Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

fta:

   But there’s only so much Washington can do to help out, what with government 
   penniless and gridlocked, and its elected officials occupying a caste of 
   selfishness, cowardice and spite, heretofore unseen in American politics.

This is pure both-sides-do-it bullshit.

In reality, one side recently passed an amazing transformation of health care to attempt to pull the united states -- still the world's richest large country -- up to the level of any civilized first world country. That is, we've moved towards providing healthcare to all americans as a birthright. One party was unanimously opposed, either for venal reasons, or outright stupidity (Sarah Palin's death panels, and thank's John McCain for that!), or evil (all Republican governors in the south). Somehow Europe, Canada, Japan, etc, all make health care work but we can't.

We could also discuss the ever declining (real) minimum wage, which had it kept up with real income growth in the US economy would be in the $20 dollar range or so.

One side of the government -- and no, the Dems didn't cover themselves in glory, but who exactly decided to spend over a TRILLION dollars on a war in Iraq for reasons that are still up for question, on the basis of flimsy and nonsensical evidence funneled through willing accomplices in the media, against all evidence from people with a history of correctness that both (1) there where no WMDs, and (2) invading Iraq would upset the jenga tower that is iraq and the middle east?

Any article that can describe largely political problems without once mentioning republicans or putting the blame for much of this squarely on them is worthless and frankly part of the problem.

This is good post. I suppose you're prepared for downvotes? ;-)

>Somehow Europe, Canada, Japan, etc, all make health care work but we can't.

The thing is, that's mostly accurate. Those places all have governments that still occasionally get out of bed in the morning and serve the interests of their citizens. America does not. Now, the reason it doesn't in the first place, is mostly due to the actions of the same sort of assholes who would oppose universal healthcare on ideological grounds. So it's rather chicken/egg to be sure, but the fact remains. As P.J. O'Rourke wrote in one of his more self-aware moments (when he was younger, basically), "Republicans insist that government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it".

So on the one hand, universal health care is a good thing and Americans should have it. On the other hand, the US government is, at best, barely capable of pulling it off. You praise the ACA, but surely you realize what a piece of shit program it implements? Compared to, as above, Europe, Canada, Japan, et al? It's better than the regime that came before it, probably, but only just barely. It does little to address spiraling costs, for example, which is an enormous problem.

If it's a first step, great. Time will tell.

Cost control is actually one of the ACA's stronger points, and since it was passed the increase in health costs has been cut by a third.

The limited expansion of health care is the main problem with the ACA, but a big part of that can be blamed on the Supreme Court.

>Somehow Europe, Canada, Japan, etc, all make health care work but we can't.

The countries you mentioned largely have outsourced their national defence concerns to the United States, allowing them to have defence budgets of <10% of spending while the USA's defence spending stands at 17% of spending. That is not irrelevant to this discussion.

What does national defense cost have to do with it?

France, ranked consistently as one of the countries with the best health-care, spends 12% vs the US (ranked waaay lower) spending 18%. Several other countries have even better quality-to-cost ratios (Japan, etc)

>What does national defense cost have to do with it?

Uh, more headroom for entitlement programs in general?

I see France at 10%, not 12%,http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_de_l'État_français but even at the latter number, that 6% difference (280 bn) would pay for a quarter of Medicare+Medicaid. With Medicaid costs set to expand by 12% under Obamacare next year (by 50 bn) eventually leading to 50% reduction in uninsured by 2024, having that kind of room in the budget would easily allow for universal coverage.

I cede the point, made above, that dollar-for-dollar US healthcare spending is less effective, but dispute that health care reform is entirely about making it more efficient. Decreasing the amount of uninsured has been at least as important an issue in the debate.

The only sustainable way to insure everyone is to lower the cost of healthcare. My insurance premium went up 15% since Obamacare was introduced (as opposed to "mere" 11% in previous years). I don;t know what I am going to do next year.

This flies in the face of the claims that "if everyone pays in, it will be cheaper for everyone". Not happening.

I agree that having universal coverage is great (and long overdue), but there are much better ways of achieving it.

Amount of money going to healthcare is actually NOT relevant to this discussion - all the countries are spending less on healthcare than USA, none of those health advantages are caused by being able to afford healthcare because of some or other reason reason.

The call for health reforms isn't "give medicine more money", but "fix the system so that you stop getting shit priced as gold".

Point taken on lower efficiency of US health care spending.

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/2/6089693/health-care-facts-whats-...

Worth noting, however, that Europe, Canada, and the ROW get to freeload on innovative on-patent medicines whose R&D is essentially supported by higher American drug prices.

> the ever declining (real) minimum wage

The last 30 years of minimum wage adjusted for inflation: http://i.imgur.com/7kRykeS.png

I'm not saying it shouldn't be higher, but it's actually currently higher than it was for most of the last 25 years.

As with most issues, there are costs and benefits with the minimum wage. It appears that Norway, Austria and Germany, amongst others, do not see a balance in favor of the benefits. Unsurprisingly their unemployment rates are low. Were I useless to an employer (as once I was) I would rather work for some wage (as I did) rather than exist (and get used to existing) on handouts from the wealth created by other tax payers' work.

> It appears that Norway, Austria and Germany, amongst others, do not see a balance in favor of the benefits.

Germany just approved a minimum wage.

> Unsurprisingly their unemployment rates are low.

I have never bought this argument. A business hires employees because it has some amount of work it needs to be done. The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid.

Arguing that the minimum wage causes meaningful increase in unemployment is just as silly as arguing that paying CEOs huge salaries does.

You can argue that a minimum wage makes things more expensive: that's likely true, but I'm okay with that.

In any case, if a business requires paying its employees pitiful wages in order to be profitable, that business is unsustainable and should fail.

> I would rather work for some wage (as I did) rather than exist (and get used to existing) on handouts from the wealth created by other tax payers' work.

When wages fall so low that workers can't reasonably afford to live, they might as well be unemployed: there is no functional difference.

I agree though that we as taxpayers should not be required to subsidize corporations unwilling to pay employees livable wages. The solution is a higher minimum wage.

The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid.

Whether the work can be profitably done certainly can change.

Arguing that the minimum wage causes meaningful increase in unemployment is just as silly as arguing that paying CEOs huge salaries does.

Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects?

You can argue that a minimum wage makes things more expensive: that's likely true, but I'm okay with that.

Which means the minimum wage is indirect welfare that redistributes money to low-skilled workers by taking it from some combination of business owners, employees, and customers. That's strictly less efficient than just giving low-income workers extra money, especially since many of the customers now facing higher prices are themselves poor.

I agree though that we as taxpayers should not be required to subsidize corporations unwilling to pay employees livable wages.

This has never made any sense to me. If Walmart pays a cashier $10/hour, they're helping him more than you are, but somehow they're the bad guy.

> Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects?

No, of course not. Nobody is asking for that.

> Which means the minimum wage is indirect welfare that redistributes money to low-skilled workers by taking it from some combination of business owners, employees, and customers.

That's a stretch... If raising the minimum wage caused a dollar-for-dollar increase in the price of everything then yes, but that would only occur in a business who's only major expense is unskilled labor, and even there it wouldn't be equal to the rise in wage. And for a low-income person, housing is a major expense that has a negligible labor component built into it.

> If Walmart pays a cashier $10/hour, they're helping him more than you are, but somehow they're the bad guy.

If people at Wal-Mart work and don't have enough money, and then they get welfare in order to make ends meet, that's you and I subsidizing Wal-Mart. I would rather that extra money for the worker come out of Wal-Mart's profits than your and my taxes.

There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.

We already have a bunch of automation technologies where machines and software can do a better job than a low-wage person can, simply the people currently are cheaper even at USA minimum wage.

Once the minimum wage rises above that cost (or the tech drops in price), those jobs will be gone for good.

> There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.

This is not an accepted fact. There's a variety of scholarly literature that argues both sides of this issue.

> Those jobs will be gone for good.

That's an entirely different problem.

It's not an entirely different problem, the point I'm trying to make is that this single factor causes a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.

Currently, it makes sense for a poor person somewhere to make a living by sewing sneakers - because that person is cheap. It makes sense for people to work on data entry, it makes sense for people to flip burgers, it makes sense to do a lot of things - but only while the people remain so cheap.

There are many jobs already that are impractical to do in USA, because of the minimum wage - they get done either by automation or by someone in much poorer countries, but never again by a US worker. If minimum wage goes from $10 to $15, then more types of jobs will join that.

The 'entirely different' problem arrives when the true market rate of low skilled labor becomes negative - i.e., an automated process generally costs less than a manual process even if the workers would work for free or for basic shelter/sustenance (order of magnitude less than first world would call a livable wage). I don't want this, but it seems rather likely that it will happen within my lifetime.

> The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid.

It probably does. But at least the number of business do change with salaries; I don't expect the relation to be monotonic, but it almost certainly have domains of negative rate of change.

That's because it was just raised recently.

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