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Isn't it better to get your money and not be hoping for a bonus or stock award? Most people would take the guaranteed pay raise over the non-guaranteed bonus o

Isn't it better to get your money and not be hoping for a bonus or stock award? Most people would take the guaranteed pay raise over the non-guaranteed bonus or profit sharing/stock awards. Let people decide what to do with their money, 'benefits' largely benefit the company not always all individuals. The problem is real pay/share of GDP to persons has gone down consistently [1] while 'real compensation' [2] has supposedly gone up and supposedly makes up over 30% of everyone's pay on average, that includes bonuses, healthcare, other benefits that most people don't see or use regularly. Even real compensation is dwindling. [3] As an example of increasing wages over benefits, I'd rather people got paid and then purchased healthcare for instance on their own as it would be a more consumer, rather than employer, focused market. Raises should be given on the regular and the base way to reward value creating employees, not some might be bonus or stock award tied to the company instead. A bonus oro profit sharing on top of increasing wages is still ok but not in spite of it. What if the employee wants to buy other stock, pay them so they can. Give raises, quit with the 'real compensation' gains that don't put actual money in your accounts, people would always take actual money over benefits. The velocity of money (domestic money that changes hands) has also fallen off a cliff [4] because pay to persons/raises have been efficiently worked out of the system in favor of 'real compensation' which does not get money in accounts consumers can spend. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006151 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006151 [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

rincebrain 8y ago
AIUI the problem with individual medical insurance, in the US, is that without group bargaining and a requirement that all people must have it, there's both little incentive for insurance providers to compete for business, and the nasty reality that lots of people not having many expensive problems subsidize the few that do, and if you cut the long tail of people with problems that are cheaper than their premiums, you end up with exorbitant costs for the remaining people, and then a death spiral as "more healthy" people continue to opt out of rising costs, and the cost needle keeps moving up. I'd probably prefer something more like a logical inverse of that - baseline guaranteed coverage for everyone by a government agency, and then if necessary private providers can wrestle over offering various incentives to use them beyond the guaranteed coverage. (Not that I have an incredible amount of faith in most governments acting efficiently, but they almost always have a better record than for-profit agencies, and I'd prefer to avoid a government mandate of a non-government agency.) (I'm not going near the convoluted structure of compensation types because I don't think I'm informed enough.)

rincebrain 8y ago

AIUI the problem with individual medical insurance, in the US, is that without group bargaining and a requirement that all people must have it, there's both little incentive for insurance providers to compete for business, and the nasty reality that lots of people not having many expensive problems subsidize the few that do, and if you cut the long tail of people with problems that are cheaper than their premiums, you end up with exorbitant costs for the remaining people, and then a death spiral as "more healthy" people continue to opt out of rising costs, and the cost needle keeps moving up. I'd probably prefer something more like a logical inverse of that - baseline guaranteed coverage for everyone by a government agency, and then if necessary private providers can wrestle over offering various incentives to use them beyond the guaranteed coverage. (Not that I have an incredible amount of faith in most governments acting efficiently, but they almost always have a better record than for-profit agencies, and I'd prefer to avoid a government mandate of a non-government agency.) (I'm not going near the convoluted structure of compensation types because I don't think I'm informed enough.)