7 ms·

In my opinion, AB5 went too far. I do not believe we should interfere with the market when it's working. It's like burning a pile of cash. Whatever you think ab

In my opinion, AB5 went too far. I do not believe we should interfere with the market when it's working. It's like burning a pile of cash. Whatever you think about gig economy companies, they have created flexible work that has served as a lifeline and supplemental income for tens of thousands of people across America. It feels like a step backwards to mandate that these people have bosses and strict schedules (that's the second order effect of AB5). That's to say nothing of the immense consumer surplus generated by a workforce that fluctuates with demand. It is much better to increase our social safety net with Medicare for All than to mandate that companies like Uber provide health insurance.

larnmar 7y ago
A better idea would be to quit linking health insurance to employment. Ban employer-provided health insurance and let everyone buy their own (reasonably regulated) health insurance as individuals. The link between employment and health insurance is, from my perspective as an external observer, America’s worst idea.
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago
  I don't know about "worst," but it's up there.
- fallous 7y ago
  And that link was the result of government wage and price controls during WW2.
- usaar333 7y ago
  Isn't this what ACA does? Employers just happen to offer health insurance as a benefit, but I'm not sure why it needs to be banned.
  - sp332 7y ago
    ACA plans can be subsidized, but as I understand it, if your employer offers a qualifying plan, then you are not eligible for the subsidy if you buy one from the marketplace instead.
  - brianlweiner 7y ago
    Employers have significant tax advantages when offering health insurance that individuals do not have access to.
    - usaar333 7y ago
      Only if you are unemployed. If you are self employed (e.g. a 1099 contractor), you can write off health insurance. (Basically letting you pay with pretax dollars, the same as if you are employed)
  - appleshore 7y ago
    One of the largest county government insurances in CA reimburses $28,000 for an endoscopy at an outpatient center. Which should cost around $2000 in a hospital. And in reality, could cost $500. Not sure why the AHA didn’t fix things like this.
    - pfranz 7y ago
      AHA? You mean the ACA? The US pays more for healthcare for a whole host of reasons split between different categories. The ACA only took on a very small aspect. The idea that getting close to 100% coverage means incentives like jacking up the prices because nobody covers the other guy's ER bill would get much smaller. I imagine the idea was changing other things made more sense to them after most everyone was covered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_prices_in_the_United_States#Reasons_for_higher_costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_prices_in_the_Unit...
  - jfengel 7y ago
    Full-time employers don't just "happen" to offer health care. It's a requirement of the ACA. That codifies a longstanding set of rules that make health care cheaper when offered by an employer, including tax breaks. The ACA does encourage state "exchanges" at rates comparable to the ones that employers provide, there's still a lot of focus on employer-provided health care. This is the result of a longstanding bargain between unions and employers to provide some compensation as health care rather than salary, which was win-win for both sides until health care costs soared. Now there's no way to break that link without throwing off those negotiations. The ACA wasn't actually a huge change, except in the sense that any change at all was nearly impossible given the stability of that equilibrium. It's widely agreed that there are many better ways to do it -- all of them dispensing with the link between employers and health care -- but there's no way to get to wide agreement on any one plan.
- squish78 7y ago
  Which nation had a better model at that point in history?
  - keenmaster 7y ago
    We spend 17.4% of GDP on healthcare. The OECD average is 9.5%, and we don't have better outcomes to show for it. That's ~$1.2-1.7 trillion of waste annually that could be used to improve our society instead of lining crony pockets. Employer-provided healthcare is one layer of the Kafka baklava that obscures the cost of healthcare and prevents better cost controls and price discovery in America. It also makes employees more reliant on their company, literally for their wellbeing. Our economy is less dynamic as a result, so my $1.2-1.7 trillon estimate might understate the problem. I got the OECD data directly from the OECD's website: https://www.oecd.org/media/oecdorg/satellitesites/newsroom/48294761hd2011fr.png https://www.oecd.org/media/oecdorg/satellitesites/newsroom/4...
    - squish78 7y ago
      Thank you for the data. Which nation had a better model for health insurance that point in history?
      - Matticus_Rex 7y ago
        The US, before it implemented that bad idea.
      - keenmaster 7y ago
        The NHS/universal healthcare was introduced in Britain in 1948, after WWII. The NHS isn't perfect, but it's much better than the American system. If we want a more flexible healthcare model, we can have universal healthcare to cover necessary + preventative care, with the option to purchase supplemental insurance for expedited and/or non-medically necessary care. Several other countries have that model.
        squish78 7y ago
- geddy 7y ago
  If we're paying on an individual basis, I want to pay based on my physical health. We'd still pay out the ass because people don't take care of themselves here - it's not healthcare, it's sickcare. People go to the hospital when their bodies start to die and that's why your hospital bill is enormous until the insurance company comes back and says "$25,000? We'll allow $1,200. And we'll pay $800 of it. Here's your bill for $400 - you're welcome." I'm tired of this model too. People should pay what they're costing. It's just that, the costs should be reasonable. I work out, I eat extremely healthy, I'm never sick, and I don't require medication to keep my heart pumping. Why am I still paying a fortune on healthcare, including premiums and deductibles? I have a great insurance plan, ffs!
  - NeuNeurosis 7y ago
    You might do and be all those things but none of that will prevent a unforeseen life changing accident from completely debilitating you. This is the true reason for what you say is "sickcare" we are all healthy until we are not. You pay into an insurance system, private or public, to offset the risk of this occurring.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    So all people born with or that develop disabilities are now destined to penury and death? Congratulations, you just invented eugenics.
    - geddy 7y ago
      Nice strawman argument. Because I don't want to pay a lot to offset the most expensive, I want people to die. Not what I said at all. But half the country either smokes or is obese, and I shouldn't have to incur the cost of other people's conditions.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    This is a misrepresentation of why healthcare costs so much in the US. There are a lot of reasons, but "you're paying for people who don't take care of themselves" barely makes the list -- insurance companies already give major discounts for not smoking etc. The biggest problem is that the entire existing system is so convoluted and bureaucratic that the cost of everything is ten times what it ought to be. They should just delete every single piece of federal healthcare law with two years of notice for the states to be ready to pick up the ball. Then let fifty states try fifty different ways to clean up the mess. Some will get it right and some won't, and then the losers can copy the winners, but even the screw ups can't be much worse than the status quo.
- Reedx 7y ago
  Disconnecting healthcare from employment would be such a boon to small businesses too. I'm not sure it's a good idea to ban other options, but it'd be great if everyone was covered by default.
- cmxch 7y ago
  Then what benefits would you offer in place to attract talent, especially at the lower end(where economies of scale help more)?
  - bpt3 7y ago
    Higher pay? Also, what happens when nationalized health care is implemented, since employers will stop offering medical insurance in many cases?
bhupy 7y ago
The argument against this is that it absolves corporations of the responsibility to provide a minimum standard of living to their employees. The same argument in favor of having a minimum wage instead of a basic income or negative income tax to offset substandard wages: it subsidizes corporations that underpay their employees. Ditto with socializing healthcare instead of making sure corporations provide it. It’s not an argument that I agree with at all, to clarify.
- ralusek 7y ago
  Corporations shouldn't have the responsibility of providing a minimum standard of living to their employees, they should have the responsibility of paying their employees what their employees agreed to work for. If their employees have their back against the wall and are literally unable to do anything to change their situation, that is a more general societal problem. UBI is, in my opinion, a monumentally superior solution than trying to micromanage the nature of contracts that people are capable of negotiating between one another.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    This is true in a vaccuum. Unfortunately when you look at the history of the U.S., it's the corporations that have taken the burden of providing for U.S. workers. Other developed nations have their government supporting it's citizens, not corporations.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      How is that an argument against replacing these rules with a UBI?
    - ralusek 7y ago
      The US spends over 2 trillion a year on social welfare services, and that's just federally.
- robomartin 7y ago
  Corporations have no such obligation. This is an imaginary and destructive construct. Destructive because mandating this, forcing it, does nothing less than destroy jobs and even entire industries. How much more evidence of this do people need before they realize we are destroying ourselves from the inside? The consequences of the $15 per hour minimum wage will be felt in due time. Anyone running a business in the context of a global economy knows this with absolute certainty. This isn’t about greed, it’s about a mathematical reality and a destructive positive feedback loop: We keep doing one dumb thing after another to push jobs, businesses and industries towards China. Our consumers lose jobs and income and, as a result, apply downward pricing pressure to the goods and services they consume. Sector by sector, over time, pricing structures become such that it is impossible for these businesses to exist in the US or Europe. The Chinese government knows this, they apply further pricing pressure and very soon they own one sector after another. And so continues our positive feedback loop, deepening economic wounds that assure bad long term outcomes. I really wish we actually taught kids from K-12 and into university a lot more about business and entrepreneurship. It is truly sad to watch young adults get behind some of the most destructive ideas this nation has had at the table in quite some time. Simple example: Medicare for All. Despite what people believe, this is already the largest private property grab by a government in, perhaps, world history. It certainly will be if we end up with Medicare for All. Why? Because Medicare is NOT insurance!!! After 55 years if age YOU OWE THE GOVERNMENT FOR EVERY PENNY OF MEDICAL CARE YOU RECEIVE. Don’t take my word for it, read this and do your own research: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-medicaid-recovers-the-cost-long-term-care-from-your-estate-after-you-die.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-medicaid-recover... So, if everyone was on Medicare/Medicaid the government would eventually have liens and the power of asset forfeiture on EVERY ESTATE IN THIS NATION. Now, stop and think about that for a moment before you support politicians using the general ignorance of facts by the public to generate votes. This is a travesty, and everyone supporting it is a participant in what would be the largest private property grab by a government in history. Think.
claudeganon 7y ago
The widespread poverty and tenuousness in California, the vast majority of wealth flowing upward from gig platforms into the hands of execs and investors, that’s your definition of the market working? AB5 seems aimed at addressing the vulturism that emerged in the wake of the Great Recession, where the economic collapse was used as an excuse to undo all kinds of more stable arrangements and protections, privatize costs onto workers, and grab an even greater share of wealth for the rich.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  This doesn’t make sense. What would happen to these people if there were no startups and no gig economy? This feels like the same argument that wants Chinese factory workers to have to go back to starving in the fields rather than worker long hours in factories because it isn’t optimal.
  - AaronM 7y ago
    Would entrepreneurs suddenly stop starting companies if they could only get rich instead of filthy rich? I doubt it.
reaperducer 7y ago
I do not believe we should interfere with the market when it's working. The fact that gig economy companies can get away with paying people less than minimum wage shows that it's not working.
- scarface74 7y ago
  And the fact that people who want to stay freelance can't shows that government involvement in the free market and taking away people's right to choose how they want to work doesn't work either.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    Vox is still free to hire freelancers, but it has to treat them as freelancers the same way every traditional media outlet does. Vox shouldn't get a magic unicorn pass because it's digital.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Why should the government get in the middle between people who want to freelance at a rate they negotiate and Vox? Both sides have intelligent adults.
      - reaperducer 7y ago
        Why should the government get in the middle between people who want to freelance at a rate they negotiate and Vox? Because we, as a society, decided decades ago that this is important to do for the good of the nation and that's why it was codified into law.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Well, society also decided at various points that government should ban interracial marriage, same sex marriage and make consensual intercourse between two adults of the same sex illegal. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t think that we should celebrate giving the government more power over what consenting adults are allowed to do when it doesn’t invade another person’s rights.

larnmar 7y ago

A better idea would be to quit linking health insurance to employment. Ban employer-provided health insurance and let everyone buy their own (reasonably regulated) health insurance as individuals. The link between employment and health insurance is, from my perspective as an external observer, America’s worst idea.

Matticus_Rex 7y ago
I don't know about "worst," but it's up there.
fallous 7y ago
And that link was the result of government wage and price controls during WW2.
usaar333 7y ago
Isn't this what ACA does? Employers just happen to offer health insurance as a benefit, but I'm not sure why it needs to be banned.
- sp332 7y ago
  ACA plans can be subsidized, but as I understand it, if your employer offers a qualifying plan, then you are not eligible for the subsidy if you buy one from the marketplace instead.
- brianlweiner 7y ago
  Employers have significant tax advantages when offering health insurance that individuals do not have access to.
  - usaar333 7y ago
    Only if you are unemployed. If you are self employed (e.g. a 1099 contractor), you can write off health insurance. (Basically letting you pay with pretax dollars, the same as if you are employed)
- appleshore 7y ago
  One of the largest county government insurances in CA reimburses $28,000 for an endoscopy at an outpatient center. Which should cost around $2000 in a hospital. And in reality, could cost $500. Not sure why the AHA didn’t fix things like this.
  - pfranz 7y ago
    AHA? You mean the ACA? The US pays more for healthcare for a whole host of reasons split between different categories. The ACA only took on a very small aspect. The idea that getting close to 100% coverage means incentives like jacking up the prices because nobody covers the other guy's ER bill would get much smaller. I imagine the idea was changing other things made more sense to them after most everyone was covered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_prices_in_the_United_States#Reasons_for_higher_costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_prices_in_the_Unit...
- jfengel 7y ago
  Full-time employers don't just "happen" to offer health care. It's a requirement of the ACA. That codifies a longstanding set of rules that make health care cheaper when offered by an employer, including tax breaks. The ACA does encourage state "exchanges" at rates comparable to the ones that employers provide, there's still a lot of focus on employer-provided health care. This is the result of a longstanding bargain between unions and employers to provide some compensation as health care rather than salary, which was win-win for both sides until health care costs soared. Now there's no way to break that link without throwing off those negotiations. The ACA wasn't actually a huge change, except in the sense that any change at all was nearly impossible given the stability of that equilibrium. It's widely agreed that there are many better ways to do it -- all of them dispensing with the link between employers and health care -- but there's no way to get to wide agreement on any one plan.
squish78 7y ago
Which nation had a better model at that point in history?
- keenmaster 7y ago
  We spend 17.4% of GDP on healthcare. The OECD average is 9.5%, and we don't have better outcomes to show for it. That's ~$1.2-1.7 trillion of waste annually that could be used to improve our society instead of lining crony pockets. Employer-provided healthcare is one layer of the Kafka baklava that obscures the cost of healthcare and prevents better cost controls and price discovery in America. It also makes employees more reliant on their company, literally for their wellbeing. Our economy is less dynamic as a result, so my $1.2-1.7 trillon estimate might understate the problem. I got the OECD data directly from the OECD's website: https://www.oecd.org/media/oecdorg/satellitesites/newsroom/48294761hd2011fr.png https://www.oecd.org/media/oecdorg/satellitesites/newsroom/4...
  - squish78 7y ago
    Thank you for the data. Which nation had a better model for health insurance that point in history?
    - Matticus_Rex 7y ago
      The US, before it implemented that bad idea.
    - keenmaster 7y ago
      The NHS/universal healthcare was introduced in Britain in 1948, after WWII. The NHS isn't perfect, but it's much better than the American system. If we want a more flexible healthcare model, we can have universal healthcare to cover necessary + preventative care, with the option to purchase supplemental insurance for expedited and/or non-medically necessary care. Several other countries have that model.
      - squish78 7y ago
geddy 7y ago
If we're paying on an individual basis, I want to pay based on my physical health. We'd still pay out the ass because people don't take care of themselves here - it's not healthcare, it's sickcare. People go to the hospital when their bodies start to die and that's why your hospital bill is enormous until the insurance company comes back and says "$25,000? We'll allow $1,200. And we'll pay $800 of it. Here's your bill for $400 - you're welcome." I'm tired of this model too. People should pay what they're costing. It's just that, the costs should be reasonable. I work out, I eat extremely healthy, I'm never sick, and I don't require medication to keep my heart pumping. Why am I still paying a fortune on healthcare, including premiums and deductibles? I have a great insurance plan, ffs!
- NeuNeurosis 7y ago
  You might do and be all those things but none of that will prevent a unforeseen life changing accident from completely debilitating you. This is the true reason for what you say is "sickcare" we are all healthy until we are not. You pay into an insurance system, private or public, to offset the risk of this occurring.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  So all people born with or that develop disabilities are now destined to penury and death? Congratulations, you just invented eugenics.
  - geddy 7y ago
    Nice strawman argument. Because I don't want to pay a lot to offset the most expensive, I want people to die. Not what I said at all. But half the country either smokes or is obese, and I shouldn't have to incur the cost of other people's conditions.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  This is a misrepresentation of why healthcare costs so much in the US. There are a lot of reasons, but "you're paying for people who don't take care of themselves" barely makes the list -- insurance companies already give major discounts for not smoking etc. The biggest problem is that the entire existing system is so convoluted and bureaucratic that the cost of everything is ten times what it ought to be. They should just delete every single piece of federal healthcare law with two years of notice for the states to be ready to pick up the ball. Then let fifty states try fifty different ways to clean up the mess. Some will get it right and some won't, and then the losers can copy the winners, but even the screw ups can't be much worse than the status quo.
Reedx 7y ago
Disconnecting healthcare from employment would be such a boon to small businesses too. I'm not sure it's a good idea to ban other options, but it'd be great if everyone was covered by default.
cmxch 7y ago
Then what benefits would you offer in place to attract talent, especially at the lower end(where economies of scale help more)?
- bpt3 7y ago
  Higher pay? Also, what happens when nationalized health care is implemented, since employers will stop offering medical insurance in many cases?

bhupy 7y ago

The argument against this is that it absolves corporations of the responsibility to provide a minimum standard of living to their employees. The same argument in favor of having a minimum wage instead of a basic income or negative income tax to offset substandard wages: it subsidizes corporations that underpay their employees. Ditto with socializing healthcare instead of making sure corporations provide it. It’s not an argument that I agree with at all, to clarify.

ralusek 7y ago
Corporations shouldn't have the responsibility of providing a minimum standard of living to their employees, they should have the responsibility of paying their employees what their employees agreed to work for. If their employees have their back against the wall and are literally unable to do anything to change their situation, that is a more general societal problem. UBI is, in my opinion, a monumentally superior solution than trying to micromanage the nature of contracts that people are capable of negotiating between one another.
- bduerst 7y ago
  This is true in a vaccuum. Unfortunately when you look at the history of the U.S., it's the corporations that have taken the burden of providing for U.S. workers. Other developed nations have their government supporting it's citizens, not corporations.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    How is that an argument against replacing these rules with a UBI?
  - ralusek 7y ago
    The US spends over 2 trillion a year on social welfare services, and that's just federally.
robomartin 7y ago
Corporations have no such obligation. This is an imaginary and destructive construct. Destructive because mandating this, forcing it, does nothing less than destroy jobs and even entire industries. How much more evidence of this do people need before they realize we are destroying ourselves from the inside? The consequences of the $15 per hour minimum wage will be felt in due time. Anyone running a business in the context of a global economy knows this with absolute certainty. This isn’t about greed, it’s about a mathematical reality and a destructive positive feedback loop: We keep doing one dumb thing after another to push jobs, businesses and industries towards China. Our consumers lose jobs and income and, as a result, apply downward pricing pressure to the goods and services they consume. Sector by sector, over time, pricing structures become such that it is impossible for these businesses to exist in the US or Europe. The Chinese government knows this, they apply further pricing pressure and very soon they own one sector after another. And so continues our positive feedback loop, deepening economic wounds that assure bad long term outcomes. I really wish we actually taught kids from K-12 and into university a lot more about business and entrepreneurship. It is truly sad to watch young adults get behind some of the most destructive ideas this nation has had at the table in quite some time. Simple example: Medicare for All. Despite what people believe, this is already the largest private property grab by a government in, perhaps, world history. It certainly will be if we end up with Medicare for All. Why? Because Medicare is NOT insurance!!! After 55 years if age YOU OWE THE GOVERNMENT FOR EVERY PENNY OF MEDICAL CARE YOU RECEIVE. Don’t take my word for it, read this and do your own research: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-medicaid-recovers-the-cost-long-term-care-from-your-estate-after-you-die.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-medicaid-recover... So, if everyone was on Medicare/Medicaid the government would eventually have liens and the power of asset forfeiture on EVERY ESTATE IN THIS NATION. Now, stop and think about that for a moment before you support politicians using the general ignorance of facts by the public to generate votes. This is a travesty, and everyone supporting it is a participant in what would be the largest private property grab by a government in history. Think.

claudeganon 7y ago

The widespread poverty and tenuousness in California, the vast majority of wealth flowing upward from gig platforms into the hands of execs and investors, that’s your definition of the market working? AB5 seems aimed at addressing the vulturism that emerged in the wake of the Great Recession, where the economic collapse was used as an excuse to undo all kinds of more stable arrangements and protections, privatize costs onto workers, and grab an even greater share of wealth for the rich.

merpnderp 7y ago
This doesn’t make sense. What would happen to these people if there were no startups and no gig economy? This feels like the same argument that wants Chinese factory workers to have to go back to starving in the fields rather than worker long hours in factories because it isn’t optimal.
- AaronM 7y ago
  Would entrepreneurs suddenly stop starting companies if they could only get rich instead of filthy rich? I doubt it.

reaperducer 7y ago

I do not believe we should interfere with the market when it's working. The fact that gig economy companies can get away with paying people less than minimum wage shows that it's not working.

scarface74 7y ago
And the fact that people who want to stay freelance can't shows that government involvement in the free market and taking away people's right to choose how they want to work doesn't work either.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Vox is still free to hire freelancers, but it has to treat them as freelancers the same way every traditional media outlet does. Vox shouldn't get a magic unicorn pass because it's digital.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Why should the government get in the middle between people who want to freelance at a rate they negotiate and Vox? Both sides have intelligent adults.
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      Why should the government get in the middle between people who want to freelance at a rate they negotiate and Vox? Because we, as a society, decided decades ago that this is important to do for the good of the nation and that's why it was codified into law.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Well, society also decided at various points that government should ban interracial marriage, same sex marriage and make consensual intercourse between two adults of the same sex illegal. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t think that we should celebrate giving the government more power over what consenting adults are allowed to do when it doesn’t invade another person’s rights.