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I could continue with examples of how ObummerCare is an absolute trainwreck of a "tax", but i guess this thread isnt about that.
That's because ACA completely decouples the premium from risk. If you're a normal healthy people, you're subsidizing people the medical insurance corporations would have previously either charged enormous premiums or outright rejected them.
Personally, I think they should have left private insurance as risk-based insurance and stuffed those uninsurable people in a stripped back Medicaid program.
I was working full time at Ace is the Place right around '95. They offered a pretty comparable policy through Kaiser as I was covered under by my parents since i was still only 17.
Fast forward to 2013 i think, (or was it 2012?) just before the crazy ACA went into effect. I had a pretty good plan through Kaiser that was not bad for someone in my position. It was $158/mo, $2700 deductable. This was at the end of the year. The most comparable policy that I was going to be forced into temporarily was ~$470/mo, ~ $4500 deductable. I let it lapse. I refuse to pay that kind of cash for a crappier policy.
I could continue with examples of how ObummerCare is an absolute trainwreck of a "tax", but i guess this thread isnt about that.
IDK, I talked to a lot of folks who never had access to Health Insurance\Care because MANY employers in the so "affordable" Midwest paid $8-10 per hour (even for educated workers who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps) and capped hours to avoid full-time status and therefore company paid Health Insurance; and this was long before anyone ever heard of Barack Obama!
It's theft to give working class people health insurance? Prior to ACA, wealthy folks had it and poor people had it, it was the middle class and working class people who did not. You think it is doable for people making $10-15 an hour to spend $1400 a month for health care for their families? There were millions of people who WORK HARD and yet were unable to get insurance prior to the ACA.
You think it's cheaper to have people bring their kids to the ER instead of a GP?
$700/month in premiums + $6000/12=$500/month in deductibles, it is &1200/month, there is nothing affordable about ACA for people who actually pay for it. ACA is half arsed disaster transfering $1 TRILLIONS in the pockets of the medical biz bloodsucking leeches to cover whopping 6 millions of the subsidized Americans. Shipping those 6 millions to Cuba for treatment is much more cost effective than ACA. ACA does nothing to tame medical biz appetites, it just forces people to pay up the medical racket biz. Mixing public and private is responsible for health care disaster.
You can no longer be an idiot with a HS education and get paid a middle class salary to screw in bolts at the ford assembly line.
That's certainly true but what are we going to do with the bottom half of the population that isn't worth much more than minimum wage?
We're a wealthy country but we can't just confiscate the income of rich people and give it to the bottom half to make them middle class. There isn't enough money to do that even if we tax at 100%.
That's certainly true but what are we going to do with the bottom half of the population that isn't worth much more than minimum wage?
We're a wealthy country but we can't just confiscate the income of rich people and give it to the bottom half to make them middle class. There isn't enough money to do that even if we tax at 100%.
What deity decides on the worth? Rich people confiscate incomes all the time, so if the proles accepted your pov, there is no bottom. that is the nature of hierarchical, class based society where the top controls survival means and incomes of the bottom. American brainwashed bottom refused collective fight in favor of individual rat race/survival. The outcome is easy to predict. Why pay more to docile slaves?
Truth to tell the post war years were sort of honeymoon for the US economy and workers.
We emerged from WWII as a major superpower with little to nil damage on our own soil. The economy was on full frontal production to satisfy pent-up domestic demand and as we fed and otherwise supplied the world (especially Europe) basically because there wasn't anyone else. Much of Europe was a bombed out wasteland with famine raging every where.
By the 1970's things began to change. The worldwide stagflation of the 1970's brought on by the oil crisis and economic policies started a death spiral for the middle class that really has never let up. There have been periods of ups and downs, but the over all trend has been the latter for years now.
The 1970's with its labor actions and other reasons caused manufacturing to either leave the USA in numbers or otherwise decline. With that went many good paying union jobs with excellent benefits that made the middle class (just as "Red Forman or Archie Bunker". *LOL*
In Archie Bunker's case entire industries began major shifts from one part of the country to another in search of lower wages and less union interference. NYC's and New Jersey's once thriving ports/shipping industry began to decline during this period or at least lost dominance.
Just tour any of the "Rust Belt" states to see what the decline of manufacturing has done to local economies. NAFTA didn't help matters despite what many say.
Biggest problem for the "middle class" in America is that entire middle layer of jobs have simply just vanished. Advances in technology means companies and businesses can get more productivity out of fewer workers. Well with fewer workers you need less supervisors, mangers, vice-presidents and so forth. Lean and Sigma Six have decimated entire ranks of jobs.
Watch the film "9-5" or any made about an office/business late as the 1980's and compare to today. You'd be hard pressed to find scores of secretaries, clerks, telephone operators, copy machine operators, supervisors and several low end VPs presiding over petty departments.
It didn't have to be this way. Just look at Germany, a country decimated during WWII. They built back their manufacturing base and economy in about two decades if not less to become the dominate economic force in Europe. Even during bad economic times of recent memory German manufacturers resisted the wholesale redundancies of employees found in say USA. Even more interesting the companies themselves didn't suffer substantial losses and many were able to survive.
Finally one of the largest factors regarding decreasing wages of American workers is the vast numbers of illegal aliens allowed to come and remain in this country.
Yes, illegals do hard back breaking work Americans historically shied away from like farming. But they have also rapidly moved into the skilled trades and or have set up service businesses. Often willing to work for far less than previous prevailing wages/fees.
Construction here in NYC is full of illegals. Jobs that once paid $40/hr. they get $15 and are happy to take it. Janitorial services are fast being outsourced all over this country to businesses set up and or mostly employed by illegals. Walmart along with many other places have gotten shot of internal cleaners and hired these services. So instead of a union janitor on staff you get contracted cleaners making barely half of the previous wage with no bennies.
Truth to tell the post war years were sort of honeymoon for the US economy and workers.
We emerged from WWII as a major superpower with little to nil damage on our own soil. The economy was on full frontal production to satisfy pent-up domestic demand and as we fed and otherwise supplied the world (especially Europe) basically because there wasn't anyone else. Much of Europe was a bombed out wasteland with famine raging every where.
By the 1970's things began to change. The worldwide stagflation of the 1970's brought on by the oil crisis and economic policies started a death spiral for the middle class that really has never let up. There have been periods of ups and downs, but the over all trend has been the latter for years now.
The 1970's with its labor actions and other reasons caused manufacturing to either leave the USA in numbers or otherwise decline. With that went many good paying union jobs with excellent benefits that made the middle class (just as "Red Forman or Archie Bunker". *LOL*
In Archie Bunker's case entire industries began major shifts from one part of the country to another in search of lower wages and less union interference. NYC's and New Jersey's once thriving ports/shipping industry began to decline during this period or at least lost dominance.
Just tour any of the "Rust Belt" states to see what the decline of manufacturing has done to local economies. NAFTA didn't help matters despite what many say.
Biggest problem for the "middle class" in America is that entire middle layer of jobs have simply just vanished. Advances in technology means companies and businesses can get more productivity out of fewer workers. Well with fewer workers you need less supervisors, mangers, vice-presidents and so forth. Lean and Sigma Six have decimated entire ranks of jobs.
Watch the film "9-5" or any made about an office/business late as the 1980's and compare to today. You'd be hard pressed to find scores of secretaries, clerks, telephone operators, copy machine operators, supervisors and several low end VPs presiding over petty departments.
It didn't have to be this way. Just look at Germany, a country decimated during WWII. They built back their manufacturing base and economy in about two decades if not less to become the dominate economic force in Europe. Even during bad economic times of recent memory German manufacturers resisted the wholesale redundancies of employees found in say USA. Even more interesting the companies themselves didn't suffer substantial losses and many were able to survive.
Finally one of the largest factors regarding decreasing wages of American workers is the vast numbers of illegal aliens allowed to come and remain in this country.
Yes, illegals do hard back breaking work Americans historically shied away from like farming. But they have also rapidly moved into the skilled trades and or have set up service businesses. Often willing to work for far less than previous prevailing wages/fees.
Construction here in NYC is full of illegals. Jobs that once paid $40/hr. they get $15 and are happy to take it. Janitorial services are fast being outsourced all over this country to businesses set up and or mostly employed by illegals. Walmart along with many other places have gotten shot of internal cleaners and hired these services. So instead of a union janitor on staff you get contracted cleaners making barely half of the previous wage with no bennies.
Nice theory, yet despite stupendous abundance of the people willing and able to manage, strategize, envision, look important etc., etc., for much less, those jobs pay more, more and more, healthy 20% growth. While stagnant/shrinking compensation of openly coercive and damaging jobs is being rationalized by supply and demand. I think there is an invisible hand indeed somewhere deciding which jobs/fields are open to the free market, supply&demand rigor and which are not. Economics 101 is mum about this riddle.
Yes, if the alternative was a useless college degree. That worked for me. I realized after 2 years that the Fine Arts Degree I was pursuing would be virtually worthless, so I found a trade school. Still work in that trade, and make a fine living.
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