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I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something simil
by gremlinsinc 7y ago
I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired.
UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months and depression hits hard when money is tight.
There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecurity, stress, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
- leetcrew 7y agomy guess is an effective system of healthcare and/or UBI would decrease the suicide rate somewhat, because people wouldn't feel so helpless. I'm not sure that max wage algorithm creates a healthy incentive though. it would seem to encourage hiring more employees than necessary just to increase the executive's compensation. I think people can often tell when their job isn't really necessary and it probably doesn't feel very good.
- lazyasciiart 7y agoIt doesn't encourage hiring more employees - how would that affect the average employee pay? You just have to pay more to the ones you have.
- leetcrew 7y ago> w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. maybe I misread this and GP meant increasing the fraction of US employees?
- gremlinsinc 7y agoI meant some claim CEO pay tied to worker might encourage layoffs. If you have 10 workers average pay 100k and you last off your lowest paid worker the average goes up, and you're paying less out of pocket. By having bonuses showing that you're not trying to game the system by laying people off it encourages job growth. That and the idea of pay cap is to ensure business growth over CEO enrichment. How does it hurt the companies bottom line if the CEO can only earn 10 Mill not 50m? When it gives 40 surplus for new devs or r and d people to grow new products and income opportunities.
- Noos 7y agoyeah, it would actually decrease the number of employees if employee cost is significant enough to not be absorbed by raising the price. It might also decrease it by forcing a robustness check on existing businesses. A lot of them manage but couldn't absorb a financial hit; this would be a minor crisis but one that could just push marginal businesses over the edge.
- austincheney 7y agoSuicidal ideation is a mental health illness. Financial desperation is stressful, but that stress is not an indication of mental health distress. I don’t see these two things as having any correlation and I am not aware of any related evidence adjoining those two. If finances are a factor in suicidal ideation then it’s a secondary consideration in addition to more prominent concerns.
- everly 7y agoI find it hard to believe that you can’t see any correlation but here you go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24121465/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24121465/ https://www.allure.com/story/suicide-debt-link https://www.allure.com/story/suicide-debt-link
- austincheney 7y agoFalse correlation. Take this damning quote from your second link: > Data analysis from a 2013 study published in the journal Clinical Psychology Review shows that those who died by suicide were eight times more likely to be in debt. Correlation does not imply causation. To illustrate the silliness when the related items are transposed the statement becomes absurdly false even though the logic remains identical: persons in debt are 8 times more likely to be suicidal. Nobody is claiming that because it’s preposterous and there is no such data. Stress is not a mental health illness. Having debt is also not a mental health illness.
- madddiagnosis 7y agoHaving debt may not be a mental health illness, but mental health illnesses are significantly exacerbated by debt. I was discharged from a mental health ward 3 weeks ago after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. My brother was murdered a year ago and I've been struggling with depression since. I lose my job a few months ago and money has been tight in my household, to the point where I began to see myself as nothing buta financial anchor weighing down my partner. Freeing her from having to manage my debts was the primary justification for my suicide attempt. My mental health illness (mixed anxiety and Depressive disorder) is not caused by debt, but the affective symptoms (in this case suicidal ideation) were. Or to put it another way: the easy way out of debt allows people to rationalize an an otherwise irrational decision. (°) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/03/aggressive-debt-collectors-raise-risk-of-suicide https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/201... NatCen analysed detailed NHS data about adults’ mental health undertaken for the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute. It found that 13% of people in problem debt – about 420,000 a year – think about suicide and 4% of them – more than 100,000 people – try to end their life. Suicide attempts in people with debt are around 400x more likely than those without debts (it's around .01% in the UK yearly), which surely counteracts the idea that nobody is claiming that people in debt are more likely to be suicidal? Having debt certainly isn't a mental illness, but we can't ignore the effect having debt has on people with mental illnesses. Edit: sorry for any typos or grammatical errors, my medication causes difficulties typing and recognising errors (°) Of course, it may actually be rational, since her financial security would be significantly improved by the removal of debt and the extra mouth to feed - but rationality does not necessarily imply correctness.
- Frondo 7y agoI like the incentive that a maximum wage introduces: increase the pay of your staff and subcontractors hired by your company to raise your wage ceiling. I can't see a drawback, aside from someone at that ceiling simply wanting to raise their salary without raising those working for them.
- emptybits 7y agoRe/ medicare for all ... Canada has universal health care yet a very similar suicide rate to the USA.[1] Canada doesn't have a livable minimum wage either. Each province sets its own. There is talk of UBI experiments. [1] https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-canada-suicide-edition.html https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-can...
- zeroxfe 7y agoThat's 2011 data. Most recent data is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... * Global rate: 10.5 per 100,000 people * Canada rate: 10.4 per 100,000 people * US rate: 13.7 per 100,000 people
- akhilcacharya 7y agoWonder if this can be normalized with other factors that influence these things, like average daily sunlight and temperature... Curious to see how Michigan would compare with Ontario or Alaska or Northern Washington would compare with British Columbia
- rwmurrayVT 7y agoCanada's suicide rate is also greatly impacted by the unfortunate prevalence of it among the native population. It's really quite sad to see. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Canada#Among_Indigenous_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Canada#Among_Indige...
- godelski 7y agoBut there's other factors there. Do we know if there was a change after Canada switched to universal health care?
- aaron_m04 7y agoYes, like Seasonal Affective Disorder.
- lukifer 7y ago> UBI would also probably help. As the only candidate currently running on a UBI platform, Andrew Yang has argued that one of its benefits would be a reduction in economic anxiety, with ancillary benefits to health in the form of stress reduction and improved executive function, as well as lower rates of depression, suicide, and drug addiction.
- hanniabu 7y agoI can attest to this. I've been in both situations where I was very financially comfortable and where I've been in more financially risk situations on and off. You definitely have higher stress, anxiety, and develop negative habits at financially risky times. And for reference the were longer time frames: 5 years well off, 3 years poor, 2 well off, 2 poor
- claudeganon 7y agoWithout other universal floors on things like housing and healthcare, UBI is just going to be eaten up by those costs. An indirect sop to these sectors isn’t going to do much to improve the average person’s quality of life.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lukifer 7y agoI agree that universal health care should be solved independently from UBI (Yang supports opt-in Medicare For All). Housing is a more complicated story; there's certainly a theory that landlords will simply raise rents in proportion to their tenants new ability to pay more. On the other hand, a stable income boost might make the housing market more fluid, giving renters more options to move when the rent goes up. I personally favor LVT to discourage rent-seeking, and there's a lot that could be done by removing zoning and building restrictions (multi-family conversions, etc) to make housing more competitive.
- Miner49er 7y agoFor the middle class maybe. His implementation will leave the poorest worse off.
- claudeganon 7y agoThere’s something obviously wrong with the U.S. because suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young people and has jumped 50+ percent since the Great Recession: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/suicide-young-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/suicide-young-peo...
- whiddershins 7y agoWhat would you prefer the second-leading cause of death be for young people? I am being serious. Some things have to be the top causes of death for young people and the list definitionally can’t include the aspirational “old age.”
- claudeganon 7y agoThis seems like an odd question. Obviously we should prefer accidental death among young people vs. that which is self-inflicted, while hoping that the overall number of deaths diminishes, regardless of circumstance. But I don’t think a spike in youth suicide is something we should hand waive away in any case.
- burfog 7y agoWe can have get accidental death up to second place by banning railings, air bags, helmets, and tire tread patterns. In other words, was there really a spike in youth suicide or did it just climb in rank because we reduced other causes of death? Something must be first, something must be second, and so on.
- claudeganon 7y agoTeen/young adult suicides are now occurring at the highest rate since we’ve been keeping statistics (1960): https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-suicide-rates-rising-teens-young-adults-20190618-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-suicide-rates-rising-... So there’s unequivocally a spike. The only argument you could really make is that suicide rates have been rising across the US since 1999, up in most states and up by 30% in half of all states, making youth suicide of a part with the broader trend. But I don’t think this is any less disheartening. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html
- pkaye 7y agoThere is nearly a 2x difference in rate between white and native americans vs blacks, asians and hispanics. I'm wondering if there is a good understanding of that difference. I don't think it is just economic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Age_adjusted_US_suicide_rate_by_race_1981-2016.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/...
- DaniFong 7y agoThat stood out to me as well, indeed the numbers vary a lot nationally and ethnically. How are you supposed to study it, though? Not exactly a good situation for an exit poll. Imaginably the government could be in a position to grant a gift, and help, to offer a moment of respite from whatever is causing the most distress -- that might help some people...
- whatshisface 7y agoYou could give the survey to random people, and when somebody dies, you go back and find their most recent survey. That's their exit poll.
- DaniFong 7y agoyeah, that could work if it was wide scale enough. apparently google and facebook already have some kind of tech that estimates if people are vulnerable to suicidal ideation based on searches ("hey google, how do I kill myself painlessly?" gives the national suicide prevention hotline -- good)
- luckydata 7y agoBecause if you're told you're supposed to "make it" since birth, and you don't, you feel like a piece of shit. Marginalized communities have been told the other story, every little thing is a win. Difference in expectations is huge, and source of all sort of bad things (like racial resentment etc...). Solution: make this country slightly less "dog eat dog" and you'll solve a LOT of social issues almost overnight.
- amelius 7y agoI think a max wage totally makes sense, because nobody is more than a modest constant times more productive than anyone else, and anything created by a person is always built on existing knowledge and constructs created by society. Also, risk does not really exist anymore these days (with minimum wages, financial constructs around bankruptcy, etc.)
- natalyarostova 7y agoA max wage is insane government overreach. If I want to make a deal with someone else where I’ll work to do something and in return they pay me a portion of the surplus value I create, there is no justification, moral or economic, to cap that amount. Moreover, price ceilings have a rich and long empirical and theoretical argument against their existence in the economics literature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling Finally, by what measure do you feel able to assert that no one is more productive than someone else based on some constant? How much more productive was the team of the Manhattan project than some other team of physicists?
- aaron_m04 7y agoCases like the Manhattan project team are rare. Cases like grossly overpaid managers and executives in FIRE industries are common.
- ggreer 7y agoIf managers and executives are so overpaid, why aren't top firms outcompeted by companies that offer lower wages for such positions? Lower wages would allow those companies to offer the same services at lower prices and take over the market.
- susijdjdjxa 7y agoI think the “outcompeted” argument proves too much. Nobody does anything wrong, otherwise they would be outcompeted.
- gjs278 7y agohave you considered getting a job
- eplanit 7y agoThere is no statistical support of these ideas, though. Suicide rates in countries with Socialist economies are higher than in the U.S. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
- ixwt 7y agoThis is disingenuous. It doesn't classify by Socialist, but by country. Russia is #3 on global suicides, and when I think of socialist healthcare, my first thought isn't Russia. Many of the countries I think of as socialist healthcare (UK, Denmark, Canada, to name a few), they all come up below the US in suicides.
- DanBC 7y agoI feel like everyone posting the link to that article needs to also post this quote from it in their comment. > The WHO statistics are based on the official reports from each respective country, therefore are no more accurate than the record-keeping in the specific country, and revisions (updates) are usually performed as well. > In much of the world, suicide is stigmatized and condemned for religious or cultural reasons. In some countries, suicidal behaviour is a criminal offence punishable by law. Suicide is therefore often a secretive act surrounded by taboo, and may be unrecognized, misclassified or deliberately hidden in official records of death.[3] It is very hard to compare rates of suicide across countries.
- mjevans 7y ago(a) Maximum Wage and/or wealth tax is the best way to fight inequality. Raising the floor without modifying how much or how quickly those at the top earn only makes those barely above the bottom relatively poorer.
- silexia 7y agoThe wealth tax is the best way to fight inequality. A maximum wage would just discourage our best entrepreneurs. I agree that raising the floor without changing anything else doesn't do much.
- thebean11 7y ago> (avg of contractors + employees * 150) Hmm, this seems suspiciously biased towards certain types of business (for example, tech CEOs would make way more than retail CEOs)
- andrei_says_ 7y agoHave been reading Rutger Bregman’s book and UBI seems to be an incredible money saver and immense benefit. It would take however a big jump in consciousness to do something like this because who would take the shorty jobs paying 1/3 living wage if no one is afraid Of homelessness?
- rubinelli 7y agoIf nobody is taking that job for a salary that is economically viable, then it shouldn't exist. We shouldn't make people waste their finite time on this Earth doing pointless jobs under the threat of homelessness or starvation.
- gremlinsinc 7y agoYou mean slavery should be abolished?
- andrei_says_ 7y agoIn an employers’ market with no unions and no regulation ensuring a livable wage, many corporations write business plans relying on precisely this kinds of jobs.
- MiroF 7y agoI think there are better policies than a UBI, but in face the "problem" you are indicating seems more like a benefit than a flaw.
- paul_milovanov 7y agoguys, guys... minimum wage, maximum wage... we got to go deeper! uniform constant wage!!!
- JDiculous 7y agoDon't forget student loans. Having six figures in student loans simply from getting a masters degree is enough to make one almost consider abandoning the U.S, especially when you consider that the older generation who caused this never experienced it themselves. My most depressing times were when I was unemployed (not to be confused with "funemployed") and not making any money.
- plumednom 7y agoDamned commie. How would we commit genocide in Iran if we were giving all of those entitlements to taxpayers? How could we afford to give $30bn to Israel so they can buy arms from us? HOW COULD WE AFFORD OUR SECOND YACHT IF WE HAVE TO PAY A REASONABLE WAGE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Go back to Cuba, commie.
- silexia 7y agoThe best form of a maximum wage would be a simple wealth tax in place of the income tax. It doesn't discourage entrepreneurs continuing to work, but it doesn't allow wealth to accumulate in idle hands.