Actually, fuck you, got mine _is_ my attitude.
It just turns out that getting mine involves helping others
Is my advice too mercenary?
31–40 of 390 posts
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It truly is shocking that health insurance is tied to employment status. I think "annoying" is a better description. It's not shocking at all, it was a fairly predictable outcome given the situation. It is really annoying that we haven't managed to walk it back to something more reasonable since then.
Candidly, do you mind flushing out what you mean here by a fairly predictable outcome given the situation?
Not GP, but:
historically Protestant work ethic + unrestrained pursuit of profit + weak labor protections and domination of corporate interests in the halls of legislation = predictable outcome.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#33Thank you for this! I have been raised in and appreciate a Machiavellian approach to society, especially upwards mobility. I have no sympathy for workplace advice that attempts to coddle someone who cannot psychologically operate in a world told more truthfully. “Mercenary” advice works in this environment, being more like a mercenary, a “sell sword”, is a pragmatic approach than being gaslit by the company’s “were a…
Those who need coddling are also the ones most affected by gaslighting.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#34It truly is shocking that health insurance is tied to employment status. I really think this is a large part of the trend towards overt ruthlessness in the USA, no one has their back so they have no ones back, as people age and experience medical bankruptcy (or narrowly avoid it at great cost) they are realizing this ruthlessness in our system.
> It truly is shocking that health insurance is tied to employment status. I think "annoying" is a better description. It's not shocking at all, it was a fairly predictable outcome given the situation. It is really annoying that we haven't managed to walk it back to something more reasonable since then.
No post body was provided.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
I think you are framing it as a top down objective, but I think it's the opposite. Employers themselves offer healthcare because it's a way to attract employees. You can get other health plans (e.g. Obamacare) but they are not as competitive as employer-sponsored plans. To not have employer-sponsored plans, you would have to either 1) ban employer-sponsored plans 2) offer other plans that are competitive. #1 seems un…
The real problem is how expensive healthcare is in the US.
Compare Cignas global plan with and without US coverage. Somehow they can easily cover essentially all of the rest of the world for far less than the US.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
I think you are framing it as a top down objective, but I think it's the opposite. Employers themselves offer healthcare because it's a way to attract employees. You can get other health plans (e.g. Obamacare) but they are not as competitive as employer-sponsored plans. To not have employer-sponsored plans, you would have to either 1) ban employer-sponsored plans 2) offer other plans that are competitive. #1 seems un…
I want to point out that the above analysis is completely ahistorical and does not track the path dependence and latent contexts of the development of the modern US healthcare system. The above is not an explanation, it is a post-hoc rationalization.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
As people age they do get “free” insurance from Medicare. And if a white collar worker experiences downward mobility they can qualify for free or cheap insurance through the Medicaid and Affordable Care Act provisions.
Every single one of those programs comes with a laundry list of asterisks that make them far worse than any employer provided insurance I have ever had.
Also, medicare doesn't kick in until 65, which pretty much guarantees that most workers won't be able to retire until then; even if they're otherwise eligible / able.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
I think you are framing it as a top down objective, but I think it's the opposite. Employers themselves offer healthcare because it's a way to attract employees. You can get other health plans (e.g. Obamacare) but they are not as competitive as employer-sponsored plans. To not have employer-sponsored plans, you would have to either 1) ban employer-sponsored plans 2) offer other plans that are competitive. #1 seems un…
There are competitive plans on the individual market. (Your local insurance market may vary.)
I could get approximately equivalent insurance for about 40% cheaper if I went on the individual market. But, my employer pays 75% of my employer sponsored plan.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#39It truly is shocking that health insurance is tied to employment status. I really think this is a large part of the trend towards overt ruthlessness in the USA, no one has their back so they have no ones back, as people age and experience medical bankruptcy (or narrowly avoid it at great cost) they are realizing this ruthlessness in our system.
I'm assuming this is by design to keep the US population "on their toes" and at work doing productive things. Otherwise why would it be tied to employment?
Because previously all social services, including police and fire safety, were privatized, and were only taken over by the state when it became clear there wasn't enough economic incentive to keep such services running without the operators doing stuff like roughing people up, burning down buildings, etc. But everyone decomposes as they age, and people fear illness and death enough that you can charge them however much you like, so it stays private and eventually employers start pitching in to attract talent without having to offer better wages, more holiday leave, or a shorter work week.
Now, there's a whole administrative system that drives up prices and puts a ceiling on availability and quality of care; with most Americans being (relatively) ill-traveled, ill-read, and fed a news product that beneath the packaging is some combination of entertainment and fear-mongering, it's easy for one to believe there's just something in the air that makes an NHS-style or even a German-style system impossible here.
Then, if you were around for the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections, you'd have seen presidential candidates arguing about whether someone should have to pay for someone else's well-being. And it's not a debate along the lines of class—it's tied up with identity politics and a broader debate around the welfare state. Advantaged and disadvantaged communities alike are full of people who see how things are, and, knowing that it takes a lottery win to move up the economic ladder and a bad week to fall down, are skeptical that next time it'll be different.
Doesn't help that most Americans will never have the opportunity to get even an hour of education in macroeconomics, unless it's buried in disconnected lessons about individual economic downturns, nor that education on probability doesn't happen until second-year calculus (which is similarly rare in high schools), nor that most Americans don't learn about the mechanics of Medicare until their fifties or sixties
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#40I can imagine a lot of new graduates having trouble with this: > I think many people, especially those newer to the working world, underestimate just how ruthless and sociopathic our late-stage Capitalist working conditions really are [...] I’d love to live in a world where less mercenary advice wasn’t dangerous, but that’s not our world.
I'm 46 and never in my whole career have working conditions been less ruthless nor less sociopathic than they are today. I'm constantly barraged with acceptance training, "human connection" training and calls where the expectation is to "share and connect" by telling the group something personal. I'm not with a bunch of kids either, these are all upper management very high 6 figure types. I don't want to be one of th…
The things that you mention are performative. You're supposed to pretend to believe in them while acting a in deniably ruthless way.