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Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

cdc.gov

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Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#111

Post by kortilla »

renholder wrote: post #39
zeroname wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because I'm "out of touch" with ordinary, less privileged workers doesn't equate to my experience and observations in the sector as being invalidated, yeah? It means your experience doesn't scale to broader society, but you were making a point about broader society. If the ordinary secretary or the shift worker or the policeman don't get their "work from home days" there's essentially no difference in your exa…

> Working from home on occasion certainly isn't unusual. Occassion and modus operandi are two entirely different precepts but you know this, yeah, and your trying ever-so hard to be pedantic. It's cute. > Paid sick days is something your insurance may or may not cover. I thought it was the employer who paid the sick days in the states. What you're talking about falls under the FMLA, I believe; which is an entire diff…

>Are you sure we, the europoor, are actually poor or is this just something you're reverberating from the echo chambers of American exceptionalism.

I’m not sure why you are getting so defensive when it is you who understands so little about the US that you just described a typical US tech job and tried to pretend it was something special about Europe.

Developers in the US make significantly more on average than developers anywhere in Europe. Developers working at the big tech companies do even better than that by clearing north of $300k annually between stock, cash, and bonuses. These jobs allow working from home, provide healthcare, PTO, significant maternity/paternity leave, etc. A few minutes of googling these numbers might help you gain some perspective.

The US is easily the best place to be when you have in-demand skills. Every country is going to trail pretty far behind on what it’s employment ecosystem can offer a developer (as of right now). This is why your post sounds so ignorant to people familiar with the perks of being a developer in the US.

Where the US is absolutely terrible compared to Europe is the social safety nets that people in worse jobs depend on. Yet that’s not what you decided to use as your point of comparison. You instead tried to show off the perks of tech skills there, which are worse than many HN readers receive in the US.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#112

Post by kortilla »

DangitBobby wrote: post #106
kortilla wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You needed to talk to more lawyers. If the case is like you said, it’s open and shut. Walmart gets successfully sued all of the time when they are at fault for workplace accidents. I personally know of two separate acquaintances’ relatives who were hurt at Walmart, fired, sued with no up front legal fees, and won. One got hit by a parking lot shopping cart train and the other got injured in the mechanic shop.

It's not unreasonable to be discouraged when you reach out to two professionals and neither of them seem to think that it's worth their time.

Lawyers work in niches. It’s unreasonable to expect to find one after only speaking to two.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#113

Post by tokyodude »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #83
mruts wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well would you prefer to have a crappy job or no job at all? Don’t labor under the assumption that government mandates don’t affect the decisions of businesses.

I, for one, would prefer that sick people stay at home. Especially food service workers. It would improve public health.

I don't know the solution I feel like given it's illegal to punch someone in the face it should also be illegal to give them your contagious sickness. Yea I know it's impossible to tell who gave you the their sickness so it will never happen. Just find it strange that if you punch someone in the face you'll face criminal charges but you get them sick so that they have fever that may give them brain damage, a sore throat so bad they can't eat, a cough so harsh it scars their insides for life, absolutely nothing. I get there's nothing that can be done legally but there's zero contrition as well.

I often wonder if we could magically make every person on the planet avoid human contact for 1 month if we'd kill off the common cold. I know it's impossible obviously it's just an interesting thought experiment.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#114

Post by StreamBright »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #61
StreamBright wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private healthcare, paid by my salary, private schools, cars, 2nd amendment.

And see? This is the kind of idiotic one-liners we have to deal with in this country about taxes and citizenship. >>How were your children born? > Private healthcare So those that can't get jobs with it don't deserve it. And even those who make little can't really afford it either. Sure the ACA copper plan leaves the policy holder with 30%, but in actuality its insurance they can't actually use. >>Fed? Clothed? > pai…

[flagged]

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#115

Post by benatkin »

tokyodude wrote: post #113
HarryHirsch wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, would prefer that sick people stay at home. Especially food service workers. It would improve public health.

I don't know the solution I feel like given it's illegal to punch someone in the face it should also be illegal to give them your contagious sickness. Yea I know it's impossible to tell who gave you the their sickness so it will never happen. Just find it strange that if you punch someone in the face you'll face criminal charges but you get them sick so that they have fever that may give them brain damage, a sore thr…

What about people who can’t tell if they have the flu? Peak contagiousness and peak symptoms don’t occur at exactly the same time.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#116

Post by kortilla »

markdown wrote: post #17
School-Cotton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's your excuse, USA? Well, what's Fiji's excuse for being "barely above 'third world' status" ? What makes you think it's normal for Fiji to have low standards of development, but it's an aberration for the USA? It turns out there are many different dimensions of development, and just like many countries, the US ranks poorly on some of those dimensions, due to extremely complicated and maybe intractable politic…

> Well, what's Fiji's excuse for being "barely above 'third world' status" ? Well there's a very long list of reasons starting from geographic isolation to brain drain (incl. to the USA) all the way up to military coups, but I doubt that was a serious question so there's no point me answering your question in any great detail. > What makes you think it's normal for Fiji to have low standards of development, but it's…

You missed the larger point. A token offering of “5 days for rugby” is irrelevant if the rest of the economy is shit. You might claim that more government mandated PTO has no impact on the economy, but that’s not been established in any facts you presented.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#117

Post by cblum »

_they wrote: post #56
renholder wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upboat for rationalisation. Also, from the European perspective (and specifically speaking of the technology sector, as that's what I have first-hand experience with), taking sick leave to take care of a child at home isn't a thing, whatsoever. You would just send an email to your team saying that you're sorry but you're working from home because your kid is sick and that would be the end of it. No compulsion to take…

American here. I would like to point out that places with amazing health and vacation benefits exist. I work at one in academia. Amazing health insurance, amazing sick leave and vacation (that you are actually allowed to use, guilt free). Paternity and maternity leave, six months (so a total of a year for one couple). If you have a family or value those things, it pays to quit looking solely at that salary field and…

The problem in America is that those things are exclusively dependent on one’s employer. More developed countries like Finland or Sweden give everyone those things via national policy.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#118

Post by lqet »

Escolte wrote: post #87
lqet wrote: post #73

I am European, and the comments in here talking about how this would never be a problem in Europe are a bit elitist. It may be true that you may work from home if you a software developer, but if you do shift work, for example, it may be very difficult (or impossible) to find a replacement for you if you realize that your 6-year has a cold 60 minutes before your shift starts. It may be very possible that your co-work…

Because here in Western Europe, our healthcare doesn't depend on your job/income. Plus, I've found that on average Americans are more health anxious (for example, if I search in Google Spain in Spanish "I just accidently hit my head with a wall" the treatment results I'll get will be "if you feel fine afterwards, and you didn't black out or anything like that, it's okay" while if I do the same search on google.com/nc…

> Because here in Western Europe, our healthcare doesn't depend on your job/income.

It doesn't? At least where I am from, the cost of healthcare very much depends in your income, as the insurance rates are calculated like taxes (with an upper limit, of course). And this only covers basic medical care. Anything that is viewed as "luxury" or "cosmetic" is either only covered partly, or not at all, for example artificial dentition, and you need additional insurance for that, which not everyone can afford.

I am almost amazed when Americans think that healthcare in Europe is basically free. Nearly 1/10 of my monthly income is spent on medical insurances. The only difference is that it is quite hard to "opt-out" of the insurance.

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#119

Post by sabujp »

renholder wrote: post #15
School-Cotton wrote: post #11

The headline here is incredibly misleading. The CDC is not making the factual claim that "low-income parents send sick kids to school due to lack paid sick leave". The actual truth: a paper from the CDC finding an apparently quite weak link between poverty and rate of school absence due to sickness stuck that in as one of many somewhat plausible explanations, in a very speculative discussion section. To emphasize: th…

Upboat for rationalisation. Also, from the European perspective (and specifically speaking of the technology sector, as that's what I have first-hand experience with), taking sick leave to take care of a child at home isn't a thing, whatsoever. You would just send an email to your team saying that you're sorry but you're working from home because your kid is sick and that would be the end of it. No compulsion to take…

an email to your team?!?! HAHHAHAHA did you even read the part about low income. People in families making <$35000 aren't sending emails to their "team"

Re: Associations Among School Absenteeism, G.I. and Respiratory Illness, and Income

#120

Post by mises »

I've seen other comments mention this, but it's really hard to make the case for paying a wage laborer to not show up. Even if he's sick. Can't do janitorial work from home. And such labor is highly fungible: very high turnover, easy replacement, little training, lots of firing/hiring. If you don't show up, you get replaced, mostly because your company now has to hire someone else to do the job and has no reason to keep paying you.

Let's not forget that every time we pass stronger "labor laws" (e.g. higher minimum wage), we do see job loss, decreased hours, second jobs. A paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that the costs to low-income workers outweighed the benefits by about three to one. Telling McDonalds it must pay people to stay home will almost certainly just accelerate the pace of automation.

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