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Uranium Phoenix posted:There's actually no reason to phase in minimum wage increases over years or decades, especially given how stagnant wages have been for decades. The fast food workers who started going on strike demanding wage increases initially had literally no establishment support, which is distinct from the Democratic party helping them. "Leftist virtue signaling" seems to be your way avoiding a relevant critique of the actions of the Democratic party and their elected politicians, who could pass many progressive laws if they wanted to, but are not. Counterpoint: in industries with low margins and high labor costs (e.g. fast food, grocery stores) it could result in very swift price increases.
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Aug 19, 2016 18:08
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Transmetropolitan posted:This is one of the main issues I always had in my economics grad - the double standard. Ask your standard run-of-the-mill "Mankiw is all you need for intro" professor about those issues and he can wax poetic on the necessity and the benefit of a shock application when it goes to the benefit of capital, but the other way is just an abominable heresy. Even though we have historical account and proof of the damage that such an approach can cause in a country. Am I an outlier in that I hesitate to support shocks to capital as well? (See: stimulus packages).
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Aug 23, 2016 22:34
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MiddleOne posted:I'm both. Hedging my personal finances while speculating with my business portfolio. financialadvisors.txt
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Nov 27, 2016 20:01
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Shifty Pony posted:The market could also be getting excited about the stock buybacks and dividend payouts that companies will do following the implementation of Trump's promise to slash the tax on repatriation of deferred overseas income. I thought those billions would go to jobs and salaries. Oh, wait...
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Dec 1, 2016 23:15
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Vermain posted:I've probably said it before, but if we pass through 2017 recession free, I'll eat my hat. The OPEC announcement raised people's hopes a little, but I doubt we're going to see even a fraction of the business investment needed returning for $50 oil. Ultimately, I suspect a lot of the outlook going forwards is going to depend on U.S. economic policy: Trump might be able to win a few token victories at home, keeping a few thousand jobs from fleeing overseas, but asking companies en masse to not lower their expenses via job exporting at a time when profits are already gloomy is really sawing the branch you sit on. Keep in mind the general predictions were that we'd have a recession in 2016-2017 all along, and that even when Clinton was expected to win. It's amusing that when one party or the other overspends we hear screams of "deficit spending!" and when one party or the other cuts we hear screams of "austerity!".
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Dec 2, 2016 15:14
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$30B in debt on a market cap of $600M? Holy poo poo. They need an FDIC for bank investors.
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Dec 6, 2016 00:00
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axeil posted:"i don't care about facts or anything else objective but i'm upset and i want my feelings validated!" populism.txt
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Jan 1, 2017 13:14
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Dead Cosmonaut posted:If anything, the healthcare industry in the US is grossly oversized. Last time I was in the ER overnight in this massive hospital I was its only there and all the other patient rooms were empty. I see you don't live in New England. Though to be fair, half the people in the waiting rooms I've been in are just there to get painkillers.
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Jan 2, 2017 14:21
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Does that number include agents (or brokers or producers depending on where you work)?
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Jan 3, 2017 03:56
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Aliquid posted:Not-for-profit entities operate at margin all the time. State-run entities may even run a deficit if it's a public good!! And that deficit is paid with: taxes. Which will slow economic growth (all other things being equal.) Money does not come from thin air. Or rather, fiat value doesn't.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:03
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rscott posted:Money is a social construct Yes. Aaaand.....
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Jan 6, 2017 04:02
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Rated PG-34 posted:I was talking to a colleague yesterday who is a contractor and he pays $2200/mo for health insurance for his family of 4. Everything is fine and this is the best we can do. But don't worry. Good posters in this thread assure us cost is not a problem we should address now.
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Jan 8, 2017 03:00
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mycomancy posted:That's a lovely argument. People vote against their best interests all the time. I voted for the Colorado health care plan, because I pay a HELL of a lot more to cover my family of three than what I'd pay under that plan. People are loving idiots who shouldn't be asked to vote on complex, highly technical policies, that's why we vote for representatives to do it for us. And therein lies the problem. if you pay less, and costs are fixed, then someone else pays more. We need to get costs under control. In some cases that means delivering the same care for less money. In other cases it means delivering less care, because a lucrative fee-for-service system combined with a litigious culture encourages enough providers to over-intervene, or to intervene in the wrong ways.
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Jan 8, 2017 03:55
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cheese posted:Can you really not loving comprehend that if every single American were covered under Medicare, that this would enable us to have significant leverage to negotiate lower rates for a wide variety of services, procedures and medications? Your argument is literally "Single payer would not matter because costs would be the same" when half of the loving point is that single payer gives you a strangle hold over costs. Costs are not fixed. They are not chiseled in the stone of the loving Lincoln Memorial. Chill out. I fully understand the concept of, "Being the only payer lets you negotiate". I'm pushing back against some earlier posts that said, "Let's just get to single payer and somehow the costs will work themselves out." The costs won't work themselves out unless we do something about it (which might start with something like, "Let Medicare negotiate prices aggressively."). I don't claim to have every answer, but I do know that ignoring cost is rarely a good policy in the long-term. I do feel (i.e. I don't have a lot of good data points on this, other than personal experience which is often a terrible basis for broad-based policy), that we aren't evaluating enough about why provider costs are skyrocketing. Is it greedy doctors? Is it medical liability insurance premiums? Is it government regulation on the type of medical devices permitted for certain surgeries? Is it the general health of the populace caused by saving more babies via NICUs? I would be surprised if costs are wholly driven upwards by one single thing, and we may make decisions as a society to simply deal with higher costs for certain things, but I see very few policy-makers doing more than wringing their hands at the issue of cost. Edit: Syntax. Ynglaur fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 17:49
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Helsing posted:You're pretty obviously responding to my post -- or at least the straw man version of it -- where I argued that costs are far less of an issue than providing adequate care. What you're conveniently ignoring, since you didn't actually quote anything I said, is that in the same post I did agree costs are an issue that needs to be dealt with. I even suggested a theoretical interpretation of why costs are so high and outlined a couple policies that could hypothetically deal with rising costs. Fair enough. I was reading and responding quickly, and may have missed your other points.
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Jan 9, 2017 01:50
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Given that we are the only first world nation with a fully private healthcare system, and that cost inflation is worse for us by orders of magnitude than anyone else with a comparable economy, can't we can make a rational case for causation here? Perhaps, though keep in mind that the US effectively subsidizes the world's pharmaceutical research right now. In other words, "Yes, the US private market drives higher costs because companies are searching for higher profits," but also, "The US is the only private market, and therefore the only place to realize profits." The answer to this question may be legitimately "yes", but are we willing to dramatically slow the pace of pharmaceutical innovation in exchange for socialized healthcare? Edit: I realize I'm oversimplifying some things for the sake of a single example.
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Jan 9, 2017 14:31
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How much pharmaceutical research is done outside the US, compared to in the US? The current model is interesting. Only big pharma companies can afford to run clinical trials at the level required by the FDA, but only small start-ups take on the risk of research. The result is weird: in aggreggate the pharma industry has barely broken even in the past 20 years, but this is because the vast majority of pharma startups fail. In other words, the aggregate profit of the industry is close to $0, but the profits and losses are at opposite ends of the spectrum. This definitely creates odd incentives, especially when pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise direct to consumers.
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Jan 9, 2017 16:53
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:This is a heck of an assertion that I would love to see some sources for. Let me see if I can dig up a public source. I saw a slide from a couple years ago with the information, but I don't know if it was all publicly available given it had numbers for private companies as well.
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Jan 9, 2017 18:13
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Private Speech posted:If you don't see the difference between the two things then I don't know what to tell you. The difference being "the whole country has a better quality of life" as opposed to "one person gets a better quality of life". By the same token you could reject taxes, social programs, education etc. etc. FWIW, I also read your earlier post as "the first world country", rather than "one person."
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Jan 16, 2017 19:24
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Private Speech posted:Then it's a matter of degree and ethics. Are you trying to claim that say Vietnamese children should be ashamed of how some American workers have a harder life due to globalisation, when they are the ones who get to not starve? It's a false equivalence. Not, but my sympathy for the American worker who has a harder life certainly remains. I don't take the attitude of, "Well, at least he's not starving to death. He has no right to complain, and should accept his lot in life."
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Jan 16, 2017 22:25
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