Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 144 posts

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#41

Post by realusername »

arethuza wrote: post #34
realusername wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your inflated health care bills helped pay for the 280k average salary of physicians (source: https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie... ), which is over 2x as high as Western european doctors' salary. I doubt that's the majority of the massive cost difference. > For instance: Western european doctors do not need a 4-year bachelors degree just to _enter_ medical school. Don't know where you are…

Entry to both medical school and law school is usually done straight from high school in the UK.

Same in France, I guess the US is structured differently but overall it's probably the same amount of years. I doubt they study more than 6 or 9 years after high school or otherwise it's a bit too long.

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#42

Post by abritinthebay »

DiddleBit wrote: post #30
INTPenis wrote: post #12

I'm glad this is being addressed but I don't feel qualified to add anything of substance to it. As many other techies I frequent message boards on reddit and other sites. A majority of users are from the US and many posts are written from a US-centric point of view. What I've observed on those message boards regarding workers rights and health has made me deeply concerned about US workers. And that's only in the tech…

As a third-world citizen, reading about US worker conditions in Reddit made me realize that working minimum-wage burger-flipping job with no benefits in US affords you a better life than working one of the rarer white-collar high-skill jobs in my country.

That’s not really due to the job there though - it’s due to the overall state of the country & infrastructure.

Not really the same thing.

When compared to countries with similar quality of infrastructure & “development” the US fares extremely poorly.

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#43

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

virmundi wrote: post #33

What I don't understand, and you may say that it's the intrenched powers keeping the status quo, is why the US picks such poor implementations of certain ideas. The article mentions low collective bargaining. Our model, as an American, is pretty much one union per vertical. There is the Teamsters. There are no unions that compete with the Teamsters. I believe that Germany has unions that fight each other for contract…

There are theories like Duverger’s Law[0] to try to account for why a two-party system emerges from the voting conditions in most of the US.

Giving the appearance of conceding to collective bargaining, when really just ensuring that a single monopoly union is in their pocket, is just another type of regulatory capture.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law >

Added: a concise way to understand Duverger’s Law, if you are mathematically inclined, is to say that plurality-rule is like L1 regularization among political parties, tending to force the participation of small parties to zero and create a sparse set of parties (generally only two). Whereas proportional representation is like L2 regularization, allowing non-zero participation by many parties.

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#44

Post by Reactionary_ »

abritinthebay wrote: post #42
DiddleBit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a third-world citizen, reading about US worker conditions in Reddit made me realize that working minimum-wage burger-flipping job with no benefits in US affords you a better life than working one of the rarer white-collar high-skill jobs in my country.

That’s not really due to the job there though - it’s due to the overall state of the country & infrastructure. Not really the same thing. When compared to countries with similar quality of infrastructure & “development” the US fares extremely poorly.

Extremely poorly? How so?

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#45

Post by sol_remmy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #32
sol_remmy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PolitiFact, a liberal site, rates your claim as FALSE: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/... That graph is not even accurate. This says Canada's health care spending is $6600 per person: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-60... while your graph says its $4500. Those numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.

The graph is inaccurate because the 2017 and 2015 numbers are different? Find any source - any reputable source - that indicate US healthcare costs are anywhere near the rest of the OECD.

Your graph (2015): United States: $10300 Canada: $4400 Ratio: 2.34

My actual findings (2017): United States: $9250 Canada: $6600 Ratio: 1.40

I think your graph is fake news.

Sources: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/20/5247741... https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-60...

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#46

Post by CompelTechnic »

INTPenis wrote: post #12

I'm glad this is being addressed but I don't feel qualified to add anything of substance to it. As many other techies I frequent message boards on reddit and other sites. A majority of users are from the US and many posts are written from a US-centric point of view. What I've observed on those message boards regarding workers rights and health has made me deeply concerned about US workers. And that's only in the tech…

It is likely true that there is a high degree of self-selection here: because U.S. citizens dominate a lot of these discussion boards, U.S. news will dominate them as well. And because emotions garner upvotes, news of terrible things in America rise to the top. And on top of that, the most vocal, emotional commenters with the most amazing stories of U.S. suffering tend to rise to the top of the comments section.

Take it all with a huge grain of salt and stick to the facts and figures.

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#47

Post by arethuza »

sol_remmy wrote: post #23
zepto wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet health care costs are lower in countries where the government runs healthcare. Our system of government involvement, where it’s neither a free market, nor a single payer system, is indeed an example of the worst way government can be involved.

And the Western European governments have _death panels_ to decide who deserves medical care and who deserves to die. And, in Western Europe, you must wait over a month for your non-urgent surgery, and much longer to be admitted into the ER. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-... . And you might die while waiting for your medical care: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/bacchus-barua-/wait-times-c…

Even here in the UK with our avowedly socialist NHS you don't have to wait for anything - if you want you can always go private.

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#49

Post by ceejayoz »

sol_remmy wrote: post #45
ceejayoz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The graph is inaccurate because the 2017 and 2015 numbers are different? Find any source - any reputable source - that indicate US healthcare costs are anywhere near the rest of the OECD.

Your graph (2015): United States: $10300 Canada: $4400 Ratio: 2.34 My actual findings (2017): United States: $9250 Canada: $6600 Ratio: 1.40 I think your graph is fake news. Sources: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/20/5247741... https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-60...

"Different sources have slightly different numbers" isn't the same as "fake news". The OECD's numbers are publicly available.

The NPR link you cite has Canada at 4576 and the US at 9237, for a ratio of 2.02. The CTV link (citing a different organization; perhaps one considers dental/eyeware and the other doesn't, or something along those lines) doesn't offer US numbers to compare against.

Wikipedia has a consistently-sourced list you can peruse, too, for multiple years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

Re: U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

#50

Post by abritinthebay »

gota wrote: post #18

Well, virtually nobody browsing HN can say they share the pains of the workers of the US that 'suffer when compared with the rest of the world'. Sure, there are many low-income residents, high inequality, high turnover, low unemployment with low upward job mobility, etc. All those things are true for the 'disadvantaged', and engineers, technologists, computer scientists etc. are _not_ part of the population that make…

Flawed premise. The lack of a sane social safety net and of a 1st world healthcare system affects everyone in the US.

Yes, being well paid in tech helps alleviate some of the issues due to them being absorbed by money, essentially, but that is itself an effect on the spending power & mobility of the individual.

The US has effectively mortgaged and remortgaged is population and has not been keeping up on maintaining it. That bill will come due.

Post reply on HN