My nephew denied a job because of Obamacare!

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actuarial

Platinum Member
Jan 22, 2009
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0
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They aren't getting a "free ride" because health care insurance isn't a requirement to employ someone.

That's not the requirement for something to be a free ride though. Providing food isn't a requirement to employ someone either, but if you pay them a wage that doesn't provide the means to buy food, but the employee still accepts the job as they qualify for government benefits that provide food, then the employer is able to pay a below market rate for the labour due to government subsidy.

Here's a question for you. If no doctor on Earth would render their services without compensation, hypothetical here, should they be forced to do so?

If the answer is "No, they should be free to render their services or not" then congratulations, you are on your way to sanity.

That isn't the state of medical care in the US though, and you'd never get people to accept a change to it. It's a legitimate economic argument, but at it's basic it means that people can be denied health care if they have an inability to pay for it. If they made that change, and the government scraped medicaid and did not compensate Doctors for providing care to those who could not pay, then there wouldn't be a free rider problem anymore.

The average person is taxed more to provide food stamps and medical care to Walmart workers. This allows Walmart to pay their employees less and allows Walmart shoppers to enjoy lower prices (or the Waltons enjoy greater profits, it's probably a combination of both). If you shop at Walmart or own Walmart stock, this is a good thing for you. Otherwise it's not.
 

xj0hnx

Diamond Member
Dec 18, 2007
9,262
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LMAO Anytime I can piss off a Rightist (which isn't hard) makes my day. ;)

Trust, you don't "piss off" anyone, you'd have to have an opinion of worth to upset someone, you don't.

That's not the requirement for something to be a free ride though. Providing food isn't a requirement to employ someone either, but if you pay them a wage that doesn't provide the means to buy food, but the employee still accepts the job as they qualify for government benefits that provide food, then the employer is able to pay a below market rate for the labour due to government subsidy.

It still isn't a "free ride", or freeloading", you need to eat to live, whether you work somewhere or not.

That isn't the state of medical care in the US though, and you'd never get people to accept a change to it. It's a legitimate economic argument, but at it's basic it means that people can be denied health care if they have an inability to pay for it. If they made that change, and the government scraped medicaid and did not compensate Doctors for providing care to those who could not pay, then there wouldn't be a free rider problem anymore.

It isn't a "free rider" now. You are responsible for your health whether you work somewhere or not. An employer is only responsible to provide you with a safe work environment, not to insure your over all health. It isn't their responsibility to make sure you eat right, exercise, and don't smoke meth.

Why does the progressive mind think that people are owed an existence?
 

3chordcharlie

Diamond Member
Mar 30, 2004
9,859
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Trust, you don't "piss off" anyone, you'd have to have an opinion of worth to upset someone, you don't.



It still isn't a "free ride", or freeloading", you need to eat to live, whether you work somewhere or not.



It isn't a "free rider" now. You are responsible for your health whether you work somewhere or not. An employer is only responsible to provide you with a safe work environment, not to insure your over all health. It isn't their responsibility to make sure you eat right, exercise, and don't smoke meth.

Why does the progressive mind think that people are owed an existence?

I'm more than happy to listen to an argument. You still haven't made one.

You have stated an opinion which is actually incompatible with this discussion (I.e. Makes the discussion irrelevant to you). You have also adopted your own definition of words used in this thread. You're quite free to reject that the free rider problem presents any actionable issue. But without an argument to support you, you're not going to be taken seriously in this discussion, and you don't deserve differently.

You might be happier reading over at mises.org where every rational argument for interfering with complete market freedom is rejected, because it interferes with complete market freedom. Can you spot the fallacy?
 

actuarial

Platinum Member
Jan 22, 2009
2,814
0
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It isn't a "free rider" now. You are responsible for your health whether you work somewhere or not. An employer is only responsible to provide you with a safe work environment, not to insure your over all health. It isn't their responsibility to make sure you eat right, exercise, and don't smoke meth.

Why does the progressive mind think that people are owed an existence?

I'm not sure why you find the need to bundle me in a group to justify your opinions.

A person is not responsible for their own health care. If they were, people would be denied emergency care if they could not pay, and Medicaid would not exist.

If you want to assert that people SHOULD be responsible for their own health care that is fine, but that's not the world we live in today.
 

xj0hnx

Diamond Member
Dec 18, 2007
9,262
3
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I'm not sure why you find the need to bundle me in a group to justify your opinions.

A person is not responsible for their own health care. If they were, people would be denied emergency care if they could not pay, and Medicaid would not exist.

If you want to assert that people SHOULD be responsible for their own health care that is fine, but that's not the world we live in today.

Being responsible for your health doesn't mean that you won't have an accident, but just because you may have an accident one day, doesn't mean that you should just stop taking care of yourself.
 

actuarial

Platinum Member
Jan 22, 2009
2,814
0
71
Being responsible for your health doesn't mean that you won't have an accident, but just because you may have an accident one day, doesn't mean that you should just stop taking care of yourself.

And what does that have to do with subsidized health care?
 

xj0hnx

Diamond Member
Dec 18, 2007
9,262
3
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And what does that have to do with subsidized health care?

If has to do with people being responsible for their health care.

circles.jpg
 

actuarial

Platinum Member
Jan 22, 2009
2,814
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If has to do with people being responsible for their health care.

circles.jpg

Your prior had nothing to do with health care.

We're only running in circles because you refuse to comment on anything of substance.

I'll make it easier: do you agree that in the current environment people are not held responsible for their own health care? Note that I am not asking if they should be, but if they actually are.
 

buckshot24

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2009
9,916
85
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First of all, we need to address, and put to rest, the ridiculous treatment of the term 'freeloader' in this thread. Nearly every post from the right-wing/libertarians in this thread has attempted to shift this term in to the moral realm, and then ridicule it. This is simply, completely inappropriate given the context we have been using. It turns out that a decade (and the rest!) out of school has made me forget some things. But fortunately, the only thing I've forgotten here is that I should have referred to a 'free rider' not a 'freeloader'.
The free rider problem is a question of externalities, and it's solution involves pricing the externality into existing markets. In many cases this means either regulation, or taxes.
But the term freeloader is so much more colorful. :p Eskimo is the one who initially used it so I can see why you may have just kept up the practice.

Even the "free rider" moniker wouldn't have helped alleviate my objections to what was being asserted about employers. I simply do not see them as "those who consume more than their fair share of a resource, or shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production." First of all they do pay taxes into the government, their employees may be paying into the government via taxes. If they did not exist the government would be on the hook for an even larger share of these employees well being. Secondly I don't see them as consuming a resource in the first place by not providing health insurance.

Since we aren't talking about morality here these employers could replace the few employees who die from the lack of health care coverage much more cheaply than covering all of them with HCI. I really think the number of people who die because they don't have insurance is minuscule. We're just going to add another burden to employers here to fix a problem that isn't as large as it was made out to be, in my opinion.

As far as I'm concerned the only way you can get employers "on the hook" for HCI is if you make moral arguments. It's much easier and more cost effective to simply replace these low skill workers than to provide them with health insurance.

Now back to Health Care:

The reason that death is part of this thread is that it's part of the debate. It is a valid position to say that those who cannot afford to pay for care in the private market (whether that is insurance or pay-as-you-go) should receive no care. This is precisely how the market for Ferraris, guitars, and Grade AAA sirloin works.

It is not valid to hold this position, and refuse to acknowledge that this means people will die of conditions which need not cause death. This facet can be abused to create an appeal to emotion, but the fact of it is correct, and unavoidable.
The main reason we want to avoid unnecessary deaths is because we have a moral compunction to do so. We don't want people to die if they didn't have to. This is why we have laws that people have to be treated in ERs whether they can pay or not. It is our morality that dictates that somebody else pays for people who can't pay for themselves. If we weren't moral we'd let them die in the streets. Without our morality we wouldn't need to find somebody to pay.

The basic existing system in the USA is 'patient pays if they can', but there is a large part of the population that falls on the wrong side of that 'if' for one reason or another. The fact that there is a safety net that applies in more than very limited cases becomes a market distortion. It means I can now purchase the labor of an employee for less than the cost of 'keeping that employee alive', because someone else is paying for their healthcare. In an ordinary market, we know there are conditions that can temporarily cause goods to be sold above or below marginal cost, but that the market will return to an equilibrium. But here we have a case where this distortion is permanent.
The bolded part is the responsibility of the individual ultimately and our fellow country man since we are a basically moral society. The employer is already doing more than their fair share by employing the worker in the first place.
 

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
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RCP just lists the public polls. :|

RCP just cherry picks the polls, which is what put Repubs into a delusional corner in the first place...

That's the problem with trying to bandwagon on bullshit- you end up believing it yourself. Karl Rove's performance on election night shows just how true that can be. Your own isn't much different.
 

buckshot24

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2009
9,916
85
91
RCP just cherry picks the polls, which is what put Repubs into a delusional corner in the first place...

That's the problem with trying to bandwagon on bullshit- you end up believing it yourself. Karl Rove's performance on election night shows just how true that can be. Your own isn't much different.
Dude, RCP had 49 out of 50 states picked correctly based on the aggregates of the polls that they "cherry picked".

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...ctions_electoral_college_map_no_toss_ups.html

Look familiar?

Silver became a superstar with a prediction like that in 2008 yet RCP is clearly biased and cherry picks. C'mon. You're just not correct on this one.
 

alkemyst

No Lifer
Feb 13, 2001
83,967
19
81
My nephew has been applying for a forklift job but has been told that they are only hiring temps right now on occassion as needed because its too expensive to hire with Obamacare looming.

The Black Magic Kenyan is going to run up another trillion in debt and force people to work as temps. :'(

How many of his youtubes have you got banned?

I am talking about his future boss, not Black Magic Kenyan you motherfucking racist.

Post a pic of your nephew and his resume so we can decide if he should have been hired.
 

buckshot24

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2009
9,916
85
91
lol, no. Basic understanding of history and economics failure.

ib330-figureA.png.538


Apparently I suck at images. It is a chart showing that productivity increases and compensation have not increased at anything even remotely the same rate.
How are they calculating productivity?

Are you saying that working people would have more money if they were less productive?

The graph, wherever it's from, doesn't contradict what I said at all.
 
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