7 ms·

So why do they stay at these awful jobs? Health insurance. Fear of losing, or even changing what they have (sometimes accompanied with some very real and not j

by beat 7y ago

So why do they stay at these awful jobs? Health insurance. Fear of losing, or even changing what they have (sometimes accompanied with some very real and not just anxiety out-of-pocket costs running into the thousands of dollars). Decoupling health insurance from employment is the #1 thing we could do to improve quality of our work. But in the long run, I dream of a day when wage labor is looked back on as nearly as terrible as chattel slavery.

aantix 7y ago
How will people be compensated relative to their work value?
- beat 7y ago
  Why do we need to work? edit: I am 100% serious about this. It is already economically viable, if society chooses to do it, to simply guarantee food, decent housing, and health care to everyone, whether they work or not. At that point, what we do with our time becomes a choice, more than the choice of "work or go homeless and starve". People could still choose to exchange their time and skills for money, and most would, I think. But the coercion of the current system, and the "safety net" holes in that coercion, would disappear.
  - WarDores 7y ago
    I'd like to see a source for "It is already economically viable...". Maybe at current levels of production, but you can't just assume current levels of output in every sector while removing incentives.
    - beat 7y ago
      Why do you think incentives are removed? Is "work or starve" the only incentive? I'm not talking about a beachfront mansion and a Ferrari in the driveway for everyone. I'm talking about not starving. Want to be more than the bare minimum? Then choose to work. Don't care? Then don't work - not that people who don't care are effective employees anyway.
      - damq 7y ago
        Have you tried purchasing health care before? It's not inexpensive. There's no way we could guarantee food, health care, and housing for everybody with no work requirement. Only a really stupid person would believe this could work. You're really stupid.
        about_help 7y ago
        Money is an artificial construct used by humans to facilitate trading their labor amongst each other in order to get what they need to survive. Arguments about how expensive things are make no sense if we restructure our society where money is only half the equation. The labor required to provide food, health, and housing is incredibly small compared to the overall economy. People want to be useful, and people want more than just a place to live and food to eat. The real danger would be in creating a system that stifles the free market side of the economy and leaves people stuck in basic assistance hell with no way of working to improve their lives. Worrying about the costs of providing basic assistance to all is actually the least important bit.
        dang 7y ago
        We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - wonderwonder 7y ago
    If everyone stopped working, who would grow the food, build the houses or go to medical school? I do absolutely agree with the concept of a UBI but there has to always be people that work otherwise everything collapses.
    - beat 7y ago
      Why would everyone stop working? If you were given the choice, would you just sit around and eat M&Ms and watch tv all day? Or would you work anyway? Consider your examples. Who would grow the food? Farmers. Because people would grow food anyway (and do), whether or not they get paid, because it's intrinsically rewarding. Building houses? Jimmy Carter is rich and 90-odd years old and builds houses. Med school? Maybe people want to be doctors? The jobs that are at risk in this model are the jobs that have no intrinsic value to the individual other than the paycheck.
      - madengr 7y ago
        Hobbies are intrinsically rewarding. Once you do it enough, it becomes monotonous. I don't think roofing a house or plowing a field is intrinsically rewarding past the fist few times.
      - wonderwonder 7y ago
        Considering most farm workers are unskilled laborers making at or close to minimum wage, why would they work if they could get a UBI that covers all their needs? Farmers would still farm but that's because they own the land and directly benefit from it, they would not be able to perform all of the unskilled labor on their own. This could perhaps be offset if we drastically changed our guest worker program to allow unskilled labor in from other countries but it would have to be setup in a manner that denies these workers a UBI, otherwise they too would not work. Same issue with building houses. The number of people wanting to perform unskilled labor would not come close to approaching the required need for unskilled laborers. For example I dont think anyone wants to be a roofer in the summer heat, the do it only for the paycheck. Doctors? You are probably right, people will do it for the love of the work. I am very much pro UBI but there are still a ton of supporting things that need to be worked out.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Why should people who work support those who choose not tow work (as opposed to people who cannot work)? Work is an important value. Whatever economic viability the U.S. has to experiment with weird social ideas, it's because of generations of people who believed in work as a moral imperative.
    - beat 7y ago
      This is the trap of equating "work" with "make money". Not all work is economically lucrative, even if it may provide real human value. Consider artists, for example. The arts don't pay very well, to the point that lots of people who would like to be full time professionals cannot afford to do so. But it adds tremendously to our social wealth.
      - aantix 7y ago
        >But it adds tremendously to our social wealth. All art adds to our social wealth? Like anything else, some art does, lots probably doesn't. And how do we decide what is bringing us value? Which art should be promoted and which is just a scam, a big pile of poop put in a mason jar? We circle right back to capitalism. Giving the populace a mechanism to vote for what has value and what doesn't. Money. Attention. Time. Esteem. Fame.
        beat 7y ago
        Capitalism has a built-in failure mode. As Peter Thiel (not exactly a commie, him) points out, capitalism only functions in its failure mode. The ideal world that all the economists and conservative politicians argue for, where pure competition sets the price, is a race to zero. In ideal capitalism, profit is impossible. Profit only happens where there is friction that prevents the market from working fully.
        aantix 7y ago
        And that friction is innovation. Something that adds value. That isn't a commodity. That would be hard to copy. Innovation's biproduct is profit.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    We need to work because we're barely at the productivity to sustain ourselves given our current obligations. For instance, in order to fund CalPers, we need a lot of people to do productive work. That's on a multi-decade timer.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      Which is odd, given that we produce more stuff than ever before. We have a couple of problems - a lot of the things we need most (dedicated time from doctors, teachers, etc.) are affected by Baumol's cost disease and in other categories, like housing, we have legally mandated shortages (it's illegal to create enough homes near transit, amenities, and jobs) so we will, by definition, never have enough.
      - scarejunba 7y ago
        Doctors also have legally mandated shortages, yes. And cost disease is a characteristic of a system not really something you can treat while retaining the other constraints (no homes, guaranteed pension returns, restrictions on number of workers, etc.)
andrei_says_ 7y ago
Employee provided health insurance guarantees cheap labor and easy to abuse employees who must make a very hard choice if they are to lose health insurance. Who would lobby for changing that balance and who would finance the campaigns of politicians that support such a reform?
- rhcom2 7y ago
  Most of the Democratic primary candidates.
  - spking 7y ago
    It's probably time to stop expecting politicians to solve these problems for us, regardless of what they claim on the campaign trail.
    - notfromhere 7y ago
      medical insurance is a political problem, so the only solution is also political.
    - vsskanth 7y ago
      yeah but only they can write the law and nominate judges to enforce it. IMO getting rid of the tax subsidy for employer sponsored insurance, enforcing anti-trust law on health providers (insurance, hospitals, etc.) by forcing them to disclose prices and getting rid of onerous licensing regulations will achieve the intended decoupling between health insurance and employment. However, you need to pass laws for all that.
  - andrei_says_ 7y ago
    Which is indeed very hopeful. The level of institutionalized corruption including in how money selects who appears on ballots makes this a difficult process. This is a great reminder of the root issues we need to deal with. https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...
wonderwonder 7y ago
I agree on the health care aspect but in addition I think people stay at these jobs because it is the norm. The grass is not assumed to be greener on the other side. We will leave a job for more money but we assume it will come with the same soul crushing workload and nonsense.
dominotw 7y ago
> So why do they stay at these awful jobs? > Health insurance. How do you know this though?
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Most companies would love to do away with the expense of health insurance and all of the administrative headaches and costs that come with it. But since most full-time white collar jobs offer health insurance, changing jobs might change your coverage some but won't leave you insuranceless. Now if you want to go out on your own or create/work at a startup, health insurance can be a big issue.
- beat 7y ago
  The worse the job, the worse the insurance, in most cases. Not all jobs are full-time skilled white collar jobs.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Big companies already have the HR staff to deal with health insurance. It’s in their interest to keep health insurance tied up with employment, as it gives them an advantage over small business and individuals, because individuals who work for small businesses that don’t offer health insurance have to pay for it with post tax dollars.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
yup, health insurance is a very big part of it. but also, it takes a long time to find another position.
olyjohn 7y ago
Also looking for a new job in a pain in the ass. First, you have to make or update your resume... which for me is like facing all of my self-hatred. As I make my resume, I spend hours trying not to feel shitty about all the things that I haven't accomplished, and feel shitty about how I don't really have the requirements for the job I want. I compare myself to everybody else in the field as I look for example resumes, realize I don't have the same kinds of accomplishments, and I have just been grinding away for the past 10 years. All this is despite the fact that I know I'm good at my job, and I've never been reprimanded or fired. Then, I get so sick of going to 6-hour interviews where you go with each member of the team one-on-one. Then wait weeks, get a call back to come in again... Take more time off the current job, lie to your boss again... Spend an hour each time figuring out how to get there and park, and find your way around the completely unmarked campus... Then half the people apologize that they forgot you were coming. Study before hand, writing cover letters, tweaking the resume for each job... I get sick of answering the same questions over and over, when we could have just had a group interview and gotten it over with. And if you're quitting because you're stressed and burnt out, last thing you want is another thing on your plate to be stressed and burnt out about.
- beat 7y ago
  Totally different perspective from mine, but certainly valid. If you're familiar with spoon theory, the spoons you spend just working are spoons you need in order to look for a new job.

by beat 7y ago

aantix 7y ago

How will people be compensated relative to their work value?

beat 7y ago
Why do we need to work? edit: I am 100% serious about this. It is already economically viable, if society chooses to do it, to simply guarantee food, decent housing, and health care to everyone, whether they work or not. At that point, what we do with our time becomes a choice, more than the choice of "work or go homeless and starve". People could still choose to exchange their time and skills for money, and most would, I think. But the coercion of the current system, and the "safety net" holes in that coercion, would disappear.
- WarDores 7y ago
  I'd like to see a source for "It is already economically viable...". Maybe at current levels of production, but you can't just assume current levels of output in every sector while removing incentives.
  - beat 7y ago
    Why do you think incentives are removed? Is "work or starve" the only incentive? I'm not talking about a beachfront mansion and a Ferrari in the driveway for everyone. I'm talking about not starving. Want to be more than the bare minimum? Then choose to work. Don't care? Then don't work - not that people who don't care are effective employees anyway.
    - damq 7y ago
      Have you tried purchasing health care before? It's not inexpensive. There's no way we could guarantee food, health care, and housing for everybody with no work requirement. Only a really stupid person would believe this could work. You're really stupid.
      - about_help 7y ago
        Money is an artificial construct used by humans to facilitate trading their labor amongst each other in order to get what they need to survive. Arguments about how expensive things are make no sense if we restructure our society where money is only half the equation. The labor required to provide food, health, and housing is incredibly small compared to the overall economy. People want to be useful, and people want more than just a place to live and food to eat. The real danger would be in creating a system that stifles the free market side of the economy and leaves people stuck in basic assistance hell with no way of working to improve their lives. Worrying about the costs of providing basic assistance to all is actually the least important bit.
      - dang 7y ago
        We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- wonderwonder 7y ago
  If everyone stopped working, who would grow the food, build the houses or go to medical school? I do absolutely agree with the concept of a UBI but there has to always be people that work otherwise everything collapses.
  - beat 7y ago
    Why would everyone stop working? If you were given the choice, would you just sit around and eat M&Ms and watch tv all day? Or would you work anyway? Consider your examples. Who would grow the food? Farmers. Because people would grow food anyway (and do), whether or not they get paid, because it's intrinsically rewarding. Building houses? Jimmy Carter is rich and 90-odd years old and builds houses. Med school? Maybe people want to be doctors? The jobs that are at risk in this model are the jobs that have no intrinsic value to the individual other than the paycheck.
    - madengr 7y ago
      Hobbies are intrinsically rewarding. Once you do it enough, it becomes monotonous. I don't think roofing a house or plowing a field is intrinsically rewarding past the fist few times.
    - wonderwonder 7y ago
      Considering most farm workers are unskilled laborers making at or close to minimum wage, why would they work if they could get a UBI that covers all their needs? Farmers would still farm but that's because they own the land and directly benefit from it, they would not be able to perform all of the unskilled labor on their own. This could perhaps be offset if we drastically changed our guest worker program to allow unskilled labor in from other countries but it would have to be setup in a manner that denies these workers a UBI, otherwise they too would not work. Same issue with building houses. The number of people wanting to perform unskilled labor would not come close to approaching the required need for unskilled laborers. For example I dont think anyone wants to be a roofer in the summer heat, the do it only for the paycheck. Doctors? You are probably right, people will do it for the love of the work. I am very much pro UBI but there are still a ton of supporting things that need to be worked out.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Why should people who work support those who choose not tow work (as opposed to people who cannot work)? Work is an important value. Whatever economic viability the U.S. has to experiment with weird social ideas, it's because of generations of people who believed in work as a moral imperative.
  - beat 7y ago
    This is the trap of equating "work" with "make money". Not all work is economically lucrative, even if it may provide real human value. Consider artists, for example. The arts don't pay very well, to the point that lots of people who would like to be full time professionals cannot afford to do so. But it adds tremendously to our social wealth.
    - aantix 7y ago
      >But it adds tremendously to our social wealth. All art adds to our social wealth? Like anything else, some art does, lots probably doesn't. And how do we decide what is bringing us value? Which art should be promoted and which is just a scam, a big pile of poop put in a mason jar? We circle right back to capitalism. Giving the populace a mechanism to vote for what has value and what doesn't. Money. Attention. Time. Esteem. Fame.
      - beat 7y ago
        Capitalism has a built-in failure mode. As Peter Thiel (not exactly a commie, him) points out, capitalism only functions in its failure mode. The ideal world that all the economists and conservative politicians argue for, where pure competition sets the price, is a race to zero. In ideal capitalism, profit is impossible. Profit only happens where there is friction that prevents the market from working fully.
        aantix 7y ago
        And that friction is innovation. Something that adds value. That isn't a commodity. That would be hard to copy. Innovation's biproduct is profit.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  We need to work because we're barely at the productivity to sustain ourselves given our current obligations. For instance, in order to fund CalPers, we need a lot of people to do productive work. That's on a multi-decade timer.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    Which is odd, given that we produce more stuff than ever before. We have a couple of problems - a lot of the things we need most (dedicated time from doctors, teachers, etc.) are affected by Baumol's cost disease and in other categories, like housing, we have legally mandated shortages (it's illegal to create enough homes near transit, amenities, and jobs) so we will, by definition, never have enough.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      Doctors also have legally mandated shortages, yes. And cost disease is a characteristic of a system not really something you can treat while retaining the other constraints (no homes, guaranteed pension returns, restrictions on number of workers, etc.)

andrei_says_ 7y ago

Employee provided health insurance guarantees cheap labor and easy to abuse employees who must make a very hard choice if they are to lose health insurance. Who would lobby for changing that balance and who would finance the campaigns of politicians that support such a reform?

rhcom2 7y ago
Most of the Democratic primary candidates.
- spking 7y ago
  It's probably time to stop expecting politicians to solve these problems for us, regardless of what they claim on the campaign trail.
  - notfromhere 7y ago
    medical insurance is a political problem, so the only solution is also political.
  - vsskanth 7y ago
    yeah but only they can write the law and nominate judges to enforce it. IMO getting rid of the tax subsidy for employer sponsored insurance, enforcing anti-trust law on health providers (insurance, hospitals, etc.) by forcing them to disclose prices and getting rid of onerous licensing regulations will achieve the intended decoupling between health insurance and employment. However, you need to pass laws for all that.
- andrei_says_ 7y ago
  Which is indeed very hopeful. The level of institutionalized corruption including in how money selects who appears on ballots makes this a difficult process. This is a great reminder of the root issues we need to deal with. https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...

wonderwonder 7y ago

I agree on the health care aspect but in addition I think people stay at these jobs because it is the norm. The grass is not assumed to be greener on the other side. We will leave a job for more money but we assume it will come with the same soul crushing workload and nonsense.

dominotw 7y ago

> So why do they stay at these awful jobs? > Health insurance. How do you know this though?

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Most companies would love to do away with the expense of health insurance and all of the administrative headaches and costs that come with it. But since most full-time white collar jobs offer health insurance, changing jobs might change your coverage some but won't leave you insuranceless. Now if you want to go out on your own or create/work at a startup, health insurance can be a big issue.

beat 7y ago
The worse the job, the worse the insurance, in most cases. Not all jobs are full-time skilled white collar jobs.
lotsofpulp 7y ago
Big companies already have the HR staff to deal with health insurance. It’s in their interest to keep health insurance tied up with employment, as it gives them an advantage over small business and individuals, because individuals who work for small businesses that don’t offer health insurance have to pay for it with post tax dollars.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

yup, health insurance is a very big part of it. but also, it takes a long time to find another position.

olyjohn 7y ago

Also looking for a new job in a pain in the ass. First, you have to make or update your resume... which for me is like facing all of my self-hatred. As I make my resume, I spend hours trying not to feel shitty about all the things that I haven't accomplished, and feel shitty about how I don't really have the requirements for the job I want. I compare myself to everybody else in the field as I look for example resumes, realize I don't have the same kinds of accomplishments, and I have just been grinding away for the past 10 years. All this is despite the fact that I know I'm good at my job, and I've never been reprimanded or fired. Then, I get so sick of going to 6-hour interviews where you go with each member of the team one-on-one. Then wait weeks, get a call back to come in again... Take more time off the current job, lie to your boss again... Spend an hour each time figuring out how to get there and park, and find your way around the completely unmarked campus... Then half the people apologize that they forgot you were coming. Study before hand, writing cover letters, tweaking the resume for each job... I get sick of answering the same questions over and over, when we could have just had a group interview and gotten it over with. And if you're quitting because you're stressed and burnt out, last thing you want is another thing on your plate to be stressed and burnt out about.

beat 7y ago
Totally different perspective from mine, but certainly valid. If you're familiar with spoon theory, the spoons you spend just working are spoons you need in order to look for a new job.