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

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

#91

Post by sol_remmy »

arethuza wrote: post #73
sol_remmy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post-high school schooling for a standard family doctor (one of the lowest paid doctors): 4 years bachelors + 4 years medical school + 3 years residency = 11 years post-high school education.

Seems to be between 9 and 12 years after high school for a GP in the UK: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/lengt...

Except, in the UK, med school graduates at age 22 are "junior doctors" and are getting paid starting Year 5 (first year of foundational school)

UK: Start getting paid year 5

USA: Start getting paid year 9

Big difference

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

#92

Post by rbanffy »

titzer wrote: post #84

Article appears, is rendered fully, and then shows adblocker-blocker popover. Dismissing the popup results in being redirected to the start page. This is very anti-web. Nope.

They need to pay for the reporting, after all. Having said that, you can sneak in by anonymously browsing there.

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

#93

Post by rbanffy »

sunshinelackof wrote: post #59

While it may be true for a subset of posters here, the idea of just finding a new job if it doesn't suit you is not possible for most people. The majority of people need to be able to do something mildly productive and be able to live a happy life as a result. If your economic model is leaving this many people behind--or they even feel they're being left behind it's not a good model. Everyday I find it harder to argu…

> The majority of people need to be able to do something mildly productive and be able to live a happy life as a result

A happy life is not a luxury most workers have.

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

#94

Post by rbanffy »

ergothus wrote: post #70
sunshinelackof wrote: post #59

While it may be true for a subset of posters here, the idea of just finding a new job if it doesn't suit you is not possible for most people. The majority of people need to be able to do something mildly productive and be able to live a happy life as a result. If your economic model is leaving this many people behind--or they even feel they're being left behind it's not a good model. Everyday I find it harder to argu…

I read an interesting perspective on universal basic income recently that suggested that it was MORE capitalistic than not: by freeing people from limits imposed by needing to supply food/shelter for themselves/their families, it allows more participation in the market. That seems a radical but obvious-in-hindsight idea to me: a majority of the population cant participate in the competition the system itself needs be…

> that suggested that it was MORE capitalistic than not

That's an awesome (but not very honest) way to sell it to the leftophobic right. But, again, capitalism doesn't mandate small government and vanishingly low taxes.

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

#95

Post by sol_remmy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #57
sol_remmy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever tried to get non-urgent surgery in the US? Whatever you say on this does not line up with reality. The UK, a nation of 60 million, has 120,000 people waiting over 6 months for surgery: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-patients-waiti... That would be equivilant to over 640,000 people waiting over 6 months for surgery in a country with 320 million people. The wait times do not compare. They…

> The wait times do not compare. They are 10x, 20x worse in Europe. What's the surgical wait time for an uninsured American ? That's 12.2% of America, or forty million people. http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/16/news/economy/uninsured-ameri... In some cases, this winds up being an infinite wait time: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02... Side-note: I'm citing a whole bunch of sources in my repli…

You just moved the goalpost. We were talking about wait times for insured people, which is 88% of Americans. Can we stick to one topic until it is resolved?

For the 88% of Americans who are insured, their wait times are lower than in rich Western European countries and Canada, and far lower than poorer Western European countries like Italy.

Here's an article about people in Canada paying for surgery in the U.S. to avoid waiting forever for their surgery: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/Long+Canadian+wait...

Have you ever seen an article about people going to Canada for superior medical care? No. Canadian medical care is clearly cheaper but also inferior.

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

#96

Post by ergothus »

sol_remmy wrote: post #51
ceejayoz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the Western European governments have _death panels_ to decide who deserves medical care and who deserves to die. In the US, we just call them "insurance companies". > And, in Western Europe, you must wait over a month for your non-urgent surgery Have you ever tried to get non-urgent surgery in the US? https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-rel... > In a survey of 15 large U.S. metropolitan ar…

> Have you ever tried to get non-urgent surgery in the US? Whatever you say on this does not line up with reality. The UK, a nation of 60 million, has 120,000 people waiting over 6 months for surgery: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-patients-waiti... That would be equivilant to over 640,000 people waiting over 6 months for surgery in a country with 320 million people. The wait times do not compare. They…

> Whatever you say on this does not line up with reality.

This sounds like you refuse to consider that you could be wrong. Is there evidence that would convince you, or will you simply decide any evidence is wrong and find a new justification?

I could be wrong (feel free to prove me so! ;) ) and there is nothing wrong with being convicable-but-unconvinced (as I currently am about the superiority of the US healthcare system) but that is not the impression I have taken from your comment.

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

#97

Post by ceejayoz »

sol_remmy wrote: post #95
ceejayoz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wait times do not compare. They are 10x, 20x worse in Europe. What's the surgical wait time for an uninsured American ? That's 12.2% of America, or forty million people. http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/16/news/economy/uninsured-ameri... In some cases, this winds up being an infinite wait time: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02... Side-note: I'm citing a whole bunch of sources in my repli…

You just moved the goalpost. We were talking about wait times for insured people, which is 88% of Americans. Can we stick to one topic until it is resolved? For the 88% of Americans who are insured , their wait times are lower than in rich Western European countries and Canada, and far lower than poorer Western European countries like Italy. Here's an article about people in Canada paying for surgery in the U.S. to a…

> We were talking about wait times for insured people, which is 88% of Americans.

No, we're talking about wait times for people in the respective countries. If you think wait times of six months are excessive, you should be incensed about "forever".

> Have you ever seen an article about people going to Canada for superior medical care?

I would suspect the citizenship/residency requirements make this difficult in practice, as does their legal ban on a parallel private system.

Meanwhile, if going overseas for care is a bad sign, as you allege, the US sees the same thing:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/02/americans-fle...

"Lots of people are pointing out that this isn’t really true, but I want to point out something different: Americans flee the US in pretty similar numbers to Canadians fleeing Canada. The best numbers we have suggest that about 45,000 Canadians left the country for medical care in 2015. (That’s all destinations, not just the US.) Meanwhile, about 250,000 Americans left the US for medical care abroad. And these numbers don’t even count the number of Americans who get their prescription drugs from overseas."

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

#98

Post by mac01021 »

This article has a lot of numbers in it. But it does a pretty poor job of describing what set of people, or even how many people are struggling with the issues it describes.

- 20% of employees leave or lose there jobs every year, but it would be a lot more helpful if that number weren't corrupted by the "leave" part when we're only concerned with the "lose" part.

- Half (or whatever number) of employees do not have union representation. But what fraction of employees want or need a union. Many, for sure, but as a software developer employed by a company I certainly do not need or want one.

I'm all for confronting issues with the way our national economy is structured and assessing its pros and cons relative to the world's other countries. But I think these issues deserve better reporting.

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

#99

Post by gota »

maze-le wrote: post #55
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…

>> 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'. Thats a huge generalization. Not everyone reading HN is a top earning software engineer. Some people are just genuineley inerested in HN-topics but earn their wage with something else entireley. And there are lousy paid IT jobs as well. And there are software developers,…

>> Thats a huge generalization.

True. Although now I'm curious what the proportions are.

>> And there are lousy paid IT jobs as well.

In comparison to other IT jobs, absolutely. In comparison to other industries, not so much. The most basic jobs in IT pay at least as well as other industries, and more often than not from a little to a lot better, no? Anyway, I doubt there are many IT jobs that pay so little that those workers are stuck in the category the article is broadly laying out, though.

Your other points all stand. YOu are correct, but the piece is not about these cases and more about the general state of employment and compensation

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

#100

Post by gota »

CalRobert wrote: post #90
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…

"Anyway, at a _personal_ level, nobody here will come to the conclusion they better leave to the EU because they'd be better there" Well, for what it's worth my wife and I did just that because we wanted more vacation time and nobody in the US was competitive in that regard, especially for her. I was also pretty near the start of my career and had what you might call a crappy job in LA - I've progressed quite a bit i…

Sure, this is in line with other comments about healthcare and other benefits. But the piece (and my comment) were more about general employment and compensation
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