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This is the cost of not having a social safety net and public services, where everybody pays a little bit and everybody benefits. It's not just the people who a
by nerdponx 4y ago
This is the cost of not having a social safety net and public services, where everybody pays a little bit and everybody benefits. It's not just the people who are self-employed that benefit. Their customers also benefit from lower prices, because self-employed people don't have such high expenses. Of course, it all gets paid for eventually anyway, but consistently over time, and ideally proportional to wealth and/or income, rather than randomly punishing people who happen to need repair work done.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoTheir income would be high enough not to benefit from that safety net anyway. You would end up paying the same.
- candiddevmike 4y agoIf the parent comment meant universal healthcare, you'd absolutely see the lack of health insurance premiums reflected in prices. As a contractor, it's definitely a chunk of my rate.
- stu432 4y agoBut universal healthcare is paid for by taxes on people who earn good money, which these people do. The costs being thrown around in this thread are about on par with the UK anyway.
- nerdponx 4y agoI explained that in my post. The point is to distribute and dilute these costs consistently over time and across the population.
- stu432 4y agoYou miss the point. Universal payer is not the utopia you think it is. People at the bottom may pay less, but people at the top pay more, "distributing and diluting these costs". That results in relatively well earning professions paying high company and income taxes, resulting in identical fees for fitting a socket in the UK (a universal payer society) as the US (a look after yourself society). Ergo, you've shifted the money around but fundamentally haven't changed anything, you carpenter isn't going to work for minimum wage suddenly because his tax burden won't allow it.