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Benefits like those would be very difficult to tax in a practical way, and would definitely have undesired consequences. The better your work environment the m

by bmm6o 12y ago

Benefits like those would be very difficult to tax in a practical way, and would definitely have undesired consequences. The better your work environment the more the company withholds from your check? No thanks. Health insurance is entirely different, as it's fundamentally monetary in nature (in the form of premiums and underwriting other expenses). Not only should it be treated as (or more like) income, but having it funded so much by employers mean that a lot of people don't even know what they are paying for health care. It keeps them uninformed, which is yet another way it's not a "free market".

abakker 12y ago
They wouldn't be very difficult to tax, you could easily tax them by looking at how much they cost to provide, divided by the number of employees receiving them. Services all have a price tag. Health Care, like most services, is something we pay for. I agree that it would be better if it were less byzantine and it would be much more practical if healthcare were in priced independent of employment status. As it stands though, practically it is quite similar to any other benefit, except that sometimes, the cost is split between the employer and the employee. If you applied this logic to free startup food, it would be akin to allowing you to opt-in to the free food if you wanted it, with the company covering some percentage of the cost. _ Its not a practical matter of whether or not we want to be taxed more, its how much we value the society our government enables and how much more we want to enable it. Our government could use a great deal of work to become more efficient, but that is not to say that the projects facing it don't also have a nearly infinite price tag (things could always be better)
- bmm6o 12y ago
  > They wouldn't be very difficult to tax, you could easily tax them by looking at how much they cost to provide, divided by the number of employees receiving them. Services all have a price tag. I meant more that the second-order effects would probably be negative. I'm not interested in paying "my share" of tax for a new pool table, can I opt out by swearing that I'll never use it? Does my employer then have to police who uses it? Are there enough people willing to pay for it - even with the negative feedback of people opting out making it more expensive for those who opt in? I think when you get into the area of free services (day care, dry cleaning, etc) it's much murkier. In many cases the free benefit replaces one that I would normally pay for, so it's not in the end much different from (say) a cash day care allowance.

by bmm6o 12y ago

abakker 12y ago

They wouldn't be very difficult to tax, you could easily tax them by looking at how much they cost to provide, divided by the number of employees receiving them. Services all have a price tag. Health Care, like most services, is something we pay for. I agree that it would be better if it were less byzantine and it would be much more practical if healthcare were in priced independent of employment status. As it stands though, practically it is quite similar to any other benefit, except that sometimes, the cost is split between the employer and the employee. If you applied this logic to free startup food, it would be akin to allowing you to opt-in to the free food if you wanted it, with the company covering some percentage of the cost. _ Its not a practical matter of whether or not we want to be taxed more, its how much we value the society our government enables and how much more we want to enable it. Our government could use a great deal of work to become more efficient, but that is not to say that the projects facing it don't also have a nearly infinite price tag (things could always be better)

bmm6o 12y ago
> They wouldn't be very difficult to tax, you could easily tax them by looking at how much they cost to provide, divided by the number of employees receiving them. Services all have a price tag. I meant more that the second-order effects would probably be negative. I'm not interested in paying "my share" of tax for a new pool table, can I opt out by swearing that I'll never use it? Does my employer then have to police who uses it? Are there enough people willing to pay for it - even with the negative feedback of people opting out making it more expensive for those who opt in? I think when you get into the area of free services (day care, dry cleaning, etc) it's much murkier. In many cases the free benefit replaces one that I would normally pay for, so it's not in the end much different from (say) a cash day care allowance.