The thing I really like about this article is that, at least in my mind, it really helped me clarify what I think of as "Bullshit Jobs". It's not so much "do you consider your job useless", but it's more along the lines of "Is your job set up to fulfill tasks that were, generally, arbitrarily designed by some gatekeeper?"
A great example of this is tax departments at large companies that look for tax avoidance strategies. On one hand, these strategies can save companies many millions of dollars, but on the other, they really produce nothing of value and are just a product of the complexities of a (human designed) tax system. Lots of regulatory compliance work also goes into this bucket. I wouldn't say all of it, because there are definitely regulations that do actually make companies safer/more transparent/etc., but anyone who has had to fill out a page after page after page "security questionnaire" knows at least half of it is bullshit that nobody is going to read in the first place. Sometimes I've been tempted to just add "Mickey Mouse" answers just to check if anyone sees it. Writing something that nobody ever reads seems like it's hard to believe that's anything else except bullshit.
> On one hand, these strategies can save companies many millions of dollars, but on the other, they really produce nothing of value and are just a product of the complexities of a (human designed) tax system
Businesses that spend less money on taxes can spend more money on expenses, such as payroll and higher quality materials and land, or it can allow them to sell products/services at a lower price, providing a competitive advantage.
But they are a product of a human designed tax system, which may or may not be bullshit. There is no single clear, correct way to implement taxes.
> Businesses that spend less money on taxes can spend more money on expenses...
Does that actually happen? Small businesses, sure. My cousin's restaurant directly ploughs that money back into the business.
But it seems large corporations mostly do executive bonuses and stock buybacks.
I guess my pendant comes down to my objection over treating all "business" as the same, morally and economically. As though megacorps are same as my cousin's restaurant, my uncle's farm.
Whereas I favor excessive generosity for small and young businesses (and farmers), anything less than levying repeated radical cashectomies against large firms is a moral disaster and economic selfown.
Tax avoidance just moves the tax burden around, it doesn't create value.
Tax collection and tax compliance does create value, but spending time specifically figuring out how to pay as little taxes as possible creates no value. It see likely that some level of bullshit jobs are an unavoidable side-effects of value producing activities. The interesting part of the idea comes from thinking about how we can structure those value producing activities to minimize the bullshit side-effects and thus increase economic efficiency.
Taxes are an area with a lot of low hanging fruit, unfortunately Intuit and other tax prep companies spend a lot of money lobbying to maximizing the bullshit jobs side effects of taxation because it makes them more money.
I disagree here. Instead of calling it “tax avoidance” let’s just talk about reducing your tax burden as much as possible. This is the prudent move for any individual or tax paying entity.
Taking advantage of your roth, 401k, homestead exemption, writing off losses, etc… absolutely provides value to the tax payer. The value is literally more money for the tax payer who can now further participate in the economy.
The accounting industry employs loads of people. Is that not “value?”
> Taking advantage of your roth, 401k, homestead exemption, writing off losses, etc… absolutely provides value to the tax payer. The value is literally more money for the tax payer who can now further participate in the economy.
But it's zero-sum - every dollar they gained was a dollar taken out of the public purse. And worse, hours of human labour were spent on this moving around rather than something productive.
Tax benefits are (notionally) intended to be positive sum, but that can only happen to the extent that they change actual behaviour. If I put more into a pension fund because it's tax-advantaged, that's (theoretically) win-win - I get more to spend in the long term, the government reduces the risk of having to support a penniless future me. Similarly if I buy a bicycle through the cycle to work scheme, that (on average) reduces the government's medical costs. But claiming a tax writeoff for something I was doing already is zero-sum, and changing my corporate structure so that it pays less tax while doing economically equivalent things is likely to be negative-sum (because the new structure will likely have (marginally) lower real-world productivity - otherwise I'd be doing it that way already).
> The accounting industry employs loads of people. Is that not “value?”
No, quite the opposite - it's taking those people away from things that are real-world productive. Sometimes the costs of accounting might be outweighed by the benefits (e.g. giving companies information they need to make business judgements, or exposing fraud earlier). But often they're not.
I argue that the increase in savings and therefore money spent participating in the economy is inherently valueable.
In addition companies are less likely to fail, and can continue to generate value. Individuals have a bigger safety net and can be more productive for society. You already touched on the fact that government has reduced burden for social services.
Government tax revenue can be poorly allocated and wasteful.
The accountants provide a valuable service navigating the complex tax laws. This allows me to outsource the work and spend more time being “productive” for society.
A great example is Tesla. They may not have survived without the billions in tax credits they received. Lots of people believe they generate tremendous value for society.
> I argue that the increase in savings and therefore money spent participating in the economy is inherently valueable.
> In addition companies are less likely to fail, and can continue to generate value. Individuals have a bigger safety net and can be more productive for society. You already touched on the fact that government has reduced burden for social services.
It's zero-sum though - you've increased individuals' savings but reduced public funds (which can be spent in the economy through e.g. public infrastructure, and/or used to provide a safety net, probably in a more efficient way since the risks are pooled).
> Government tax revenue can be poorly allocated and wasteful.
Sure. So can individual or corporate wealth. Even if you think the tax rate is too high, the most efficient solution would be to change the tax rate, not add a bunch of loopholes.
> The accountants provide a valuable service navigating the complex tax laws.
The argument is that that complexity is largely bullshit.
> A great example is Tesla. They may not have survived without the billions in tax credits they received. Lots of people believe they generate tremendous value for society.
Corporate tax avoidance means the government has less money from which to offer that kind of targeted tax credit.
I appreciate the discourse but I think we’re going in circles. On a slightly related point, you should check out CPG grey’s video “rules for rulers”. That video helped me understand why our tax codes are so complicated in the states.
My (unprofessional) opinion is that the messy tax structure is there by design, and not the result of incompetence or oversight.
I think there are plenty of far more “BS” jobs out there than book keepers. Companies wouldn’t be able to function without them.
> let’s just talk about reducing your tax burden as much as possible
For the purposes of the discussion, it is irrelevant if the overall tax burden should be raised or lowered. Given any target level of tax burden, it is inefficient to meet that tax burden by requiring large amounts of regulatory compliance by tax payers. If you can make tax rules simpler and easier to comply with, then you reduce the amount of bullshit work.
> The accounting industry employs loads of people. Is that not “value"?
Some of it is, some of it isn't. Simply providing jobs alone doesn't always produce value. If so, we could always grow the economy by paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
The world is more complicated than you’re letting on. Democracies have complicated tax codes to incentivize certain behavior and also as a political tool. Legislators need to use tax incentives to ensure their base continues supporting them, and to win over new supporters.
Before you say “that’s messed up! Legislators shouldn’t do that!” Think for a second how anyone would possibly win an election and retain their power without that tool. I guarantee you couldn’t do it.
I’m all for simplifying our tax code but it’s not as simple as “this is all BS and those who make the rules are dumb.”
> Legislators need to use tax incentives to ensure their base continues supporting them, and to win over new supporters.
If it's legislators serving the interests of their constituents directly and thus get re-elected, that is one thing. However often legislators make these decisions to serve corporate lobbyists (such as Intuit's) and are working against the interests of their constituents so they can raise money from corporate doners to get reelected. This is why the IRS has been prevented from offering any sane method of filing personal taxes and wastes unmeasured amounts of tax payer time, effort and money every year.
> it’s not as simple as “this is all BS and those who make the rules are dumb.”
I didn't say that at all. Optimal taxation strategies are hard, but we haven't really tried to fix taxation in decades, meanwhile the length of the tax code has ballooned to several times what it used to be.
> If it's legislators serving the interests of their constituents directly and thus get re-elected, that is one thing. However often legislators make these decisions to serve corporate lobbyists (such as Intuit's) and are working against the interests of their constituents so they can raise money from corporate doners to get reelected.
I actually think we’ve found some common ground here. It’s pretty wack that corporate interests can create detrimental effects on society. But realize that corporations are ALSO the representatives constituents! I wish the world didn’t work this way, but it does.
So since societal governance works this way, I’m sticking to my guns and still argue that accounting departments provide actual value.
If you don't believe that government has any value, then there isn't much to discuss with you as your views on the topic are extremely fringe and we likely won't agree on much.
If you do believe that government can create value, then it easily follows that paying / collecting taxes can create value. There is no need to assume that taxes always provide value or that all parts of government create value (since that would also be a extremely fringe view.)
> it doesn't create value, it retains value for those who created it.
Yes, at the cost of higher taxes on others who created value or a reduced revenue for the government.
If you believe the goverent needs less revenue, then lower taxes. The "bullshit jobs" are created when you have a complex set of rules and loopholes that incentives wasting manpower to find ways to dodge paying taxes. We would be better off just having lower tax rates and less effort wasted dodging taxes.
You should think of it this way. The reasons that tax policies are complex are that the government uses tax incentives both as a "carrot" to control people; and also to buy political support from interest groups who benefit.
The tax compliance and tax avoidance jobs should be understood to be part of one of these schemes. Either they're low-level enforcers in the government's heavy-handed tax-based system of control; or else they're co-conspirators in the influence-buying grift.
Those are some of the reasons taxes are complicated, but not all of them. In the US the tax compliance industry has directly lobbied to keep the tax system as complex as possible so they can keep extracting rent for doing bullshit work.
The "influence-buying grift" jobs are usually classed as bullshit anyways, so that source of the complexity doesn't change the assessment.
There are potentially valid policy goals served by various tax incentives, but it is still worth considering if there are different tax incentives or other regulatory approaches that would create fewer bullshit jobs. With the political problems of raising taxes, government often choose to offload the costs of policy goals onto the public via creating bullshit jobs that cost more overall but avoid the need for tax increases.
Avoiding taxes and utilising tax minimisation strategies keeps value with you, but it also distorts your consumption in other ways. EG you are incentivised in the US to purchase more housing (via mortgage interest deduction) than you might want or need.
Mortgage interest deduction is not utilized much anymore since standard deduction was increased in the 2017 tax changes. You have to itemize to get it, and only 11% of tax filers itemized in 2019.
There is a statistics page that shows this on its.gov, but I am on mobile and it is too much work to find it.
> "Is your job set up to fulfill tasks that were, generally, arbitrarily designed by some gatekeeper?"
But isn’t this basically every job that doesn’t directly support a human need (like food, clothing, shelter)? Just arbitrarily working to meet some other human’s desires?
Meeting a desire is not a bullshit job, depending on the desire. One example in the book is a receptionist. Some places need receptionists to answer phones or receive packages, but one receptionist was hired at a firm that didn't need her to do any work - but a competing firm in the same building had one, so they wanted one too. Meeting your desire for nice hair, even a desire for a butler to pick up your laundry or whatever, is still meeting a need, but it's less superfluous than "I need you to sit there because someone else has someone who does something similar)
I'm not arguing that it's about meetings some other human's desires. Indeed, jobs that give real pleasure or sense of accomplishment to other people (actors, massage therapists, yoga teachers, personal trainers, artists, language coaches, yada yada) I find incredibly valuable.
I'm talking about when someone, specifically a gatekeeper, creates what is basically a little tedious maze for you to run, not for their own pleasure, not even for someone else's pleasure, but often just to justify their own job, usually in a "CYA" fashion.
I don't know of any arbitrary tasks set up by gatekeepers. I mean, people don't just sit around and think up stupid tasks for fun. These jobs usually arise something like this:
In order to process request X, we need pieces of information A, B, C, D. Users frequently send in incomplete information. So we have to hire someone to check that all the required information is provided and accurate.
Yeah, it's kind of bullshit because it wouldn't be needed if people just did the right thing, but people are people, and they don't. In some cases it can be replaced with a web form with proper validation, but sometimes the information is something you can't verify with Javascript (like checking for a valid driver's license or something), so you need a human. So it goes.
I'm not a communist, but I recognize that one of the economic arguments for the State owning the means of production is that there's no longer any need for such jobs on a per-organization level. Why engage in tax-avoidance when the sum total of corporate profits belongs to the State anyway? Why answer per-client security questionnaires when the State audits and polices your security before certifying the company, so that it can continue to play a part in the State-managed economy? Why employ marketers and salespeople when the State guarantees demand? Etcetera.
Of course, in the real world, we understand that theoretical economic efficiency isn't quite as attainable as the real efficiency that is made possible with price signalling. Demand is a fickle and complex beast that eludes the best intentions of the best central planners. But, as contrasted to that theoretical efficiency, a price-signalled economy involves some waste and costs. This is fine / acceptable as long as we appreciate that it permits a larger system that is better than the alternative.
A great example of this is tax departments at large companies that look for tax avoidance strategies. On one hand, these strategies can save companies many millions of dollars, but on the other, they really produce nothing of value and are just a product of the complexities of a (human designed) tax system. Lots of regulatory compliance work also goes into this bucket. I wouldn't say all of it, because there are definitely regulations that do actually make companies safer/more transparent/etc., but anyone who has had to fill out a page after page after page "security questionnaire" knows at least half of it is bullshit that nobody is going to read in the first place. Sometimes I've been tempted to just add "Mickey Mouse" answers just to check if anyone sees it. Writing something that nobody ever reads seems like it's hard to believe that's anything else except bullshit.