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For anyone tired of sheet metal workers or whoever coming in and posting grim realities about skiing from their trailer park I fully recommend Kaiser Health News and their daily roundup of health news. In particular, everyone seems to love the idea of single payer but nobody seems to be able to articulate how to implement or pay for it. Given how entrenched private insurance is, I think a German style model where the existing Medicare tax levied on employers and employees be expanded and diverted to purchase private insurance offering essential coverage is probably a more sustainable and deficit neutral option. Rich people can even opt out and buy a Cadillac plan of they want or self pay! CAPS LOCK BROKEN fucked around with this message at 15:41 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 15:39
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Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing private insurance and making the the Fed the sole provider of insurance, which is mandatory for all. Strict cost controls, doctors become government workers and receive tiered salaries through the General Schedule. Paid by a progressive tax on the highest earners, middle barely pays into the pool and and low income does not pay.
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May 6, 2014 15:50
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Fat Ogre posted:Yeah because lawyers have always made lots of money Ah here we go, more 'get trade jobs' bullshit that has zero empirical evidence to support it. Get hosed
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May 6, 2014 15:57
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Oxxidation posted:The best thing about the IT/Engineering "ha ha on you for not taking the One True Degree" jag-offs is they're always so insulated they think their opinion is some kind of fresh new wisdom. They'll all be out on their asses in some of the most expensive SoL markets in America soon enough. Patience.
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May 6, 2014 18:45
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Fat Ogre posted:
America needs WAY more anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists than it has now. It's just that no one is willing to hire them.
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May 8, 2014 00:56
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MondayHotDog posted:America needs WAY more anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists than it has now. It's just that no one is willing to hire them. And it seems nobody wants to hire engineers either
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May 8, 2014 00:58
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Fat Ogre posted:What I am saying is there are ways around it if you put thought and effort into it instead of rolling the dice and gambling on not getting sick so you can get your grad degree and then hopefully get that job related to your science degree once you get your PHD and hopefully you'll get tenure and that you'll never have a serious accident or illness that entire time. Also hopefully your spouse will have decent healthcare in the meantime if you want kids etc. What? Fat Ogre posted:It is about priorities in life and working in a given system. Privatized college tuition and healthcare a like ponzi schemes, but have the problem of actually being necessary. If you are talking about exploiting it, then it's better to ditch your American citizenship once you're done. Fat Ogre posted:How many of you saw people that were the first in their family to ever go to college and they went for an arts degree thinking, "I'll study what my passion is!" Hell I've even seen it with some of the science degrees. How many Anthropologists, Archaeologists, Paleontologists, Sociologists, Psychologists etc are really needed? Yet why do people keep getting these degrees? Do you have a degree in a STEM related field? If so, take a picture of it so that everyone in this thread can see you're not full of poo poo. You honestly don't know what you're talking about. Not everyone can be an engineer. It's an extremely unreasonable expectation to be put on society. Fat Ogre posted:Until we fix our healthcare system and fix the issues with student loans people need to wake the gently caress up and stop loving themselves over. Going to college = loving yourself over. You've heard it here first folks.
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May 8, 2014 01:18
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Remember when this thread was about UHC in Vermont?
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May 8, 2014 01:23
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Grondoth posted:Remember when this thread was about UHC in Vermont? It's amazing. Several days of no posting and then when I finally see activity again someone has just resurrected the education derail that was already put to rest.  But really there isn't much to discuss. All we can do is wait and see how it paves out for Vermont.
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May 8, 2014 05:49
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Conservatives don't want to debate the issues. It's all about distracting from issues by offering "common-sense" individual solutions to systemic problems. "If you can't get a job in the recession and are suffering from the high unemployment rate, you should have picked a different major. It's obvious an individual who plans better and works harder will get a job, so everyone just needs to plan better and work harder and we'll all have good jobs with health insurance!"
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May 8, 2014 06:31
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VitalSigns posted:Conservatives don't want to debate the issues. It's all about distracting from issues by offering "common-sense" individual solutions to systemic problems. I know you think your quote is a joke but it isn't that far from the truth of what needs to be done. I've seen it work enough times to know it isn't bullshit. People just get tied up with "I sunk thousands into this degree I need to try to find work tied to it." Instead of just giving up on that tactic and switching to something different or even going back to school for something different. Your job is literally you selling your labor or services to someone. Your wages and benefits are tied to how much worth you bring to the table and how valuable your services are in the market place. That you can't find a job in many cases means you aren't selling something people want, you lack the skills or features that set you apart from a hundreds of others just like you. You shop around for a good deal on everything from haircuts to home electronics to groceries, employers do the same for employees. That people don't understand this is honestly a failure of our educational system. Your options are either keep blindly plugging away at getting a job or try a different course of action. One good thing about Obamacare is it makes it much easier to start your own business now. You don't have to worry about not being able to get Health Insurance, which is huge. If eventually the US switches to UHC that will make it much much easier for more people to start their own companies and do things that kept them tethered to their old jobs by playing it safe for so long. It amazes me that if Republicans stump for Job Creators that they hate the idea of Universal Healthcare so much because it will literally help people create more jobs.
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May 8, 2014 15:14
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Fat Ogre posted:I know you think your quote is a joke but it isn't that far from the truth of what needs to be done. I've seen it work enough times to know it isn't bullshit.  So you're actually going to doubledown on your composition fallacy, deny the recession, and assert it only takes a little gumption and planning to land a good job, so with a little more gumption from the poor we'd have full employment? Oh hey, what caused the sudden and apparently inexplicable attack of national laziness and stupidity in 2008? Bootstrap shortage? Shrinking radio audiences mean that fewer young people are getting a gumption-boost from right-wing blowhards telling it like it is? I really want to know the cause of this national epidemic in 2008. Fat Ogre posted:People just get tied up with "I sunk thousands into this degree I need to try to find work tied to it." Instead of just giving up on that tactic and switching to something different or even going back to school for something different. It sure is strange how a pile of debt seems to make people too lazy and stupid to shell out a bunch more money going back to school for a STEM degree. I just don't understand why a lifetime of debt makes it hard to afford a brand-new education: why not just call up Dad and ask for $80k?
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May 8, 2014 15:28
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Fat Ogre posted:Bootstraps horseshit Hard word and determination are necessary but not sufficient conditions, you dipshit.
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May 8, 2014 15:51
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menino posted:Hard word and determination are necessary but not sufficient conditions, you dipshit. Exactly. It seems like too many people here forget the first part every time this stupid derail comes up. We don't live in a just world, but it also isn't COMPLETELY unjust. There is a relationship between "hard work and good decisions input" and "standard of living output" even if it isn't perfect and there are exceptions.
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May 8, 2014 15:58
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Yeah, but if we're discussing state or national policy initiatives, personal advice to "get off your rear end and learn a trade" is a useless distraction. Hey that's maybe good advice for your son, because he can't unilaterally change national policy so he has to control the things that are in his direct power. But what the gently caress does it have to do with national policy? If we're discussing what the government should do, we should likewise talk about the things government can actually affect. Unemployment is 8%. Maybe with some hard work and gumption I can beat out the other guy and get one of those jobs, but that's obviously not applicable to everyone. "If you run faster you'll win the race; thus if everyone runs faster, they'll all win the race" is a basic logical error.
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May 8, 2014 16:06
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StarMagician posted:Exactly. It seems like too many people here forget the first part every time this stupid derail comes up. We don't live in a just world, but it also isn't COMPLETELY unjust. There is a relationship between "hard work and good decisions input" and "standard of living output" even if it isn't perfect and there are exceptions. It's more unjust than just. You can make it with hard work if you are born to the right people. If you are not, you are hosed. That's a failure of justice.
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May 8, 2014 16:27
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Fat Ogre posted:I know you think your quote is a joke but it isn't that far from the truth of what needs to be done. I've seen it work enough times to know it isn't bullshit. People just get tied up with "I sunk thousands into this degree I need to try to find work tied to it." Instead of just giving up on that tactic and switching to something different or even going back to school for something different. Employers don't "shop around" for labor. And, right now, it doesn't matter WHAT you majored in. Someone posted an article that you conveniently ignored showing that even "good degrees" face high unemployment for the graduates of 2014. The problem isn't that we have a population of ill-educated workers; the problem is that the wealthy don't need them (at all, not just "we don't need a feminist underwater basket weaver"), and the workers are so burdened with debt and so poor on average that they can't go about hiring each other.
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May 8, 2014 16:31
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VitalSigns posted:
It isn't a matter of gumption. It is a matter of taking stock of your assets evaluation what you're good at and doing that. I've seen jobs literally destroyed by a software application. Entire departments wiped out because they aren't needed to sift through and collate and sort reports that a printer and a SQL statement now does. Those people were either fired or changed positions in that company. It isn't like they can just magically get their job back. It literally doesn't exist. VitalSigns posted:Oh hey, what caused the sudden and apparently inexplicable attack of national laziness and stupidity in 2008? Bootstrap shortage? Shrinking radio audiences mean that fewer young people are getting a gumption-boost from right-wing blowhards telling it like it is? I really want to know the cause of this national epidemic in 2008. People also got laid off outside of the 2008 bust but again it is different for different sectors of the economy. No one is crying about all the Blockbuster or Hollywood Videos employees that got laid off. Or the guys who worked at Venture, Service Mechandise, Sam Goody, Tower Records, Virgin Megstores, Circuit City, Comp USA, Mervyns, Waladen Books, B Dalton Books etc are they? Technology and other forms of competition killed almost all those stores and business models. No amount of boot straps or complaining is going to get those guys their jobs back. It just won't happen. People have to adapt and find something else. This isn't right wing bullshit it is just plain common sense. VitalSigns posted:It sure is strange how a pile of debt seems to make people too lazy and stupid to shell out a bunch more money going back to school for a STEM degree. I just don't understand why a lifetime of debt makes it hard to afford a brand-new education: why not just call up Dad and ask for $80k? It isn't making them lazy it is keeping them throwing more money and effort after that pile of debt instead of moving the gently caress on. It is a sunk cost fallacy plain and simple. It is the same thing that keeps people paying on underwater houses instead of just writing them off and telling the banks gently caress you. Corporations do this poo poo all the time but people get hung up on emotional attachments etc that can end up costing them money and job opportunities. If you got a degree in whatever lets say English, you will treat your current job as something you're doing in the meantime until you get that job related to your degree. Instead of looking at it as a sunk cost and writing it off and moving on or even treating your current job as a possible career. "I'm only working at Starbucks until my Novel gets published..." Kind of like how everyone in Hollywood is an Actor that is just temporarily waiting tables until they get their big break...  Everyone sees how loving ridiculous that idea is, but when it comes to telling people about higher education, maybe try a different angle they get lambasted as some uncaring privileged rear end in a top hat.You don't have to get a STEM degree at all. That can't solve the issue for everyone. It helps for a good number of people but there are still loads of jobs outside of STEM jobs that can be had. You still need people skilled at things like accounting, marketing, communications, business development, product management etc.
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May 8, 2014 16:58
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anonumos posted:Employers don't "shop around" for labor. And, right now, it doesn't matter WHAT you majored in. Someone posted an article that you conveniently ignored showing that even "good degrees" face high unemployment for the graduates of 2014. The problem isn't that we have a population of ill-educated workers; the problem is that the wealthy don't need them (at all, not just "we don't need a feminist underwater basket weaver"), and the workers are so burdened with debt and so poor on average that they can't go about hiring each other. Sure they do. In a recession it is a buyer's market for employers. They get to prune resumes and find who or what they want. They get to set labor rates and costs to what people are willing to work for. Why hire this unskilled guy for 20 an hour when I can get an unskilled guy with X degree for 20 an hour as well? You can't rely on your degree. A degree is literally a foot in the door MAYBE. Also graduates of 2014 a degree again isn't enough. If you don't have the work experience why would they want you anyway? This happens all the time with people looking for jobs. A guy with a newly minted degree applies for an entry level job asking for Salary requirements that are way beyond what entry level pays. So naturally they get passed over for the dude with or without a degree that is ok for the Salary requirements allowed for that position. And we do have a population of ill-educated workers. People think they are done learning once they are finished with college or have a job. You should always been learning and keeping your skill set up to date. If your employer goes tits up, and you haven't kept up with the latest tech in your field because your employer only used Outdated_Tech_98 you're going to be hosed when looking for a new job. poo poo most people don't keep an up to date resume unless they are looking for a job. It isn't the wealthy that don't need them. Just having a business doesn't make you wealthy. The issue is if you don't have marketable skills you aren't wanted. Which again goes back to what I was saying earlier that people need to realize that just getting a degree now isn't financially worth it once you add in the cost of student loans and lost work experience. I graduated college in 2004, and tuition has almost doubled since then at my college. The degree didn't get more valuable in that time, nor did the educational experience double in usefulness. Our education system needs an overhaul as bad as our healthcare system does. Fat Ogre fucked around with this message at 17:17 on May 8, 2014 |
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May 8, 2014 17:09
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Fat Ogre posted:Comp USA You know nothing about that company or why it failed/was sold off to the lowest bidder. The company execs ran it into the ground, offering poo poo customers didn't want, at prices that weren't competitive, and essentially destroying the entire business model that made it a worthwhile store in a niche of their own. They chased the big box retailers and failed... It had nothing to do with technology replacing jobs and everything to do with incompetence in the investor class.
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May 8, 2014 17:15
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anonumos posted:You know nothing about that company or why it failed/was sold off to the lowest bidder. The company execs ran it into the ground, offering poo poo customers didn't want, at prices that weren't competitive, and essentially destroying the entire business model that made it a worthwhile store in a niche of their own. They chased the big box retailers and failed... Uh huh, yeah and same with Circuit City and eventually Best Buy. Amazon and New Egg apparently are just thriving because the Comp USA exec bungles. Was Block Buster bad execs as well? Not Netflix, Amazon and Redbox destroying it? Fat Ogre fucked around with this message at 17:20 on May 8, 2014 |
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May 8, 2014 17:18
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Fat Ogre posted:Uh huh, yeah and same with Circuit City and eventually Block Buster. CompUSA failed because we had customers coming in all the time looking for computer parts and our parts section was nearly empty. But boy did we have a thousand big screen TVs that nobody could afford! I had half a dozen opportunities to sell massive gaming laptops...except the people who buy them want to upgrade everything in them at the store. They literally had their credit cards in-hand, but decided not to because we didn't have the hard drives or memory. We did at one point. They stocked everything you needed to be the most kickass brick-and-morter-I-must-have-it-now computer store but, again, the TVs were more important. They had the position to out-do online shops but chose the other way.
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May 8, 2014 17:21
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anonumos posted:CompUSA failed because we had customers coming in all the time looking for computer parts and our parts section was nearly empty. But boy did we have a thousand big screen TVs that nobody could afford! Brick and Mortar electronic stores are mostly doomed. It doesn't matter how great they are. Radio Shack is dying right there with Best Buy. Why goto a brick and mortar store when you can get the same part cheaper, shipped next day with no sales tax?
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May 8, 2014 17:25
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Fat Ogre posted:Brick and Mortar electronic stores are mostly doomed. It doesn't matter how great they are. I'm only telling you what I experienced while working there. Most of CompUSA's best, most spendy customers wanted it NOW. Impulse buyers and top-of-the-line early adopters. When they stopped paying attention to who walked in the door, they died. The same is happening to Radio Shack, except they were always garbage with nothing anyone wanted.
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May 8, 2014 17:28
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Fat Ogre posted:
This is a complete tangent, but the reason is because the population at large is still unskilled at replacing parts within a computer, particularly as the laptop market increases and data recovery and other repairs becomes more of a market for people who drop the damned things. There's also still an enormous population that wants to buy "a computer" and does not understand that a computer is, in fact, a collection of hardware parts. And they want the benefits of one "computer" over another explained to them by a "skilled employee." The larger point still remains that unemployment in general and not in specific fields is a problem right now, and there is little evidence for your point that companies used the market crash as an excuse to cut "dead weight." For profit education, for example, is and remains a lucrative market for a wide berth of generic bachelors degree graduates (most of the jobs are essentially sales), despite some federal intervention and some bad press that caught people up on the bad actors, but there have been massive layoffs in the sector because the market of people who could afford the tuition has decreased dramatically.
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May 8, 2014 18:55
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It's literally everyone's fault but the people who control the purse strings and wield the power in this society. Got any more bootstraps tales for us Fat Ogre? Are you aware that you can't just discharge student loan debt through bankruptcy anymore, and that you have to start paying that poo poo off 6 months after you stop going to school full time? It's not a sunk cost fallacy to be 3 years through a bachelors that you're 60k in debt in already, because you will owe that 60k plus interest for the rest of your loving life. Your tax returns will be garnished, and your already pitiful wages as well. Hardship exemptions are basically impossible to get. General personal bankruptcy law has been tightened as well. Normal people can't just walk away from their debts like corporations can, the deck has been stacked against them.
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May 8, 2014 19:07
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rscott posted:It's literally everyone's fault but the people who control the purse strings and wield the power in this society. Got any more bootstraps tales for us Fat Ogre? Are you aware that you can't just discharge student loan debt through bankruptcy anymore, and that you have to start paying that poo poo off 6 months after you stop going to school full time? It's not a sunk cost fallacy to be 3 years through a bachelors that you're 60k in debt in already, because you will owe that 60k plus interest for the rest of your loving life. Your tax returns will be garnished, and your already pitiful wages as well. Hardship exemptions are basically impossible to get. General personal bankruptcy law has been tightened as well. Normal people can't just walk away from their debts like corporations can, the deck has been stacked against them. Totally aware of it. Which is why I'm saying we need education reforms, and that people need to be exceedingly careful about what they are doing in school. When I was in school people would just get a ton of credit cards increase the limits, then pay their bursar bill with credit cards. File for bankruptcy and go on. Now colleges don't let people do that or you have to cash advance and make the minimum payments somehow. It still is a sunk cost if you keep trying to get a job related to your expensive degree instead of looking for other ways to support yourself and get rid of the debts.
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May 8, 2014 19:17
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Fat Ogre posted:When I was in school people would just get a ton of credit cards increase the limits, then pay their bursar bill with credit cards. File for bankruptcy and go on. Now colleges don't let people do that or you have to cash advance and make the minimum payments somehow. The credit card company should've challenged that during bankruptcy. If you have no intention of paying a debt when you incur it it's fraudulent and non-dischargable.
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May 8, 2014 19:25
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:The credit card company should've challenged that during bankruptcy. If you have no intention of paying a debt when you incur it it's fraudulent and non-dischargable. Unless the charge is so many days old, I think the law is 90 days it may have been bumped up during the Bush era bankruptcy reforms in the early 2000s.
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May 8, 2014 19:51
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What third world hellhole is Fat Ogre from? It sounds positively dystopian and I can't imagine why anyone with any marketable skills would want to live there.
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May 8, 2014 20:12
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GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:What third world hellhole is Fat Ogre from? It sounds positively dystopian and I can't imagine why anyone with any marketable skills would want to live there. One where health-care is financed entirely by education derails.
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May 8, 2014 20:15
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Fat Ogre posted:Unless the charge is so many days old, I think the law is 90 days it may have been bumped up during the Bush era bankruptcy reforms in the early 2000s. There's a presumption of abuse for things like luxury purchases and cash advances for a few months before the petition, but if you can prove the debt was fraudulent there's no time limit. Same if you lie about your income on the CC application.
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May 8, 2014 20:20
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:There's a presumption of abuse for things like luxury purchases and cash advances for a few months before the petition, but if you can prove the debt was fraudulent there's no time limit. Same if you lie about your income on the CC application.
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May 8, 2014 20:41
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Fat Ogre posted:Totally aware of it. Which is why I'm saying we need education reforms, and that people need to be exceedingly careful about what they are doing in school. So your solution to a systemic problem that is affecting 10s of millions of Americans (funny how this applies to healthcare costs and higher education costs) is to "figure out a different way to support yourself and get rid of your debt". Stunning analysis really. Why didn't everyone think of that before?
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May 8, 2014 20:48
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You need a degree to get a job. You need to go into debt to get a degree. You need to pay off that debt at your job, for the rest of your life. Doesn't really seem just to me.
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May 8, 2014 21:05
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rscott posted:So your solution to a systemic problem that is affecting 10s of millions of Americans (funny how this applies to healthcare costs and higher education costs) is to "figure out a different way to support yourself and get rid of your debt". Stunning analysis really. Why didn't everyone think of that before? Nice strawman. I'm not saying that. One is a solution on a personal level while the country works towards healthcare reform and student loan/education reform. It would be like me telling people how to smoke pot without loving over your life and you getting mad because that doesn't fix the pot legalization problems in the country 
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May 8, 2014 21:14
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Fat Ogre posted:Nice strawman. 1. Explain to me how I can get a well-paying job without a college degree. 2. Explain how I can get a college degree without swimming in debt.
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May 8, 2014 21:15
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Someone got seriously angry enough to buy me a new AV
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May 8, 2014 21:15
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Since we're mixing education and healthcare and news about Vermont single-payer hasn't changed much, here's some information about affording either on a minimum wage job from a couple years ago:quote:The table below shows the results of a simple exercise. We ask how many hours did a minimum-wage worker have to work to pay for a year of college education (at various kinds of institutions) or a year of health insurance (for an individual or a family). The table compares the experience facing a minimum-wage worker in 1979 — when the minimum wage was $2.90 per hour — with that of a minimum-wage worker in 2010 or 2011 — when the minimum wage was $7.25. (All wages and prices, here and below, are in current dollars — that is the actual dollar value at the time, without any adjustment for inflation. The point is to compare the minimum wage in place in each period with the actual cost of health and education services at the same point in time.) This also highlights one of the other benefits behind Single-Payer like what is being proposed in Vermont: your health insurance would no longer be tied to your employment. This means losing your job is not as devastating and quitting your job to pursue another opportunity like education or entrepreneurship is something you can do without risking large financial burdens when hit with unexpected illness or injury.
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May 8, 2014 21:19
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AYC posted:1. Explain to me how I can get a well-paying job without a college degree. Trade schools, starting your own business, getting certifications for fields that don't require a degree like IT, support jobs, or other service jobs. Then use that decently paying job to pay for your degree and not get crushed by debt. If you're really lucky your job will pay for your school and you can get promoted upwards once you get your degree.
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May 8, 2014 21:19
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