The article says this...? It analyzes three possible causes: overgenerous benefits (the covid stimulus), fear of COVID, and inefficiencies in job-seeking. It goes on to suggest that overgenerous benefits are probably not the reason and that the latter two causes are probably more important.
Furthermore, I expect approximately zero economists to not "wrap their head around the idea that being a front line worker being exposed directly to sick people during a pandemic seems to be worth more money than when there wasn't a pandemic."
Why are you going on a vaguely related rant about economists when the article (presumably written by an economist in the wider sense) agrees with you? And why is your low-quality comment at the top of the comments section? What is with the quality of discussion these days?
My favorite is the owner of a liquor store in my area. I indirectly know the guy — they are printing money from the pandemic, expanded the business across storefronts to keep up with demand, operate 4 delivery trucks, etc.
The guy gets on TV complaining that he has to pay $17 to hire drivers.
I think USA is still in a very good position compared to other countries as it is still seen as one of the best places to emigrate to. Other countries have it much worse and declining demographics will kill them faster.
The USA still has a lot of private capital to attract talents. But eventually it's going to run out of it or the dollar will lose value. This will be accelerated by the growth of the Chinese renminbi, especially once countries start to use it as a base currency instead of the dollar.
The USA has high salaries and relatively cheap house but it also has high taxes, high cost of healthcare and education, a good amount of social craziness (political polarisation, crime, revolts, gun shootings in school, badly handled homelessness) - I personally think you may be better off living in Europe for the time being.
Still, Europe is a time bomb waiting to explode. The demographics decline and high paid jobs moving away to countries with lower taxation will trigger a pension crisis, eventually. When Italy needs a bailout, Europe will stop being what it is.
I think in x0 years South America could be the next Europe and China could be the next USA.
It boils down to the following in the US. If you are upper middle class or above you have a very high quality of the life in the US. Healthcare is excellent, taxes are very low for the wealthy and unlike some parts of central and South America, you're free to openly enjoy your wealth here without fear of retribution. My parents live in the US and would love to retire in Spain. The tax burden alone makes that untenable.
China may end up being the dominant economic power but it's unlikely to ever reproduce what the US has in the last century. While the US has societal issues, it's not (currently) committing genocide and it's not facing a demographic time bomb with no ability to incorporate immigrants into society. For all the problems in the US, within a generation or two immigrants become Americans and participate at the highest echelons of American society. Please call me when that's the case in China.
What has made the US great is that it's been able to convince the brightest people in the world to make their homes here. From Albert Einstein to the Google founders and Elon Musk. I really don't see any of that that happening in China.
The U.S. has plenty of problems but I think moral contest with China in this area is not one of them.
[edit] - I incorrectly identified China as the bad guy in a historical event where they were the victim. My bad. Point still stands.
They're actually recruiting foreign talent, they're building futuristic and liveable mega cities, they're collecting the capital needed for venture and they're growing their global VC investments.
I really don't like this development and I wished a free country would have achieved what China is doing (I think of them like the Galactic Empire in Star Wars), but I think they'll get there.
People are quick to forget the past and the majority of young people favour socialism. I'm sure they will be quick to move and work for the CCP.
I really don't have much hope left for Europe and the USA, things just keep getting worse. I hope South America will grow its economy and become the free society that can oppose China.
Could you expand on that? Does Spain heavily tax retirees?
I know the US taxes his citizens on global income though, so they would be taxed like US retirees.
If we can do that without the EU so be it, it's not like we culturally merged just yet.
But not saying the situation is great in each country, but I suppose if Italy dies, we can still kick it out or stop the EU as long as France and Germany find a way to ensure no more world war. This is the only goal for most of us. Every other advantage is a bonus, every flaw a necessary sacrifice.
I still think that if the EUR currency were to fail all those countries will face tremendous adversities for quite some time. That could be a chance for countries like Italy and Greece to rebuild a less corrupted version of themselves, but I reckon it would take a long time.
This is a very good observation. And smaller business owners often really don't get the increases in efficiency because they skimp on tools and aren't great managers. So it's a double whammy of increasing costs and not getting the increase of efficiency that larger companies enjoy.
Basically, they're on the receiving end of Baumol's cost disease.
And because more expensive labor forces increases in efficiency (more tech, better organization), cheap labor is by far the worst drug for the economy, covering up for stagnation and exploitation.
I agree, but is it the best place for pernament emigration?
I always think of US like a 1-3 year journey and then go back to PL
The "coasts rich and good, middle America poor and backwards" narrative that we get plenty of here, on Reddit, etc. is an over-simplification at best.
Is it no wonder, then, we might feel like there are "different" Americas in the broad expanse of the US? And "different" Americans?
While I agree with you in part, another argument might ascribe many aspects of a perceived "polarization" to mere geography.
San Francisco and LA are infamous for large homeless populations. The inland South and West are flourishing.
Have a listen to "We Can't Make It Here Anymore", by James McMurtry
I mean, from a business standpoint, let's face it, employees are a pain and more of a necessary evil when needed. I dream of running a lifestyle business where I don't need any full-time employees. Not many people start a business wanting to employ lots of people and be a "model employer" (even though those who do are loud about it)
Less employees means less consumers which means less income for your lifestyle business. Economics 101 bud. But yeah, keep dreaming!
I fail to understand why any business should pay more than market rate for anything. I get that you want the market rate to be higher, but I have yet to ever have encountered a business that completely disregards market rate and just blows their wad on the first employee they hire.
It seems like the market rate for labor is going up, but the businesses are failing to deal with that reality.
How do you figure this? If businesses were not paying more the market rate would not be going up.
I believe we're currently at 5.8% unemployment for May 2021, down from around 15% during the pandemic.
Yes. Those are the options. The .001% is really cleaning house while smaller businesses are dying. And no way Amazon is going to absorb the cost, so all of this will just end wiping out the earnings and savings of most people while nobody's purchasing power increases.
If you are willing to pay $2/gallon for gasoline in June 2021, you are likely to have difficulty operating a car. Note that does not mean there is a gasoline shortage.
Firms can’t get workers because they don’t actually have a sustainable job to offer. In a functioning capitalist system encouraging those firms to die would be seen as positive.
Firms should have to compete for labour. Not getting labour and the existential risk that poses to firms drives automation and innovation. They are capitalists supposedly. Deploy some capital, or close and get out the way so somebody else will.
Venerating individual businesses stops capitalism working. It’s time to give up believing firms have a right to exist and that they are doing anybody a favour by existing. Let competition do its job of getting rid of the bad and encouraging the good.
Source: I'm an economist.
Even members of the Nobel family have come out and said the prize is bullshit.
The more people are willing and able to do a job, the less is the perceived marked value, especially if they are not organized in unions to assert their interests.
Now from what I know unions are generally frowned upon in the US for some reason or another (perhaps because of their obsession with capitalist ideology), and reports say that large corporations are actively oppressing the formation of unions.
So what is left is simply trying to avoid work and perhaps hoping that some companies will come around and provide reasonable working conditions and pay or to start businesses themselves, while trying to survive the bullying tactics of said companies.
It is interesting, that in free-market economics, you get many of the same effects as in nature and evolution. There will always be parasites.
The problem today, are all the people so convinced of the perfection of free-market economics, that they will insist that even the parasites somehow serves a purpose.
The more power you have over others, the more money you make. That's the real "free market" definition of value.
There's a reason climate damage and other critically important side-effects of market dysfunction are dismissed as ignorable "externalities". They have little or no immediate political effect and no independent political agency. Therefore in market terms their value is either zero or negative.
The physical reality is that the game board is on fire and unless something changes the entire game will be over soon.
What we have is some form of (heavily financialized) crony statism, where a bunch of well connected monopolies milk consumers shamelessly (health "care", higher education, etc).
There is no getting around the fact supply and demand = price. If society wants to change the price, society needs to work on moving the supply and demand curves. So what is left is providing people with the information on the market, such as publicizing pay rates (Colorado has made a good start here), and then providing people with the means to get an education so they can provide the type of labor that the market is willing to pay more for.
Another option is unions, although that is more difficult when the global supply of labor is so high and people around the world are willing to work for 10x less. In this case, tariffs are an option, but then you get into politics and there are other consequences to consider.
Economics does have a fair amount of fortune telling. I believe the entire field of technical analysis is bunk and really is "fortune telling" but I think that economists have a lot of value to add outside of fortune telling BS.
No one is in a capitalist system. Democracies ensure that - politicians will act to ensure the interest of their supporters.
As a result there will always be tariffs, subsidies or tax breaks to support different types of commercial work.
Is it just a rhetorical tool? Some times it reads as if people are actually arguing based on a pure capitalist model and it’s confusing.
Will they? I think they are more like adults promising sweets for breakfast to children if they behave (vote). Not really in their interest if you think about it.
The supporters are the PACs and special interest lobbying groups exchanging funding for political achievements.
Voters are just the marginalized workers whose favor needs to be curried every so often to keep critical analysis of our sociopolitical economic reality in check.
It is an ideology that is used to solidify and concentrate power.
"Free trade agreements" that actually lower trade interaction and increase the foothold of multinational corporations in foreign countries to outsource work and avoid taxation.
"Competition" for the workers, while large corporations get massive tax cuts, bailouts and lobby for regulations that benefit them and are a burden for SMBs.
"Market innovation" that is largely superficial and stands of the shoulders of giants, researchers who are paid by the taxpayer.
(I'm being hostile and uncharitable here to get a point across and give some counterweight to the status quo.)
We are all in a capitalist system. Capitalism doesn't mean free markets, it has a much wider definition than that, and doesn't require free markets.
I read it as, "why talk about pure capitalism when we're not even in capitalism?" I've seen far more conflation of the two by commenters on HN than not, so maybe that's clouding my reading.
Of course pure capitalism is not realistic nor desirable in practice.
Unfortunately - similar as with housing - most people currently don't have a meaningful choice between having a job or not or paying through their nose for rent or not, which is something that way too many employers and landlords exploit as a natural consequence of a captive market.
The obvious solution would be a livable minimum wage and government provided housing or at the very least severe rent control and building out of infrastructure in rural areas, but all of that is often simply decried as communist.
We don't need a minimum wage. We need a minimum job - the ability to sell your labour hours for a given price.
Alternatively, we could look at what our ancestors dreamed of: utilizing automation to reduce the individual workload for everyone and spread it over more people. A future that is not 5x9-5 is possible. 4 workdays of 6h each with a 30min break at halftime would be a starter.
We would however first need to re-define our culture that derives much of our sense of "self worth" from our employment status, and we would need to think about which jobs we actually want as society... IMO we could cut out a large part of the plague that is advertising, most of the insurance industry (very easy: forcibly fuse all kinds of insurance provider into a single non-profit government entity - added benefit, rates could get massively lower due to less overhead) and likely all of far-distance truck transportation by expanding rail coverage and capacity.
Which is a fallacy of composition - unless you believe you can turn a dumpster diver into a brain surgeon just by applying some amount of training.
It's known as the appeal to fungibility and it doesn't stack up.
Jobs are becoming more skilled, not less, which means that we all have to deploy our hours in solidarity with the skilled who we want to work a full week.
Otherwise they will just stop on Tuesday, once they have made enough for themselves, and have the rest of the week off.
So... take the workload of one brain surgeon, and hire two brain surgeons with 20 hours a week each?
Of course society would need to (drastically) expand training capacity, but it would be better off in the end.
That was always the failure of the 'socially necessary labour time' idea. It assumes complete fungibility amongst people, and that isn't the case.
> Alternatively, we could look at what our ancestors dreamed of: utilizing automation to reduce the individual workload for everyone and spread it over more people. A future that is not 5x9-5 is possible. 4 workdays of 6h each with a 30min break at halftime would be a starter.
This won't solve the initial problem. The amount of work which gets done defines the amount of activity in the economy, but unemployment is compatible with a range of amounts of activity.
If the goal is to keep about 3% of those who want jobs and could work unemployed, then you will achieve that whether people are working 20 hour weeks or 40 hour weeks. (Actually, the target unemployment is a lot higher than that, because there's plenty of people who want jobs and could work, but who the labor market prefers to redefine as "can't work" or "doesn't want to work". If two people can do the same job, but one person can only do it at half the pace, then we often exclude them from the market.)
Right now we have a lot of people that are not working at all even if they wanted... in many households, women stay home for childcare, there are people who don't even register for unemployment because of all sorts of (sometimes willful!) bureaucratic impediments.
By reducing the expected per-person workload to 20 hours a week, society would enable all these people to contribute.
I personally have moved out of the 1st world to avoid the work plague, I help my kids grow up and dig a beautiful garden...my conscience cringes at the "work ethic" which I perceive as government propaganda to help milk peoples time and keep them politically silent... the easiest solution to global warming is to work less, we saw it with covid (at least a whispering) but maybe politicians are avoiding doing anything realistic because...power corrupts...
The market won't solve this.
On one side there is inflation which ruins the economic recovery (too generous benefits) and on the other side you have mass suffering (too stingy benefits). As the primary driver of the shortage (the fear of COVID) goes down, we also need to scale back benefits while maintaining that delicate balance between too generous and too stingy. And we can't stop decreasing benefits until people begin to accept those less desirable jobs again. Failure to do this would push us over into inflation.
Instead, because the power relationship between companies and employees is imbalanced towards companies, who can afford to not hire a few employees while individual employees can't afford to starve, these employees have to accept suffering for a pittance because hey, there's a slight risk of inflation (while companies have been bailed out to the tune of a few trillion).
This is why low wage workers should unionise.
Italy and Greece both had low or shrinking inflation since 2016 and their economies are down the gutter.
The rest of the EU that has reasonable inflation is doing very well with 2%+ growth well above inflation.
Can you explain why you think this would happen?
The article didn't have anything to say about those who work multiple part time jobs, which I suspect is important. Getting paid 50% more to work half as much will leave many low income workers in a precarious position. Worse yet, the threat of job loss (either due to mandated closures or a business failing) introduces the risk of being denied benefits should they be needed again.
It follows, therefore, that economists are stupid and couldn't possibly think of everything they did.
I have seen them being dismissive of mathematicians as well. I think only physicists are spared their scorn.
Even within software engineers they consider themselves the smartest. They are also simultaneously dismissive of Google's interview process, if they fail it; while respecting Googles engineering prowess.
No wonder this is the most upvoted response.
There are times when perspectives from the outside should be considered and be given the dignity of a credible response. Even though that appears to be happening more often now that a microscopic virus has thrust a grand social experiment upon us, it has been all too rare in the past. It is also worth noting that software engineers are far from the only ones going unheard when speaking up. Many outside the discipline have done so when the reality of economics didn't reflect their reality.
The only exception is the commenter who implied you were an out of touch ivory-tower academic because you called the pandemic benefits overgenerous. It’s the only reply whose author seems to have actually read your comment and it doesn’t even make an argument, only calls you names.
To answer your question as to why the top comment was someone just bullying economists based on a misinterpretation of the headline, the reason is because the left was never inherently more pro-science than the right. For a long time, the right denied climate change and the left embraced it because the right was representing coal miners who felt like their jobs were at risk and the left was representing environmentalists who appreciated having a rock-solid justification for why we needed to switch to forms of energy production that emit less carbon (which usually means they pollute less). This got converted in the cultural conciseness to the left “following the science” and the right distrusting it and thinking they’re smarter or more knowledgeable than people whose job it is to study the topic at hand. But that want why, it was just because the obvious prescription coming from science was bad for the population the right represented and good for the population the left represented. (If you still feel the reason the left supported climate change is because they believe what scientists tell them, why does the left broadly oppose nuclear?)
Now, the cultural battleground is moving from climate change and social issues like gay marriage where the science is either neutral or on the side of the left, to economic issues where it’s not so clear cut. For example, there’s wide agreement among economists that the corporate tax is one of the most distortionary and least efficient taxes, and should ideally be reduced to very low rates if not zero. Yet this is broadly ignored on the left, who want to instead make “corporations pay their fair share”, as of whatever you intuitively feel is a corporation’s fair share is the economically optimal corporate tax rate.
Economists are also not united in supporting a federal $15 minimum wage. (Actually if I remember correctly the majority opposite it.) If the left was truly pro-science, they’d ask economists what they thought the minimum wage should be, possibly fund studies to help determine the socially optimal amount, then implement whatever number they say. But that’s not how the number was chosen and now since there’s disagreement among economists about whether it’s a good idea, the left needs to justify why they suddenly know better than the people whose job it is to study this stuff, and that manifests as calling all economists stupid or in the pocket of big business whenever the topic comes up.
Obviously this post wasn’t about minimum wage, but what I’m trying to communicate is that economists are now seen by the left (mostly the young online left) as agents of the enemy, and many see it as their prerogative to make sure nobody has a good impression of them. In their circles everyone knows that, while you should follow the science, these economists either don’t really know what they’re talking about or are being actively deceptive and so their opinions can be safely disregarded. How else can you explain why the GP comment felt the need to call economists stupid before even reading the article to figure out what they had to say?
First, there was no need for the political rant… the answer to the above question is simple: people just read the headline, not the article.
Second, economics isn’t “science” any more than any other “social science”, so the left being “pro-science” or “anti-science” doesn’t really apply.
Economists are not seen as “agents of the enemy” by the left. That’s absurd. There are many economist across the left spectrum: from Stieglitz to Picketty and Kelton.
Stop it. You can’t try to make a point about “sides” having an agenda and then write… this. It looks foolish.
It didn't start with climate change, that was just a sequel to asbestos and smoking denialism.
- from the ivory tower
It's not about feeding and clothing everyone who needs it. It's about seeing if there are any jobs out there that people feel are beneath them and if you find any, lower the floor a bit until the jobs don't look so bad.
lower the floor a bit until the jobs don't look so bad
Surely you can see how this reply reads as “let them eat cake”? (And thats the most polite way to put it I could think of).
I don't think that was the parents intent. I read it as descriptive of how the system currently functions, not as justification for it being that way.
I've been thinking about this, how a society can get necessary work done without forcing some people to choose between doing it or starving. Perhaps if everyone was guaranteed to be fed, to be housed, and to have medical care, then the market would find a fair price for collecting garbage or cleaning floors.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210531112440/https://www.econo...
Profit > People
I deliver for DoorDash and make around $100 dollars a day from about five hours of work. My girlfriend (who’s disabled) rides along with me, so it’s sorta like I’m just getting paid to drive around and hang out. I drive a 2005 Honda Civic, so I spend less than $15/day on gas and the car is old enough the depreciation is minuscule. I buy my health insurance on the exchange. It’s excellent and with the premium subsidy I only pay $22/month. I have several chronic health conditions, so good health insurance (and particularly drug coverage) is really important to me. I’ve been able to get my insurance to cover all of the many medications I’m on (many of still under patent and not generic) and my copay is only $45/month. Visits to my primary care doctor are free and I’ve got a $500 deductible for everything else.
I can work as much or as little as I want on pretty much whatever schedule I choose. I tend to stick to about five hours a day because it doesn’t feel like a ton of work, but it’s enough to cover my expenses and then some. Rent is my only other major expense and I pay just $550 for my one bedroom apartment. I rarely cook at home, but even after spending way too much eating out, I regularly have $500-$1,000 leftover at the end of the month, so I’m certainly not living paycheck to paycheck. Since I save some of that extra money, I can take time off whenever I want (although I rarely do, since I enjoy getting out of the house and working). Sure, if I get sick and don’t work, I don’t make any money, but that’s why I keep a bit of money in savings.
It might be Uber or Lyft or Instacart instead of DoorDash, but I know several people in a similar position to me. And honestly it’s a pretty sweet life. I’ve got all my needs met and then some. I enjoy my work. And I’ve got lots of free time to purpose my intellectual interests like coding.
Yes, these “jobs” are fine as long as everything goes to plan, but is it really that much to ask to not have to live under the sword of Damocles?
Probably the hardest part was how depressed I was, even as my body was recovering, I simply wasn’t prepared to start hustling to get my sales income back up, pay for physical therapy, deal with the hospital & insurance company, etc.
The issue in the US is the setup, not the fundamental principal
They can, but it's not necessary. There are lots of private hospitals in France and it works just fine
> you don't have to expect sick folks to have extra money to pay for middle men
There are always going to be middlemen. Too few and resources are allocated inefficiently due to a lack of management. Too many and it's a waste of resources. The trick is to find the right balance
Yes, agreed, though I'd argue that middlemen aren't actually needed - as actual middlemen are folks getting paid when they aren't really necessary. It is kind of like car dealerships don't really need to be as they are, but that is part of the service you pay for with cars. Instead, you simply need enough people to get things to work - and sometimes that can be lessened. For example, standardized medical billing and coding in the US would reduce the labor required to deal with insurance - and suddenly, fewer people are needed at the office. Fairly standarized coverage would help as well (fewer misunderstandings) and decoupling it from employment (US based: Would take away HR jobs, but reduce burden on companies).
But the main point really was that sick people, who could easily be missing work to see the doctor, shouldn't be expected to pay for everything.
Like many folks here, I worked full-time minimum wage for years before eventually entering the professional world, and I can say given the choice now, I'd absolutely prefer the make-your-own-hours contract model to obligation of a fixed-hour in-person position. Of course there are drawbacks, like the lack of health coverage (though I'm Canadian so I'm not sure how this would work in the states exactly), but given the option, I'd still choose the former.
Or are you talking about workmen's comp coverage?
Mine would (not a company, a university). For the first two weeks, I'd use accrued Sick Time then switch to their Short-Term Disability that would cover 100% of my pay (for some positions with fewer years of service it would be 75%). Short-Term Disability coverage lasts for six months, beyond that my employer doesn't pay any salary replacement but I pay a few dollars a month for long-term disability insurance that would.
I think the federal Family and Medical Leave Act only guarantees I can return to my job for 12 weeks but Massachusetts increases that to 20 weeks. By policy, my employer won't dismiss someone on Short-Term Disability (26 weeks) and may not beyond that either.
I'm not implying we should all afford a living in San Francisco, but an anecdote that represents the average case would be more relevant. The prospect of having a family with a couple of kids to take care of is quite the norm (still)
So two to six month's savings. Painful but not career-ending.
So your idea makes sense.
I don't think it will. I know plenty of people who've worked retail and still treat others like trash.
That being said, I still agree that empathy in general seems to be trending downward and my assumption is that online life makes it a lot easier to dehumanize other people which makes it easier to treat people like shit.
I'm trying to translate it into the Australian work context, but we don't tie healthcare to employment so I'm a bit confused.
Prior to Obama, low wage workers might be scheduled to work full time without health insurance. If they're poor enough, they might get Medicaid from the state; otherwise they get to ruin their credit and claim bankruptcy if they show up at the emergency room.
Obama passed ACA, which required employers with full time workers to provide health insurance or pay a fine per worker. Full time is defined as 30 hours per week or more by ACA. So in low wage jobs, employers responded by scheduling people for 29 hours.
So if you work multiple jobs or a job+doordash/uber/etc... you may work full time, and not have any health insurance because no one employer is going over 29 hours.
ACA also expanded Medicaid, but some states decided to decline that expansion. So whether that covers a low wage worker depends on where they are, the size of their household, and their total household earnings.
For many of these workers, it's not just the risk of unexpected medical bills that they can't pay... they rarely have savings, so if they miss a few days of work (say because they contracted COVID), that can spiral into a series of missed bills. And with the eviction moratorium coming to an end, that now includes losing their home.
It’s not a loophole in the sense that it’s an unintentional exploit. Everyone involved knew full-well what the point of that provision was. If Congress voted in something more stringent, their corporate donors (e.g., Walmart) would have been pissed. That’s a deal-breaker for most Congress-critters.
It was very distressing watching the news spin it all as being about the ACA when it was definitely much more about his opponent since everyone here already had something analogous to the ACA. But that's how spin works I guess, it's certainly even worse now.
Speaking as a French person, 15% of my pre-income-tax salary sounds close to what I pay for state-sponsored healthcare (I pay more than that, but it includes retirement contributions and stuff).
In the case of the UK where I live, approximately 20% of all government spending goes on healthcare. Taxes on businesses, retail sales, house sales, wealth, capital gains, etc all contribute to the cost of healthcare, not just income taxes. That means a lot less than 15% of anyone's individual tax is spent on it.
However, depending on how you define "socialized", lots of people are covered under several "socialized" programs by the US government, not just Tricare. Medicare (old or disabled people), Medicaid (the very poor), CHIP and things like that (poor kids). Also, if you're counting Tricare, probably any health insurance provided by any level of US government (federal, state, county, city) to government workers should count.
In the end, the US government pays for healthcare (or, at least, much of it—US prices for healthcare are very high, and the way our insurance works means that insurance is just part of how the bills get paid, though a large part) for an high percentage of our population, one way or another.
All those part time jobs would disappear since what kind of employer pay $5-10k per year in insurance premium for an employee who earns $600 per month before taxes?
And you might say “great! Who cares about part time work?” and you’d be wrong, plenty of people don’t need or can do full time work.
There's room for a class of contractors that do small number of hours for many different employers, either many within a quarter or many throughout the year.
One practical alternative would be universal health care.
Within our current system of insanely bad group negotiation for rates, establishing a house cleaning union that could negotiate as a class would probably be the second best alternative.
The third alternative is the Obamacare one, which is to pay your employees at a rate high enough so they can buy their own subsidized insurance on the health exchanges.
Single payer healthcare, not that your question is sincere.
Plenty of people are hired for work like that without forming a business entity, and sometimes under conditions that qualify as employment rather than contract work.
For the sake of conversation, let's consider the cleaner to be an employee and OP to be the employer. Even then, unless OP has 50 full-time and full-time equivalent employees, there is no requirement for the employer to provide group health insurance, according to the ACA.
Obviously if she only has one client that’s not going to be a lot, but it stacks with all the other employers
You would never be obligated to pay for their health insurance, it would be up to them, or their employer, to figure that out.
Walmart on the other hand has clear employees which are expected to turn up to non-negotiable shifts and wear a Walmart specified shifts. They’re currently forced to take on the risks of a contractors, but with none of the freedoms.
My recollection from working at CompUSA in college (a big box Best Buy like store) in the 90s was about 50-70 hourly employees, with 10-15 full timers.
The fact it's easier to afford if you make more money is...well, sort of the reason why people want it to be universal, and covered by taxes, so the rich can offset it for the poor.
At least with Obamacare, you (likely) won’t go bankrupt if you break a leg.
You also get preventative care fully covered (or ~$30 copay) even with plans that have $6,000 deductibles.
That includes both low & high cost items, like annual physicals and colonoscopies.
No, Obamacare shouldn’t die (as you said in an earlier comment) but it should be replaced with something that improves on what it’s already done.
Personally, I favor Medicare for all.
My anecdata for people on ACA is that it works pretty well, with a caveat that premiums are high due to various misaligned incentives in the US health care system.
- bartender friend of mine got laid off due to covid. With unemployment at ~$3k a month, he paid about $200 a month for insurance that had very low deductibles and overall seemed to be a good plan (silver). It was better than the plan I had as a university professor at a “good” university.
- another friend of mine started her own business. Very low income the first year (maybe $20k?) and was living on savings. She ended up paying about $100 a month for similar insurance to the bartender friend above.
The “downside” of these plans is that they scale aggressively with income. For reference, the entrepreneur friend’s business took off in year two, and now she’s paying about $1100 a month. This sounds high, but that’s what her group plan cost at her previous employer when you factored in the company contributions.
[0] https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/identifyin...
And employment contracts for hourly works are incredibly rare and pretty much nonexistent for part-time workers.
I'm not sure if going over one month does anything, and it most certainly doesn't do anything in a week: Some places will schedule folks around 40 hours for a couple weeks and then nearly nothing for a week to get the average down.
* American healthcare is too expensive. The problem is long known and nobody wants to solve it. That problem is administrative inefficiency. Solving that problem means terminating the a large segment of a massive industry (destroying a massive number of jobs). Drugs are expensive too, but drug pricing problems impacts specific persons that when averaged across the entirety of the population become only a tiny part of the industry wide problem.
Since medicine is expensive everybody is reliant upon insurance. The options are private insurance (expensive), employer offered insurance, and government insurance (designed for low income people and poor choices/service).
The exceptions are Obama care and military. Military has a wonderful health insurance plan called Tricare. Tricare is great for the patient because they cover just about everything but they are really hard about releasing funds to medical providers so some medical providers refuse to take Tricare.
Obama care is a new private insurance option from the government that provides an affordable insurance option partially subsidized by government funding.
I have known people who are not insured and refused to get insurance then just never go to the doctor. Wonderful medical insurance is a primary reason I remained employed by the military for a number of years.
My impression from looking at this for many years now is that the problem is everything. Every single individual and entity involved—and that's a whole bunch—is taking too much money. That's why it's so hard to point at any one problem and dig deeper and fine all the money. Every time, you find some of it, and usually a lot, but not all of it.
Doctors and other people actually providing care? Too few of them, and (or, "therefore") they're making too much money. Hospitals? Consolidation of hospitals and smaller providers into "networks"? Yes and yes, but still, that's not all. Administration costs? Yep, but not all of it. Insurance overhead? Yes, but... well, you get the idea.
It's absolutely shameful.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/medicaid-works-millions...
No.
> Or is this casual work where you get a higher hourly loading to compensate?
No.
It is precisely as horrific as you would imagine for those low-wage workers who want full-time jobs to obtain those healthcare benefits, but keep running into this issue in job after job. The official tax-oriented definition of "full-time" [1] is a bit more nuanced than what you will colloquially hear in discussions, but in broad terms, once you are put into the HR system for more than 30 hours in a week of work, the threshold to full-time is triggered. It is a binary switch, no spectrum, no gradient.
This doesn't even begin to get into how capital-inefficient and service-poor so many of the healthcare plans are once you do get access to them as a low-wage worker. Nor how so many of these workers are so completely unequipped and unprepared to comprehend the fiscal realities of engaging these plans.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/identifyin...
And so of course 90%+ of the companies that can short on this, do. It's as awful as you think.
https://careers.walmart.com/us/jobs/WD597130-senior-software...
"Beyond competitive pay, you can receive incentive awards for your performance. Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, and much more."
I give you the fine state of Mississippi where only 1/3 is vaccinated and they are only doing 15k vaccinations per week. If the population even wanted a vaccine at this rate it would achieve immunity some time in 2023. Its like a nice little virus lab where there are plenty of unvaccinated hanging around for existing strains but the first strain to successfully attack vaccinated will gain a huge advantage.
What I am seeing from the CDC is around 535 break through deaths out of 3016 hospitalizations as of June 1st but this isn't broken down by time frame so I cannot compare a time frame to see what percentage exactly are break through deaths however looking at the rough magnitude of breakthrough deaths vs deaths makes me doubt that 3% is accurate nationwide.
This means that 15% are too young at this point to vaccinate and 17% (20% of 85%) wont vaccinate. This means full vaccination of everyone who intends to vaccinate would be about 68% of the population. This means that 26% of the population is still in progress.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/02/02/job...
https://austingwalters.com/stagflation-is-here-monetary-infl...
The reality is that they're being paid to stay home. A lot of people (myself included) would have loved the opportunity to take one of those $12/hr greeting jobs when I was 16. Instead, I managed to get $9/hr setting up a companies internal network.
You're correct, this is America. You can work hard and build something. America is intentionally setup NOT to give you anything, but to make as many opportunities as possible open to you. That's why people brave deserts to come here.
There aren't any static classes (although the education system is quickly becoming one), that's what makes america great. Honestly, health care isn't what most of the poor care most about (having been there, it is a concern, just not #1); medicaid and medicare cover you if you're poor enough, hospitals will drop 80-90% of your bill if you're over that, etc. etc.
How did you come to this conclusion? Is it the lack of social safety net that opens opportunities? Does the lack of parental leave open up opportunities for mothers to breastfeed? Or having to work multiple jobs open up opportunities to spend time with one’s family and participate in the community?
I'm sorry, but it's not a belief, I've estimated it fairly accurately and you can as well.
Effective tax rate (from my income):
Income Tax:
- 26.72% Federal
- 4.33% Social Security & Medicaid
- 4.95% State
Investments:
- Investments 15-45% (EDIT: on capital gains)
Additional Tax Burden:
- Sales: 10% (of goods purchased)
- Property: 2.35% (of home value)
- Inflation 4% (of wealth maintained)
Then there's all these others fees & excise taxes: licenses, fuel, tolls, alcohol, tobacco, firearms, etc, etc.
Finally, you have import duties on any goods you or any company producing goods for you are importing, typically 0-10%.
You may think tolls are something cheap, but it's $3-5 per toll (I pass 200-500 a year). Licenses for my vehicle(s): $500. Fuel: $0.392 tax per gallon.
Fuel Taxes: https://www2.illinois.gov/rev/research/taxrates/Pages/motorf...
Toll Rates (cars): https://turnpikeinfo.com/toll-calculator.php?road_name=tri-s...
Toll Rates (trucks): https://www.illinoistollway.com/documents/20184/86147/2020+T...
Freight Duties Estimator: https://www.freightos.com/freight-resources/import-duty-calc...
EDIT: Previously said: "on investment revenue"
Why are you calling it investment revenue? Its either income or a capital gain or its stuck inside of a C Corporation and doesn't really have to be paid to you?
You are also adding inflation as a separate line item. Wow.
And on everything else, even Illinois isn't that complicated.
You are being penalized because you aren't paying attention to the market and somehow doing the most inefficient things.
I'm guessing a pass through LLC designated as an S-Corp importing humans from a sanctioned country and making them pay rent in your house after ferrying them up the Mississippi river all the way to Chicago and driving them in your pre-catalytic converter truck to the suburbs. Have you tried SaaS?
Fair, will edit to make capital gains. It's late, tired -_-
> You are also adding inflation as a separate line item. Wow.
Inflation is a separate line item and it's effectively a tax. Since 2000, the dollar has lost >35% of it's value, i.e. you can purchase 35% less. They've also changed the way inflation is calculated in that time, it's likely even higher. As an exercise: If you gave someone land, but every year took x% of it -- they'd call that a tax.
> You are being penalized because you aren't paying attention to the market and somehow doing the most inefficient things.
Not really sure what you mean, if it's regarding taxes, I was pointing out how I could be paying 60%+ in taxes. I know there are rebates, discounts, etc but (A) a lot of people don't know these and (B) when you earn enough that disappears. The general point was 60+% taxes is real.
As it not something you pay to the state, why not add your healthcare premiums while you’re at it.
If you have assets look into charitable contributions. You can donate a portion highly valued illiquid business interests to any charity that will take it and reduce your own taxes for years.
Municipal governments are affected the same as you are.
And the federal government which issues the currency is also mostly adversely affected while marginally helping it (and all borrowers) defer paying off its debt. The additional money in its coffers is from its own creation* and doesnt help it purchase more (for long) as it has the same purchasing power and liquidity in the global market.
Its revenue sources, which are mostly tax these days, are distinctive from inflation.
*us treasury issues USD bonds, fed buys USD bonds from everyone including the us treasury creating new USD at the moment of transaction. Sometimes the US treasury is the recipient, other times the other investors are
It's not a tax on income. It's a tax on past income. If you keep switching jobs and invest your money you shouldn't have to worry about inflation at all except when it's too low.
The reason why it exists is that we don't want old money to dominate the economy, the other reason is that demand for USD is legitimately going up.
I don't think that's the case, the price of dollar against other currencies does not indicate that.
For now it is a non-negligible factor
(I’m not the person you replied to, and they didnt mention other currencies, just adding to the discussion)
How did you come to the alternative conclusion?
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
> Is it the lack of social safety net that opens opportunities?
There are a LOT of social safety nets. I pointed out one in my prior comment -- Medicare and Medicaid. I'd argue that's actually the cause of our price increases in medicine, but they do provide effectively free healthcare. I'm not sure how many poor people you know? But I grew up in a poor area, and I can tell you, no one had their primary concern as medical care. No one was worried about food, no one was worried about shelter. I've lived with people who their entire lives have never found or wanted to find a job, they've survived entirely off what the government provided. I know at least ten people (several in my family), who live like this.
> Does the lack of parental leave open up opportunities for mothers to breastfeed?
What type of question is this? You have to choose to be a mother, if you cannot figure it out, you probably shouldn't have children.
> Or having to work multiple jobs open up opportunities to spend time with one’s family and participate in the community?
My entire family has worked multiple jobs at one point or another? For reference, if you work on a farm (as some of my family has) you work every day; usually ten hours. I don't really see the difference here.
That being said, I dont' know what you're saying?
I understand the history of that term, but in this context it seems inhumane. Asking for additional sacrifices from people who are already struggling to afford access to medical care is deeply fucked up. Giving back (to your country/community/world/whatever) should be an ethical obligation, sure, but not one that kicks in when you're still struggling to attain some very basic needs.
Like, I understand your point that safety net programs are available to many (though I don't necessarily agree--food insecurity numbers and medical bankruptcy rates seem like pretty compelling counterpoints). But coming out with "ask what you can do for your country" when talking about a country's least affluent population seems crass and disingenuous.
Why should I expect that hospitals will drop their bill 80-90% after I go in? My expectation is that bill collectors will try to get reimbursed for as much of the bill as they can. This article mentions about half a million went bankrupt in 2019 due to medical bills.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/02/11/thi...
You mention America being a land of opportunity, but now that I’m self employed, I’m looking at places outside of the US to persue entrepreneurship. This is partly due to the sky high medical costs here.
We all have a right to speak. I also suggest you have an open mind as these are topics I've experienced and then further researched. How is it your place? I've shared my experience being poor and what I have seen. I try to share what personal research and experience has taught me.
> Why should I expect that hospitals will drop their bill 80-90% after I go in? My expectation is that bill collectors will try to get reimbursed for as much of the bill as they can. This article mentions about half a million went bankrupt in 2019 due to medical bills.
I used to work at a medical billing service, they managed tens of millions in monthly billing (with millions of accounts annually). I personally used to reduce bills for hospitals by 80-90%, typically for hundreds of people a day (I was one of many). If you speak with a hospital and are below a certain income, they will reduce your bill. It's subsidized by those with insurance, hence the high medical costs nationally. Typically, insurance is paying 3-20x the medical procedure cost; medicare/medicaid pays around 20-50% of what insurance will pay.
> You mention America being a land of opportunity, but now that I’m self employed, I’m looking at places outside of the US to persue entrepreneurship. This is partly due to the sky high medical costs here.
I mean, do what suits you. But I find this interesting, I spend ~$9k a year for some really great health insurance (my family included in this), with potentially $5k out of pocket. I can also tune it (unlike taxes) and could really only spend $1-2k a year with a potential for $20k out of pocket. I did that for many years, because I was healthier.
Currently, I receive far better treatment than the nationalized healthcare in the EU for instance (particularly the UK or Ireland, where I was considering moving). I also have the potential to make 5x what I would for my profession in the EU. That more than makes up for the differential.
I was pleading that you stop representing you know what poor people worry about on the basis of knowing at least 10 poor people. I don’t think you or I should speak on poor folks behalf. I never claimed to know what their worries are. Your opinions are your own, but I think it’s important to not take a chance and misrepresent people, especially when the stakes are high like with health care.
> I used to work at a medical billing service, they managed tens of millions in monthly billing (with millions of accounts annually).
I need to know the odds that the hospital that I happen to be around when I need treatment will reduce my bill by 80-90%. It’s not enough to know what your billing center was doing.
> I spend ~$9k a year for some really great health insurance (my family included in this), with potentially $5k out of pocket.
The cheapest quote I received from FL ACA marketplace is $12k a year for two people on a bronze plan and a potential $15k deductible. I view these plans as next to worthless aside from keeping me from immediate bankruptcy jeopardy.
I can live in Central America or India for less and be treated better by the locals in all likelihood. It doesn’t matter where I live in terms of my income potential.
How do we know that your personal anecdote can be extended to all hospitals in the US?
Ok, no more children. Honestly, haven't you though about why it is not economical to have children? Isn't it absurd that children drag their parents down even though they are going to be future tax payers?
>I've lived with people who their entire lives have never found or wanted to find a job, they've survived entirely off what the government provided. I know at least ten people (several in my family), who live like this.
It's better that way. Their children will do better.
Every time I've been in that category, it's been my #1 concern. Medical bills are also the #1 reason for bankruptcies in the United States.
> hospitals will drop 80-90% of your bill if you're over that, etc. etc.
My experience is... different. Not only are adjustments more modest, not only are they harder to get than you're implying in the first place, I've found that hospitals will hound you for a $100 copay they think they didn't receive because when you paid it they accidentally credited it to the wrong account (glad I could dig up the receipt).
There's things to value about America's enterprising spirit and some of its policies, but health care is pretty far from it. Overall it's a drag on the rest of the economy, and the incentives are wrong for there to be private solutions.
So, real experience for me in priorities have always been:
1. Food
2. Shelter
3. Clothes
4. Transportation
5. Employment / Income
6. Healthcare
You’re correct bankruptcy is an option and I know of multiple people who’ve done it for medical reasons. Honestly; it didn’t seem to impact them, as much as I suspected, but I didn’t see their internal finances. I do know they restructured and paid some and got on a plan to pay the rest. The first five on my list aren’t impacted by bankruptcy (typically) due to healthcare issues. That’s why I think a lot of people are okay taking the hit.
But I think you bring up the key question which is “drag on the system”. There’s a reason our system is so expensive and it’s regulation and litigation from that regulation. Why do they limit the number of doctors graduating medical schools? Or zone hospitals such that all are profitable? Or have Medicare pay a fraction of what the private health insurance pays (increasing premiums for those with insurance?)? There’s a ton of systemic issues and it’s almost entirely from well meaning laws turning into a hellscape of rules. Bankruptcies are accounted for in the lending rates of banks, so that’s also impacted.
Finally, I recommend asking the hospital for charge codes and looking up what Medicare will pay, pay that. It’s basically 20-50% of what your bill will be.
If you're facing risk or serious insecurity to any one of these, consider that health issues (especially those insurance matters for) often (a) produce costs that are higher to nigh-unbounded (b) may well present as issues that are upstream of all of these things ("Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call/job/meal when you are unable to speak/work/keep food down?"). #1-5 may be more foundational in some kind of pyramid of needs than mild health concerns, but serious health care concerns are equal-to-more foundational. Also, #1-5 are also more easily provided by friends and family or community charity on an episodic basis.
> Honestly; it didn’t seem to impact them, as much as I suspected, but I didn’t see their internal finances.
A merely low credit score has substantial financial impacts and will cut you off from some possibilities outright. A bankruptcy will close more doors. It's less an "option" than a salvage operation.
> There’s a reason our system is so expensive and it’s regulation and litigation from that regulation
Specific regulations sometimes do introduce compliance costs, and like code, can often be reviewed for optimization. But criticizing "regulation" in abstract is like criticizing code in abstract. And litigation is how legal accountability happens.
Additionally, more heavily "regulated" systems than ours control expenses better, so it seems unlikely that's necessarily the source, and there's other explanations available in incentive analysis.
> Why do they limit the number of doctors graduating medical schools?
Ask the AMA. I expect part of it is incentives, though... how many more doctors do you think could be reasonably graduated?
> I recommend asking the hospital for charge codes
I've actually asked hospitals for charge masters before, even ahead of time. Answers ranged from "I'm not sure what that is" to "we don't do that." That was pre-ACA, so perhaps things have changed, but if so, it's thanks to regulation.
Socioeconomic mobility in the US is amongst the lowest of developed countries.
If a lack of static classes is what makes a country great, then can we assume that a great many other developed countries with much more socioeconomic mobility are greater?
If what makes America great is all these opportunities, as you say, then something must have gone very wrong since so few people are using these opportunities to move up.
The majority of people don't want to move to America. This is simple math. There are about 7 billion people on Earth. 300 million are already in America. Approximately an additional million people move to America every year legally, and some number enter illegally. Even if twice as many people enter illegally, that's only 3 million people, which is just 0.045% of the people on Earth.
Many Americans believe that everyone is desperate to leave where they live and move to the USA and chase the American Dream. This belief is wrong.
I don’t follow the jump from that to “people must work in a grueling fashion just to survive unless they’re lucky”. That is inhumane, and what makes America’s form of capitalism especially sinister. Have some damn compassion.
For some US' citizens, there may as well be no healthcare, as they're not willing to take on the burden of medical debt. They could technically access it, but not without changing the course of their life for the worse forever. That's not an issue for citizens in most developed nations.
There are countries far far lower on the economic leaderboard than the US who do provide reasonable access to healthcare for their citizens, and of course the majority of developed nations do as well. The US is behind, and it's not because of increased opportunity.
(I'm not the one downvoting you by the way, I don't mind the conversation)
Please do not make misleading statements such as that it's accessible to a very few.
Economists cant seem wrap their head around the idea that being a front line worker being exposed directly to sick people during a pandemic seems to be worth more money than when there wasn't a pandemic.
Incredible. It's like people--including low wage people--understand there's a pandemic going on.
I wonder when economists will catch on.