.. because RIGHT NOW it's not profitable for Big Energy. If ExxonMobil figured out a way to make billions on it, you can bet your ass the government would be funding it. Big Energy likes us right where they have us: under their collective thumb. And they'll spend billions to keep us there.
Yes, let's cut 'entitlement' spending. I'm sure all the (wildly overexaggerated) problems with those programs will simply disappear overnight if we take money away from them.
Or, you know, the ACTUAL result will be that benefits will be cut to people who have paid into the system for decades. Yeah, that's fair.
I'm all for improving efficiency in government. But you don't cure cancer by shooting yourself in the head.
After paying salaries, taxes, insurance, unemployment insurance, and vacations, Christmas bonuses, my warehouse workers are a high cost against already low margin sales.
This assumes you're hiring permanent employees. I'm assuming that you are not based in the USA.
Salaries - N/A. You cut a check to the temp agency and they pay THEIR employee. Since they take their cut, there is that much less to pay the worker.
Taxes - 100% of what you pay a temp agency is deductible as a 'business expense'. You don't even have to worry about payroll taxes or paying into that annoying socialist un-American terrorist program called Social Security, either; the temp agency manages that.
Insurance - Temp employees don't get insurance, apart from what they're entitled to by law. This usually means worker's comp and nothing else. No life insurance, no short- or long- term disability, and DEFINITELY no health insurance.
Unemployment insurance - The temp agencies pay as little as possible into the pool. This means that every claim gets fought. Temp agencies are notorious for going into these hearings and telling bald-faced lies, because they know that the ex-worker won't be able to prove otherwise. Or, before the worker can file a claim, they offer them an assignment that is either blatantly illegal or they physically cannot accept due to massive safety issues or those pesky 'laws of physics' that prevent you from showing up for an assignment that starts in 20 minutes, when you're 30 minutes away from the location. Then, at the hearing, they'll be able to (technically correctly) argue that you turned down an assignment and therefore voluntarily quit.
Vacations - Temp employees don't get vacation days. Or any other paid time off. You want a sick day? You're fired. You come in anyway, even though you're so sick you can't do your job? You're fired. Your child dies in an auto accident and you want to go to the funeral? You're fired. You're in an auto accident and are in the hospital with three broken limbs? After you go bankrupt because you can't pay the hospital bill (because of course, you have no health insurance), you're fired.
Christmas bonuses - That's the funniest thing I've heard all week. NOBODY in the USA gets ANY KIND of bonus anymore, unless you're a C-level executive at a big company, in which case you can get a bonus for keeping expenses down (for example, creating an atmosphere in which you can pay the temp agencies as little as possible, since they're desperate for clients.)
Exacerbating the problem is the fact that it's 100% legal for your employer to turn to you and say "OK, you're fired, if you want to keep working here, call this temp agency." The company being able to get the same work for less pay is a good enough reason to fire someone, especially in low-skill jobs like warehouse work (since it costs next to nothing to hire a replacement). Technically, since most states are at-will employment states, they don't even need the slightest pretense to fire you. I have literally been told, to my face, when I asked why I was being fired, "We don't have to tell you."
Well then I suppose you would find a company who finds no point in protecting their most valuable asset (people)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh wait, you were serious, let me laugh even harder...
To the vast majority of companies out there, you are not an asset, you are a liability on a balance sheet. Nobody can ever work hard enough to justify their salary, no matter how pathetic or insulting that salary is. You are less valuable than the office furniture.
Maybe the senior executives would sing a different tune if you showed them that 75% of their current workforce passwords were cracked in 45 seconds or less.
In my experience, no 'senior executive' is technical enough to understand that phrase. Their eyes glaze over when you try to explain the need for passwords at all, let alone more secure ones. Then when you tell them that they need to jump through even the slightest hoop regarding security, the first thing they tell you is to make an exception for them, because they don't want to be any further inconvenienced. (Most of them resent the idea that they have to put in a password at all, let alone a reasonably secure one. Their convenience is far far FAR more important than data security, because they understand the former much more than the latter.) The second thing they tell you is do it or you're fired. I have first-hand knowledge of this attitude from multiple Fortune 500 companies as well as public sector entities. I've worked at places where the CEO's password (for EVERYTHING they access, from email to file shares) is the name of the company. And set to never expire. And known to everyone in IT, lest there be a problem with it.
Security at most big companies is a bad joke. You can yell and scream and beg and cajole and do anything you can think of to explain why what you're doing is grossly inadequate, but all it will get you is fired.
You're right, we should not make people buy health insurance. We should nationalize the health care system and pay for it through taxation, like every other civilized country on the planet.
Quality of care (Massachusetts has among the worst quality of health care in the nation)
My father and his new liver would disagree with you. And if we have the worst health care in the nation, why do people travel from the four corners of the earth to take advantage of what's available right in our back yard?
Government in health care is not the problem. The profit motive is the problem. Remove that, and you'll see the other problems you quote go away.
I would much rather our representative government protect our quality of life than allow some private for (HUGE) profit company decide if I live or die.
Cruel and oppressive government or rule.
A nation under such cruel and oppressive government.
Telling a company that they can't make money by killing people is not cruel or oppressive. It's the right thing to do. People's lives are more important than money.
You may want to re-read my post as that isn't even close to what I said.
OK, let's do that:
Legislating private industry profits is not freedom
It is when you're talking about the people whose lives that private industry has in its hands. Your implication is that corporations are less "free" if the government regulates them, and you could probably stretch that into a fact (if you ignore the fact that, unregulated, big business would destroy us all in the name of profit). But despite what Mitt says, corporations are not people. People's lives are more important than corporate profits, period.
it is tyranny regardless of whether you think it's the right thing to do or not.
See the above definition of tyranny. Telling people they can't have the coverage they've paid into for decades just because they had the NERVE to get cancer is far more tyrannical than the ACA.
I guess you just have to decide this: Is money more important than people's lives? Not having health insurance is strongly correlated with increased morbidity and mortality. Each one of your points is based on how much something costs, not what the value is. The "money" thing can be fixed.
Premiums were going to go up no matter what happened. Until the profit motive is removed from the health care system, that's the way it is. All things being the same, I'd rather people had health insurance than not.
Which is why this former Obama voter and health policy researcher is sitting out this election.
You really think the Mittster is going to be better equipped to help the situation? He's on record as saying that one of the first things he'll do after taking office is implement policy that will deny coverage to 50 million Americans. And that's after setting back the women's movement 50 years (not to mention making a woman's right to choose what she does with her body less important than appealing to the radical right) and basically formalizing the policy of allowing those with money to control the rest of us.
For the effect on health insurance premiums, the CBO referred[182]:15 to its November 2009 analysis[183] and stated that the effects would "probably be quite similar" to that earlier analysis. That analysis forecast that by 2016, for the non-group market comprising 17% of the market, premiums per person would increase by 10 to 13% but that over half of these insureds would receive subsidies that would decrease the premium paid to "well below" premiums charged under current law. For the small group market, 13% of the market, premiums would be impacted 1 to 3% and 8 to 11% for those receiving subsidies; for the large group market comprising 70% of the market, premiums would be impacted 0 to 3%, with insureds under high premium plans subject to excise taxes being charged 9 to 12%. The analysis was affected by various factors including increased benefits particularly for the nongroup markets, more healthy insureds due to the mandate, administrative efficiencies related to the health exchanges, and insureds under high premium plans reducing benefits in response to the tax.[183]
Citations: (182) a b c "Correction Regarding the Longer-Term Effects of the Manager's Amendment to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (PDF). Congressional Budget Office. December 19, 2009. Retrieved March 22, 2010. (183) a b "An Analysis of Health Insurance Premiums Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act". Cbo.gov. 2009-11-30. Retrieved 2012-06-29.
The law, however, severely limits the ability of the IRS to collect the penalties. There are no civil or criminal penalties for refusing to pay it and the IRS cannot seize bank accounts or dock wages to collect it. No interest accumulates for unpaid penalties.
You know, I've never bought that argument. Let's say that you take the position, for example, that the ACA forces you to buy something that you might not choose to buy yourself (but if you don't buy it, you're an idiot, but that's beside the point.) Let's take the pros and cons:
Cons: 1) You have to buy health insurance. 2) Private companies have to provide services to people that they otherwise would not choose to do business with.
Pros: 1) Everyone has access to more affordable health insurance, regardless of employment status. 2) Everyone has access to more affordable health insurance, regardless of employment status. 3) Your employer cannot force you into indentured servitude by providing the health insurance that you or a family member need to continue breathing. This gives you the freedom to start your own business without worrying that you'll be unable to purchase health coverage, and therefore, say it with me now, CREATE JOBS AND GROW THE ECONOMY. 4) Insurers can't deny you coverage because of a 'pre-existing condition'. 5) Insurers can't drop your coverage when they decide you're costing them too much money. 6) People can stay on their parents' health coverage longer, giving them time to establish themselves and be able to get health insurance on their own, either through their employer or purchased independently. 7) Insurance companies cannot just raise premiums whenever the wind blows, and if they do, they have to pay you back. 8) Without
Things that are not true: 1) There are no "death panels." This is an invention of the radical right who (willfully) misinterpreted a requirement by your insurer that they pay for a visit with your (independently) chosen physician in which you privately discuss your wishes should you no longer be able to make your own decisions about end-of-life topics, such as a DNR order. The government would NOT have any say in those wishes, just that your insurer has to pay the doctor for having the discussion. (And the regulation in question was dropped from the bill before it was passed, in any event. Which is too bad, since requiring you to pay for that visit out-of-pocket presents an obstacle for being able to make your own decision about your life and the end thereof. Essentially, it makes you less free.) 2) This is NOT a government takeover of health care. Hospitals and insurers are still private companies, albeit slightly more regulated ones. 3) America will not fall apart as a result of passing this bill. There are far bigger threats to the country (and your freedoms) at the moment. 4) It is not the 'end of liberty'. You cannot be thrown in jail if you refuse to buy health insurance. You cannot be prosecuted for failing to pay the penalty for doing so. The enforcement of the individual mandate is so toothless that it's laughable. All the government can do, basically, is shake their finger at you and call you a bad person.
Essentially you're trading being beholden to a private company that you have no influence on, in exchange for an obligation under the law that you have some say over (through our representative government) that essentially cannot be enforced. I'm OK with that.
Calling all taxation "theft" is inaccurate hyperbole. I get plenty back from paying my taxes. I certainly get a lot more value for my money than if I tried to buy the services on my own. Sure, some of it gets spent on things I don't want, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.
Then after they work on it for six months they switch to a new job using the skills they developed working for you and now you're stuck with some useless buzz shit.
Why should IT be treated any differently than any other division of the company? Employees in all departments do this, because businesses in the USA don't give raises (of any consequence) or improve working conditions to the point at which the employee WANTS to stay. Just like IT, employees in other departments gain experience and skills that tend to make them more valuable (and therefore more marketable). When the company decides not to compensate the employee in line with their new skill set, then said employee leaves. The only real right employees have in this country is to walk away from the job, usually to another company that treats their employees better.
We don't have indentured servitude in this country. Employees can quit whenever they want (just like they can be fired for no reason). If your company is in the position where its employees use you as a stepping stone to the job they really want, it's not the fault of the worker (who has his/her best interests at heart, which may or may not be in line with his/her employer's interests), it's the corporate culture that causes this to happen.
Treat your employees like the assets they are, and they'll stay. Treat them like a (negative) number on a balance sheet, and they'll cycle through your company like the proverbial crap through a goose.
Wow. Undoing my moderation so I can yell at your selfish self-absorbed short-sighted bitter ass.
Here's the fundamental point of fact that your little hardwired Paultard brain can't comprehend: YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY PERSON ON THIS PLANET.
If you were, I'd say happy trails, go on with your bad self, you're perfectly suited to exist under those circumstances. But you're not. I'm not. Nobody is. Society currently functions because people help one another, even when they'd rather not (or it costs them money). Sometime in your life, someone helped you when they didn't have to. And, at some point, you benefited from a government program to the point where you got out of it more value than you put into it. Like it or not, most people don't see the world the way you do; they realize that by helping others, they themselves will be helped when they need it. We have rules and laws (and taxes!) that allow for that help to be provided to everyone in a given society. This is a good thing.
To reply to a previous posting of yours:
I don't have to cost the government, YOU and other taxpayers, a dime!
Fine, no problem. Don't ever drive on a road, drink water, eat food, or breathe air. Maintaining roads, ensuring safe drinking water, food and air.. all of it costs money. From the government. Lots more than you could ever pay yourself.
You remind me of the knuckle-dragger who yelled out "YES!" when Ron Paul was asked at a debate if an uninsured person arriving at an emergency room after an accident should be allowed to die. When that comes to pass, I bet you'll be singing a different tune when some asshole in a giant SUV 5 times bigger than they need to carry 20lb of groceries drives over your front fender at speed on a highway, and you don't have your insurance card with you. Enjoy bleeding to death after the ambulance refuses to transport you because they won't get paid for it.
I'm a fucking white male. That fact alone means I most likely won't see the light of day from behind the wall of paper work and red tape that would be thrown up in my face. Gotta take care of the fucking illegals and minorities first.
Your racism and hyperbole are almost endearing. Illegals and minorities are people too, just like you, no more or less important. The reason that you're seeing more "illegals and minorities" taking advantage of public services is because on average, those populations tend to be poorer. Our current standard of living exists because of the exploitation of the less powerful. (Try finding a head of lettuce picked by an American citizen. Enjoy paying $5 for the privilege. Or, you could grow your own fucking lettuce, if you hate participating in civilization so much.)
To answer your upcoming (predictable) questions: No, I don't like paying taxes. Yes, I think the government is bloated and ineffective. No, I don't think that everything should come from the government. But, unlike you, I don't have some paranoid delusional fear that the government wants to take everything I own. Taxation is not theft; theft is depriving someone of material goods with nothing given in return. I get plenty back from the government for the taxes that I pay. Do I get everything back penny for penny? Probably not. It doesn't keep me up at night, because I know that that money is being put to use somewhere else for some purpose that I could never effectively pay for as an individual. Am I angry that people game the system so that they can remain lazy? Sure. But like I just said, it doesn't keep me up at night. I can pay my bills. I don't sweat how much more I could take home if the evil gubmit would stop "stealing" from me.
And I don't like people, either. But on the other hand, I don't want poverty to be a death sentence.
I disagree. The structure of the current program discourages the visa holders from asserting their rights, which effectively means they do not have those rights. Imposing a requirement on those who employ H1-B visa holders to PROVE they're paying market rates to an impartial authority would probably be a solution.
How, exactly, do you see 'greater enforcement' happening under the current system? Picture this:
Concerned party (immigrant's rights worker, social worker, lawyer): "You're being exploited, they're not paying you market rate, you should complain" H1-B visa holder: "If I do that, they'll fire me. Better to be making below market value than get deported back to [wherever] where I will make 1/10th of what I make here."
It's like a prostitute complaining about his/her pimp to the police. All it will do is 1) get him/her arrested for solicitation and 2) beaten and possibly killed by said pimp.
They don't get paid market rate. What is the H1-B visa holder going to do if they find out that the native worker next to them is making $20k/year more than them with the same experience and the same job responsibilities? Complain? That's a one-way ticket back to wherever they're from. We're basically all "at-will" employees, but native workers don't face deportation for asserting their (few) rights as employees, they just get fired.
And there's the problem...what is the definition of "qualified"?
Said elsewhere but bears repetition:
Listed qualifications: 5 years blah blah 4 years blah blah good team player etc.
Actual qualifications: Willingness to work insane hours. Willingness to ruin health to help the company make a buck. Willingness to put employer ahead of all other priorities, including financial security and family. Willingness to work at 20% below the industry average for the area. Ability to say "how high" when some pinhead over-promoted manager with an IQ of 70 says "Jump." Ability to refrain from using begrudgingly given PTO. Ability to not get sick or in an accident or have a loved one die.
While your comment is true at the macro level, it is infrequently true at the workgroup level of a large organization.
I disagree. I think that, were you to take a survey of developers (who do actual work) and ask them about how their company sees them, the majority would tell you that they're treated like a liability instead of an asset, and are frequently reminded that they can be replaced easily. (Whether or not that's true is a separate matter.)
A good/great manager wants to retain people and get maximum performance.
And a shitty manager will be totally focused on the numbers, to the exclusion of everything else. How many lines of code you produce, how many tickets you close, how many features you add, and so forth. And the biggest number they will be focused on is the budget. I think the number of shitty managers in the field we're in is much larger than the number of good/great ones.
You have been fortunate to have had multiple managers that are focused on the long-term health of the company instead of the short-term numbers, and even more fortunate that upper management has allowed them to treat you that way. The best manager in the world can't retain good employees if upper management refuses to allow them to pay competitively.
In some industries, a short-term financial focus as you describe may be normal and acceptable. In mine, people will quickly find new jobs inside or outside the company if you approach compensation and job responsibilities with that mindset. And you will fail.
I think you could replace 'some industries' with 'nearly all industries'. At least in my experience. I've worked at a number of companies, and there was one that treated me in the way you are describing. That's why I've been here for nearly five years.
Failure is something that nobody wants to talk about, especially the higher up the corporate ladder you go. Upper management has the mantra of 'improving productivity' and 'doing more with less', because they think that that means they can increase output (and therefore revenues) with the same or lower amount of resources. They don't want to hear about people being stressed to the point of quitting or being so overworked they wreck their health and their family life. Those people are disloyal lazy sandbaggers who only want to escape doing the work that they've been assigned.They want people who will eat the shit that they are given and smile about it.
No legitimate company would give you a promotion requiring more responsibility and not give you more money.
You misspelled "Every company would try to give you a promotion requiring more responsibility and not give you more money." If it's a for-profit, they have to. The difference being whether you take it or not. That's the only control you really have in any job in this country: Eat the shit or get a new job.
Complete waste of time. HR knows what words to look for on a resume and that their jobs depend on paying people as little as possible. Logic of the kind you describe is wasted on them, because at the end of the day, they don't care. Caring is not in their job description.
If you want a raise of any consequence (very important, almost to the exclusion of everything else) or are dissatisfied with your job duties/environment (much less important) in your current position, you must find a new job. They have you where they want you, and know that you are far more likely to stay and eat the shit you're given, given the current economy.
Slashdot Mirror
.. because RIGHT NOW it's not profitable for Big Energy. If ExxonMobil figured out a way to make billions on it, you can bet your ass the government would be funding it. Big Energy likes us right where they have us: under their collective thumb. And they'll spend billions to keep us there.
Yes, let's cut 'entitlement' spending. I'm sure all the (wildly overexaggerated) problems with those programs will simply disappear overnight if we take money away from them.
Or, you know, the ACTUAL result will be that benefits will be cut to people who have paid into the system for decades. Yeah, that's fair.
I'm all for improving efficiency in government. But you don't cure cancer by shooting yourself in the head.
This assumes you're hiring permanent employees. I'm assuming that you are not based in the USA.
Salaries - N/A. You cut a check to the temp agency and they pay THEIR employee. Since they take their cut, there is that much less to pay the worker.
Taxes - 100% of what you pay a temp agency is deductible as a 'business expense'. You don't even have to worry about payroll taxes or paying into that annoying socialist un-American terrorist program called Social Security, either; the temp agency manages that.
Insurance - Temp employees don't get insurance, apart from what they're entitled to by law. This usually means worker's comp and nothing else. No life insurance, no short- or long- term disability, and DEFINITELY no health insurance.
Unemployment insurance - The temp agencies pay as little as possible into the pool. This means that every claim gets fought. Temp agencies are notorious for going into these hearings and telling bald-faced lies, because they know that the ex-worker won't be able to prove otherwise. Or, before the worker can file a claim, they offer them an assignment that is either blatantly illegal or they physically cannot accept due to massive safety issues or those pesky 'laws of physics' that prevent you from showing up for an assignment that starts in 20 minutes, when you're 30 minutes away from the location. Then, at the hearing, they'll be able to (technically correctly) argue that you turned down an assignment and therefore voluntarily quit.
Vacations - Temp employees don't get vacation days. Or any other paid time off. You want a sick day? You're fired. You come in anyway, even though you're so sick you can't do your job? You're fired. Your child dies in an auto accident and you want to go to the funeral? You're fired. You're in an auto accident and are in the hospital with three broken limbs? After you go bankrupt because you can't pay the hospital bill (because of course, you have no health insurance), you're fired.
Christmas bonuses - That's the funniest thing I've heard all week. NOBODY in the USA gets ANY KIND of bonus anymore, unless you're a C-level executive at a big company, in which case you can get a bonus for keeping expenses down (for example, creating an atmosphere in which you can pay the temp agencies as little as possible, since they're desperate for clients.)
Exacerbating the problem is the fact that it's 100% legal for your employer to turn to you and say "OK, you're fired, if you want to keep working here, call this temp agency." The company being able to get the same work for less pay is a good enough reason to fire someone, especially in low-skill jobs like warehouse work (since it costs next to nothing to hire a replacement). Technically, since most states are at-will employment states, they don't even need the slightest pretense to fire you. I have literally been told, to my face, when I asked why I was being fired, "We don't have to tell you."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh wait, you were serious, let me laugh even harder...
To the vast majority of companies out there, you are not an asset, you are a liability on a balance sheet. Nobody can ever work hard enough to justify their salary, no matter how pathetic or insulting that salary is. You are less valuable than the office furniture.
In my experience, no 'senior executive' is technical enough to understand that phrase. Their eyes glaze over when you try to explain the need for passwords at all, let alone more secure ones. Then when you tell them that they need to jump through even the slightest hoop regarding security, the first thing they tell you is to make an exception for them, because they don't want to be any further inconvenienced. (Most of them resent the idea that they have to put in a password at all , let alone a reasonably secure one. Their convenience is far far FAR more important than data security, because they understand the former much more than the latter.) The second thing they tell you is do it or you're fired. I have first-hand knowledge of this attitude from multiple Fortune 500 companies as well as public sector entities. I've worked at places where the CEO's password (for EVERYTHING they access, from email to file shares) is the name of the company. And set to never expire. And known to everyone in IT, lest there be a problem with it.
Security at most big companies is a bad joke. You can yell and scream and beg and cajole and do anything you can think of to explain why what you're doing is grossly inadequate, but all it will get you is fired.
You're right, we should not make people buy health insurance. We should nationalize the health care system and pay for it through taxation, like every other civilized country on the planet.
My father and his new liver would disagree with you. And if we have the worst health care in the nation, why do people travel from the four corners of the earth to take advantage of what's available right in our back yard?
Government in health care is not the problem. The profit motive is the problem. Remove that, and you'll see the other problems you quote go away.
I would much rather our representative government protect our quality of life than allow some private for (HUGE) profit company decide if I live or die.
I guess you don't need to.
Also:
tyranny Noun:
Cruel and oppressive government or rule.
A nation under such cruel and oppressive government.
Telling a company that they can't make money by killing people is not cruel or oppressive. It's the right thing to do. People's lives are more important than money.
OK, let's do that:
It is when you're talking about the people whose lives that private industry has in its hands. Your implication is that corporations are less "free" if the government regulates them, and you could probably stretch that into a fact (if you ignore the fact that, unregulated, big business would destroy us all in the name of profit). But despite what Mitt says, corporations are not people. People's lives are more important than corporate profits, period.
See the above definition of tyranny. Telling people they can't have the coverage they've paid into for decades just because they had the NERVE to get cancer is far more tyrannical than the ACA.
I guess you just have to decide this: Is money more important than people's lives? Not having health insurance is strongly correlated with increased morbidity and mortality. Each one of your points is based on how much something costs, not what the value is. The "money" thing can be fixed.
Premiums were going to go up no matter what happened. Until the profit motive is removed from the health care system, that's the way it is. All things being the same, I'd rather people had health insurance than not.
You really think the Mittster is going to be better equipped to help the situation? He's on record as saying that one of the first things he'll do after taking office is implement policy that will deny coverage to 50 million Americans. And that's after setting back the women's movement 50 years (not to mention making a woman's right to choose what she does with her body less important than appealing to the radical right) and basically formalizing the policy of allowing those with money to control the rest of us.
Oh, and one more word: Romneycare.
I was ready to say that you have a point that affordability is still a problem.
But then you dropped this nugget:
Someone's been listening to Rush.
Seriously, dude? Private industry profits are more important than doing the right thing?
Oh, and 98% of Massachusetts residents now have health insurance. It worked.
The money doesn't "appear out of nowhere". The insurers will just have to get by on 9 kajillion dollars in profit as opposed to 12.
From wikipedia:
Citations:
(182) a b c "Correction Regarding the Longer-Term Effects of the Manager's Amendment to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (PDF). Congressional Budget Office. December 19, 2009. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
(183) a b "An Analysis of Health Insurance Premiums Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act". Cbo.gov. 2009-11-30. Retrieved 2012-06-29.
From the Washington Post:
You know, I've never bought that argument. Let's say that you take the position, for example, that the ACA forces you to buy something that you might not choose to buy yourself (but if you don't buy it, you're an idiot, but that's beside the point.) Let's take the pros and cons:
Cons:
1) You have to buy health insurance.
2) Private companies have to provide services to people that they otherwise would not choose to do business with.
Pros:
1) Everyone has access to more affordable health insurance, regardless of employment status.
2) Everyone has access to more affordable health insurance, regardless of employment status.
3) Your employer cannot force you into indentured servitude by providing the health insurance that you or a family member need to continue breathing. This gives you the freedom to start your own business without worrying that you'll be unable to purchase health coverage, and therefore, say it with me now, CREATE JOBS AND GROW THE ECONOMY.
4) Insurers can't deny you coverage because of a 'pre-existing condition'.
5) Insurers can't drop your coverage when they decide you're costing them too much money.
6) People can stay on their parents' health coverage longer, giving them time to establish themselves and be able to get health insurance on their own, either through their employer or purchased independently.
7) Insurance companies cannot just raise premiums whenever the wind blows, and if they do, they have to pay you back.
8) Without
Things that are not true:
1) There are no "death panels." This is an invention of the radical right who (willfully) misinterpreted a requirement by your insurer that they pay for a visit with your (independently) chosen physician in which you privately discuss your wishes should you no longer be able to make your own decisions about end-of-life topics, such as a DNR order. The government would NOT have any say in those wishes, just that your insurer has to pay the doctor for having the discussion. (And the regulation in question was dropped from the bill before it was passed, in any event. Which is too bad, since requiring you to pay for that visit out-of-pocket presents an obstacle for being able to make your own decision about your life and the end thereof. Essentially, it makes you less free.)
2) This is NOT a government takeover of health care. Hospitals and insurers are still private companies, albeit slightly more regulated ones.
3) America will not fall apart as a result of passing this bill. There are far bigger threats to the country (and your freedoms) at the moment.
4) It is not the 'end of liberty'. You cannot be thrown in jail if you refuse to buy health insurance. You cannot be prosecuted for failing to pay the penalty for doing so. The enforcement of the individual mandate is so toothless that it's laughable. All the government can do, basically, is shake their finger at you and call you a bad person.
Essentially you're trading being beholden to a private company that you have no influence on, in exchange for an obligation under the law that you have some say over (through our representative government) that essentially cannot be enforced. I'm OK with that.
Calling all taxation "theft" is inaccurate hyperbole. I get plenty back from paying my taxes. I certainly get a lot more value for my money than if I tried to buy the services on my own. Sure, some of it gets spent on things I don't want, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Back under your bridge, troll.
Why should IT be treated any differently than any other division of the company? Employees in all departments do this, because businesses in the USA don't give raises (of any consequence) or improve working conditions to the point at which the employee WANTS to stay. Just like IT, employees in other departments gain experience and skills that tend to make them more valuable (and therefore more marketable). When the company decides not to compensate the employee in line with their new skill set, then said employee leaves. The only real right employees have in this country is to walk away from the job, usually to another company that treats their employees better.
We don't have indentured servitude in this country. Employees can quit whenever they want (just like they can be fired for no reason). If your company is in the position where its employees use you as a stepping stone to the job they really want, it's not the fault of the worker (who has his/her best interests at heart, which may or may not be in line with his/her employer's interests), it's the corporate culture that causes this to happen.
Treat your employees like the assets they are, and they'll stay. Treat them like a (negative) number on a balance sheet, and they'll cycle through your company like the proverbial crap through a goose.
Wow. Undoing my moderation so I can yell at your selfish self-absorbed short-sighted bitter ass.
Here's the fundamental point of fact that your little hardwired Paultard brain can't comprehend: YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY PERSON ON THIS PLANET.
If you were, I'd say happy trails, go on with your bad self, you're perfectly suited to exist under those circumstances. But you're not. I'm not. Nobody is. Society currently functions because people help one another, even when they'd rather not (or it costs them money). Sometime in your life, someone helped you when they didn't have to. And, at some point, you benefited from a government program to the point where you got out of it more value than you put into it. Like it or not, most people don't see the world the way you do; they realize that by helping others, they themselves will be helped when they need it. We have rules and laws (and taxes!) that allow for that help to be provided to everyone in a given society. This is a good thing.
To reply to a previous posting of yours:
Fine, no problem. Don't ever drive on a road, drink water, eat food, or breathe air. Maintaining roads, ensuring safe drinking water, food and air.. all of it costs money. From the government. Lots more than you could ever pay yourself.
You remind me of the knuckle-dragger who yelled out "YES!" when Ron Paul was asked at a debate if an uninsured person arriving at an emergency room after an accident should be allowed to die. When that comes to pass, I bet you'll be singing a different tune when some asshole in a giant SUV 5 times bigger than they need to carry 20lb of groceries drives over your front fender at speed on a highway, and you don't have your insurance card with you. Enjoy bleeding to death after the ambulance refuses to transport you because they won't get paid for it.
Your racism and hyperbole are almost endearing. Illegals and minorities are people too, just like you, no more or less important. The reason that you're seeing more "illegals and minorities" taking advantage of public services is because on average, those populations tend to be poorer. Our current standard of living exists because of the exploitation of the less powerful. (Try finding a head of lettuce picked by an American citizen. Enjoy paying $5 for the privilege. Or, you could grow your own fucking lettuce, if you hate participating in civilization so much.)
To answer your upcoming (predictable) questions: No, I don't like paying taxes. Yes, I think the government is bloated and ineffective. No, I don't think that everything should come from the government. But, unlike you, I don't have some paranoid delusional fear that the government wants to take everything I own. Taxation is not theft; theft is depriving someone of material goods with nothing given in return. I get plenty back from the government for the taxes that I pay. Do I get everything back penny for penny? Probably not. It doesn't keep me up at night, because I know that that money is being put to use somewhere else for some purpose that I could never effectively pay for as an individual. Am I angry that people game the system so that they can remain lazy? Sure. But like I just said, it doesn't keep me up at night. I can pay my bills. I don't sweat how much more I could take home if the evil gubmit would stop "stealing" from me.
And I don't like people, either. But on the other hand, I don't want poverty to be a death sentence.
I disagree. The structure of the current program discourages the visa holders from asserting their rights, which effectively means they do not have those rights. Imposing a requirement on those who employ H1-B visa holders to PROVE they're paying market rates to an impartial authority would probably be a solution.
How, exactly, do you see 'greater enforcement' happening under the current system? Picture this:
Concerned party (immigrant's rights worker, social worker, lawyer): "You're being exploited, they're not paying you market rate, you should complain"
H1-B visa holder: "If I do that, they'll fire me. Better to be making below market value than get deported back to [wherever] where I will make 1/10th of what I make here."
It's like a prostitute complaining about his/her pimp to the police. All it will do is 1) get him/her arrested for solicitation and 2) beaten and possibly killed by said pimp.
They don't get paid market rate. What is the H1-B visa holder going to do if they find out that the native worker next to them is making $20k/year more than them with the same experience and the same job responsibilities? Complain? That's a one-way ticket back to wherever they're from. We're basically all "at-will" employees, but native workers don't face deportation for asserting their (few) rights as employees, they just get fired.
Said elsewhere but bears repetition:
Listed qualifications: 5 years blah blah 4 years blah blah good team player etc.
Actual qualifications: Willingness to work insane hours. Willingness to ruin health to help the company make a buck. Willingness to put employer ahead of all other priorities, including financial security and family. Willingness to work at 20% below the industry average for the area. Ability to say "how high" when some pinhead over-promoted manager with an IQ of 70 says "Jump." Ability to refrain from using begrudgingly given PTO. Ability to not get sick or in an accident or have a loved one die.
I disagree. I think that, were you to take a survey of developers (who do actual work) and ask them about how their company sees them, the majority would tell you that they're treated like a liability instead of an asset, and are frequently reminded that they can be replaced easily. (Whether or not that's true is a separate matter.)
And a shitty manager will be totally focused on the numbers, to the exclusion of everything else. How many lines of code you produce, how many tickets you close, how many features you add, and so forth. And the biggest number they will be focused on is the budget. I think the number of shitty managers in the field we're in is much larger than the number of good/great ones.
You have been fortunate to have had multiple managers that are focused on the long-term health of the company instead of the short-term numbers, and even more fortunate that upper management has allowed them to treat you that way. The best manager in the world can't retain good employees if upper management refuses to allow them to pay competitively.
I think you could replace 'some industries' with 'nearly all industries'. At least in my experience. I've worked at a number of companies, and there was one that treated me in the way you are describing. That's why I've been here for nearly five years.
Failure is something that nobody wants to talk about, especially the higher up the corporate ladder you go. Upper management has the mantra of 'improving productivity' and 'doing more with less', because they think that that means they can increase output (and therefore revenues) with the same or lower amount of resources. They don't want to hear about people being stressed to the point of quitting or being so overworked they wreck their health and their family life. Those people are disloyal lazy sandbaggers who only want to escape doing the work that they've been assigned.They want people who will eat the shit that they are given and smile about it.
You misspelled "Every company would try to give you a promotion requiring more responsibility and not give you more money." If it's a for-profit, they have to. The difference being whether you take it or not. That's the only control you really have in any job in this country: Eat the shit or get a new job.
FTFY.
Complete waste of time. HR knows what words to look for on a resume and that their jobs depend on paying people as little as possible. Logic of the kind you describe is wasted on them, because at the end of the day, they don't care. Caring is not in their job description.
If you want a raise of any consequence (very important, almost to the exclusion of everything else) or are dissatisfied with your job duties/environment (much less important) in your current position, you must find a new job. They have you where they want you, and know that you are far more likely to stay and eat the shit you're given, given the current economy.