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GaussianCopula posted:Where exactly do "people die in the streets" in the EU? I must have missed that. Is this a joke? It's in pretty bad taste if it is.
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:47 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 03:35 |
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French Civil Servants update: Very effective people. Hit up the Sécurité Sociale, the Post office, and the HR of my town hall (I used to work at the library), in an hour and fifteen and got my routine paperwork done with absolutely no delay and a smile. To be fair I have noticed that going right when these things opens tends to get you the quickest and fastest service. I'm sure it all goes to poo poo after lunch. In all honesty the only places that I have ever experienced trouble with are the Sous-Prefecture and specifically immigration services. I wonder why? Couldn't be that they are understaffed and underfunded.
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:49 |
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poo poo, I should have finished reading the postGaussianCopula posted:I really don't get why people always focus on redistributing wealth instead of simply creating more of it. The economy is not a zero sum game. "If poor people don't want to be poor, maybe they should stop being poor!" Now where have I heard this before? lmao
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:50 |
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Truga posted:because tired doctors kill people Also, "our surgeon just ended his 6-hour shift and we couldn't find anyone to fill in for the rest of the day, so please come back in 18 hours with your potentially rupturing appendix ok?" is also not a safe situation for the patient. I mean once you churn out enough doctors then go hog wild with your working hours, but that's not the situation in Sweden right now afaik (Of course, all this doesn't extend to administrative staff and nurses)
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:53 |
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So remove the numerus clausus on the recruitment of doctors, make the training process smarter, and majke them work 2,5 12-hour shifts a week
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:58 |
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By the way, I overslept and have yet to arrive at work, so it'll be a six-hour workday for me. I'm fighting the good fight bros
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:59 |
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Also doctors are far from being the only kind of personnel in hospitals. Nurses, radio operators, stretcher bearers, midwives, administrative staff can all switch to 6 hours, no problem.
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:01 |
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Pizdec posted:So do constantly-changing doctors. It's a 'too many cooks spoil a broth' type of situation, except with more killing than spoiling because the 3rd doctor in a row didn't have the information needed for competent care that the previous two doctors possessed. I mean once you get to crazy territory, like 36-hour shifts, the negative effects of tiredness become way more dangerous than lack of information continuity, but that's not the scale we're dealing with in this particular example. Specialist doctors already work overtime any time it's better for the patient though?
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:04 |
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Flowers For Algeria posted:Because being insanely rich like the 1% while people die in the streets is fundamentally immoral Also, their "productivity" results by and large in products people don't really need but have been convinced they do by marketing. To produce these essentially useless items, the environment is strained, resulting in a net loss of public utility. Resentment towards the 1% makes people feel badly about themselves, which makes them buy more useless products, which makes the 1% wealthier. High labor productivity is therefore only good in the abstract, but it really depends on what's actually being produced. For you, this may be an open door, but it's obviously of no use to argue with a business type about this, because they will simply not see a problem. There is no use saying the right things to the wrong people. I think we need to get used to the idea that sometimes, economic shrinkage is perfectly acceptable, even desirable, if it enables us to establish a baseline of survival and human dignity. GaussianCopula posted:So basically Germany in 2017? Here's my favorite German:
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:06 |
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GaussianCopula posted:I really don't get why people always focus on redistributing wealth instead of simply creating more of it. The economy is not a zero sum game. Normal people care about fairness, and thus about distributional justice. But if you want to be a robot about it, you could look at the evidence that in the long term, excessive inequality hurts economic growth while redistribution does not harm it, is linked to higher crime rates and more unequal health outcomes.
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:16 |
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Flowers For Algeria posted:So remove the numerus clausus on the recruitment of doctors, make the training process smarter, and majke them work 2,5 12-hour shifts a week My original point was that the healthcare sector is unique and necessitates additional provisions, which is why experimenting with the 6-hour working day in a hospital is basically pointless wrt providing a representative example of how the idea works in general.
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:22 |
Pluskut Tukker posted:Normal people care about fairness, and thus about distributional justice. But if you want to be a robot about it, you could look at the evidence that in the long term, excessive inequality hurts economic growth while redistribution does not harm it, is linked to higher crime rates and more unequal health outcomes. This is all very fine research, though I'd question whether the situation in Asia and South America is all that comparable to the EU, but income inequality is not on the rising, contrary to what people believe and might feel - if we look at the Gini-coefficient for the Eurozone since 2005, it has risen by only 1,5 points, hardly more than the yearly fluctuation and has actually decreased from 2015 to 2016. Furthermore the research shows that it's access to basic public services like education and healthcare that leads to the issues, but universal education and healthcare are hardly socialist ideas, given, as I pointed out before, that they were actually invented by rather reactionary people who understood that a educated and healthy population benefits everyone.
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:29 |
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Pizdec posted:If that worked and when that worked (~10 years down the line?), sure, but then you're defeating the point of a 6-hour working day and just giving your doctors more holiday time (which is also fine I guess, if the labour situation allows it, but that's a really huge 'if'). Oh of course! Labor reforms necessarily take a lot of time to be fully implemented and require adjustments, that's a given. I mean I work 39 hours a week, instead of 35, but this is compensated by extra vacation time. My colleagues in uniform pull 3 12-hour shifts a week, and they are similarly compensated. The goal isn't to work x hours a day for the sake of it, but for a combination of increased leisure time and reduced unemployment.
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:42 |
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GaussianCopula posted:This is all very fine research, though I'd question whether the situation in Asia and South America is all that comparable to the EU, but income inequality is not on the rising, contrary to what people believe and might feel - if we look at the Gini-coefficient for the Eurozone since 2005, it has risen by only 1,5 points, hardly more than the yearly fluctuation and has actually decreased from 2015 to 2016. I'd argue that the situation in South America for instance is a good argument for why we shouldn't let inequality in the EU deteriorate to the levels of inequality prevalent over there. In any case, over the last 25 years , income inequality has rise in the majority of eurozone countries. This might not be a direct cause of lower economic growth but it's certainly worrisome. As a result, I agree with you that we should maintain universal education and healthcare and fund them through a strongly progressive tax system.
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:48 |
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GaussianCopula posted:This is all very fine research, though I'd question whether the situation in Asia and South America is all that comparable to the EU, but income inequality is not on the rising, contrary to what people believe and might feel - if we look at the Gini-coefficient for the Eurozone since 2005, it has risen by only 1,5 points, hardly more than the yearly fluctuation and has actually decreased from 2015 to 2016. "Income inequality is not rising because it's only rising a little" "UHC and education were implemented by a non-leftist at one point so they're not socialist ideas, check-mate buddy" "That's some very nice research you got there. I will now proceed to not read any of it"
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:55 |
Pluskut Tukker posted:I'd argue that the situation in South America for instance is a good argument for why we shouldn't let inequality in the EU deteriorate to the levels of inequality prevalent over there. In any case, over the last 25 years , income inequality has rise in the majority of eurozone countries. This might not be a direct cause of lower economic growth but it's certainly worrisome. As a result, I agree with you that we should maintain universal education and healthcare and fund them through a strongly progressive tax system. The data of the article you posted is inconsistent with the official data ( Eurostat: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=ilc_di12&lang=de) Worldbank: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=DE Moreover the reasons for income inequality would need to be researched in more detail, because high unemployment is a leading cause of income inequality. Pizdec posted:"UHC and education were implemented by a non-leftist at one point so they're not socialist ideas, check-mate buddy" UHC and education are supported by all mainstream parties in Europe. If you absolutely need to claim them for leftism so that you can celebrate a moral victory over that, go ahead, it has no impact on the more idiotic policies the left wants to implement. GaussianCopula fucked around with this message at 09:59 on May 12, 2017 |
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:56 |
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The reason why Bismarck decided to implement socialist reforms wasn't because he was concerned with the welfare of the people, it's because he was trying to undercut socialist parties after failing to outlaw them.
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# ? May 12, 2017 09:59 |
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Phlegmish posted:A well-functioning market economy is what will allow you to sustain the former. I don't know how some people still haven't learned this lesson in the 21st century, after the complete failure of any sort of communist system ever attempted. The latest attempt in Venezuela is failing spectacularly right now. How is is possible for you to post semi-regularly ITT and still think that arguments this bad are going to convince anybody? Also, for the last time, Venezuela is about as communist as the UK was circa 1945-1970, i.e. not even close. Phlegmish posted:'Wealth' is not a static given or manna floating in the air that you can just go siphon off and redistribute however you please without it having any effect. It's something intangible continually produced through the interaction of countless actors and institutions, motivated by specific attitudes, within the cultural and technological context of a specific society. Private property and a capitalist economy play an important role in that process, the government's role is to set the limits and to make sure the created wealth benefits society as a whole. This is funny, because the objection you're making up there is literally one of the assumptions you have to make for capitalism to make any sense.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:02 |
Cerebral Bore posted:How is is possible for you to post semi-regularly ITT and still think that arguments are going to convince anybody? Fixed that for you.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:03 |
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Flowers For Algeria posted:The reason why Bismarck decided to implement socialist reforms wasn't because he was concerned with the welfare of the people, it's because he was trying to undercut socialist parties after failing to outlaw them. It also shows if you actually want to get anything done, you have to pressure elite of society enough they are willing to give concessions to the population in order to stop you. (Hell, even Bernie claimed a couple victories.) (Also, the deepest issue with Venezuela seemed to be trying to support Soviet style price controls with imports purely financed through oil revenue. As for why they did this, is probably worth a book or 3.) Ardennes fucked around with this message at 10:07 on May 12, 2017 |
# ? May 12, 2017 10:04 |
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GaussianCopula posted:Fixed that for you. Well, I suppose it's nice you finally admit that you're unreachable with arguments.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:10 |
Flowers For Algeria posted:The reason why Bismarck decided to implement socialist reforms wasn't because he was concerned with the welfare of the people, it's because he was trying to undercut socialist parties after failing to outlaw them. No one is going to argue that the "Soziale Frage" (social question) was not of great importance in the 19th century, given that at that time, triggered by the industrial revolution, the historical social order (family, villages, feudal system) ceased to exist and had to be replaced with something else.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:13 |
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And it got replaced with capitalism, which is the exact same thing as feudalism, but with currency instead of just plain land.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:21 |
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GaussianCopula posted:The data of the article you posted is inconsistent with the official data ( Why are you showing me links with data from 2006 onwards when the article I linked claims inequality has risen since 1990? Even if income inequality has been broadly stable or risen only slightly over the past 10 years, it could still be the case that it is already too high, and that's ignoring wealth inequality for a moment. GaussianCopula posted:Moreover the reasons for income inequality would need to be researched in more detail, because high unemployment is a leading cause of income inequality. Plugging 'causes of income inequality' into Google Scholar yields roughly 1.5 million hits. While we always need more research, maybe it's time we actually put some of it into practice. GaussianCopula posted:UHC and education are supported by all mainstream parties in Europe. If you absolutely need to claim them for leftism so that you can celebrate a moral victory over that, go ahead, it has no impact on the more idiotic policies the left wants to implement. If parties on the right are pushing for austerity, for imposing higher user fees on education or on healthcare, then defending universal access to UHC and education by definition becomes a leftist political position.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:25 |
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MiddleOne posted:Teetering on the edge of profitability...? As someone working in finance this attitude just baffles me. Any business which can't survive an unexpected 2-4% one-time hike in operating costs is not a business long for this world. When operating margins (that is costs before taxes and interest even factor in) are that low your industry is either undergoing vast technological change (hello half of retailing today) or market saturation has created a consumer-friendly market (hello steel and brent oil) and as the market gods decree someone is going to have to go bankrupt to restore order. Forced wage raises are not productivity gains. Sure, average productivity rises because you've just forced unproductive people into unemployment, but you haven't increased national productivity at all. ChainsawCharlie posted:Dude and we were having a nice discussion about union support or lack of there off To immigrants.the only sectors that could not readily absorb the cost would be retail and food,and the extra expenditure would be partly compensated by a reduction in vat rates and labour taxes,which impact those industries in a big way.because you would have a increase in employment you would get 1) less government expenditure on social welfare 2) increased tax base 3) a fairer vat which is one of the most regressive taxes. I'm phoneposting now but there's a ton of literature about this and also its what happened in France in the 2000s like FFA said. Not about union support to immigrants - I agree with you that unions support immigrants, however they oppose immigration. Anyway that was a side note. There are lots of different sectors that might not be able to absorb the cost. Airlines are always fighting with their unions over pay, in Finland the paper companies are, transport etc.. And then you have differences within industries, with some companies being unprofitable. I don't think the solution to 50% youth unemployment is cutting hours to force companies to hire a wider base of workers. a) You get some working hours lost from the increased costs and b) people and companies aren't working as long as they want to and would be optimal. The solutions for youth unemployment are investment in education and skills (+ programs like apprenticeships) and more flexible labor markets that allow you to get rid of workers (make hiring less risky), allow you to pay less for early career workers (make hiring less costly) and allow more flexible working hours (make hiring more suitable). Even if that means that young people do not enter the labor market with the same working conditions that older workers have, at least they enter the labor market instead of being stuck outside. The dichotomy between "insiders" (i.e. long-tenured workers who are currently very strongly protected by laws, even so much that they hamper companies) and "outsiders" is what leads to high youth unemployment.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:29 |
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Forced wage raises are not productivity gains. Sure, average productivity rises because you've just forced unproductive people into unemployment, but you haven't increased national productivity at all.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:40 |
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Fiction posted:In a couple decades or so, assuming we haven't all starved to death from our arable land all drying out, the only political question will be who gets to own the robots that do all the work for us: the rich, or everyone. The hackers who take them over?
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:52 |
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The day automation became autonomous.
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:55 |
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Shibawanko posted:Also, their "productivity" results by and large in products people don't really need but have been convinced they do by marketing. To produce these essentially useless items, the environment is strained, resulting in a net loss of public utility. Resentment towards the 1% makes people feel badly about themselves, which makes them buy more useless products, which makes the 1% wealthier. High labor productivity is therefore only good in the abstract, but it really depends on what's actually being produced. For you, this may be an open door, but it's obviously of no use to argue with a business type about this, because they will simply not see a problem. There is no use saying the right things to the wrong people. I'm a business type and this is an open door to me. Also third wave RAF knew their poo poo.
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# ? May 12, 2017 11:42 |
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GaussianCopula posted:Corporations are owned by people and you would take away the money from those people. People who own corporations are not poor. blowfish posted:Anywhere you find that money accumulates without being spent on vaguely useful things in a reasonable timeframe. E.g. any profits that go straight into executive compensation packages or just sit in the bank instead of being reinvested into the company. poo poo if anything the economy would be a lot healthier if the idle rich didn't have so much money that they just put it in hedge funds.
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# ? May 12, 2017 12:33 |
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MiddleOne posted:Also, since you've clearly never looked at a balance sheet in your life, a 10% increase in labour costs is not a 10% increase in operating costs. That would mean that a 100% of an organizations expenses are labour costs. I never claimed 10% labour costs would increase over all operating costs by 10%. I claimed it's pretty crippling with businesses teetering on the edge of profitabilty or moving to Belarus or Taiwan or whatever when labour costs go up, sometimes even a little. I'm in support of your model as I understand it, i.e. increasing wages, decreasing work hours, or both, but I'm just not sure how well that adapts to the Nordic reality right now. Also you handily ignored my earlier post where I tried to show you, with links, that migrations costs actually are not billions a year but billions a month. You just whistle away "nooo, is not real, didn't happen, I'll just go on my way, I must disagree with ligurs". Not very convincing. One of your faults is also that you appear think of the costs, it appears, as a one time hit. But if new migrants who flood the borders increase public spending by billions - it won't stop in a year. The public spending to house them will continue until the end of time for those who do not find work, which will be most of them. It just goes on, year after year. As more will come, it will accumulate. If you work in finance you should understand this. Last thing, Germany does not need to take loans to cover for additional billions of spending (because of immigration or asteroids or whatever) because Germany is churning money, like I loving said if you would just read my posts. I said many economies in the EU area would be in trouble, like Finland is, if you suddenly need to whip out 1,5 billion or whatever, just because tens of thousands of guys from Sweden came over and require 24/7 assistance. You need to either cut from somewhere, or loan. Germany (and Sweden) can handle it for now.
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# ? May 12, 2017 14:26 |
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That's why there should be huge transfers from Germany to these countries. It's called international solidarity
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# ? May 12, 2017 15:01 |
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There should definitely be transfers within Germany, says the IMF:quote:The International Monetary Fund is calling on Berlin to combat inequality within Germany and encourage more “inclusive growth” across the country, Handelsblatt has learned. (of course nothing will happen as a result of this because Schäuble, and the IMF economists haven't suddenly become social democrats. Still good to see the discourse changing though)
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# ? May 12, 2017 15:18 |
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Ok Portugal is 100% definitely in a clusterfuck now. PT, Portugal Telecom, Portugal's largest ISP, together with Telefonica, were the target of a ransomware attack that used a Microsoft vulnerability. PT has data of A LOT of big companies in Portugal. It's encrypted. Some people have lost TV & Internet Service. The pope is arriving in Fatima today. And tomorrow... Tomorrow it's gonna be the main pope cerimony, it's the 100th anniversary of Mary showing herself to some kids here, and Benfica (that has 6.5M fans here) will probably win the championship. It's gonna be a loving wildride, these couple of days. Chaoooos!
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# ? May 12, 2017 15:33 |
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Looking forward to GC's explanation of why the IMF recommendations are idiotic, Germany is actually in the right and it is good to put the heaviest burden on the lowest earners.
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# ? May 12, 2017 15:36 |
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orange sky posted:Ok Portugal is 100% definitely in a clusterfuck now. Not just portugal its affecting Spain and the uk,lol a miracle of fatima!
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# ? May 12, 2017 15:49 |
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Pizdec posted:So do constantly-changing doctors. It's a 'too many cooks spoil a broth' type of situation, except with more killing than spoiling because the 3rd doctor in a row didn't have the information needed for competent care that the previous two doctors possessed. I mean once you get to crazy territory, like 36-hour shifts, the negative effects of tiredness become way more dangerous than lack of information continuity, but that's not the scale we're dealing with in this particular example. bro, the problem is not lack of trained personnel, it's about people getting worked into the ground and quitting. 6 hour shifts means you need to do more reports to the next nurse and doctor in line, but this is already being done, so you just do it earlier. Guess what, we employ temp doctors and nurses to fill gaps in high stress positions. Most of them are not even familiar with the teams they're working on, let alone the patients. In addition to that they cost the hospitals many times more than regular staff, so don't tell me it's about money. A change to 6 hours workday would make Sweden's healthcare safer, better and make more doctors and especially nurses return to work
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# ? May 12, 2017 16:42 |
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Pluskut Tukker posted:There should definitely be transfers within Germany, says the IMF: That's nothing new, the research arm of the IMF constantly tells to do just about the exact opposite of what the political arm of the IMF requires.
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# ? May 12, 2017 16:43 |
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Cat Mattress posted:That's nothing new, the research arm of the IMF constantly tells to do just about the exact opposite of what the political arm of the IMF requires. A clear case of commie subversion&infiltration if I've ever seen one.
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# ? May 12, 2017 16:52 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 03:35 |
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orange sky posted:Ok Portugal is 100% definitely in a clusterfuck now. You forgot the Eurovision final too!
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# ? May 12, 2017 16:58 |