Articles by Girish Anand

April 27, 2009

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Lesson of Japan: Maybe We Do Need EFCA

Japan's dirty little immigration secrets are starting to come to light, and they're not pretty. A little history from The Japan Times: Back in the 1980s, "official" Japan became worried that labor was getting too expensive, threatening its manufacturing and exports. Importing cheap labor was at first ruled out as a solution because it would debase Japan's "homogeneous" racial stock, but that...

April 24, 2009

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American Dream Destroyed by...Real Estate?

Great Depression real estate

I've always thought of the American Dream as including home ownership. You know, having your own place to tool home to and relax after a hard day's travail. Now, two economists at Chapman University (which is actually fairly near the American Dream abode to which I retire each evening) have asked a serious, intriguing question--and come up with a penetrating answer. Steven Gjerstad and Vernon...

April 22, 2009

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Merging and Purging Their Way to Billion$

CEOs downsizing layoffs rightsizing

I'm no fan of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), but the principle of organizing for better wages and benefits is a sound one--until it's abused. And union abuse is largely what doomed (along with better products from foreign competition) the so-called Big Three automakers in Detroit. So, in unions you have a good thing in principle, and a bad thing in practice. Look at the routine corruptio...

April 22, 2009

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Hostage-Taking Trumps Card Check Anyday | WWC

card check France unions

As is their wont, the French reject American culture while embracing and perfecting it, in their own inimitable way. Take the example of unionization. France is widely unionized. You can hardly visit there without the garbage collectors or air traffic controllers or railway operators going on strike for this or that. They all work for publicly operated entities, which are in turn union strangl...

April 20, 2009

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Employment Increases in D.C.--and North Dakota?

North Dakota unemployment

One can easily understand how employment continues to rise in Washington, D.C., even as every other state in the union continues to stay even (three states) or lose workers to unemployment (the rest save one), but the Peace Garden State (aka Flickertail State and Roughrider State)? Yup, North Dakota has evidently managed to live both frugally and well to survive and prosper in our current econ...

April 15, 2009

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What Takes 7.6 Billion Hours to Produce Each Year?

income taxes IRS

Now, if you think about it, there's only one institution in our nation capable of wasting that many hours of people's time...our good ol' government. For the answer to what takes that long, think April 15. Yup, it takes all of us and our tax preparers and accountants and whoever else is involved 7.6 billion hours each year to comply with our tax filing requirements. To do that much work, it w...

April 15, 2009

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'Someone's Gotta Go,' a Fox Reality TV Show That's Gotta Go

Fox TV Someone's Gotta Go

Fox has announced plans for an upcoming reality TV show that's based on downsizing an office staff in tough economic times called Someone's Gotta Go. Here's how it's described at ABCnews.com: The show will highlight a small business that needs to downsize because of the economy, but instead of the bosses deciding who gets the axe, co-workers must choose who among them has to go. Workers will ...

April 14, 2009

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The Burger King Complex and Health Care

Burger King health care

This comment by an emergency room physician is so juicy and right on that I just have to reprint it here from another blog--sorry about that, blogger, but I did give you a backlink: Your reader's response to Megan got a lot closer to the core of the problem with healthcare costs. I am a physician in an emergency room in New York City, and every day I see tons of cash needlessly flying out the...

April 12, 2009

56 view(s)

HR 1355 Replicates EFCA But Without Card Check

EFCA

Introduced in the House of Representatives on March 5, the National Labor Relations Modernization Act (H.R. 1355) is like EFCA's little sister. The main difference is that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) allows for instant unionization when a majority of employees sign a card--the infamous card check provision. What the Modernization Act calls for instead are elections within 30 days of 3...

April 6, 2009

61 view(s)

The Dismal Science Becomes Depressing

David Ricardo dismal science Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages

I know I studied economics way back when, no doubt in some undergraduate survey course, but the passage of time has helped me mercifully forget many of the economists and theories I studied. Until today. In my daily research rounds of reading Google Alerts, I came across a site called the Christopher Hitchens (who he?) Watch. In the most recent blog posting, Greywolf (who he?) regurgitates th...

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Girish Anand

Recent Articles

Practical articles on HR, Safety, compliance, and people operations—written for real businesses, not legal textbooks.

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Articles by Girish Anand