Comment by toomuchtodo

Enron saw 20k workers let go in 2001, Arthur Andersen saw 85k jobs evaporate when they collapsed in 2002. Yellow Corporation caused 30k union freight jobs to be lost when they failed in 2023. 33k Toys "R" Us workers lost their jobs when the company liquidated in 2017. These events happen, and the economy will carry on. Notably (and for comparison and counterexample purposes), the US. government bailout of General Motors (GM) in 2008 and 2009 saved an estimated 1.2M jobs (with up to 2.6M total jobs preserved across the broader auto industry and supplier network in 2009 alone), according to studies by the Center for Automotive Research. When we want to save a lot of jobs, we can when there is political will.

There are labor shortages throughout the developed world, due to structural demographics. This will not change in our lifetime due to global demographic trajectories. This will push wages up. This is good. Wages paid are shareholder returns not paid.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)

The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781479 (citations in subthread)

Can you stop big companies from making these cuts? No, at least not without unions and laws to make it harder. So, in the short term, help these people land softly and in the long term, build better systems so that people who want to contribute have some place to from a place of economic security. That’s it’s. Feelings are irrelevant, only outcomes matter (imho).