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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

#141

Post by thebigshane »

blakesterz wrote: post #48
adammunich wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a jet ski, it is indeed hard to be unhappy on a jet ski.

I always heard the 2 greatest days of owning a jet ski are the first day, and the day you finally sell it. I've had several people say they get old REALLY fast. Kind of like pools, get a friend/neighbor with a pool and a jet ski, now THAT's happiness.

I dunno. They say that about boats, much bigger than jet skis.[0]

Jet Skis are pretty easy to load/unload and store compared to a bigger boat. Also much easier to maintain, most of the jet skis I've ridden have all been small 2-stroke engines. Bigger than a lawn mower engine, but not as powerful as most motorcycle engines (except for the bigger wave runners, those are 4-stroke motorcycle engines). Like a go-cart engine. Yes, they require maintenance, but also probably the simplest engine you could possibly maintain.

[0]: https://www.myboatlife.com/2010/12/two-best-days-of-boaters-...

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

#142

Post by taborj »

Kye wrote: post #114
whatshisface wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How many things were invented or financed because someone wanted to get rich? What happens to those types of things when it's impossible to get rich?

The answer is they don't happen here, they'll happen somewhere else. They may happen with the same people even, and then you're losing knowledge and experience to other countries, which is fine as long as those other countries choose to be friendly with you.

In other words, you willfully put your country's advancement into the hands of other entities. You no longer control your future.

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

#143

Post by lukifer »

claudeganon wrote: post #101
lukifer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I agree that universal health care should be solved independently from UBI (Yang supports opt-in Medicare For All).

Housing is a more complicated story; there's certainly a theory that landlords will simply raise rents in proportion to their tenants new ability to pay more. On the other hand, a stable income boost might make the housing market more fluid, giving renters more options to move when the rent goes up. I personally favor LVT to discourage rent-seeking, and there's a lot that could be done by removing zoning and building restrictions (multi-family conversions, etc) to make housing more competitive.

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

#144

Post by Miner49er »

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.

For the middle class maybe. His implementation will leave the poorest worse off.

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

#145

Post by whatshisface »

Kye wrote: post #114
whatshisface wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

At least with our current system the rich people change every couple generations, if income and capital gains were frozen after $100M without any other changes to the tax code, everyone who is presently rich would keep their money while suddenly there would be no risk of replacing them. Bill Gates would become the richest man in the world, not just today, but forever. That's terrible according to Marixist and modern economic consensus: so not a good plan!

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

#146

Post by taborj »

wallace_f wrote: post #106
ceejayoz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It always makes me chuckle when people cite health care being inefficient as a reason to let the government run it.

(Not saying you're doing that, you just reminded me of it)

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

#148

Post by ceejayoz »

Domenic_S wrote: post #130
ceejayoz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Where's the remainder of your premium going to come from when you're only paying 10% salary for it? Private insurance companies sure aren't going to reduce their prices.

Can we stop pretending the rest of the developed world doesn't exist?

The per-capita healthcare spending of Europe, public and private, is about half what ours is with similar health outcomes. We are an extreme outlier.

https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

The remainder of the premium stops going into the pockets of insurance middlemen.

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

#149

Post by whatshisface »

DaniFong wrote: post #121
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#/...

That stood out to me as well, indeed the numbers vary a lot nationally and ethnically. How are you supposed to study it, though? Not exactly a good situation for an exit poll. Imaginably the government could be in a position to grant a gift, and help, to offer a moment of respite from whatever is causing the most distress -- that might help some people...

You could give the survey to random people, and when somebody dies, you go back and find their most recent survey. That's their exit poll.

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

#150

Post by wyre »

inanutshellus wrote: post #76
tempsy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please read any study on cities that have substantially raised min wage in recent years (like Seattle) and understand how wrong you are about there being "fewer jobs" as a result before making such ridiculous statements

Seattle's raising of the minimum wage was arguably symbolic. Seattle--a world-class tech nexus point--raising its minimum wage affected a relatively small percent of businesses compared to a "normal" city, as businesses in Seattle would have long since needed to offer higher wages in order to keep employees. I'd be much more interested in seeing the effects of a $15 wage in Nowheresville, USA than in Seattle.

Symbolic for maybe people that are making above minimum wage but an increase in minimum wage to $15 made so many people lives easier.
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