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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • I get why people are upset by the headline. It is written to provoke anger. Unfortunately, anger at the wrong issue.

    I understand the argument that a large company can absorb the cost of workers they don’t currently. Though it’s unrealistic to expect them too.

    I lived in the Quad Cities for a number of years. A large majority of people I know, both family and friends, worked for either Deere or Case IH - until they closed the plant in East Moline.

    Layoffs are a yearly thing. Deere, Case, Caterpillar, they all hire a bunch of people in the beginning of the year and lay them off towards the end. It’s typically around August or September, and they announce it in July. Everyone in the Quad Cities knows it. It is expected. Sometime early next year, they are going to hire these jobs back. The people who take these jobs go into it knowing this is going to happen.

    It can suck being let go and some people might struggle with it. Those who are used to this cycle treat it as a well-paying seasonal job. Many already have something else lined up. This is only a single, anecdotal, data point, so take it with a grain of salt… one of my uncles works for Deere and is a bus driver for one of the school districts. He knows Deere is going to let him go by fall so he has the driving job for the rest of the year. In spring, he will go back to Deere.

    Perspective is also important. Deere has somewhere between 80k and 85k employees. They are laying off < 1000 based on this story. That’s the equivalent of a small, 80 person company hiring 1 person to get through the holiday season, then laying them off in January. Next year, they will do it again.

    Headlines like this are nothing more than a distraction from real issues. For example, why does any company have multi-billions of dollars in profit to begin with? It just means they are charging more than they need to. The farmers who buy Deere equipment then have to charge more for their produce. Which means the stores have to charge more. Which means we pay more for our food. Deere’s profits are leading to higher food prices for everyone. To me, that is more of an issue than 1/80th of their workforce being in a hire/layoff cycle.













  • People want someone or something to blame. I think the reason is that certain groups think everything can be controlled. It’s too much of a challenge to their world view to have a large scale desaster not be attributed to someone’s fault. This causes them to dig in more with conspiracies. It’s easier to accept wild theories than change their world view.

    It seems to typically be people who don’t have critical thinking skills. Those who can’t see past the superficial. A story that, on the surface, matches something that is true, then gives a speculative leap to something that isn’t, is hard for them to disregard. If A is true, and C happens sometimes with A, then A causes C. Without the ability to realize, B was skipped. Or to say it in a different way, its hard for some to realize correlation is not causation. So, conspiracies are born.

    Ex: The ice is melting in Antarctica. Scientists are there all the time, drilling holes to get samples. If you drill a hole in an ice cube, more air gets to it and it melts faster. Therefore its the so called scientists that are causing the icecaps to melt. Maybe they are even putting heaters in it to speed it up just so they can say they were right. We need to stop these scientists before they kill us all. And so on.