approach even cheaper. The real upside though is that companies can be very nimble and are more competitive internationally.

On both sides - greedy people who don't want to pay either in the moment for firing someone or pay taxes for a safety net, and employees who demand total job security even if it means cement boots for the employer - the extremes are very short sighted.

Why is that reasonable when firing an employee (vs layoffs)?

So a bad performing person now costs even more to get rid of? That might force the company to just keep them on and try to squeeze out some productivity, waiting until they just quit instead.

It's reasonable when firing an employee without cause. If a person is performing badly, document that and then fire them.

> If a person is performing badly, document that and then fire them.

Which is entirely subjective. There are a billion criteria you can reasonably evaluate someone on, so it's trivial to make the average person look below average by choosing the things they're bad at as the things to evaluate them on.

A company will always be able to get rid of an employee they don't like one way or another. The only choice you have is how much bureaucracy to impose. But it's the same amount of bureaucracy even when the company has a justifiable reason.

For you to be so dismissive of the breadth and depth of documentation needed to withstand a potential lawsuit, I suspect your experience is limited to the employee side of the relationship.

Denmark is famous for having a social safety net that makes sure laid-off employees have the skills to get a new job. It's a happy medium between excessive employee protections and lack of employee protections.

Safety net is definitely there, but my Dane friends actually told me it’s really bad for small businesses to the point that small businesses won’t hire for desperately needed work because it is impossibly expensive to let anyone go.

I've never heard anyone express that concern. Rather, I would think the reason why small businesses won't hire would more likely be because the wages are so high here.

You can quite easily hire for work for small periods, e.g. summer job style.

I wonder if you have misunderstood your friends. The Danish system is different from other Nordic countries in that dismissal is quite easy from legal point of view (even if for someone running a small company, it may still be psychologically very difficult).

The unemployment benefits are good, although the officials monitoring it also force the unemployed to be quite active to find a new job.

This was his complaint 10 years ago, from an earlier time (perhaps 20 years ago?) he was considering starting a business.

I probably have misunderstood his complaints, as you and Tehnix both point out; I'll reach out to him to get the details right...

Perhaps that experience is more than 20 years old. Denmark started to implement a thorough labour market reform in 1990's and coined the term "flexicurity", to denote a system where hiring and firing are extremely simple, but employees have good unemployment benefits and receive active guidance by authorities for re-employment. This has been created since then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity

Yes, this unusual Danish system is why I said Denmark -- it's pretty different from the rest of Europe.

The Flexi-Security approach to social security. The hard part is making sure companies pay their dues.

Having health care tied to the employer-employee relationship has worked out poorly.

The less the safety net is subject to the whims of business, the better off we will all be -- including businesses.

How come? AFAIK there is no big problem in Denmark (which has the flexicurity approach) to collect social security payments. All employees have a person number registered at the civil registration system. Companies pay the social contributions and tax withdrawals with the PAYE system.

The only exception is perhaps "shadow economy" of immigrant-dominated areas in some cities where rule of law is weaker and restaurants and other local businesses may use undocumented employees. But these cannot be very big business.