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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

#111

Post by wcarron »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #34
keeganjw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum wage should be livable - sincerely any good person

Livable to what extent? You should be able to afford food (what quality of food? do good people also believe everybody deserves to eat filet mignon/comparable on occasion?), transportation (which in some cases means car + gas + maintenance + insurance) + housing (what kind of housing? rent a room in a low cost area? have your own single family home?) + family (should you be encouraged to have 3 children aka mouths to…

> "do the minimum and be rewarded?"

In my experience, the lower you are paid, the harder you are worked. Cooks, janitors, sanitation workers, mail(wo)men and amazon delivery workers, waiters, teachers, mechanics, construction workers, etc. all work longer hours in more emotionally and/or physically taxing jobs, with worse pay and work environments than any dentist, accountant, lawyer, CEO, sales person, or software engineer that I have ever met.

Wages are inversely correlated with how hard you actually have to work, perversely

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

#112

Post by gjs278 »

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…

have you considered getting a job

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

#113

Post by notadoc »

chadlavi wrote: post #99
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…

Pardon my French but what the heck do you think is driving rising depression rates and opioid addiction if not economic pressures? Do you really think those are unrelated?

A large volume of research shows depression/suicide/drug abuse/etc are directly related to economic stress, but that's a much harder topic to address so it's ignored in favor of easy scapegoats and bogeyman.

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

#114

Post by Kye »

whatshisface wrote: post #52
0000011111 wrote: post #47

I see income inequality as a key issue here. I recently read the "Triumph of injustice" and came away with a changed view in our tax system. After reading the book, I now believe that any household with a net worth over $100 million should be subject to both an income and capital gains tax of 99%. In short folks with income come and or net worth at levels that surpass their ability to buy a life of finical security f…

That would not create the semi-communist world you're hoping for: today's rich people are already rich, and the effect would be stopping anybody new from becoming rich.

>> "and the effect would be stopping anybody new from becoming rich."

I read this as you thinking there's a problem with no more people getting rich. Can you expand on that?

For example: how many people need to get rich to balance the economic, social, and political power of the people who already are? Is this the best way to achieve that balance?

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

#115

Post by natalyarostova »

amelius wrote: post #110
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.)

A max wage is insane government overreach. If I want to make a deal with someone else where I’ll work to do something and in return they pay me a portion of the surplus value I create, there is no justification, moral or economic, to cap that amount.

Moreover, price ceilings have a rich and long empirical and theoretical argument against their existence in the economics literature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling

Finally, by what measure do you feel able to assert that no one is more productive than someone else based on some constant? How much more productive was the team of the Manhattan project than some other team of physicists?

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

#116

Post by llamataboot »

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…

Are you claiming that a $1/hour increase in your wage makes you less likely to be on an SSRI? I'm not sure I follow your logic here...

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

#117

Post by Domenic_S »

hanniabu wrote: post #77
ngngngng wrote: post #4

I was reading the other day that typically mass shootings happen during a recession, and right now is a confusing time because the economy is supposedly doing fantastic, yet we keep having mass shootings. Could this have to do with the mounting inequality? It seems the standard indicators for the health of the economy are breaking because wealth just keeps pooling near the top. So what this study could be saying is,…

The economy is only doing great for businesses. Common folk are barely recovered from the recession. So yes, I would say it's definitely due to inequality and a breakdown of indicators.

> Common folk are barely recovered from the recession.

By what measure?

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

#118

Post by simonsarris »

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...

That's my point. You can totally have those things, just most middle class people will have to pay in, it cannot be built via taxing only some nebulous $100 million+ class.

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

#119

Post by linuxasheviller »

cartercole wrote: post #11

The minimum wage should be 0 - sincerely any good economist

Any good economist would point to the economic inefficiencies created on the whole market by the externalities of the human suffering this would cause.

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

#120

Post by mc32 »

linuxftw wrote: post #100
mc32 wrote: post #95

Alternatively stop exporting jobs and outsourcing joining a race to the bottom. Stop buying cheap, disposable stuff and buy durable things affording locals a living wage. Minimum wages are only slightly better. In my mind minimum wages are wages to minimally support a teenager or similar who has no other responsibilities. People with responsibilities need actually decent jobs. Hollowing our decent paying blue collar…

You mean domestic policies have been negatively impacting the labor force for decades now? Get outta town! It's almost like low-to-no tariffs and importing literal slave-produced goods has created economic incentives to produce things overseas.

I agree with Bernie and Trump on protecting American workers. Everyone else just goes along with the siren song of more better value add jobs that never materialized for the affected population.

No one listened to the crazy Texan when he warned us.

Now their supposed to be happy having access to $5 T-shirts which last a week and should be mad that tariffs could push that up but could make s better paying job viable for an employer who no longer gets undersold.

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