Posted by The Taint on 2/28/2013 11:07:00 AM (view original):
What about the companies laying off people, allegedly because of Obamacare...or cutting back their hours? Did demand suddenly shrink?

Posted by The Taint on 2/28/2013 11:06:00 AM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/28/2013 10:53:00 AM (view original):
Not being facetious but I don't think I'd be that surprised, assuming a decent-sized staff, in your business.   It's obviously a stereotype but waitresses/servers are often young women. Many with less than any college eduction.  And, in my experience, young women are ridiculously unreliable.   I'd honestly expect, on a 10 person shift employing these women, that at least one would miss virtually every shift.

You wouldn't believe how many resumes I get with masters degrees on them. Five of us, including myself, have BA/BS's at my job. We just had an 18 month run of zero turnover. We're kinda the outlier in the grand scheme of the service industry.

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/28/2013 11:07:00 AM (view original):
If you're not making business decisions based on the future, you're falling behind.    Only the worst companies start meetings with "Oh, ****.   We need to add 20 people TODAY!!!!  Why didn't we see this coming!?!?!?!??!"

Posted by genghisxcon on 2/28/2013 11:10:00 AM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/28/2013 11:07:00 AM (view original):
If you're not making business decisions based on the future, you're falling behind.    Only the worst companies start meetings with "Oh, ****.   We need to add 20 people TODAY!!!!  Why didn't we see this coming!?!?!?!??!"

Someone tell the dummy blocking me that he's talking about hiring on the basis of anticiptated demand...not the debt/confidence fairy.

Posted by tecwrg on 2/28/2013 11:12:00 AM (view original):
Demand drives hiring, not the confidence fairy.

There's your disconnect.  You don't believe there's any connection between consumer confidence (which drives demand) and the financial soundness of the country (i.e. the ever growing debt).

Posted by bad_luck on 2/28/2013 11:11:00 AM (view original):

Posted by The Taint on 2/28/2013 11:07:00 AM (view original):
What about the companies laying off people, allegedly because of Obamacare...or cutting back their hours? Did demand suddenly shrink?

That's different than the deficit.

If expenses go up there needs to be a proportional increase in revenue to maintain staffing. But that's not hiring/firing because the deficit is $800 billion instead of $500 billion.

So companies will decrease expenses based on expected future revenue but won't increase expenses based on expected future revenue?

Yeah, that makes sense.

Posted by bad_luck on 2/28/2013 11:16:00 AM (view original):

Posted by tecwrg on 2/28/2013 11:12:00 AM (view original):
Demand drives hiring, not the confidence fairy.

There's your disconnect.  You don't believe there's any connection between consumer confidence (which drives demand) and the financial soundness of the country (i.e. the ever growing debt).

We've had an incomprehensible amount of debt for the last 30+ years. The economy has done fine. Debt isn't the problem.

Consumer confidence does drive demand. But jobs are what drive consumer confidence. Income and security. Not some abstract number owed by the government to (mostly) it's own citizens. If people didn't have faith in the government's ability to repay the debt, interest rates on Tbills would be a whole hell of a lot higher than ZERO.

Sez you.

People watch the news, read papers, hear rumors.   People who have jobs, income and security.   When there's nothing but bad fiscal news, including the deficit, people are not inclined to have confidence in the future of the economy. 

Consumer confidence.  If people don't spend, revenues go down.   What part of this is so hard to understand?    

I assume you don't believe that the deficit affects consumer confidence.   Alone, it probably doesn't.   Yet we don't live in a vacuum.   As I mentioned earlier, the news is dominated by talk of the rising deficit, increasing tax rates, out of control govt spending and Obama's recent doomsday proclamation due to the sequester.   People hear these things.  They believe our govt cannot reduce the deficit, that they cannot control spending and that the only way to resolve this is to raise taxes.   And that affects CC.