Do you know it was because of the ACA or did UPS use the ACA as a scapegoat to do something they've wanted to do for awhile?
Competitive businesses can't just cut benefits like that without some backlash and losing some employees due to it. Now they've got a convenient excuse. "Yeah, your wife can't be on the plan anymore...I know, I know it's not our fault, it's that damn Obamacare."
No one is seriously talking about changing it because we're risk averse.
The whole health insurance debate isn't really all that complicated. Hell even the ACA isn't all that complicated. The idea is that there are lots of people who are priced out of the market so we can require insurers to give the same price to everyone (this is called Community Rating). Lots of people need coverage for existing conditions. We'll require insurers to cover those (this is called Guaranteed Issue). But...if everyone waits until they're very ill to buy insurance, premiums will skyrocket out of control. For that, we'll require everyone to purchase insurance (this is called the Individual Mandate) to increase the risk pool or pay an extra tax.
Now this is, IMHO, the wrong way to do it, but it's not that hard to explain. Sure there are some other things on the edges, but that's pretty much it.
I'd be happy to de-couple employment and insurance (and the ACA is a half-hearted attempt at doing it), but if you tell people that they can't keep their current employer-subsidized insurance, they'll freak out even more than they did when they heard about the individual mandate...even though it doesn't apply to the vast majority of Americans.
You're eligible for Medicaid and you're complaining? Medicaid is pretty damn cheap seeing as it's for poor people. The only problem is that you may have trouble finding doctors who will be willing to see you.
But yes, you're probably a reasonably healthy white male in his 20s or 30s. You're getting the shaft on this one so that sickly folks with tons of pre-existing conditions can pay $420-$700/mo instead of simply being denied coverage. Really, it sucks to be you, but that was the intent of the law. Do I think it's a good thing? On the balance, I'll give it a very tepid yes. So fuck me, I guess.
I'm lucky in that my wife works for the state and is in a union, so our coverage is really good and cheap. In fact it's probably too good compared to what most people get. If you were to take this idea to car insurance, I'd be in the same boat. I've never had so much as a speeding ticket. My premiums would skyrocket if car insurance was guaranteed issue and required community rating, and then all the other people who have a half dozen DUIs would have their premiums decrease by just as much.
In short, your plan is more expensive so other folks' plans are less expensive (or simply available). That's socialization of risk, and you're on the short end. Why do you have to buy maternity coverage? So women's plans are less expensive. The way I see it, I'd be happy to have my premiums tripled if it meant that someone with a blood factor disorder could get affordable insurance. If you don't see it that way, that's ok. Best of luck in your new business, BTW.
That was the fallback position to a fallback position. If they'd have done it right like the left wanted it, we'd all be on Medicare right now.
But that's socialism, so we can't have that. We need another kludgy hack to our current healthcare system which itself is a hack in the tax code to make it such that employers would want to pay for their employees' health care.
Yeah, it doesn't work that way here. There is no mechanism to force a non-scheduled election of Senators and Representatives. Right now there is no authority for certain departments that run off of a budget (we have plenty that don't -- Medicare and Social Security, for instance) to spend any money. This can theoretically continue indefinitely. Also in our system, the lower house must originate spending bills, but the upper house has equal rights to amend those bills.
The more interesting crisis is the debt ceiling vote coming up. It used to be that every time Congress would need to issue debt, they'd do it "manually" by voting to do so. When that became too cumbersome, they put in place a limit to how much debt the Treasury could issue. From time to time when tax revenue is less than spending, they have to vote to raise that limit or else we are in default.
It's an odd situation. Congress says $X must be spent on Y, but less than $X comes in via revenue, but they also say that no debt can be issued to make up the shortfall. It's contradictory instructions, and I believe we're alone in the civilized world in this regard.
2009: 4,430,000 2010: 4,443,000 (the site notes that this includes temporary workers hired for the census) 2011: 4,403,000
So we can conclude that there were less federal government employees in 2011 than there were in 2009 when President Obama took office. Not much less, mind you, but certainly less.
The reason why college sports are such a circus is due to the fact that they are the de facto minor leagues for pro sports (at least as football and to a lesser extent, basketball is concerned). The NFL has a rule that any player eligible for the draft must be 3 years removed from high school. This means that if you are an exceptional football player, you can do one of the following:
1) Don't play for three years. 2) Join a semi-pro league for three years (the Arena League apparently pays $400/game). 3) Go to the CFL (I don't even know if that's possible as I don't know the rules for imports in the CFL). 4) Get a free college education.
I know what I'd do.
The NBA is a bit different because of the D-League and in baseball and hockey, the majority of prospects are not found in college. Figure out a way so that football and basketball have a large minor league system and colleges won't care as much about sports.
I hear you. The only way I can watch Columbus Blue Jackets hockey legally would be to buy cable and get Fox Sports Ohio. There is a way to watch out-of-market NHL games on various devices, but no way to watch in-market games short of routing it all through a VPN or breaking down and getting cable.
I guess the difference with you is that you don't live in the Pittsburgh metro area. It's still a problem for sports/teams that are not usually nationally broadcast. Be happy that your Steelers are good enough that they tend to be on "game of the week" type matchups. I follow San Francisco, and before they were good as of late, I'll bet I didn't watch a game for 2 or 3 years because they simply weren't on TV.
It depends on who "we" is. As others have pointed out, this portion of the law limits how much more private insurers can make smokers pay than non-smokers. This has nothing to do with what the publicly-funded (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc.) programs can and cannot do.
Unless your state requires community rating from your private insurers, they already do charge people more for being fat or being a woman, or working in a dangerous occupation. If they could make more money doing so, I'm sure they'd charge people who sleep around more, assuming sleeping around correlates with higher health care costs (I assume it does).
It's just like car insurance, dude. If they decide that you meet a particular risk profile that says you'll cost a lot more in claims, they're going to charge you more in premiums. Hell, if having blue eyes correlated with increased heath care expenses, they'd charge you more for that. It isn't moralizing; it's about being on the right side of an actuarial calculation. If you don't agree with that, you're free to write to your state representative and ask them to require community rating and guaranteed issue from the private insurers that do business in your state (or write to Congress if you want a federal standard).
I don't have a problem with torrenting stuff, but come on. It's not like 99.9% of the stuff out there can't be found with a minimum amount of effort.
Re:New technology makes old technology obsolete.
on
The Price of Amazon
·
· Score: 2
Same here.
The dog chewed a laptop cable. It was cheaper to have Amazon overnight a new one than it was to buy it at the local Best Buy. $20 cheaper. The brick & mortar stores that deal in electronics thrive on the folks who simply don't have enough information to make an informed decision. As soon as they get wise, they order online.
I've been looking for the same, and never came across those. Thanks.
Now I have another quibble. ARM CPUs are always soldered on to the board. They can't be upgraded w/o upgrading the entire board. I'm waiting for the day when you can build from scratch a rig using an ARM CPU just like you would with an x86 CPU, using commodity parts from NewEgg, etc.
I'd be more than happy to short the hell out of Bitcoins if I had the resources. And even if I did, a smart man once said the market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent.
That's a feature, but it's not a good feature to have (for Bitcoin). A currency's success is measured by its ability to facilitate commercial transactions, not by its ability to make you rich simply by holding it. That's what *investments* are for. Currency isn't an investment and shouldn't be.
The fact that there could never be any more Bitcoins ever again would encourage speculation and hoarding, which is not what you want from a medium of exchange.
If you're worried about currency devaluation and put some of your money/time into Bitcoins, that makes sense as a hedge against inflation (ie. an investment), but nothing more.
Indeed. I'm a bigger fan of the GPL in most cases, but there is room enough in the world for both camps (crazy talk, I know). Now you have your compiler under a suitable license for you and your fellow travelers.
I think you know the answer to your question of why certain technology must be outlawed or taxed more. It's because by the time the technology becomes cheaper than fossil fuels we will have already done the damage.
I'll meet you half way and say, lets just get rid of all the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels that already exist and then tax people on the externalities they create. Hell, that in and of itself might be enough to make renewables cost effective.
I'm reasonably sure we're past the point of no return, so it might not even matter.
Yes, criminal copyright infringement is that way. Civil infringement is a strict liability tort. That means you're on the hook even if you took reasonable steps not to infringe and did not ever intend to infringe.
So you could still be on the hook for the infringement of copyright if a copyright owner took you to civil court. Going to federal PMITA prison would require mens rea.
Echoing SiriusStarr, make sure you install the tweak tool and get familiar with the shortcuts.
I complained like crazy when Debian Sid went to GNOME 3.0. I moved to XFCE + Compiz for awhile until I decided to give it another try. It took a few weeks to get used to, but now that I have retrained myself and gotten used to it, I wouldn't go back.
I don't think its for everyone and the fact that 3.0 was very unconfigurable is what gave everyone a heart attack. It's getting better. Some people will never like it, and that's fine. Different strokes for different folks.
If they're in another country, it's hard to get them to pay anything in a civil case, DMCA or otherwise. I don't know what to tell you other than "talk to a lawyer".
Yes, that's generally the case. On an "at will" contract, you can be terminated for any reason that isn't explictily illegal. If the employer believes they were fired for an illegal reason, they have to make the case. The assumption is that terminations are for legal reasons absent evidenct to the contrary.
The "double standard" is because EULAs are designed to restrict what you can do with a piece of software over and above what copyright does to restrict you. The GPL and other FOSS licenses give you rights you don't already have.
I respect the GPL because it recognises one thing that EULAs never recognise -- the unlimited right to run the program.
I've got a Math degree (not Math Education, mind you, just plain Math). I couldn't find a job to save my life for awhile, but sooner or later I took a tech support job and was moved up to Quality Assurance and may one day move into development.
One thing I *want* to do, but just don't have the fortitude to do is take some of the actuary exams. If your wife is a standard math nerd, doing actuarial work should be right up her alley.
I guess she can really do whatever she wants. A lot of place will just take anyone that isn't an idiot that has a degree. I'm sure anything that she wants to do will be rewarding in and of itself.
I'm not too bothered by it all. As a wise man once said, I don't mind if I have to pay, so long as the people who've been pocketing my premiums also have to pay. Of course that was about insurance, but the same principle applies.
I don't care if I get anything out of it, just as long as the cocksuckers have to pay.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know it was because of the ACA or did UPS use the ACA as a scapegoat to do something they've wanted to do for awhile?
Competitive businesses can't just cut benefits like that without some backlash and losing some employees due to it. Now they've got a convenient excuse. "Yeah, your wife can't be on the plan anymore...I know, I know it's not our fault, it's that damn Obamacare."
No one is seriously talking about changing it because we're risk averse.
The whole health insurance debate isn't really all that complicated. Hell even the ACA isn't all that complicated. The idea is that there are lots of people who are priced out of the market so we can require insurers to give the same price to everyone (this is called Community Rating). Lots of people need coverage for existing conditions. We'll require insurers to cover those (this is called Guaranteed Issue). But...if everyone waits until they're very ill to buy insurance, premiums will skyrocket out of control. For that, we'll require everyone to purchase insurance (this is called the Individual Mandate) to increase the risk pool or pay an extra tax.
Now this is, IMHO, the wrong way to do it, but it's not that hard to explain. Sure there are some other things on the edges, but that's pretty much it.
I'd be happy to de-couple employment and insurance (and the ACA is a half-hearted attempt at doing it), but if you tell people that they can't keep their current employer-subsidized insurance, they'll freak out even more than they did when they heard about the individual mandate...even though it doesn't apply to the vast majority of Americans.
You're eligible for Medicaid and you're complaining? Medicaid is pretty damn cheap seeing as it's for poor people. The only problem is that you may have trouble finding doctors who will be willing to see you.
But yes, you're probably a reasonably healthy white male in his 20s or 30s. You're getting the shaft on this one so that sickly folks with tons of pre-existing conditions can pay $420-$700/mo instead of simply being denied coverage. Really, it sucks to be you, but that was the intent of the law. Do I think it's a good thing? On the balance, I'll give it a very tepid yes. So fuck me, I guess.
I'm lucky in that my wife works for the state and is in a union, so our coverage is really good and cheap. In fact it's probably too good compared to what most people get. If you were to take this idea to car insurance, I'd be in the same boat. I've never had so much as a speeding ticket. My premiums would skyrocket if car insurance was guaranteed issue and required community rating, and then all the other people who have a half dozen DUIs would have their premiums decrease by just as much.
In short, your plan is more expensive so other folks' plans are less expensive (or simply available). That's socialization of risk, and you're on the short end. Why do you have to buy maternity coverage? So women's plans are less expensive. The way I see it, I'd be happy to have my premiums tripled if it meant that someone with a blood factor disorder could get affordable insurance. If you don't see it that way, that's ok. Best of luck in your new business, BTW.
That was the fallback position to a fallback position. If they'd have done it right like the left wanted it, we'd all be on Medicare right now.
But that's socialism, so we can't have that. We need another kludgy hack to our current healthcare system which itself is a hack in the tax code to make it such that employers would want to pay for their employees' health care.
Yeah, it doesn't work that way here. There is no mechanism to force a non-scheduled election of Senators and Representatives. Right now there is no authority for certain departments that run off of a budget (we have plenty that don't -- Medicare and Social Security, for instance) to spend any money. This can theoretically continue indefinitely. Also in our system, the lower house must originate spending bills, but the upper house has equal rights to amend those bills.
The more interesting crisis is the debt ceiling vote coming up. It used to be that every time Congress would need to issue debt, they'd do it "manually" by voting to do so. When that became too cumbersome, they put in place a limit to how much debt the Treasury could issue. From time to time when tax revenue is less than spending, they have to vote to raise that limit or else we are in default.
It's an odd situation. Congress says $X must be spent on Y, but less than $X comes in via revenue, but they also say that no debt can be issued to make up the shortfall. It's contradictory instructions, and I believe we're alone in the civilized world in this regard.
The horse's mouth says it has dropped since 2009:
2009: 4,430,000
2010: 4,443,000 (the site notes that this includes temporary workers hired for the census)
2011: 4,403,000
So we can conclude that there were less federal government employees in 2011 than there were in 2009 when President Obama took office. Not much less, mind you, but certainly less.
The reason why college sports are such a circus is due to the fact that they are the de facto minor leagues for pro sports (at least as football and to a lesser extent, basketball is concerned). The NFL has a rule that any player eligible for the draft must be 3 years removed from high school. This means that if you are an exceptional football player, you can do one of the following:
1) Don't play for three years.
2) Join a semi-pro league for three years (the Arena League apparently pays $400/game).
3) Go to the CFL (I don't even know if that's possible as I don't know the rules for imports in the CFL).
4) Get a free college education.
I know what I'd do.
The NBA is a bit different because of the D-League and in baseball and hockey, the majority of prospects are not found in college. Figure out a way so that football and basketball have a large minor league system and colleges won't care as much about sports.
I hear you. The only way I can watch Columbus Blue Jackets hockey legally would be to buy cable and get Fox Sports Ohio. There is a way to watch out-of-market NHL games on various devices, but no way to watch in-market games short of routing it all through a VPN or breaking down and getting cable.
I guess the difference with you is that you don't live in the Pittsburgh metro area. It's still a problem for sports/teams that are not usually nationally broadcast. Be happy that your Steelers are good enough that they tend to be on "game of the week" type matchups. I follow San Francisco, and before they were good as of late, I'll bet I didn't watch a game for 2 or 3 years because they simply weren't on TV.
It depends on who "we" is. As others have pointed out, this portion of the law limits how much more private insurers can make smokers pay than non-smokers. This has nothing to do with what the publicly-funded (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc.) programs can and cannot do.
Unless your state requires community rating from your private insurers, they already do charge people more for being fat or being a woman, or working in a dangerous occupation. If they could make more money doing so, I'm sure they'd charge people who sleep around more, assuming sleeping around correlates with higher health care costs (I assume it does).
It's just like car insurance, dude. If they decide that you meet a particular risk profile that says you'll cost a lot more in claims, they're going to charge you more in premiums. Hell, if having blue eyes correlated with increased heath care expenses, they'd charge you more for that. It isn't moralizing; it's about being on the right side of an actuarial calculation. If you don't agree with that, you're free to write to your state representative and ask them to require community rating and guaranteed issue from the private insurers that do business in your state (or write to Congress if you want a federal standard).
Really?
I don't have a problem with torrenting stuff, but come on. It's not like 99.9% of the stuff out there can't be found with a minimum amount of effort.
Same here.
The dog chewed a laptop cable. It was cheaper to have Amazon overnight a new one than it was to buy it at the local Best Buy. $20 cheaper. The brick & mortar stores that deal in electronics thrive on the folks who simply don't have enough information to make an informed decision. As soon as they get wise, they order online.
I've been looking for the same, and never came across those. Thanks.
Now I have another quibble. ARM CPUs are always soldered on to the board. They can't be upgraded w/o upgrading the entire board. I'm waiting for the day when you can build from scratch a rig using an ARM CPU just like you would with an x86 CPU, using commodity parts from NewEgg, etc.
I'd be more than happy to short the hell out of Bitcoins if I had the resources. And even if I did, a smart man once said the market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent.
That's a feature, but it's not a good feature to have (for Bitcoin). A currency's success is measured by its ability to facilitate commercial transactions, not by its ability to make you rich simply by holding it. That's what *investments* are for. Currency isn't an investment and shouldn't be.
The fact that there could never be any more Bitcoins ever again would encourage speculation and hoarding, which is not what you want from a medium of exchange.
If you're worried about currency devaluation and put some of your money/time into Bitcoins, that makes sense as a hedge against inflation (ie. an investment), but nothing more.
Yes. And you can't have an intelligent designer without an intelligent designer designer.
From there it's turtles all the way down.
Indeed. I'm a bigger fan of the GPL in most cases, but there is room enough in the world for both camps (crazy talk, I know). Now you have your compiler under a suitable license for you and your fellow travelers.
[citation needed]
I think you know the answer to your question of why certain technology must be outlawed or taxed more. It's because by the time the technology becomes cheaper than fossil fuels we will have already done the damage.
I'll meet you half way and say, lets just get rid of all the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels that already exist and then tax people on the externalities they create. Hell, that in and of itself might be enough to make renewables cost effective.
I'm reasonably sure we're past the point of no return, so it might not even matter.
Yes, criminal copyright infringement is that way. Civil infringement is a strict liability tort. That means you're on the hook even if you took reasonable steps not to infringe and did not ever intend to infringe.
So you could still be on the hook for the infringement of copyright if a copyright owner took you to civil court. Going to federal PMITA prison would require mens rea.
Echoing SiriusStarr, make sure you install the tweak tool and get familiar with the shortcuts.
I complained like crazy when Debian Sid went to GNOME 3.0. I moved to XFCE + Compiz for awhile until I decided to give it another try. It took a few weeks to get used to, but now that I have retrained myself and gotten used to it, I wouldn't go back.
I don't think its for everyone and the fact that 3.0 was very unconfigurable is what gave everyone a heart attack. It's getting better. Some people will never like it, and that's fine. Different strokes for different folks.
If they're in another country, it's hard to get them to pay anything in a civil case, DMCA or otherwise. I don't know what to tell you other than "talk to a lawyer".
Yes, that's generally the case. On an "at will" contract, you can be terminated for any reason that isn't explictily illegal. If the employer believes they were fired for an illegal reason, they have to make the case. The assumption is that terminations are for legal reasons absent evidenct to the contrary.
The "double standard" is because EULAs are designed to restrict what you can do with a piece of software over and above what copyright does to restrict you. The GPL and other FOSS licenses give you rights you don't already have.
I respect the GPL because it recognises one thing that EULAs never recognise -- the unlimited right to run the program.
I've got a Math degree (not Math Education, mind you, just plain Math). I couldn't find a job to save my life for awhile, but sooner or later I took a tech support job and was moved up to Quality Assurance and may one day move into development.
One thing I *want* to do, but just don't have the fortitude to do is take some of the actuary exams. If your wife is a standard math nerd, doing actuarial work should be right up her alley.
I guess she can really do whatever she wants. A lot of place will just take anyone that isn't an idiot that has a degree. I'm sure anything that she wants to do will be rewarding in and of itself.
I'm not too bothered by it all. As a wise man once said, I don't mind if I have to pay, so long as the people who've been pocketing my premiums also have to pay. Of course that was about insurance, but the same principle applies.
I don't care if I get anything out of it, just as long as the cocksuckers have to pay.