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446 points Teever | 7 comments | | HN request time: 1.374s | source | bottom
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tptacek ◴[] No.45030497[source]
The controls summarized in the CNBC piece seem reasonable, or, if not that, then at least not all that onerous.

The controls in the actual proposal are less reasonable: they create finable infractions for any claim in a job ad deemed "misleading" or "inaccurate" (findings of fact that requires a an expensive trial to solve) and prohibit "perpetual postings" or postings made 90 days in advance of hiring dates.

The controls might make it harder to post "ghost jobs" (though: firms posting "ghost jobs" simply to check boxes for outsourcing, offshoring, or visa issuance will have no trouble adhering to the letter of this proposal while evading its spirit), but they will also impact firms that don't do anything resembling "ghost job" hiring.

Firms working at their dead level best to be up front with candidates still produce steady feeds of candidates who feel misled or unfairly rejected. There are structural features of hiring that almost guarantee problems: for instance, the interval between making a selection decision about a candidate and actually onboarding them onto the team, during which any number of things can happen to scotch the deal. There's also a basic distributed systems problem of establishing a consensus state between hiring managers, HR teams, and large pools of candidates.

If you're going to go after "ghost job" posters, you should do something much more targeted to what those abusive firms are actually doing, and raise the stakes past $2500/infraction.

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ng12 ◴[] No.45031024[source]
Maybe it would be simpler to just impose a nominal tax on the total number of job openings a company creates throughout the year. Maybe as a % of the role's salary. You could even rebate it against employer payroll taxes so they get the money back when they actually hire someone.
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smt88 ◴[] No.45031073[source]
You should never tax things you want people to do, like posting legitimate job openings
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sokoloff ◴[] No.45031357[source]
We tax things we want people to do all the time.

We want people to buy things, yet we have sales taxes.

We want people to work productive jobs and earn money, yet we have income taxes.

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1. WalterBright ◴[] No.45034370[source]
> We tax things we want people to do all the time.

True. But why not think about ditching those taxes, and replace them with taxing things we don't want people to do? There's a double benefit - tax revenue is raised, and people do less of those things undesirable to society.

For example, "sin" taxes.

For other examples, taxing pollution. Taxing the conversion of forest land to a parking lot. And so on.

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2. wqaatwt ◴[] No.45037643[source]
> replace them with taxing things we don't want people to do

Because your tax revenue will collapse if people actually stop doing those things?

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3. WalterBright ◴[] No.45037749[source]
It's not possible for people to not pollute, for example.
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4. wqaatwt ◴[] No.45038831{3}[source]
Well yes, but if you reduce pollution by 50% then you need to double the tax and so on and so forth.

If it’s not something that’s enforced globally you will either end up destroying certain industries and or having massive inefficiencies.

My point is that sin taxes might be a good way to discourage certain behaviors but not as good as a consistent revenue source.

Also there is a risk of perverse incentives like what happened in Tsarist Russia when most government revenue was coming from alcohol taxes.

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5. WalterBright ◴[] No.45043303{4}[source]
> but if you reduce pollution by 50%

What a terrible outcome! LOL

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6. dwd ◴[] No.45047494[source]
Tobacco tax in Australia is an interesting example. A lot of people may have stopped initially but there was a more gradual decrease over time as the tax increases annually by CPI + 5%.

The problem is not everyone will stop and they now face is that at 70% of the price it's encouraging a black market for illegal tobacco with associated crime and a decline in tax revenue.

7. wqaatwt ◴[] No.45049679{5}[source]
Well yeah.. that’s my point.

If the tax works you have to keep continuously increasing it every year. At some point that becomes detrimental (I mean there are good reasons why we don’t ban the usage of fossil fuels entirely..)

So it’s not a reliable source of revenue