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Where I live, an employer is required to do keep records indefinitely, and to do paperwork not only for its current employees, but ALL previous employees in its entire history, if requested.

For example, I could request a reference letter or pension contribution confirmation from some summer job I did 30 years ago, and if that company doesn't reply within a month I could sue them!

That's why larger companies have whole HR departments just do deal with this kind of legacy paperwork.

No wonder everyone is sooo reluctant to hire.  Each extra employee will leave behind a small amount of bureaucratic "nuclear waste" that the company will never be able to get rid of.  It may be small per employee, but it accumulates over the decades.

When I point out this ridiculous situation in my social circle, I usually get the answer, "but it creates jobs for HR people!".  *facepalm*

I would argue needless jobs are better than handouts.

Paying people to do useless work is worse than paying them to do nothing, because in the latter case, at least some of them are going to use their free time to work on their own projects (eg. rearing children, composing an opera, starting a web business) that will create at least some value for themselves and the economy as a whole.  

"Make work" schemes on the other hand, actively prevent people from creating value.

I don't understand how any rational person can support that, unless they subscribe to some kind of twisted Protestant morality that "Work for the sake of work is intrinsically good".

Except that people who have nothing to do, do nothing.
It's a trueism that if you want something done you should ask the busiest person in the office.

Alright, I am going to address the Keynesian vomit in here:

If breaking windows and having people fix them helps society, then why don't we bomb everything and rebuild it again? That will certainly create jobs.

Because that's when the terrorists win.

Its a straw man cartoon.  Among the major economies, the US has least red tape.

"A World Economic Forum survey that ranks countries on their overall economic competitiveness puts the United States fifth; the countries ahead of it, including Singapore and Finland, are tiny, with populations around 5 percent that of the United States. The World Bank publishes a report that looks at “Doing Business” across the globe. The United States ranks No. 4, again behind a handful of tiny countries. As is the case with the World Economic Forum, that ranking has not changed much over the years."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-economic-speech-shifts-the-focus-from-deficits/2011/12/07/gIQA0WHcdO_story.html?hpid=z3

Ironically, your cited resource is a strawman.

Now, if the point you wished to make was true, my point may be held as irrelevant but that is not the case. Regulation is very centralized in the United States, while little compared to competing nations, these states are smaller. Redtape in those nations is not as potent over small decentralized populaces as compared to relatively little regulation on a federal level over 300 million people. We are suffering due to a combination of factors which include our large populace and the rigid one-size-fits-all regulations that inhibit them; as little as they may appear to be.

So, one should not assume strong governments over small populaces should be held as idols to governance for larger populaces; they should not be revered. In fact, the discussion over regulations overall may not be relevant to the ends we wish to achieve.

What really needs to be discussed is how rules are applied to people and in what division: centralized or decentralized?

The resource is not a strawman.  It makes the point that the US is producing more graduates than ever yet its producing less science and engineering graduates than ever.  so unless there is a coming boom in the Women's Studies, Black History or Elizabethan Stitchwork industries, the US is committing economic suicide.

The problem isn't regulation - its motivation.  For some reason, not enough young Americans want to be techies.  As a European it baffles me when I see that people borrow sums like $100,000 for degrees in Puppetry and Drumming.

In 1972 a law degree cost only 10,000 US dollars, counting for inflation. Decades forward in the US, federal subsidies began to flood for-profit and public universities alike. Degrees began to reach heights over 40K.

It's more than just ignorance of individuals -- which is certainly a factor -- but regulation has its part.

I thought that US state tuition was dirt cheap and that it was private colleges were making a fortune ? 

In any case, does the US need lawyers more than it needs engineers.  The answer to your "What does it take to get a job around here?" is get a useful qualification.

As an example of what not to do, the first paragraph of this article is priceless: http://www.thenation.com/print/article/164348/audacity-occupy-wall-street

I never claimed it would help society.  I only claimed that it would be less harmful than handouts.  I live in rural WV, and I see a large amount of generational welfare.  The kind of people who have another child because the increase in benefits is enough for another pack of cigarettes each week, or a payment on a big screen TV.  It's disgusting.  And I do believe hard work is good medicine.  Productive work is the best medicine, but pointless work is better than no work.  Also, bombs are very expensive.  However, what you described is exactly how we made it out of the great depression, except it was Europe's windows we broke, then we made them pay us to fix them.

Myth. The nation had to live in a rationed dystopia prior to the end of the war. It's no miracle it looked like a boom afterwords.

It is.  But there's still incredibly stupid young people out there that take out $100k student loans to get degrees in fields that will never have enough jobs.

So the great depression ended because things couldn't get worse, not because we had massive exports?  I'm pretty sure most people would agree it had a large influence.  It certainly can't be brushed aside by the powerful force of "it can't get worse".  You're going to need a better explanation than that.

All hail the god-kings, the job-creators, the rich! Sent from the heavens to own the means of production and reward us with labor!

There are two problems with this. Firstly, not everyone would necessarily make a good scientist or engineer and not every graduate job needs that kind of employee. (Some of them would honestly be better off employing a Women's Studies or Black History graduate.) Secondly, scientists and engineers have been having trouble finding jobs.

Nice round about way of saying that he isn't selling enough.

He would be selling enough if it weren't for the state destroying wealth through their needless bureaucracy.

There are tons of jobs available, including so-called "dream-jobs."

If you have ambition, motivation, dedication, and persistence (and of course, skills), you can get a job without too much trouble.

Maybe if people didn't send tons of crap resumes to monster.com or other similar job posting sites and simply focused on preparing themselves for a position they truly desire, they would have more luck.

You sound like Herman Cain blaming the victims of this destruction for their lack of success in the first place. The fact is every human being has value and it's in the best interest of everybody to have a job. Employers, in an efficient society, would have hired up all these people because their is a constant need for food, housing and other desires to be met. There is no reason for anybody to be stagnant and we can only blame the destruction of the incentive to meet societal desires. If we want to see the destroyer, the parasite, we can look no further than our government.

As you are implying, all these workers are capable of producing. Resumes and bureaucracy should not be stopping them.

That's a very blanket statement.  You seem to be making a utilitarian argument where the value of any individual is the same as the value of any other individual regardless of individual circumstance.  Is it in the best interest of everybody if, say, a crooked cop gets a job?

Also, blaming the government defers responsibility away from the individual.  Actually, the government can be argued to be the result of the sum of individual choices.  Welcome to democracy where mediocrity rules.

Also, the "poor" in america are probably in the top 25%-50% in the world economically.  The "poor" here have basic needs met (generally speaking). 

It's funny.  If I didn't attend school, occasionally listen to the news, or read about changes in law or social policy, I probably wouldn't even notice government-induced changes.

Every individual has value to bring. I never said it was equal.

In addition, I never remembered I or anybody else voting for excess Federal control over our society. I don't remember saying our government is allowed to violate The Constitution.

True, but what if a person brings negative value?

Again, if I didn't stay informed to some degree, I'd probably be completely oblivious to the government violating the Constitution.

From a macro-perspective, somebody will feel shorted and there will usually be violence.

It's the give and take of nature.  It's...natural.

I truly believe in karma (or, simply, cause and effect and not that whole "what goes around comes around" crap) and I think that there is a sort of universal justification for the unequal distribution of human suffering.

Isolating this context, I think that some people are just destined to have shitty times.

America is pretty damn awesome even despite the corruption and greed.  I guess it depends where you like to focus your attention.  I like to focus on the positive.  When I was in high school especially, I used to be anti-government, anti-big business, anti-capitalism, etc.  Then I realized that I like myself and I'm a product of the environment in which I grew up.  So, if I like myself, then I should probably appreciate the environment, too.

Wrong.  The article I linked in the WashPo shows clearly that the US has the lowest admin overhead of any major economy.

Heh, that doesn't refute my argument. Admin overhead is admin overhead. It's just more potent over larger populaces.

Very positive attitude, I truly hope that is the case, then everything will be back on track after a while, we don't need to worry

But in my observation, in today's society, employers will keep reducing the amount of the employee due to the productivity improvement, and the need for food, housing and other desires are easily met by a mass scale production. Those who have the biggest market share can produce almost everything at the lowest cost (due to economy of scale), and hire only a handful amount of elite engineers and scientists to do the R&D, and outsource the production overseas