191–200 of 563 posts
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What a cruel thing to say.
I think it’s fair, given the way people in NYC have treated the underclass for a long time.
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Already most Americans support Medicare for all – it’s our bought elected officials who don’t.
eh. Most Americans support a public option. M4A is down to about 26% support as of yesterday. https://i.imgur.com/H9bAwV9.png
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Also I'm not sure if I'm in agreement with the tactic of immediately pushing employees to unemployment. Unemployment is funded by taxes which are largely paid by the same people being laid off. If you're promoting businesses push people to unemployment instead of first trying to cover them during hardship and also taking a loss (as everyone else is), you're pushing for more tax subsidies to businesses indirectly. Une…
> If I'm laid off, I'll first look at my savings and hit the job market before I consider driving right into unemployment. This is a great case of “the world doesn’t revolve around you.” 1. Most states only give you a few weeks to apply. 2. You already “pay” for your unemployment several times over during your career through unemployment insurance. Your employer pays this, but they could have paid you more if they di…
2. That's pretty much verifiably false. That's fundamentally trickle down economics which everyone knows simply doesn't work. Employers could take that money and increase your compensation. Historically, that hasn't happened. Any breaks given on those expenses temporarily go to an employee then disappear quickly after because there's nothing the business gains by shifting that to labor expenses. The most recent example to look at is the 2017 'Tax Cuts and Jobs Act' which translated to almost no increase in labor rates aside from initial PR compensation packages that people received, forgot about, and continued on with stagnant compensation rates.
3. I never said it's free money, I pointed out in the first paragraph it's not free money. Employees pay a large portion of unemployment as taxes, as I said. Businesses also contribute to that in taxes but the lionshare comes from labor taxes.
I hope that tech industry employees do not feel immune to this. I encourage you to take a look at your customer base and think very critically about where that money is actually coming from.
I just don't know what the future holds for us, I'm sure the company will survive in some form due to our hospital, pharma and defense clients. But we also have a ton of clients in manufacturing, and I have no idea how they are going to manage this.
The thing we have going for us is we run workloads that they absolutely need to run to exist as a business, but if they go completely under there is no avoiding the pain.
So far I feel relatively secure, and they are even cutting us a bonus next week which shocked me. Scary times though, really makes you realize how little you actually control - you just gotta let go and deal with what hits you.
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What will the employees, in the US at least, do for health insurance? A pandemic is when you need it. These employees will be strained to pay for COBRA. I fear that we will see revolutions in countries where this is not contained, from either a health or economic perspective. An old saying is that you should buy stocks when there is blood in the streets. I hope that doesn't become literal.
"These employees will be strained to pay for COBRA." That is a huge understatement. Especially for anyone that needs family coverage. The rates I paid when self-employed were more money per month than my entire paycheck until I was in my late 20's.
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What will the employees, in the US at least, do for health insurance? A pandemic is when you need it. These employees will be strained to pay for COBRA. I fear that we will see revolutions in countries where this is not contained, from either a health or economic perspective. An old saying is that you should buy stocks when there is blood in the streets. I hope that doesn't become literal.
It's rather fantastic that congress spends $2,000,000,000,000 to handle a virus, where $0 of that goes to paying for treatment of those infected by that virus...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-anatomy-of-the-2-trilli...
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It's rather fantastic that congress spends $2,000,000,000,000 to handle a virus, where $0 of that goes to paying for treatment of those infected by that virus...
Got to maintain the principle that people who can't afford their own healthcare get to suffer. That is far more important to the US system than other outcomes.
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eh. Most Americans support a public option. M4A is down to about 26% support as of yesterday. https://i.imgur.com/H9bAwV9.png
55% in the latest Morning Consult poll[1]. And this is after a heavy push from the healthcare industry against it, as well as strong opposition from all of the Republican leadership and most of the Democratic leadership. Before the recent blitz against it, polling was 70%[2]. [1] https://morningconsult.com/2020/04/01/medicare-for-all-coron... [2] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/403248-poll-seventy-pe...
Any numbers on what is happening for software engineering unemployment?
I don't think you really need to distinguish between industries at this point. It's all bad.
Unemployment benefits have been significantly expanded under the Coronavirus aid bill. The benefit amounts will sound small if you're living in an expensive city like SF or Seattle, but $600/week from the federal government and a similar amount from state unemployment insurance means that unemployment benefits can pay up to an equivalent of $50-60K/year right now. That goes a long way in most parts of the country, es…