catastrophic insurance plans (under obamacare)
If Obamacare eliminates catastrophic insurance than they have written it exactly backwards. Insurance IS catastrophic insurance. If they were trying to make healthcare more efficient, they would eliminate low deductible plans, copays, co-insurance and all that crap and make everybody pay the first $5,000 or so.
You still haven't pointed out how having critical thinking skills is wrong for a student.
Nobody is arguing that having critical thinking skills is wrong for a student. The whole argument is based on the fact that the summary twisted the words of the GOP which is against the PROGRAM called Higher Order Thinking Skills, not against critical thinking skills, as the HOTS program was not critical thinking at all, but merely teaching kids to memorize progressive agenda facts instead of memorizing the traditional teaching curriculum.
Well, we have solved the problem of insurance companies not being able to make record profits quarter after quarter. Perhaps now we can move on to the issue of healthcare.
of health insurance--do you have some better way? You don't believe in capitalism?
There is no free market for health insurance. In a free market, a person can look at all of the vendors offering the same good, and can say, "those are all too expensive. I shall do without." This tends to lower prices. If, on the other hand, you are REQUIRED to purchase from one of the vendors, then they can charge whatever the hell they want, and you have no choice because you have to buy from one of them.
Yes, and car insurance mandates are pretty worthless.
The only thing mandatory car insurance did was make the people who decide to be legal have to pay 10 times as much for car insurance. I assume the same thing will happen if we are required by law to buy the luxury of health insurance. So instead of paying $800 a month like the typical American, it will go up to $8,000 a month, which is more than twice the average household income.
So... was it worth it? Tenure alone does not pay the bills, after all.
So far, no. I mean, I still get paid enough to put food on the table and pay most of my bills. I used to be able to pay all my bills, but inflation happened and salary increases didn't, so now I realistically make about 40% less than I did when I started. But, they keep promising and I am gullible enough to believe them.
I've had both and will take matching 401k every time. Pension involves vesting, which often means that if you resign or are laid off you lose the pension. 401k is yours. Plus you'll do better with an IRA or 401k in the long run (unless you have a extremely generous retirement plan like the ones that are driving states and municipalities bankrupt).
I would tend to agree, but I wish they would match the same amount as they put towards a pension. The problem with pension is that later down the road, when you are getting close to retirement age, they can just fire you and say "Sorry, you didn't have X years with the company", or they can let you go ahead and retire with vested years and then say "Sorry, we mismanaged the pension funds, so we can't pay you". They can't do that with a 401k, because as you point out, it's yours.
I have had programs where you had to be vested to get the employer match percent of the 401k, though.
Still quite underpaid, still desperately hoping working for my current startup will pay off eventually, even though they haven't shown the least likelihood of extending any equity or options my way whatsoever (and I'm employee #5). I often wonder if I'm a fool for staying, but I just bought a house and I don't want to be seen as a job hopper the next time I go for interviews, so I'm sticking it out for at least two years. Is this a good plan?
I was probably employee #5 or 6 at one point, but now that a few people have left, I am probably #2 or #3. Maybe I can see your desk from mine. If you're reading this, wave your hand up in the air.
In fact, since this company just purchased a project that was originally started two companies back, I am in fact, the longest tenured person still on this project, by a factor of about 2.
So staff jobs have been losing pay while managers have been gaining. Why can't we stop this trend? It's not as if managers have increased in performance over 2 years while staff workers have decreased.
This is because of the arbitrary lines that HR draws on how much a position can pay. They base it on surveys such as this one. Then if some hotshot developer wants more money, HR says no, and if the bossman wants to give him a raise, he has to change the developers title to manager. Number of reports? Zero. So what does this do? The average developer salary goes down because hotshot developer is no longer a developer in title. And the average manager salary goes down because hotshot developer just entered into the management title at the bottom end of the spectrum. Next year, HR is all excited because developers and managers average salary is a little lower, so they can lower the bar some more. Before long, we have Directors and VPs writing code and making $60k a year.
These numbers are only "Base Salary", they don't include additional compensation such as Health Insurance or Pension benefits which generally add quite a bit to an employee's total compensation.
I have worked for 7 companies in my life, zero of which have paid Pension benefits. Some of them have paid matching 401k, but that pales in comparison with an actual pension offering.
Health Insurance is always a nice "offering" that the companies say is a benefit, but when you look at the truth of it, you are the one who pays for the benefit, and the only advantage is that you might get to pay it out of pretax dollars. My company pays for my individual health insurance, which is almost unheard of anymore. To insure my family would cost about $900 a month. Since I can't afford that, I went and got private insurance, which is costing me less than $300 a month.
What about the healthcare for the unemployed in the US? Do they stand in line like beggars in front of some charity organization?
No, they go to the hospital, just as they have done since long before the whole Universal Healthcare proposition.
and you are an expert on those states because of what you observed out the bus window...
Well, I live here in the south, and I can vouch for the fact that racism is alive and well. If a black man kills an unarmed white man after robbing him and forcing his girlfriend to strip in the middle of a city street, he gets 20 years in prison. If a white man kills a black man that attempted to rob him at gunpoint, then he gets life in prison.
Hope somebody saved its DNA or at least sequenced it, so that the species can be revived some day.
Nature has declared this a failed species. Who are we to question nature's logic?
As has previously been stated time and time again, racial profiling just doesn't work. If we concentrate on Mexicans, then they will just start sending Caucasians across the border.
When all you have to go on is 'Indians aren't allowed to buy alcohol', is it refering to Natives(further explanation in the rules would make that obvious) or those from India, the country?
I'd guess India, the country. otherwise they would have said "fire water".
At least they didn't call them "prairie niggers".
Well, if they were trying to be offensive to Indians, they would have failed because back then, the N-word was not offensive, it was just what they were called, just as they are called African Americans today,until such time as we decide that that is also offensive (as we have previously done with Negro, Colored, and Black).
I guess people just feel good that every time we stop using an offensive term for a temporarily non-offensive one, it buys us 10 years of pretend racial harmony.
err you do know that the Hawaiian islands are ALL VOLCANIC so the question is wether the volcano on the island is even partly active.
No, but I do know that only one of them is currently active and that none of the other inactive ones will ever be active again. All of the Hawaiian islands were generated by the same lava source at different periods of history as the Earth's crust moved and occasionally offered a thin spot. As time marched on, the older islands have moved further from the vent and were worn down by the elements. None of them will be active again from that vent, but probably in the next 50 million years, there will be a new Hawaiian island popping up east of the big island.
How about if you tromp the accelerator of a Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 on one side of the island, you'll run out of gas just about at the point where you run out of land?
Capitalism is the best system if your goal is to concentrate wealth into the fewest hands.
So African monarchies are capitalist, then? Because the royalty owns 99% of the wealth in the country, millions of times more than the common man?
On the other hand, if your goal is an equitable distribution of resources capitalism fails miserably.
I am quite sure I don't want an equitable distribution of resources. I want to do a better job than the next guy and I want to be more richly rewarded for doing it.
Capitalism generates very rich people and very poor people.
Seems to me that the disparity of wealth in most capitalist nations is on the order of 100 times or 1000 times, while disparity in the non-capitalist African countries that we are discussing is a million to 100 million times.
And people in Africa starve to death, ridiculous.
Yes, let's take all of Larry Ellison's money and give it to Africa, that way people in Africa won't starve to death until next week.
Just because people have money doesn't mean that they should have to use that money to support people who choose to have more children in an area that cannot support its existing population.
Why don't YOU tell them a better way to advertise new products? Hm? Not everyone reads the interwebs for purchasing advice on window cleaner, shampoo, etc....
Right now, ads on tv are the most effective way to spread news about new products.
I haven't seen an advertisement for a new product that I would consider buying since...well ever. I would say that the best way to advertise their products is free advertising. Make a product so good that people want to use it. Then they will tell their friends.
Find another way to make money, you morons. OK. They just doubled your rate and moved everything except goverment / religious to premium tiers.
Why do they need to double my rate? They seemed to do okay back when they charged $20/month. How come they are suffering so bad now that they are charging $120 a month?
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catastrophic insurance plans (under obamacare)
If Obamacare eliminates catastrophic insurance than they have written it exactly backwards. Insurance IS catastrophic insurance. If they were trying to make healthcare more efficient, they would eliminate low deductible plans, copays, co-insurance and all that crap and make everybody pay the first $5,000 or so.
You still haven't pointed out how having critical thinking skills is wrong for a student.
Nobody is arguing that having critical thinking skills is wrong for a student. The whole argument is based on the fact that the summary twisted the words of the GOP which is against the PROGRAM called Higher Order Thinking Skills, not against critical thinking skills, as the HOTS program was not critical thinking at all, but merely teaching kids to memorize progressive agenda facts instead of memorizing the traditional teaching curriculum.
Well, we have solved the problem of insurance companies not being able to make record profits quarter after quarter. Perhaps now we can move on to the issue of healthcare.
of health insurance--do you have some better way? You don't believe in capitalism?
There is no free market for health insurance. In a free market, a person can look at all of the vendors offering the same good, and can say, "those are all too expensive. I shall do without." This tends to lower prices. If, on the other hand, you are REQUIRED to purchase from one of the vendors, then they can charge whatever the hell they want, and you have no choice because you have to buy from one of them.
Yes, and car insurance mandates are pretty worthless.
The only thing mandatory car insurance did was make the people who decide to be legal have to pay 10 times as much for car insurance. I assume the same thing will happen if we are required by law to buy the luxury of health insurance. So instead of paying $800 a month like the typical American, it will go up to $8,000 a month, which is more than twice the average household income.
So... was it worth it? Tenure alone does not pay the bills, after all.
So far, no. I mean, I still get paid enough to put food on the table and pay most of my bills. I used to be able to pay all my bills, but inflation happened and salary increases didn't, so now I realistically make about 40% less than I did when I started. But, they keep promising and I am gullible enough to believe them.
I've had both and will take matching 401k every time. Pension involves vesting, which often means that if you resign or are laid off you lose the pension. 401k is yours. Plus you'll do better with an IRA or 401k in the long run (unless you have a extremely generous retirement plan like the ones that are driving states and municipalities bankrupt).
I would tend to agree, but I wish they would match the same amount as they put towards a pension. The problem with pension is that later down the road, when you are getting close to retirement age, they can just fire you and say "Sorry, you didn't have X years with the company", or they can let you go ahead and retire with vested years and then say "Sorry, we mismanaged the pension funds, so we can't pay you". They can't do that with a 401k, because as you point out, it's yours.
I have had programs where you had to be vested to get the employer match percent of the 401k, though.
Still quite underpaid, still desperately hoping working for my current startup will pay off eventually, even though they haven't shown the least likelihood of extending any equity or options my way whatsoever (and I'm employee #5). I often wonder if I'm a fool for staying, but I just bought a house and I don't want to be seen as a job hopper the next time I go for interviews, so I'm sticking it out for at least two years. Is this a good plan?
I was probably employee #5 or 6 at one point, but now that a few people have left, I am probably #2 or #3. Maybe I can see your desk from mine. If you're reading this, wave your hand up in the air.
In fact, since this company just purchased a project that was originally started two companies back, I am in fact, the longest tenured person still on this project, by a factor of about 2.
So staff jobs have been losing pay while managers have been gaining. Why can't we stop this trend? It's not as if managers have increased in performance over 2 years while staff workers have decreased.
This is because of the arbitrary lines that HR draws on how much a position can pay. They base it on surveys such as this one. Then if some hotshot developer wants more money, HR says no, and if the bossman wants to give him a raise, he has to change the developers title to manager. Number of reports? Zero. So what does this do? The average developer salary goes down because hotshot developer is no longer a developer in title. And the average manager salary goes down because hotshot developer just entered into the management title at the bottom end of the spectrum. Next year, HR is all excited because developers and managers average salary is a little lower, so they can lower the bar some more. Before long, we have Directors and VPs writing code and making $60k a year.
These numbers are only "Base Salary", they don't include additional compensation such as Health Insurance or Pension benefits which generally add quite a bit to an employee's total compensation.
I have worked for 7 companies in my life, zero of which have paid Pension benefits. Some of them have paid matching 401k, but that pales in comparison with an actual pension offering.
Health Insurance is always a nice "offering" that the companies say is a benefit, but when you look at the truth of it, you are the one who pays for the benefit, and the only advantage is that you might get to pay it out of pretax dollars. My company pays for my individual health insurance, which is almost unheard of anymore. To insure my family would cost about $900 a month. Since I can't afford that, I went and got private insurance, which is costing me less than $300 a month.
What about the healthcare for the unemployed in the US? Do they stand in line like beggars in front of some charity organization?
No, they go to the hospital, just as they have done since long before the whole Universal Healthcare proposition.
and you are an expert on those states because of what you observed out the bus window...
Well, I live here in the south, and I can vouch for the fact that racism is alive and well. If a black man kills an unarmed white man after robbing him and forcing his girlfriend to strip in the middle of a city street, he gets 20 years in prison. If a white man kills a black man that attempted to rob him at gunpoint, then he gets life in prison.
Hope somebody saved its DNA or at least sequenced it, so that the species can be revived some day.
Nature has declared this a failed species. Who are we to question nature's logic?
As has previously been stated time and time again, racial profiling just doesn't work. If we concentrate on Mexicans, then they will just start sending Caucasians across the border.
When all you have to go on is 'Indians aren't allowed to buy alcohol', is it refering to Natives(further explanation in the rules would make that obvious) or those from India, the country?
I'd guess India, the country. otherwise they would have said "fire water".
Savages?
At least they didn't call them "prairie niggers".
Well, if they were trying to be offensive to Indians, they would have failed because back then, the N-word was not offensive, it was just what they were called, just as they are called African Americans today,until such time as we decide that that is also offensive (as we have previously done with Negro, Colored, and Black).
I guess people just feel good that every time we stop using an offensive term for a temporarily non-offensive one, it buys us 10 years of pretend racial harmony.
err you do know that the Hawaiian islands are ALL VOLCANIC so the question is wether the volcano on the island is even partly active.
No, but I do know that only one of them is currently active and that none of the other inactive ones will ever be active again. All of the Hawaiian islands were generated by the same lava source at different periods of history as the Earth's crust moved and occasionally offered a thin spot. As time marched on, the older islands have moved further from the vent and were worn down by the elements. None of them will be active again from that vent, but probably in the next 50 million years, there will be a new Hawaiian island popping up east of the big island.
How about if you tromp the accelerator of a Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 on one side of the island, you'll run out of gas just about at the point where you run out of land?
Capitalism is the best system if your goal is to concentrate wealth into the fewest hands.
So African monarchies are capitalist, then? Because the royalty owns 99% of the wealth in the country, millions of times more than the common man?
On the other hand, if your goal is an equitable distribution of resources capitalism fails miserably.
I am quite sure I don't want an equitable distribution of resources. I want to do a better job than the next guy and I want to be more richly rewarded for doing it.
Capitalism generates very rich people and very poor people.
Seems to me that the disparity of wealth in most capitalist nations is on the order of 100 times or 1000 times, while disparity in the non-capitalist African countries that we are discussing is a million to 100 million times.
And people in Africa starve to death, ridiculous.
Yes, let's take all of Larry Ellison's money and give it to Africa, that way people in Africa won't starve to death until next week.
Just because people have money doesn't mean that they should have to use that money to support people who choose to have more children in an area that cannot support its existing population.
Why don't YOU tell them a better way to advertise new products? Hm? Not everyone reads the interwebs for purchasing advice on window cleaner, shampoo, etc.... Right now, ads on tv are the most effective way to spread news about new products.
I haven't seen an advertisement for a new product that I would consider buying since...well ever. I would say that the best way to advertise their products is free advertising. Make a product so good that people want to use it. Then they will tell their friends.
I already pay five times the rate that it used to be when there was no commercials and now they also have commercials.
Find another way to make money, you morons.
OK. They just doubled your rate and moved everything except goverment / religious to premium tiers.
Why do they need to double my rate? They seemed to do okay back when they charged $20/month. How come they are suffering so bad now that they are charging $120 a month?