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.