You're missing a couple of things - first, it isn't zero sum. I don't care if I'm poor relatively as long as I'm not poor absolutely. Second, the average benefit isn't $1,000 a month and in almost all cases the $1k per month is an increase on existing benefit numbers. Third, since it doesn't come with strings, you don't have to worry about losing your benefits when you get a job or a kid leaves the home, when you rel…
> I don't care if I'm poor relatively as long as I'm not poor absolutely. This might be true for you personally, but it is not true in general; whether people are dissatisfied with their level of wealth/poverty has a great deal to do with how it compares to others.
We're not talking about dissatisfaction here. We're talking about meeting basic needs like food, housing, and health services. Wanting to be satisfied of these things is absolutely true in general.
"Hospitals could be fined $300 a day by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if they don’t comply with the new disclosure rule, officials said." https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/trump-releases-rule-requirin... The stick is not big enough.
Clearly it is. The hospitals are suing the government to prevent the rule. A massive amount is about to be spent on lawyers, so clearly they see this as a huge threat. [0] - https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/12/04/55...
Of course - the fine can be increased or changed if they don't challenge it. Doesn't mean it's enough now.
Even though it seems like she lives in an urban area (or urban enough to be squeezed by rising home prices), the public transit is so poor that she spends 3-5x more time getting to work without a car than with one. Sometimes she can't even get home. That's crazy, the car dependence of America means that you need to pay for insurance + a car to even function in society. That is the opposite of freedom
Hey, don't knock it, it boosts our GDP!
If you use a single metric for success it will stop being useful as people will optimize for that number, it will be an end unto its self.
Even though it seems like she lives in an urban area (or urban enough to be squeezed by rising home prices), the public transit is so poor that she spends 3-5x more time getting to work without a car than with one. Sometimes she can't even get home. That's crazy, the car dependence of America means that you need to pay for insurance + a car to even function in society. That is the opposite of freedom
>127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced, they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn't want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one's own pace one's movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport, the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker's freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)
Everybody seems to be latching on to the McDonald's part of her story, the author included. But it's the hospital part I find mortifying. McDonald's is pinching pennies left and right, it's their key to success. The hospital is not. How much would you guess they're charging per day for the average patient to stay there? I bet it's enough money to cover full-time employment and benefits for their food service workers.
I find it very interesting that most people assume it should be the employer's responsibility to provide for the employee's wellbeing. Call me naive, but I think it should be society's responsibility. What about Hedge Funds, Technology companies, Law Firms and every other company that hires primarily 6-figure white collar employees. Should they be completely off the hook, just because their business model only requir…
Low margin businesses fundamentally operate by exploiting low paid workers. What's wrong with making the playing field even by taxing them? The prices of food will go up, but that's okay. We do it here in Australia and nobody is crying over having to pay 12 AUD for McDonald's vs 9 AUD in the US.
I’ve always thought that working in a retail/fastfood/service job of some kind should be a necessary requirement for graduating from childhood to adulthood.
I found it annoying to work in retail but I appreciate where I am now 1000x more.
You learn a lot of little things you can do to make the cashier's job easier.
My local store had a good sale on 12-packs of soda and so I decided to stock up with a dozen packs (I like a variety). I loaded them into my cart upside-down so the barcodes were facing up. The cashier just had to take the hand scanner and zap each one super easy and didn't have to lift any of them. It saved both of us time and effort and the cashier was extremely appreciative.
> The way we treat less-fortunate people is shameful and undignified. i think the crux has always been separating the unfortunate from the lazy. i don't think anyone would have serious a problem with supporting the former if the latter could be sieved.
Teams suffer tremendously when they are forced to include lazy people. You get the additional Mythical-Man-Month complexity without any gain in productivity. Society would be better off if lazy people were excused from the workforce. The weird obsession with forcing everyone to run on a treadmill has got to go.
The older I get the more I think labels like "lazy" are not really useful.
Some people are beaten down, discouraged, unexcited at doing hard manual labour for just enough money to get them through to the next day. And some, even if you get them to work, are not going to be much use there.
I know in my own career (have worked for decades with no sabbaticals or more than 3 weeks off at a time), I'm really lucky to do a job that I find interesting. That allows me to really dig in and work long and hard.
If I was doing a shitty manual labour job I think I'd revert from being an apparently extremely hard working person to one of the laziest ones around.
One thing that made her life so difficult is the difficulty of getting to and from work.
It's pretty crazy that we spend nearly 15% of GDP on transportation costs. I mean sure, we can all reduce the expenses by buying a 10 year old Prius and get our travel costs down. but, a big part of the problem is that housing is always so far away from work. 500 years ago, people lived within a mile or less of their work places. now it's normal for people to live 20 miles or more away. we need to start building our cities with residential and work places closer by and hold employers accountable for where they create jobs. If you want to regulate it, then by all means regulate as follows: no job can be created unless there's an available residential place to live within 1000 feet of it. this would not only save people's lives, but also significantly reduce C02 pollution as transportation is a major source of c02.
McDonalds already has those. French fry hoppers automatically filling baskets from a frozen mini-closet. Out comes fresh fries. Same for the cups that they can use in drive-throughs. I think it’s up to the franchises to buy/install them. Depends on volume/space whether its worthwhile/possible. Or they just push it to the customer to do it.
About those automated drinks at McDonalds...when I order mine with 'no ice,' the machine is apparently incapable of filling the cup with the additional amount of coke that would normally be displaced by ice. It will simply fill the cup just 2/3 of the way. They seem to have realized this though, but instead of increasing the volume of coke dispensed, the machine drops ANOTHER cup which the employee is supposed to use…
That is because those machines are made in a way to mix the 'perfect' ratio of water + syrup. They take in account the ice as well. If the cup is 0.5l, it plans to be 0.4l of liquid + 0.1l of ice (random values), so if you chose no ice, you get 0.4l since that is the 'perfect' ratio. (And probably what they advertise ie '0.4l coke = 1 euro' or whatever, they just give a 0.5l cup to account for ice)
Even though it seems like she lives in an urban area (or urban enough to be squeezed by rising home prices), the public transit is so poor that she spends 3-5x more time getting to work without a car than with one. Sometimes she can't even get home. That's crazy, the car dependence of America means that you need to pay for insurance + a car to even function in society. That is the opposite of freedom
> you need to pay for insurance + a car to even function in society. That is the opposite of freedom I’m not sure what “freedom” is supposed to mean in that context. How is being dependent on paying for public transportation better? In countries where public transportation is amazing enough to obviate the need for cars, you just trade in the freedom to go wherever you want whenever you want.
There are some countries where public transport is free for citizens, I'm pretty sure. And even if you have to pay for public transport... gas isn't free either. And car maintenance gets pricey. And insurance. Meanwhile, public transport is a known quantity. Pay this much for a ticket/monthly pass and ride wherever you need in city limits.