A reader makes an important distinction:
Frum’s examples in his argument about the virtue of firing people or the danger of not firing people is not analogous to the mass (and not-so-mass) layoffs after a leveraged buyout or corporate merger. People get fired not because they are incompetent but because other employees can do those jobs, or simply to reduce overhead. The competence or incompetence of the laid off is often not even weighed before the decision is made. You can’t compare the decisions a president makes on keeping or firing appointees and staff to that.
I’ll go further and say that often the laid-off employees had no responsibility for the financial difficulties of the company. Those things are determined by the business plan, strategic decisions made by management, etc. Not the competence of someone in the accounting department.
The Dish 