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Is my advice too mercenary?

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Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#351

Post by spopejoy »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #169
nebula8804 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Health insurance is not tied to employment status. Anyone can go to healthcare.gov and buy an equivalent BCBS or Kaiser or whatever gold/silver/bronze insurance. Unless you are in a particularly shitty state. Out of curiosity, I went and looked up the plans in NJ for a 32 year old person(56k salary). This is someone in a lower risk pool. The bronze plans are in the upper ~280$/month and include a $6000 deductible. T…

What does box 12 code DD on your W-2 say? Your employer is probably just paying a lot for your coverage. When I got quotes for insuring my employees in NJ, they all matched up with the premiums on healthcare.gov, also seen here: https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra... ACA compliant health insurance pricing is pretty commodified since all the rating factors are codified in law (age, location, s…

> Your employer is probably just paying a lot for your coverage.

Yes but they get to deduct this, unlike an individual for whom no such deduction exists. Repeat after me: "a tax deduction is a subsidy." That is, welfare. An extremely biased, discriminatory welfare at that.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#352

Post by ALittleLight »

JustLurking2022 wrote: post #116
randrews wrote: post #63

One of the wisest pieces of career advice I ever heard was "you cannot change an organization by leaving it." It works both ways: if you're leaving in hopes that it'll be a wake-up call to management that a valuable person left, then it probably won't be. And, if you leave your workplace to improve your own life, you've also necessarily chosen not to try and improve the workplace. Leaving means giving up on trying to…

While that's true on an individual basis, I recently left a large company to join a FAANG and, as it turns out, so did quite a few other top performers shortly before me. By the time I left, there were definitely very senior folks asking questions about how to retain talent. I didn't even dislike the job - but the offers from FAANG were a good bit higher and came with some nice perks, so I'd actually think of going b…

I wonder about the "worth paying" thing. As an example, I worked at a FAANG company for about 10 years and every project I worked on flopped, was cancelled, or wound up being a net cost. In some sense, the real dollars and cents sense, I wasn't worth anything and yet was paid quite a lot.

My impression is that the FAANG companies have a relatively small part of the company that makes them insane amounts of money (e.g. search ads) and then the rest of the company is just soaking up a lot of that money. In this model of the universe FAANG companies are just over paying software developers and the other companies out there without their own infinite money machine shouldn't actually be learning the lesson that they need to pay their developers more because maybe, as a business priority, they shouldn't be.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#353

Post by BeFlatXIII »

121789 wrote: post #27
AYBABTME wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

IMO, the population covered by employer-sponsored group policies is significantly healthier than the population shopping on the exchanges. The biggest weakness of the ACA was that it didn’t ban employer-sponsored coverage as a means to force everyone into the same free market.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#354

Post by LordDragonfang »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #275
LordDragonfang wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The plans simply reflect the cost of healthcare. Anyone who works in healthcare and looks at billing can tell you this is not actually the case, prices are not based on any reasonable metric and are rarely actually paid by insurers anyway. >The companies that sell the healthcare have profit margins in the sub 5% range. Point of contention here, these companies aren't selling healthcare, they're reselling it. Which…

What you are talking about is taxpayer funded healthcare, with the large collective entity being the government. Seeing as how that is not politically possibly, middlemen with sub 5% profit margins was the compromise. Obviously not the best situation, but still better than before.

Correct, that was what I was alluding to. There's lots of good reasons to move to such a system, and no good reasons to keep our current system.

>Seeing as how that is not politically possibly

Basically every other liberal democracy has taxpayer funded healthcare, and even many US states have successful programs. It's extraordinarily silly to call that impossible, or to call what we have now a "compromise" rather than a clear case of corporate welfare being put before the welfare of the citizens.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#355

Post by lovich »

q-big wrote: post #348
verve_rat wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of we train them, they might leave. But what if we don't train them and they stay?

Simple solution: let the employee pay for the training. If the employee stays for x years, the training costs are waived.

At least in tech, companies have already decided to make employees pay for training. You don’t see people doing leetcode training or side projects to pad their resume because their employers invested in increasing their skill set.

Given that this has already occurred, why would any employee agree to a system where now they have a financial obligation to their employer if they leave?

I get your sentiment but the employers already cut all the benefits out of the system when it comes to skill development. They’ll need to start adding back in investments to employee’s skills without any sort of guaranteed payback for a while before the average employee would extend them any trust

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#356

Post by LordDragonfang »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #284
ghaff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bosses absolutely do not love healthcare costs if that's what you're suggesting. But even legal mandates for larger firms aside, if you're trying to hire white collar workers while not having a decent healthcare plan, you're going to find it's a challenge.

Give me a break. Bosses can add and subtract, and so can employees. They both know healthcare is getting paid for from the paycheck regardless. And with company plans, bosses may pay less or may pay more. Probably less. Either way, bosses love that employees know quitting their job is going to require switching health insurance plans, which is a dicey process. Bosses like holding that power in the same way they like…

>Bosses can add and subtract, and so can employees. They both know healthcare is getting paid for from the paycheck regardless.

It's not clear to me that most employees do know that, actually. I see a ridiculous number of people that oppose nationalized healthcare "because they'd have to pay taxes", not realizing that there is already a deduction from their total compensation to pay for their healthcare (i.e. a tax).

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#357

Post by LordDragonfang »

eropple wrote: post #142
sidewndr46 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem believing that other nations governments do a great job. I also do not live there nor am I a citizen of those countries. American government is a uniquely incompetent form of government. Despite being one of the largest & most expensive governments it gets little to nothing done. Anything that is 'done' is often done far over the original projected budget.

> American government is a uniquely incompetent form of government. Objectively untrue by any serious metric you'd like to go for, and in particular government-run health insurance programs (Medicare chief among them, but also the VA) are notably well-run and have low incidence of fraud while maintaining remarkably low overhead.

It's interesting to me that you're lumping together Medicare and the VA. Because while I here almost nothing but positive things about Medicare, I hear lots of stories of people not getting the care they need from the VA (and "slipping through the cracks"). Granted, those seem to be mostly older anecdotes, have things changed in the past decade or so?

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#358

Post by LordDragonfang »

nmhancoc wrote: post #350
dlp211 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because giving individuals money, targeted or otherwise, is given/spent to enhance an individual or families life in some way. It is a direct benefit to them. And yes, SS is absolutely welfare and it is extremely effective. It reduces the poverty rate of the elderly by nearly 30%. It also reduces, directly and indirectly, child and young adult poverty by meaningful amounts as well, 1.5% and 3% respectively.

Hey I appreciate your answer. Regarding your first point, I disagree. I think the intention is clearly to provide a direct benefit, but that isn’t always the effect. One example which seems to be entering the zeitgeist now is student aid. The presence of additional student aid has a high correlation with the rise in tuition over time, but I think we’d all struggle to say it was commensurate with to the cost. Addressi…

The majority of "student aid" money is not given, but rather loaned, and I think that needs to be factored that into any analysis of its effects.

Also, education is rather interesting special case in that it's a highly price-insensitive good in the modern economy.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#359

Post by LordDragonfang »

agentdrtran wrote: post #28
jdavis703 wrote: post #18

Earlier 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.

To offer a contrasting anecdote, my government health insurance (MediCal) was the best I ever had, including my current 6-figure job. It can be done well.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#360

Post by spacemanmatt »

and0 wrote: post #344
spacemanmatt wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who the hell wanted either trump or biden Let's just dismiss the millions of votes cast in 2020, then?

I think the point is that many had other preferences, but our two party (and FPTP voting) system doesn't address them. Who I voted for in 2016 and 2020 weren't nearly my first choices, and I think that's a fairly common experience. Ranked choice would show a lot more nuance in people's beliefs that US politics would have to address. I haven't looked into it in some time, though. It seemed to work where implemented in…

Hey, always nice to hear from a fellow RP (ranked preference aka ranked choice) voting advocate. I think RP would be better, too.

I estimated the PP was getting at a more conspiratorial notion of "other preferences" in the sense of both parties being equally bought out, etc.

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