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Healthcare, retirement, everything required for living should be socialized. Old people today have Medicare and Social Security, but we need to finish the prog

Healthcare, retirement, everything required for living should be socialized. Old people today have Medicare and Social Security, but we need to finish the progression to Star Trek and just make sure there's enough to go around and that it does go around. The other part is that misery, fire bad customers and bad managers. It really isn't that difficult to be polite.

qwerty456127 5y ago
> Healthcare, retirement, everything required for living should be socialized. Indeed. Many small businesses can't even afford sponsoring a sick leave directly AFAIK. At my location (in Europe) you pay a part of your monthly wage to the social security fund and once you get sick it covers your salary in the amount like if you kept working (and also pays you basic pension once you get too old).
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  In which country is this? In France, the "social security" (run by the state) doesn't cover the full salary, not even close. It only covers up to 50% [0], and only after three days (if you have 10 single sick days, you lose 10 days' pay). You have to have your own insurance ("mutuelle", usually chosen by your employer — which you cannot refuse, but can augment) to have a better deal. --- [0] It covers 50% of the salary, but the maximum salary taken into account is 1.8 times the minimum wage, which is 2 798,24 € before tax. https://www.ameli.fr/assure/remboursements/indemnites-journalieres/arret-maladie-salarie https://www.ameli.fr/assure/remboursements/indemnites-journa...
  - Arete314159 5y ago
    You write that 50% of nearly 3k Euros is bad. I can see where it would be bad. But in the US, you would have to fight tooth and nail for YEARS to get disability coverage that "good." US Disability payments average around $1500 or so a month, and you often get rejected your first application or for several rounds of appeals. Source: am on disability.
martinmakesgame 5y ago
Thanks for saying this. I feel that a lot of the time people forget about post scarcity. People can focus on the dystopia but I feel that it's important to remember there are other options. A lot of us are already living post scarcity and helping others. We are so close to limitless energy generation it is a matter of when not if it happens. Thanks
crooked-v 5y ago
Socializing those things would also make basic entrepreneurship much more practical and make failures of entrepreneurship much less harmful (such as the many restaurants that fail in their first year), hugely benefiting the economy as whole.
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  I'd like to see data from other parts of the world, but at least for France, this argument may hold some water. A crude comparison of business formation between France (with socialized healthcare / retirement) and the US (without those), shows that the numbers are fairly close. Data is for 2020, which saw a 4% rise for France, whereas in the US numbers were stable. France also doesn't have as much of an "entrepreneurial" culture as the US, meaning people are much more likely to "look for a job" rather than found their own business. France: Population: 67M, 850 000 new Business, 12 700 / 1M pop. US: Population: 331M, 3 600 000 Businesses, 11 000 / 1M pop. --- https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/index.html https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/index.html https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/5359569 https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/5359569
  - andrewlgood 5y ago
    Interesting statistic. The one year may be a bit of an outlier for the relationship. If you look at the 2010-2020 period in the data linked above, the US had a significantly higher growth rate in business formation (75% vs. 36%). This is not explained by growth in population which were identical over the period (7.2%, wikipedia).
mythrwy 5y ago
That's the dream, hopefully it comes to pass, but for now implementation remains problematic. How do you pay for it? Will it be run by the same entities that are having so much trouble balancing Social Security and preventing Medicare fraud?
- aaronblohowiak 5y ago
  How does Germany do it?
  - rurban 5y ago
    In Germany it's reverse. In the typical case the waiter verbally abuses the paying customer. Like when are not friendly enough to the waiter. Or you only can pay with credit card
- toxik 5y ago
  Is Medicare fraud really a meaningful amount compared to how much it pays out? Europeans have had the same issue for decades, you can’t give things away without some grifting. But that’s part of the cost. Usually not a very large one either.
  - andrewlgood 5y ago
    Just a quick looks suggests it is a big issue. Hard to get firm estimates (presumably because we only know about the people who get caught) but one estimate has it at 7% of total expenditures of $700 billion which puts it at around $49 billion / year. https://safeatlast.co/blog/medicare-fraud-statistics/ https://safeatlast.co/blog/medicare-fraud-statistics/
    - jatone 5y ago
      which is less than the fraud in private insurance industry, which is 10%. https://www.propublica.org/article/we-asked-prosecutors-if-health-insurance-companies-care-about-fraud-they-laughed-at-us https://www.propublica.org/article/we-asked-prosecutors-if-h...

qwerty456127 5y ago

> Healthcare, retirement, everything required for living should be socialized. Indeed. Many small businesses can't even afford sponsoring a sick leave directly AFAIK. At my location (in Europe) you pay a part of your monthly wage to the social security fund and once you get sick it covers your salary in the amount like if you kept working (and also pays you basic pension once you get too old).

vladvasiliu 5y ago
In which country is this? In France, the "social security" (run by the state) doesn't cover the full salary, not even close. It only covers up to 50% [0], and only after three days (if you have 10 single sick days, you lose 10 days' pay). You have to have your own insurance ("mutuelle", usually chosen by your employer — which you cannot refuse, but can augment) to have a better deal. --- [0] It covers 50% of the salary, but the maximum salary taken into account is 1.8 times the minimum wage, which is 2 798,24 € before tax. https://www.ameli.fr/assure/remboursements/indemnites-journalieres/arret-maladie-salarie https://www.ameli.fr/assure/remboursements/indemnites-journa...
- Arete314159 5y ago
  You write that 50% of nearly 3k Euros is bad. I can see where it would be bad. But in the US, you would have to fight tooth and nail for YEARS to get disability coverage that "good." US Disability payments average around $1500 or so a month, and you often get rejected your first application or for several rounds of appeals. Source: am on disability.

martinmakesgame 5y ago

Thanks for saying this. I feel that a lot of the time people forget about post scarcity. People can focus on the dystopia but I feel that it's important to remember there are other options. A lot of us are already living post scarcity and helping others. We are so close to limitless energy generation it is a matter of when not if it happens. Thanks

crooked-v 5y ago

Socializing those things would also make basic entrepreneurship much more practical and make failures of entrepreneurship much less harmful (such as the many restaurants that fail in their first year), hugely benefiting the economy as whole.

vladvasiliu 5y ago
I'd like to see data from other parts of the world, but at least for France, this argument may hold some water. A crude comparison of business formation between France (with socialized healthcare / retirement) and the US (without those), shows that the numbers are fairly close. Data is for 2020, which saw a 4% rise for France, whereas in the US numbers were stable. France also doesn't have as much of an "entrepreneurial" culture as the US, meaning people are much more likely to "look for a job" rather than found their own business. France: Population: 67M, 850 000 new Business, 12 700 / 1M pop. US: Population: 331M, 3 600 000 Businesses, 11 000 / 1M pop. --- https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/index.html https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/index.html https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/5359569 https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/5359569
- andrewlgood 5y ago
  Interesting statistic. The one year may be a bit of an outlier for the relationship. If you look at the 2010-2020 period in the data linked above, the US had a significantly higher growth rate in business formation (75% vs. 36%). This is not explained by growth in population which were identical over the period (7.2%, wikipedia).

mythrwy 5y ago

That's the dream, hopefully it comes to pass, but for now implementation remains problematic. How do you pay for it? Will it be run by the same entities that are having so much trouble balancing Social Security and preventing Medicare fraud?

aaronblohowiak 5y ago
How does Germany do it?
- rurban 5y ago
  In Germany it's reverse. In the typical case the waiter verbally abuses the paying customer. Like when are not friendly enough to the waiter. Or you only can pay with credit card
toxik 5y ago
Is Medicare fraud really a meaningful amount compared to how much it pays out? Europeans have had the same issue for decades, you can’t give things away without some grifting. But that’s part of the cost. Usually not a very large one either.
- andrewlgood 5y ago
  Just a quick looks suggests it is a big issue. Hard to get firm estimates (presumably because we only know about the people who get caught) but one estimate has it at 7% of total expenditures of $700 billion which puts it at around $49 billion / year. https://safeatlast.co/blog/medicare-fraud-statistics/ https://safeatlast.co/blog/medicare-fraud-statistics/
  - jatone 5y ago
    which is less than the fraud in private insurance industry, which is 10%. https://www.propublica.org/article/we-asked-prosecutors-if-health-insurance-companies-care-about-fraud-they-laughed-at-us https://www.propublica.org/article/we-asked-prosecutors-if-h...