When You’re Last Year’s News

You’re the Boss: A System That Encourages Small Businesses Not to Hire Older Workers:

“I have good reason to suspect that my costs and the costs of all of my employees are going to go up if I hire an older worker…

Our current system hides these costs, and I’m sure that this is a large part of the difficulty that older workers have in getting hired. Some of you will probably object that my system would result in lower wages for older workers. In some cases it might, but that beats no wages at all. As I said in my last post, it may be illegal to discriminate on the basis of age, but there’s always a way to rationalize hiring any given worker over any other one. If we can put a price on the insurance costs, then the skills and experience that older workers bring to the table can be properly accounted for.

Postscript: Yes, I know that a single payer system would solve this problem. But it ain’t gonna happen, so I’m not waiting for it.”

(Via Business and Financial News – The New York Times.)

Markets don’t make moral decisions.  They make economic ones.

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