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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

#291

Post by mymythisisthis »

mrfusion wrote: post #273
HarryHirsch wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing is artificially constrained due to zoning regulation, and in any given area there is a small number of major landlords, who all know each other and who all are politically well connected. UBI will be a conduit to funnel money from the taxpayers to large landowners.

However with ubi more people might have the means to move out of the cities sooner than they otherwise would have. This reducing demand.

I think this is why people want 'less government'. What they really mean is there are too many governments, the basic three levels, plus other institutions like home owners associations. Moving means dealing with a whole different bureaucracy, and falling to the bottom of a new list.

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

#292

Post by natalyarostova »

susijdjdjxa wrote: post #255
ggreer wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If managers and executives are so overpaid, why aren't top firms outcompeted by companies that offer lower wages for such positions? Lower wages would allow those companies to offer the same services at lower prices and take over the market.

I think the “outcompeted” argument proves too much. Nobody does anything wrong, otherwise they would be outcompeted.

I think the correct way to think about it is not that nobody does anything wrong, it's that if people consistently do things wrong, and it's reasonable clear that they are doing things wrong, then their long run survival rate in a competitive market will be zero, as someone else will outcompete them.

If someone is making a claim that someone is clearly doing something wrong, the burden of proof should -- to some extent -- be on them to explain why despite this, they are continuing to be successful without going out of business (if that is in fact the case).

For example, it feels to me that the way FANG companies hire SDEs and place them on teams is inefficient and weird. Why are 24 year old 1337coders considered fungible to work on any project? It doesn't make sense to me. But it's hard for me to convince myself that my feeling is correct, given that there are billions of dollars on the table for anyone who can come up with a better strategy.

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

#293

Post by rkho »

I'd also like to see the inclusion of compulsory personal finance and budgeting education in our education system, both during high school and college/university years. A lot of the stress that encompassed my life back when I was working in a retail environment came from worrying over bills which ballooned because of my own lack of budgeting. It's an important skill that everyone should be exposed to early on.

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

#294

Post by anm89 »

celdon25 wrote: post #274
anm89 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question. What if you don't like potatoes? This sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

Is it as much of a dystopian nightmare as, say, having no food at all?

We already have soup kitchens in America. We have solutions of last resort regarding hunger. So this is a total strawman.

Yes. Having every man, woman and child line up for government potatoes, government bread, and government cheese at some government office is unequivocally a dystopian nightmare.

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

#295

Post by susijdjdjxa »

natalyarostova wrote: post #292
susijdjdjxa wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the “outcompeted” argument proves too much. Nobody does anything wrong, otherwise they would be outcompeted.

I think the correct way to think about it is not that nobody does anything wrong, it's that if people consistently do things wrong, and it's reasonable clear that they are doing things wrong, then their long run survival rate in a competitive market will be zero, as someone else will outcompete them. If someone is making a claim that someone is clearly doing something wrong, the burden of proof should -- to some exte…

I think this argument fails because “firm-space” is sparse. There are many companies, but there are way more possible companies given all the degrees of freedom. Also, the number of “competition events” is small. Companies don’t have the opportunity to run gradient descent to optimize themselves. A bunch of companies can make the same bad decision for the same bad reason, and they will each succeed or fail because of a bunch of unrelated factors.

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

#296

Post by MiroF »

corporate_shi11 wrote: post #211
luckydata wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you're told you're supposed to "make it" since birth, and you don't, you feel like a piece of shit. Marginalized communities have been told the other story, every little thing is a win. Difference in expectations is huge, and source of all sort of bad things (like racial resentment etc...). Solution: make this country slightly less "dog eat dog" and you'll solve a LOT of social issues almost overnight.

Using the term "marginalized communities" as a broad descriptor for people with a certain skin color in America is misguided and counterproductive. It paints a distorted view of reality and is a political statement more than anything else.

Many things are political statements, including (obviously) your comment

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

#297

Post by MiroF »

rayiner wrote: post #196
pkaye wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nearly a 2x difference in rate between white and native americans vs blacks, asians and hispanics. I'm wondering if there is a good understanding of that difference. I don't think it is just economic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/...

I mean the data by race suggests it’s not economic, right? Black, Hispanic, and Asian people have half the suicide rate of non-Hispanic white people. Another anomaly: Hispanic people have the second highest life expectancies in the United States (after Asians), significantly higher than non-Hispanic whites, despite on average having lower incomes and health insurance coeverage.

Most of the evidence suggests (unintuitively) that insurance coverage doesn't have much of an impact on health outcomes, but does have a large impact on economic outcomes. I say that as a supporter of M4A

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

#298

Post by MiroF »

natalyarostova wrote: post #115
amelius wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/Pric…

Setting the terms of permissible voluntary contracts is exactly the governments domain. Honestly this logic is somewhat baffling.

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

#299

Post by MiroF »

kardos wrote: post #258
amelius wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 will just lead to workarounds, hiring each family member at the maximum rate for instance, or schemes where a family member sues the company and the company "loses", etc. Is it worth it to play that game?

I've heard tax circumvention is a problem too, which is why I'm in favor of abolishing taxation.

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

#300

Post by MiroF »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #199
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 been reading Rutger Bregman’s book and UBI seems to be an incredible money saver and immense benefit. It would take however a big jump in consciousness to do something like this because who would take the shorty jobs paying 1/3 living wage if no one is afraid Of homelessness?

I think there are better policies than a UBI, but in face the "problem" you are indicating seems more like a benefit than a flaw.
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