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446 points Teever | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.223s | source
1. 0xDEAFBEAD ◴[] No.45035958[source]
People are too eager to tackle problems using regulation. Taxes are often preferable, because they're simpler to administer and they generate revenue for the state.

Here's one way to address the problem of ghost jobs using taxes:

Force every job post to include a salary range. Make companies pay a small "job posting tax" for every listing, which is proportional to the product of the job's stated salary, and the number of views or applications it gets.

Including a salary range in every job will improve gender equality and help jobseekers save time.

The nominal "job posting tax" should aim to be a small fraction of the actual cost of making a new hire (say 1-5% of the equivalent labor cost for all the work that goes into filling a role). The tax needs to stay small, so companies aren't seriously discouraged from hiring. (Heck, you could even have the tax automatically get reduced a little bit if the economy is in a recession -- or automatically go up if data analysis determines there are too many ghost jobs. Or even refund some taxes once a hire actually gets made!)

The goal is just to apply some financial drag to companies that spam job listings. If you're inconveniencing jobseekers, you've got to pay a little tax for it. Identify the right tax scheme and everything should sort itself out.