The problem with taking general economic lessons from the US is that the US is in a unique, and uniquely advantageous economic position.
Comparing different legal systems and different practical implementations of those systems is hard - but I think the basic claim, that there's a inverse correlation between employee's rights and economic growth, isn't visible within the EU or elsewhere.
The UK is a good example because they have aggressively reduced the safeguards for workers (between 2014-2017 it was essentially a state with no safeguards if you could not afford the employment tribunal process), and is also an example of consistent poor economic growth.
There's a big gap between the US and UK in this regard. The UK has and enforces the concept of an unfair dismissal as distinct from being fired due to discrimination. The US has the latter but not the former. In the UK you can't lay someone off if it would be unfair or if your dismissal process was unreasonable, where unreasonable can mean purely bureaucratic reasons like not following your own dismissal checklists.
In addition British employment tribunals are very worker friendly, resulting in frequent bizarre outcomes [1] like:
- "A worker who was absent for 808 shifts over a 20-year career – costing the firm an estimated £95,850 in sick pay – has won tribunal claims of unfair dismissal against his former employer." (employee won because employer didn't follow their own absence management procedures).
- "An office manager was discriminated against after she was told she was not allowed to work remotely from her son’s hospital bedside", deemed unfair because the boss "gave her views no credit" and "had a closed mind".
- "Worker unfairly dismissed for complaining about boss on Facebook, tribunal rules"
- An NHS worker who resigned won an unfair dismissal claim, because her workers had played a practical joke on her at one point and didn't like it when she complained.
- A lecturer accused of sending “aggressive” messages to colleagues was awarded £15,000 for unfair dismissal after an employment tribunal ruled there had not been a proper investigation into the allegations made against him, whilst also concluding that he had indeed sent aggressive messages.
The idea that this is a country that's "aggressively reduced safeguards for workers" will seem blinkered to the Americans on this site, who can be fired with zero notice and for any reason at all, with recourse only available if it can be proven to be sexism/racism/etc. Winning huge awards because you weren't allowed to work remotely hardly exists there.
[1] https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1747159/worker-ab...
1. I wasn't claiming that.
2. It's not silly at all. British companies were and are flouting employment laws[0].
3. If the plural of anecdote is not annecdata, what's the plural of a cherry picked, unsourced, and likely misrepresented court ruling? Fiction?
[0]: https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/06/14/british-employe...
>If you look at the employment protections of the UK[0], and compare them to the US[1]
I think you meant to include citations at the bottom, but I don't see them.
This is true, but understated in a crucial manner. By global standards, the greatest enduring strength of the US economy has been its ability to recover from downturns. More than anything else, that has pulled it ahead of competitors time and time again. When the early '80s financial crisis hit Japan with a lost decade, Volcker (PBUH) pulled the US out of the doldrums and back into a growth phase within three years. When the Asian financial crisis hit at the same time as the dotcom bust, the US recovered more efficiently than the erstwhile "Asian tigers". When the 2007 financial crisis went worldwide, aggressive measures by the Fed and a willingness to risk inflation restored growth faster than in Europe. When COVID hit, economies around the world dived, but even with political divisions running at their highest since 1876, the US again restored growth more quickly than almost anywhere else — now growing at competitive rates with China.
There are a variety of theories about this, but one iniquitous postulate I've heard is that the US makes it a lot easier for companies to do layoffs — not a happy proposition for those directly affected, but what could be worse for an economy than having thousands of people working on something that just isn't working? Many worker protections — for health, safety and family — have become more popular with economists recently, but when the subject of being able to fire people comes up, there is still a sort of grim understanding transmitted in whispers: paying someone who isn't making progress makes us all worse off in the long run.
Of course we can also trace the roots of some profound social malaise — including the collapse of whole cities — to the cutthroat nature of employment in America; there is no free lunch.