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For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

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Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#101

Post by claudeganon »

lukifer wrote: post #44
gremlinsinc wrote: post #2

I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months and depression hits hard when money is tight. There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecu…

> UBI would also probably help. As the only candidate currently running on a UBI platform, Andrew Yang has argued that one of its benefits would be a reduction in economic anxiety, with ancillary benefits to health in the form of stress reduction and improved executive function, as well as lower rates of depression, suicide, and drug addiction.

Without other universal floors on things like housing and healthcare, UBI is just going to be eaten up by those costs. An indirect sop to these sectors isn’t going to do much to improve the average person’s quality of life.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#102

Post by leetcrew »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #49
leetcrew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my guess is an effective system of healthcare and/or UBI would decrease the suicide rate somewhat, because people wouldn't feel so helpless. I'm not sure that max wage algorithm creates a healthy incentive though. it would seem to encourage hiring more employees than necessary just to increase the executive's compensation. I think people can often tell when their job isn't really necessary and it probably doesn't fee…

It doesn't encourage hiring more employees - how would that affect the average employee pay? You just have to pay more to the ones you have.

> w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired.

maybe I misread this and GP meant increasing the fraction of US employees?

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#103

Post by notadoc »

codingslave wrote: post #12

Really doubt this. Instead I would look into the connection between anti depressants/anti psychotics and suicide. There's research of strong connections, but immunity is claimed by the drug companies, "because they were already depressed/mentally unhealthy when put on the drugs". Mental health professionals and managers at large drug companies need to start going to jail for over-prescribing psychiatric drugs. The ne…

> Stemming the flow of cheap fentanyl dumped into the United States by China

OK, and how's the "war on drugs" going thus far?

> Mental health professionals and managers at large drug companies need to start going to jail for over-prescribing psychiatric drugs.

Really? You want to put people into jail for trying to treat depression?

> throwing doctors in jail who over prescribe these drugs would do wonders for people.

And now you want to imprison doctors for treating pain and taking care of patients?

You can't be serious, I hope you are merely ignorant rather than that punitive.

BTW, prescriptions have nothing to do with illegal fentanyl overdoses, and virtually nobody prescribed painkillers becomes addicted to them. This is well studied but largely ignored by the political posturing, media hysteria, and moral panicking about an imaginary prescription crisis, data shows it does not exist.

"Overall 675,527 patients underwent urological surgery, of whom 0.09% were diagnosed with opioid dependence or overdose."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00225...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27400458

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3z98b/big-pharma-didnt-c...

Read facts and change your mind, or don't and remain ignorant. You have that freedom.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#104

Post by Frondo »

leetcrew wrote: post #7
gremlinsinc wrote: post #2

I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months and depression hits hard when money is tight. There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecu…

my guess is an effective system of healthcare and/or UBI would decrease the suicide rate somewhat, because people wouldn't feel so helpless. I'm not sure that max wage algorithm creates a healthy incentive though. it would seem to encourage hiring more employees than necessary just to increase the executive's compensation. I think people can often tell when their job isn't really necessary and it probably doesn't fee…

I like the incentive that a maximum wage introduces: increase the pay of your staff and subcontractors hired by your company to raise your wage ceiling.

I can't see a drawback, aside from someone at that ceiling simply wanting to raise their salary without raising those working for them.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#105

Post by claudeganon »

whiddershins wrote: post #96
claudeganon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s something obviously wrong with the U.S. because suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young people and has jumped 50+ percent since the Great Recession: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/suicide-young-peo...

What would you prefer the second-leading cause of death be for young people? I am being serious. Some things have to be the top causes of death for young people and the list definitionally can’t include the aspirational “old age.”

This seems like an odd question. Obviously we should prefer accidental death among young people vs. that which is self-inflicted, while hoping that the overall number of deaths diminishes, regardless of circumstance. But I don’t think a spike in youth suicide is something we should hand waive away in any case.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#106

Post by wallace_f »

ceejayoz wrote: post #89
simonsarris wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you look at current income figures and try to come up with a plan where juicing the rich works. There's a reason Germany's 42% tax bracket starts at... €55,961 If you want to pay for these things, you need to bring your idea of who's gonna get taxed way, way down to earth.

> There's a reason Germany's 42% tax bracket starts at... €55,961 Oooh, is the reason "because a lot of services are publicly delivered instead of privately", because I'll bet it is. I pay $30k/year for private healthcare here in the US; a $2200/month premium and an annual out-of-pocket of $4k. I'd happily accept a 10% tax hike to make that go away, and that doesn't even account for my kids' eventual college costs...

US healthcare is corrupt and inefficient. It's not only a debate about who should pay for it. Your comment suggests changing the latter would fix the problem with cost, which surely has a lot to do with the former.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#107

Post by kangnkodos »

tombert wrote: post #41
cartercole wrote: post #11

The minimum wage should be 0 - sincerely any good economist

That's a common trope, but there have been studies indicating that minimum wage doesn't have a significant effect on unemployment. [0] [1] Assuming that's accurate, then shouldn't we mandate that these corporations pay their workers a livable wage? If they don't pay the workers a livable wage, guess who does? The taxpayers, in the form of food stamps, welfare, and increased prison population. I really don't see why t…

Economists can't run experiments like other scientists. In a way, they are more like historians.

In my opinion, almost all of the actual past raises to minimum wage have been on the small side, and have not significantly affected unemployment. You're right about that.

But if my opinion is true, then there's a huge leap with no scientific basis to saying "therefore this specific large increase in minimum wage will not raise unemployment."

Unfortunately, there aren't any scientific studies of increasing the US minimum wage by 100% because it has not been done multiple times in the past. So no one really knows what would happen if we did it now.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#108

Post by Noos »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #49
leetcrew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my guess is an effective system of healthcare and/or UBI would decrease the suicide rate somewhat, because people wouldn't feel so helpless. I'm not sure that max wage algorithm creates a healthy incentive though. it would seem to encourage hiring more employees than necessary just to increase the executive's compensation. I think people can often tell when their job isn't really necessary and it probably doesn't fee…

It doesn't encourage hiring more employees - how would that affect the average employee pay? You just have to pay more to the ones you have.

yeah, it would actually decrease the number of employees if employee cost is significant enough to not be absorbed by raising the price. It might also decrease it by forcing a robustness check on existing businesses. A lot of them manage but couldn't absorb a financial hit; this would be a minor crisis but one that could just push marginal businesses over the edge.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#110

Post by amelius »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #2

I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months and depression hits hard when money is tight. There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecu…

I think a max wage totally makes sense, because nobody is more than a modest constant times more productive than anyone else, and anything created by a person is always built on existing knowledge and constructs created by society. Also, risk does not really exist anymore these days (with minimum wages, financial constructs around bankruptcy, etc.)
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