U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by gota » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

abritinthebay wrote: post #50

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 i…

Being well payed is supposed to alleviate these issues to the point where it wouldn't normally justify moving _because of those issues_. You can move because a certain aspect is more appealing to you, as is the case with vacation days for another commenter, for example, but that makes it more a particular case rather than a general trend.

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

#102

Post by MatrixAlgebra » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

saint_fiasco wrote: post #85

MatrixAlgebra wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with free education is that as more people become educated, the signaling effect of education becomes diluted. So the Europeans are paying for something that decreases in real value the more that people have access to it. That's a self defeating policy, especially since it encourages people to remain in academia for significantly longer than they would otherwise, because hey, it's paid for by the taxpayer…

> If their desired career are less lucrative, they will not take out more loans than absolutely necessary This is not in fact what is actually happening. Lots of people take out loans whey they are first starting college, when they are young, inexperienced and by definition uneducated. Few of them even try to calculate the expected value of college for their future income, and the ones who try don't have high quality…

The information is available to them, they have no one to blame but themselves. It is not the duty of the taxpayer to fund poor decision making.

That's one of the major philsophical differences between the US and Europe: people must take responsibility for themselves and their own lives.

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

#103

Post by nerdponx » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

abritinthebay wrote: post #58

maratd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings This is not true. Those same workers get most or all of their insurance costs covered by the company. Same goes for retirement with 401k plans, etc. > Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer. This is true.

This comment betrays an incredible misunderstanding or naivety of how medical insurance works in the US, and what/how it covers people. Also a completely bizarre use of 401(k)’s which are not available to most citizens and are highly volatile. Compared to the rest of the world the US spends more individually on healthcare & gets less. It’s average retirement savings are amongst the lowest in the developed world! Hand…

Why are you being downvoted? Even after employer subsidies, group rates, and tax savings from income deduction, health insurance can cost a lot of money, and you will still have routine non-covered medical expenses, as well as quite a lot of downside risk depending on your plan.

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

#104

Post by sol_remmy » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #97

sol_remmy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prac…

I'm sorry but Mother Jones is not a reputable news source. Can you link to some other site?

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

#105

Post by analog31 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

finaliteration wrote: post #13

Reactionary_ wrote: post #2

The US is one of the best places in the world to be a business owner, that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies. In order to create such an environment worker protections cannot be as robust as in Europe. This biased article of course ignores that fact. Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well. They get to keep a greater portion of their income, their income goes…

> They get to keep a greater portion of their income I always see this come up during discussions about how the US compares to other developed countries. I think the mentality is slightly different in the EU. If you were raised knowing that your income was going to be taxed at 50% but you also got free healthcare, education, welfare assistance, etc., you’d probably learn to value those things over buying a bigger TV…

I'm not even sure that we really get to "keep" more of our income. We have to hoard more of our income to buffer ourselves against emergencies that can drive people into bankruptcy, such as medical care. We have to save for college if we have kids. We need to cover ourselves in old age. It's "our" money, but it isn't really ours to spend.

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

#106

Post by scruple » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #64

> The United States and Mexico are the only countries in the entire study that don’t require any advance notice for individual firings. This is why I never feel bad for quitting a job without giving the expected two week notice. They don't give you any notice when they fire you.

A Canadian friend just experienced this, too. He had many years with the same employer and was recently fired for nebulous reasons and offered a paltry severance package. He's currently in the process of suing. I do not know _anything_ about Canadian labor laws but I did find it _very_ interesting that he went through this experience as a Canadian with a Canadian company in Canada (BC). It goes against everything that I thought that I knew about the treatment of workers there (no surprises there, of course, as I am a naive person, but still...).

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

#107

Post by njarboe » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #83

lkrubner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of this was determined by the so-called "Battle Of Detroit" of 1948. The USA had just defeated Nazi Germany and was looking to make sure that fascism would never return to Germany, so the USA encouraged the formation of strong labor unions, and supported the law that made unions automatic for large firms. The USA labor unions looked at that and wondered "If we are imposing this on Germany as a good thing, why ca…

> Although the workers got higher wages, they were denied control of the corporations There is an interesting lesson on giving up control of your rewards in favor of an uncontrollable but larger reward. Stupid humans.

The labor unions did not have control, but were striking to get that control. Maybe if they don't take the higher wages then end up with nothing, busted and broken. Complicated humans.

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

#108

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

sol_remmy wrote: post #104

ceejayoz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 prac…

I'm sorry but Mother Jones is not a reputable news source. Can you link to some other site?

You should at least briefly skim it if you want to debate constructively. If you'd done so, you'd have noticed that the line "Meanwhile, about 250,000 Americans left the US for medical care abroad" is a link. To a US government publication at https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/c....

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

#109

Post by njarboe » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

protonimitate wrote: post #72

tonysdg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we as American's have been brainwashed to believe that we are all just 'down-on-our-luck millionaires' I'm not sure I'd say "brainwashed" -- this is a founding mythos of the United States. It's embedded in our most sacred documents -- the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, etc. -- that the individual (in theory) reigns supreme and (in theory) has ultimate control over his/her life. It's…

That's fair. Brainwashed is probably an overly emotional label for what is actually a great idea that has deviated from it's original intent. The American Spirit (for lack of a better term) is at odds with the economic and political structure of current-day America. We are led to believe (for good reasons) that we control our fate, but the infrastructure no longer supports it in a way that makes it available to every…

From 1862 till 1976 an American could always head west(or north) and claim 160 acres with 5 years of hard work(caveats apply)[1]. It would be cool if some similar opportunity was available today. 1976 was not that long ago.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts

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

#110

Post by deadmetheny » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

MatrixAlgebra wrote: post #102

saint_fiasco wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If their desired career are less lucrative, they will not take out more loans than absolutely necessary This is not in fact what is actually happening. Lots of people take out loans whey they are first starting college, when they are young, inexperienced and by definition uneducated. Few of them even try to calculate the expected value of college for their future income, and the ones who try don't have high quality…

The information is available to them, they have no one to blame but themselves. It is not the duty of the taxpayer to fund poor decision making. That's one of the major philsophical differences between the US and Europe: people must take responsibility for themselves and their own lives.

The problem with the 'personal responsibility' screed in regards to university in America is that more or less my entire generation was hoodwinked into going to college and doing anything and to totally not worry about the cost because loans are available and you'll never get a job that will amount to anything if you don't go to college. Ironically enough, a large portion of my high school class that's doing the best financially are the kids who didn't think they were smart enough for college that went into trade school or apprenticeships. When your parents, guidance counselors, and basically the entire system are yelling that you'll never do more than flip burgers if you don't rack up a lot of student debt going to school, and you're a young impressionable youth that trusts these people...well, I think you have to be somewhat willfully ignorant or just an obtuse asshole to blame those of us who took that advice and got burned.