231–240 of 304 posts
In the short term, contractors can get more money by far - hour to hour. But when life events crop up such as illness, death in the family, personal injury, etc, the house of cards can become unstuck pretty rapidly if people haven't planned well enough for their rainy day.
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Poor people seem perfectly capable of buying car insurance as evidenced by the fact that millions of poor people have car insurance. What makes you think that purchasing disability insurance is so much more difficult?
They are certainly capable of buying it (at least, when regulation means that it is something you often are compelled and assisted to do before taking a newly-purchased car home, and reminded you must do under penalty of law when registering a car, and actually cited for if you fail to do it and are pulled over driving a car—which is a whole lot of pressure taken together), and many do; whether they are capable of ma…
Somehow we've gotten from there to a point where you're suggesting that a poor person who is somehow capable of starting their own small business is, by the very nature of being poor, fundamentally incapable of making a good decision regarding disability insurance options. And it is because of this fundamental lack of cognitive ability that we need a regulatory environment demanding that the business owner (who is themself) must purchase disability insurance on their behalf?
I'm sorry, but you've just gotten to the point of nonsense.
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This is one of those solutions that seems simple and neat, but falls apart on a cursory inspection. For example, it implies that the poor should die of curable illnesses. It also largely ignores the economics of the situation — healthcare is inherently expensive because it involves high technology, high safety standards and lots of training. You can't have it be like food, where people just get it when they want it,…
Oh bullshit. Sure, there's a lot of newer tech in medical. But for a ton of routine medicine uses generic drugs, simple testing (scales, blood pressure, simply viewing abnormalities), and cheap care. For "routine medicine" this should be negligible cost - it's only because of systemic garbage I can't just go to the pharmacist and buy metformin without going through a fucking paywall. Sure, I get something weird and/o…
And doctors want annual / quarterly renewals on prescriptions to check if your condition has gotten better or worse in regards to whatever the drugs were treating.
Because at the end of the day, if you overdose on something, someone will still call 911, an ambulance will still come haul you to the hospital, and doctors will still spend millions of dollars trying to save your life if they deem it feasible regardless of if you can afford it or not. Unless you have an explicit will saying not to do that. And when you cannot pay your million dollar hospital stay (and the uninsured cannot) the hospital gets to write off the loss and seek recompense from the government anyway.
And from the governments perspective, around the world, it is simply cheaper to provide regular and preventative care than to deal with the astronomical higher rate of emergency care people have to get in the US because they cannot afford the cheap routine stuff and instead cost the state life saving procedures instead.
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This is one of those solutions that seems simple and neat, but falls apart on a cursory inspection. For example, it implies that the poor should die of curable illnesses. It also largely ignores the economics of the situation — healthcare is inherently expensive because it involves high technology, high safety standards and lots of training. You can't have it be like food, where people just get it when they want it,…
Oh bullshit. Sure, there's a lot of newer tech in medical. But for a ton of routine medicine uses generic drugs, simple testing (scales, blood pressure, simply viewing abnormalities), and cheap care. For "routine medicine" this should be negligible cost - it's only because of systemic garbage I can't just go to the pharmacist and buy metformin without going through a fucking paywall. Sure, I get something weird and/o…
But even if it were just weird things that cost a lot, that would still be a serious problem with the idea of expecting people to just buy healthcare as needed.
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There's an element of luck involved in absolutely everything. Not specifically to you but this conversation is highly interesting because it demonstrates the two different attitudes - one from the person you were replying to and one from pretty much everyone else. In software engineering it is the attitude of people who come up with a solution to their problem as compared to the attitude of the people who are complai…
To me, this conversation represents the two classes. One guy is living life probably pulling in upwards of $150,000 a year (or living in a lower cost of living place with six figures income). Simply budgeting well will cover all these things. And another thinks that "budgeting" means you don't get to eat on Mondays so you can keep on bills.
Person 2: But what if you're a diabetic blind one legged cancer patient?
One aspect of the "gig economy" that I've not seen covered is the way it effects gigsters professional social graphs. At the deep end of Mechanical Turk services where work is dispatched by an algorithm (Uber/Lyft/AirBnB/etc.) there are no upward connections to supervisors and managers and officers and no lateral connections to coworkers. This means that working does not provide insider access to potentially better (…
On the other hand, I know a couple of people who started driving for Lyft recently to supplement income when their other freelance work slows. They've found pretty creative ways to make the most of the gig. One guy in particular is doing some social/influencer type stuff around it and has found some clients for his primary work as a content writer.
Going in the other direction, my wife is a lawyer and is always chatting with drivers and giving them her business card. She helped a driver with some questionable traffic tickets. Nothing major, just a short phone call and some free advice that got the tickets throw out. When his brother got hit by someone running a red light, she got the case.
There's always value generated when people connect. Sure, two Lyft drivers don't have a lot of reason to connect, but a Lyft driver has the opportunity to connect with people who do other things. Maybe there's some value in that that is just now being explored.
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You dodged my first question. Apply the same thing to car insurance. Are poor people generally incapable of attaining the "expertise" to be able to purchase car insurance?
Car insurance is much simpler than health insurance. Still, I expect most people without car insurance are poor, and the reason they don't have it is not simply a lack of money but also (and relatedly) a lack of time. Generally yes, poor people are less capable of gaining the "expertise" to do many things, because they are busy trying to stay alive. It's textbook hierarchy of needs. Noticed other replies; why the fix…
>Consider how much time, energy, and expertise it takes even to research disability insurance and buy the appropriate product.
This is in the context of a discussion about starting your own business. If you're on the tier of hierarchy of needs where you're struggling for food, then sure, maybe you shouldn't be starting your own business at this point. However, if you have the intellectual capacity to buy car insurance, and also are in a position to be starting your own business, you almost certainly have the cognitive ability to purchase disability insurance.
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If someone is laughing in your face everywhere you go (especially with unemployment at an all-time low right now) then you probably need to recalibrate your expectations. However I'd venture a guess that most people aren't actually asking for higher rates. Most people do a terrible job negotiating for compensation (and by terrible I mean they don't even try). http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
The "gig economy" being discussed isn't highly paid software developers. It's dudes working uber / lyft / postmates. These people have no negotiating power.... you take the gig or you leave it. It is amazing how out of touch people in the software echo chamber are....
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How are you independent if you have to band together with other people to get the same benefits other groups have? You cant rely on a group and be independent at the same time!
How could you be independent if you all buy the same brand of smartphone ? Why couldn't independent unite themselves voluntarily ?
the act of uniting is literally antithetical to being independent. I can't even understand why you would ask that question. Why can't red be blue, makes about as much sense as asking why independent people couldn't unite and still be independent
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If someone is laughing in your face everywhere you go (especially with unemployment at an all-time low right now) then you probably need to recalibrate your expectations. However I'd venture a guess that most people aren't actually asking for higher rates. Most people do a terrible job negotiating for compensation (and by terrible I mean they don't even try). http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
> Most people do a terrible job negotiating for compensation (and by terrible I mean they don't even try). He's talking about stuff like Uber . Their whole deal is having a take-it-or-leave it gig-employment offer. They'd laugh in his face if they actually took the time to talk to anyone face-to-face, which they don't.