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This is the challenge with large mortgages and heath care requirements taking away people's moral agency. Maybe that's the idea.
by CalRobert 7y ago
This is the challenge with large mortgages and heath care requirements taking away people's moral agency. Maybe that's the idea.
- tafox 7y agoI had a boss that would try to bully employees into buying expensive cars they couldn't afford, just so they had too much debt and he could exploit them... because they could no longer afford to quit. One might be disappointed how effective this technqiue can be. Now imagine you have car payments, a mortgage, and a family to feed.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThat’s also why some people don’t provide steady schedules or part time work, in order to prevent the employee from finding another job.
- eska 7y agoThat's a common tactic in the business world. Tell your salesmen "if you don't drive a nice car, your customers won't think that you're any good" and boom.
- tashoecraft 7y agoFeel like that has the opposite effect on me. If I interact with a salesmen who has lots of flashy items I just think about how much mark up/reverse incentives they have on the sale.
- tcbawo 7y agoI have the same reaction, especially when I walk into a flashy store or office. My grandfather used to say, Las Vegas didn't pop up in the middle of the desert because people were winning money...
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoIt's true though for a lot of businesses. Imagine if your lawyer pulls up in a mid-nineties Toyota Corolla, and tell me if you think you're likely to win the case. More than likely, if you can afford another lawyer, you'll find one.
- Hextinium 7y agoThere are other factors here though, if they have a nice watch and freshly pressed suit I see them as that they are putting their money to where they see value. A car to them is just a pay to get to a place.
- randycupertino 7y ago> Imagine if your lawyer pulls up in a mid-nineties Toyota Corolla, and tell me if you think you're likely to win the case. I drove my upset and blindsided friend to her first meeting with her new divorce attorney after her husband left her. We were early so were sitting outside the Palo Alto firm in the parking lot when a pearl-white Mercedes Maybach rolls in with R&B music bumping and custom plates "MKHMPAY" She seemed like a very good attorney, but my friend ended up going with another firm because that lady was too expensive ($1500/hr). Even the paralegal there was $500/hr. Ultimately, my friend told me her divorce was 2x as expensive as her wedding.
- bsanr2 7y ago>R&B music bumping One wonders what this characterization is meant to imply.
- randycupertino 7y agoWasn't trying to characterize with the music- mainly said that because the loud music is why we noticed the car pulling in and parking (and hence ended up seeing the custom plates!).
- bsanr2 7y ago
- tcbawo 7y agoI have always advised friends and acquaintances never to tell an employer about a new house or car purchase. The less tied down you seem, the better off you are in negotiations!
- astura 7y agoMy mortgage company did an employment check with my employer, so they knew I was buying a house without me telling. My employer and co-workers also all see me driving to/from work everyday, so they know when I get a new car.
- fs111 7y agoWhy would anybody let themselves be bullied into buying a car? That is seriously foobar
- NeutronStar 7y agoA car, out of all things...
- Pet_Ant 7y ago> Maybe that's the idea. It literally is. The post-war housing boom was meant to discourage activism by having workers tied to something they could lose.
- ReactiveJelly 7y agoI heard from someone that the "biological clock" was made up after the war to convince women to quit their careers. Hearing all this, and hearing that homosexuality used to be tolerated, it's scary to wonder how much of the status quo is not just _a_ social construct, but purposely constructed for someone's benefit, and recently. And we're expected to presume that it's natural, or at least old, and therefore correct.
- projektir 7y agoI went to poke at Wikipedia just for giggles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility Love the [citation needed] and lack of clarity in that second paragraph.
- smogcutter 7y agoSounds reasonable that it had that effect, but citation needed on the intention.
- bsanr2 7y agoIt becomes more reasonable to assume the intention when you realize how much of national infrastructure policy was meant to engineer specific social outcomes - particularly with regard to segregation. Also in how much of regulatory policy - particularly in telecommunications - was intended for the same.
- ReactiveJelly 7y agoI think, if it's not done on purpose, it's very convenient to those in power, so they don't want to stop doing it. When most people cannot afford to express morals, you have a host of hungry attack dogs. Some of them start to rationalize that having morals is wrong, that caring about people is wrong because, after all, they can't afford it, so the government can't either. And if there weren't people desperate for careers and education, the military wouldn't get enough volunteers. So it's very convenient to that whole system. Propagating the myth of houses as an appropriate working-class investment also sustains this. Index funds are far more liquid, far more diverse, and don't require debt or even a large amount of cash to start with, but a large mortgage is a tight leash.
- marcus_holmes 7y agoTalking to US friends about jobs is always weird because they're so afraid of quitting/being fired, because their health insurance is tied to their jobs. This whole system conspires to make people afraid and subservient. Why you guys haven't replaced it with someone that actually frees you, is always a mystery to me.
- baggachipz 7y agoBelieve me, it's a mystery to many of us living here as well.
- southphillyman 7y agoA handful of politicians have been trying to decouple health insurance from employment the last two election cycles but for whatever reason a significant portion of the country "likes their health insurance", whatever that means. Personally I've never loved any of my health plans and dread the yearly increases and frequent provider changes as I either jump between jobs or my job eliminates or adds new plans due to rising cost. As long as I can register with a competent physician and dentist and keep the cost low I could care less who administers my plan. It truly is a mystery but I suspect resistance is tied to a belief that a government implementation would some how be more inefficient than what we have and the general disdain people in the U.S have against taking "freebies" or public assistance due to the history of social/racial stratification in the country.
- marcus_holmes 7y agoI've seen the odd post from people along the lines of "why should my taxes pay for someone else's healthcare? No thanks, I'll stick with insurance" and the inevitable "you do understand how insurance works, right?" responses. Always fun. As usual, this seems to be partisan politics at work. Though I don't really understand why the right portrays universal healthcare as socialism when it's so clearly more "free".
- vidarh 7y agoWhat they seem to not realise is that they already pay more for other peoples healthcare than people in places like the UK - Medicare and Medicaid costs more per tax payer than the NHS does in the UK despite covering a small proportion of the population... What the right really does in the US is protect massive wealth transfers from tax payers to corporations by restricting Medicare and Medicaid in ways that makes it impossible to make them cost effective.
- defterGoose 7y agoAbsolutely. Ostensibly, we have a "free" society where people are "free" to make their own decisions. Functionally what we have looks a lot like serfdom.
- cbsmith 7y agoFortunately Tim is in Canada, where the health care requirements are met by default.