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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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I meant some claim CEO pay tied to worker might encourage layoffs.

If you have 10 workers average pay 100k and you last off your lowest paid worker the average goes up, and you're paying less out of pocket.

By having bonuses showing that you're not trying to game the system by laying people off it encourages job growth.

That and the idea of pay cap is to ensure business growth over CEO enrichment. How does it hurt the companies bottom line if the CEO can only earn 10 Mill not 50m? When it gives 40 surplus for new devs or r and d people to grow new products and income opportunities.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If nobody is taking that job for a salary that is economically viable, then it shouldn't exist. We shouldn't make people waste their finite time on this Earth doing pointless jobs under the threat of homelessness or starvation.

You mean slavery should be abolished?

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

#304
post #278

wow, how about.. 1) NO taxes till $40k-50k for a family 2) Free healthcare 3) Not so crazy tution fees all these are doable.. just like raising minimum wage..

1 is already mostly true at the federal level.

not for payroll it isn't

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

#305

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…

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cases like the Manhattan project team are rare. Cases like grossly overpaid managers and executives in FIRE industries are common.

But what defines overpaid? You? If there is an opportunity to not over-pay, you should be able to start your own firm and put overpaying ones out of business. ...Of course, we can actually be even more clever than this, if we want, and imagine models where we are both right (of course they might not be true). For example, we might say the value provided by a manager is, on average , $1,000,000. However, this is drive…

>If there is an opportunity to not over-pay, you should be able to start your own firm and put overpaying ones out of business.

Sure, but first lend me a few hundred million in capital would ya?

I realize not every business requires that much but I work for an oil supermajor... so, little hard to do what you're suggesting without your help. The "capital" in "capitalism" keeps getting in the way.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re/ medicare for all ... Canada has universal health care yet a very similar suicide rate to the USA.[1] Canada doesn't have a livable minimum wage either. Each province sets its own. There is talk of UBI experiments. [1] https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-can...

Our model (Canada) doesn't include free ambulances or drugs, it's better to compare to the European model. We do have good welfare programs here however, and drugs are much cheaper anyways.

Any good model does it's best to prevent ambulances. The kink in the USA is that if you cannot afford to go to a family doctor, you call 911, they send you an ambulance, you get a free ride to the general hospital emergency room where you then sit for 5 hours to be told you have bronchitis. That taxi ride cost the taxpayers about $2500, and then the hospital writes off another $1500 (which is what the emergency room would charge you for 10 minutes of doctor time. Really).

I moved from San Francisco to Istanbul a few years ago, and now every time I hear an ambulance or a firetruck I am blown away by the fact that I heard one. In SF you don't hear them because they're going 24/7, mostly for stupid reasons (certainly not fires).

Ambulance frequent fliers also really gum up the works. Take for example Bruce Myers, an alcoholic drug addict who gets picked up in an ambulance on average 90 times per year. There's another drunk in San Francisco who averages 300 times per year and has cost the city $10m.

Pretty much every single aspect of healthcare in America is broken.

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

#308
post #304
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 is already mostly true at the federal level.

not for payroll it isn't

Payroll tax is more akin to a government pension program in that your payment roll gets you money back when you retire. Counting as just another tax really cuts against years of government arguments to the contrary.

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

#309
Eh, I might kill myself in a year or two - more money would not change anything. The recent realization that I will never find a romantic partner despite being (relatively) rich, tall, good looking, sociable and sane has been crushing. At least if I had money problems I'd have something else to blame than myself.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But by contrast, the UK and it’s NHS has almost half the rate of the US.

Where are you getting your facts from? The UK has a higher than global average, with some demographics tragically high. UK – 11.2 per 100,000 people – in 2018 ( https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/03/suicides-rat... & https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... ). I think the UK's Office of National Statistics is a better source of information that Wikipedia. UBI is a great idea. Unfortun…

The UK counts suicide deaths differently to the US, and it's likely the the UK over counts while the US under counts.

I agree that the ONS is a better source of information than Wikipedia.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

Here's the old definition:

> The previous National Statistics definition of suicide includes deaths from intentional self-harm (where a coroner has given a suicide conclusion or made it clear in the narrative conclusion that the deceased intended to kill themselves) and events of undetermined intent (mainly deaths where a coroner has given an open conclusion) in people aged 15 and over.

It's this "events of undetermined intent" part that is different. In the US (and I guess many other places" those deaths are not counted as suicide.

The US uses this definition:

> Death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with an intent to die as a result of the behavior

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