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You missed the fact that most developed countries don't have a minimum wage because they are heavily unionized and unions decide how much workers make. In other words they don't need one. In Scandinavian countries the effective minimum is ~$20/hr.
You missed the fact that most developed countries don't have a minimum wage because they are heavily unionized and unions decide how much workers make. In other words they don't need one. In Scandinavian countries the effective minimum is ~$20/hr.
Do you have any ideas or policies that give us the freedom to decide if we want to engage in these programs?
What I don't get is what you think gives you the right to mandate how others have to behave.
Why don't you create your programs and give people the choice whether or not they want to participate? Probably because no one wants to participate.
Why not make Social Security or Obamacare optional? If they are so great then people will flock to these utopian policies.
Do you have any ideas or policies that give us the freedom to decide if we want to engage in these programs?
If you give the 0.01% the option of making a killing in finance and trade, and keeping it all, or supporting universal healthcare, which do you think they will chose?
Consumer capitalism thrives when the wealth is shared, and self destructs when it isn't. If you don't understand why, then you have a long education ahead.
Nearly all industrial nations spend the same on healthcare until age 65. The USA outspends everyone else at that age.
The amount is not so much the issue. It is a Who Pays issue.
In the countries that have as high as Tax Rates as US . . . medical is part of the package "for free," or just included.
In the US we pay the High Rates and THEN have to also pay for the Medical Expense(s) and/or "Insurance, as well.
You follow the difference? It is HUGE.
Meanwhile our money goes to Support a HUGE Welfare/Warfare Military that just keeps building more un-needed nonsense hardware . . . when the ONLY day in the last 50 years when called to actually Defend US -- sat on its butt and could not even "defend" itself.
Denmark has NONE of this idiocy.
Here the Medical Market Racketeers have bribed the US Congress with our own money to:
1. Limit Medical School Enrollment.
2. Keep Low Priced Imported Meds out of the US.
3. Make Insurance Necessary -- due to their own run-up of the price.
And then we have a pack of "Free Market" (in name only) Nitwits who run around thinking this is great?
In a Real Free Market --
1. Anyone could go to Medical School and become a Doctor, and if they could pass the Exit Exams, go into Practice. (and the market would be saturated, bringing prices WAY Down).
2. Low Priced Meds could be imported, under-cutting the US Price Gouging Firms.
3. Few people would need insurance -- because Medical Care would be MUCH Cheaper.
This stuff is not an accident.
US "Capitalism" is just a Phoney Racket to support the politically connected and wealthy.
The amount is not so much the issue. It is a Who Pays issue.
In the countries that have as high as Tax Rates as US . . . medical is part of the package "for free," or just included.
In the US we pay the High Rates and THEN have to also pay for the Medical Expense(s) and/or "Insurance, as well.
You follow the difference? It is HUGE.
Meanwhile our money goes to Support a HUGE Welfare/Warfare Military that just keeps building more un-needed nonsense hardware . . . when the ONLY day in the last 50 years when called to actually Defend US -- sat on its butt and could not even "defend" itself.
Denmark has NONE of this idiocy.
Here the Medical Market Racketeers have bribed the US Congress with our own money to:
1. Limit Medical School Enrollment.
2. Keep Low Priced Imported Meds out of the US.
3. Make Insurance Necessary -- due to their own run-up of the price.
And then we have a pack of "Free Market" (in name only) Nitwits who run around thinking this is great?
In a Real Free Market --
1. Anyone could go to Medical School and become a Doctor, and if they could pass the Exit Exams, go into Practice. (and the market would be saturated, bringing prices WAY Down).
2. Low Priced Meds could be imported, under-cutting the US Price Gouging Firms.
3. Few people would need insurance -- because Medical Care would be MUCH Cheaper.
This stuff is not an accident.
US "Capitalism" is just a Phoney Racket to support the politically connected and wealthy.
Doctor net take-home pay is only about 10% of medical spending in the United States. You could pay physicians the minimum wage and we'd still have an enormous economic problem.
We've all seen the bills for even minor surgery. The physician gets $1,000. The hospital gets $10,000. Administrative costs are a huge waste. Hospitals, group practices, and insurance companies all have squadrons of cubicle trolls pushing paper. In our litigious society, everybody practices defensive medicine and that drives up the costs.
Health care is cheaper per-capita in other first world countries because the compensation for health care workers is lower. If you look at the dollars spent in the US, the compensation for the non-physician jobs that chew up most of the money are almost double anywhere else. Nurses. Medical techs who operate all the equipment, draw blood, perform the lab testing. Those people tend to be much better compensated than the equivalent skill set outside of health care.
Doctor net take-home pay is only about 10% of medical spending in the United States. You could pay physicians the minimum wage and we'd still have an enormous economic problem.
We've all seen the bills for even minor surgery. The physician gets $1,000. The hospital gets $10,000. Administrative costs are a huge waste. Hospitals, group practices, and insurance companies all have squadrons of cubicle trolls pushing paper. In our litigious society, everybody practices defensive medicine and that drives up the costs.
Health care is cheaper per-capita in other first world countries because the compensation for health care workers is lower. If you look at the dollars spent in the US, the compensation for the non-physician jobs that chew up most of the money are almost double anywhere else. Nurses. Medical techs who operate all the equipment, draw blood, perform the lab testing. Those people tend to be much better compensated than the equivalent skill set outside of health care.
Sure. Was not exactly talking about every/each doctor, only, per se.
Besides it was NOT the individual doctors who wanted to limit the Medical School enrollment -- it was the Corporate Organization -- the AMA.
Same on the Hospital Corporations. The collective goal is to bundle (limit access to) all the Medical Services together and then Price Gouge US across the board.
And no it is not the Lawyers, per se, either. They just help run up the price, so the Gross Revenues are even higher.
But it is still all Top End Greed. Cannot have Billionaire Owners of Hospital Corporation of America without lying, cheating and stealing somewhere. THAT is where the money is going.
If you want to be rich -- you can only earn so much . . . the rest you have to steal.
If you look at the dollars spent in the US, the compensation for the non-physician jobs that chew up most of the money are almost double anywhere else. Nurses. Medical techs who operate all the equipment, draw blood, perform the lab testing. Those people tend to be much better compensated than the equivalent skill set outside of health care.
True. The medical professions are excellent examples of using outrageous requirements to limit access and boost salaries.
True. The medical professions are excellent examples of using outrageous requirements to limit access and boost salaries.
So it's an "outrageous requirement" to ensure that people are competent at their jobs?
What we're seeing now is the hysteresis in going from about 60% overpaid relative to the other first world countries to something more like being paid on-par. It's now pretty easy to get into a medical school compared to 40 years ago. The best and the brightest can read the writing on the wall. An MD is not an automatic ticket to being a multimillionaire. I'm a 5%-er. A Family Medicine physician makes quite a bit less than I do. They have to hustle and see 6 patients per hour to earn that money. They've been squeezed by the insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid. Most have been forced to affiliate with a hospital where they're at least not losing money on Medicaid patients. They have enormous education debt to pay off. There are way easier ways to make that kind of income that aren't a repetitive task job. Sure, there are extremely high skill specialties that still pay well but that is because those skills are so rare. The average plodder who goes into family medicine couldn't handle the high end surgery specialties. That spread is only going to increase. That same trend projects on all the other health care jobs. Nurses are seeing big downwards wage pressures. Ditto the med tech jobs. It's pretty easy to predict that where the United States today has the highest survival rates for the various serious health problems like cancer, it's going to drop. The people entering the field today simply aren't as good as the people entering the field 30 or 40 years ago.
Being a medical resident has long been a trial by fire. Current rules allow most residents to routinely work 28-hour hospital shifts, just not on consecutive days.
Yeah like no one has ever seen this before.....
The exclusive privilege of an incorporated trade necessarily restrains the competition, in the town where it is established, to those who are free of the trade. To have served an apprenticeship in the town, under a master properly qualified, is commonly the necessary requisite for obtaining this freedom. The bye laws of the corporation regulate sometimes the number of apprentices which any master is allowed to have, and almost always the number of years which each apprentice is obliged to serve. The intention of both regulations is to restrain the competition to a much smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into the trade. The limitation of the number of apprentices restrains it directly. A long term of apprenticeship restrains it more indirectly, but as effectually, by increasing the expense of education.
Adam Smith
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