Job! Jobs! Jobs! Cheering on our own slavery. Employment bubble popped. Fight against work.

DaltheJigsaw

Yeah we need jobs. As much as we need a prison sentence. I hate jobs. Not just my job - its actually pretty sweet. But the effect of the job itself is what makes jobs such an awful nuisance to modern man.

So here's where we find ourselves in this Great Repression or whatever the media is calling it. People are out of work. But the jobs they're applying for are precisely the problem. People talk about the housing bubble. What we have is an employment bubble. Its popped. We have no more room for useless jobs. But we have people who need that job in order to secure food and shelter. So what, precisely, is the problem? That we have people out of work or that these people need work to get food and shelter?

Is unemployment even a problem if work wasnt intimately tied to food and shelter? Can we change the world for EVERY single worker in the world if we break the bond between work and food, between slaves and masters?

Read more:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread752209/pg1

Hubris

Very compelling. Thank you, I passed it on via Facebook.

Mountains

Unemployment (or at least 'traditional' employment) wouldn't be a problem for me if I could have another way to obtain health insurance. I'd give it up in a heartbeat and fend for myself if could just be assured of having health insurance.

I love America...

Hubris

@ Mountains, if Canada was not so cold or the UK so far away, yeah. Our system is flawed. I am unemployed and uninsured right now, and hope every day to find a job because I need the income and the insurance. Not for lack of trying, that's for sure.

riverflow

It's sad when I register patients in the ER who are self-employed, small mom & pop businesses, and yet, guess what? No insurance. Makes you wonder why anyone in the US would want to start up their own business in the first place (unless you're already well off to begin with).

AMH

I do love my job, but not how much I earn. Very hard to make it (looking at moving and downsizinb yet another time, having older kids move on their own, etc). But we have the almighty health insruance for me and all 3 kids. They have made it easier by allowing older kids to be on insurance which is a lifesaver for my oldest with her medical issues. She works hard at a movie theatre but there is no insurance offered, plus my friend who does have insurance through her retail job pays an amazing amount in co-pays for cancer treatments.

Anyway, at least I do something very useful.

zombiegirl

insurance is such a huge problem for the self employed. i know, because that's where i'm at. i kept my second job to keep my crappy group insurance until i couldn't take it anymore and now i only have a few months left of COBRA and i'll probably start crying once i start to actually investigate how much it's going to cost for private insurance. and the best part is that with the cheap insurance i have now, they pretty much deny everything i end up going to the doctor for and i get a check for it anyways. plus, denying "women's health" like pap smears for cancer screenings (so what am i paying for again?). oh brother.

it's despicable that people think there isn't a problem here. i wonder when our fellow countrymen and woman started looking around at each other and seeing enemies instead of friends in need.

riverflow

and the best part is that with the cheap insurance i have now, they pretty much deny everything i end up going to the doctor for and i get a check for it anyways. plus, denying "women's health" like pap smears for cancer screenings (so what am i paying for again?). oh brother.

I have a friend in a similar situation. He had become overweight and was a smoker and he cut out smoking cold turkey and is no longer obese. He's got some really bad issues with hypertension and the company he works for doesn't offer any health insurance, so he had to get private insurance-- which costs (just for himself alone) $600 a month. The main reason he got the insurance was because of his high blood pressure. But the insurance company has told him that anything that he goes to see the doctor for that has to do with blood pressure they won't pay. The main reason he got the in insurance in the first place was because of his blood pressure. So he's blowing away 7,200 bucks a year for what?

vixthenomad

I can only imagine that there are lower taxes in the States than there are here in the UK, otherwise I can't see how ANYONE would be able to afford health insurance!

Income tax and national insurance contributions account for around a quarter of the full-time worker's wage...then we pay 20% VAT on more or less everything we buy, inheritance tax if we get left anything in a will, council tax in order to pay for local services (around £100 a month even for a small property), road tax if we run a car...I'm fairly certain that if the government could get away with bringing in a Breathing Tax, they would. Even some unemployment benefits are taxable.

If it wasn't for housing benefit and tax credits, our family wouldn't even be able to afford to starve to death in the gutter.

vixthenomad

Incidentally, @LeonBasin, you might be interested to check out the following websites:

http://www.anxietyculture.com/
http://idlefoundation.net/ (I'm a member of the forum there too)
http://idler.co.uk/

Enjoy!

AMH

AI have a friend who lost her husband to cancer a few years ago. The first thing that happened when he could not work was his insurance rates skyrocketed. He worked for his family's business but there was nothing they could do. So after working for the business and paying into insruance for at least 20 years he did not get to keep his rate during his illness. Seems like that would be the fair thing to do as he worked as long as he could before having to quit.

Now his family pays 1/3 of their income a month in insurance. They have medical issues that cannot go uninsured so it is essential. I just put my kids on my insurance so they will be covered, including the 21 yo. She would have everything excluded if she ever went without insurance even briefly.

This confuses me, a few years ago i had private insruance and they also said my reasons for insurance (asthma) would not be covered, but it was only for 12 months. has is alrready become legal to exclude something for life? I think that should be somehow regulated, after all in my case i don;t need extensive treatment but if I ever do need the ER that is terrible to think I could not go just like I am uninsured.

Mountains

Americans have this irrational delusion that they're taxed to death. The fact of the matter is, in the developed world, America has one of the lowest individual tax rates of any other country. It infuriates me when I hear politicians harp on tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts as a way to get out of our current mess. It's just plain stupid.

Hubris

Not only that Montains we're not equally taxed, there are loopholes, exemptions,shelters, and other things that the wealthy get to avoid paying tax, and they are the ones who should be paying more.
Not all of them are as generous as the Gates Foundations are - and the rich protect the rich, our politicians rely on donations from the wealthy so they cover their "special interests".
The little guy hasn't a chance because the rich are taking the budget cuts off the back of those who need it most. Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
Cut Congressional pay and benefits? Unfathomable, would that they knew what it's like to be un or under insured, how people lose their homes from a cancer diagnosis.
From what Vix says they have a pretty big nut to crack tax-wise, however if that meant having health insurance for ALL, I am not so sure it would not be worth it.
Of course being uninsured/unemployed right now that may come with some bias.

DaltheJigsaw

Incidentally, @LeonBasin, you might be interested to check out the following websites:

http://www.anxietyculture.com/
http://idlefoundation.net/ (I'm a member of the forum there too)
http://idler.co.uk/

Enjoy!

Thank you!

vixthenomad

From what Vix says they have a pretty big nut to crack tax-wise, however if that meant having health insurance for ALL, I am not so sure it would not be worth it.

The NHS is great for certain things, not so great for others. It is terribly inefficient in many ways and waiting times for appointments, operations and emergency treatment can be obscene. My personal best is thirteen hours in a hospital waiting room, during which time I had two panic attacks and the nurses on duty just sat around and watched. Care is often fragmented and continuity of care providers is rare. I can't remember the last time I had a consultation with the GP I am actually registered with, for instance.

If I could afford private healthcare, I'd take it in hope of a better standard of service.

Mountains

@hubris - I don't deny any of that. It's all true. But it's also true that as a marginal percentage, our tax rates are at historically low levels, and are incredibly low by any comparison to any other developed nation. We just don't realize (as in so many other ways) how good we have it from that standpoint in America.

Certainly we need to fix the system, but it's not correct to say that we're being taxed to death, because objectively, we're not. It's just that some of us are being taxed less than we should be (ie; almost any large corporation or mega-wealthy individuals) because we have good lawyers and accountants. Don't forget that almost 50% of American households pay no federal income tax because they don't make enough money to incur a tax liability after all the exemptions and deductions.

Mountains

This all boils down to priorities. The US spends more on defense than at any time in its history. Twice as much as we spent (as a percentage of GDP) to defend ourselves against the mighty Soviet empire at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s. We spend more than the next four largest countries - COMBINED. Four dollars out of every ten spent on the military in the entire world are spent by the US. We have 5% of the world's population, and we spend 40% of the total world wide outlay on "defense".

If we spent half what we do on "defense" and spent the rest on health care, we'd blow the rest of the world totally away on quality of care, longevity, infant mortality, and every other measure.

But we're too busy protecting our oil supplies and sticking our noses into the business of every other nation on earth at the point of a gun.

Hubris

@Mountains, I was not disagreeing with you. If anything I was agreeing that the UK tax burden seems higher, however at least all their citizens have healthcare, and for that I would be willing to pay more.

Mountains

I know... there's just no damn "inflection" or "body language" button on my keyboard

vixthenomad

@Mountains, I was not disagreeing with you. If anything I was agreeing that the UK tax burden seems higher, however at least all their citizens have healthcare, and for that I would be willing to pay more.

I'd say we have sick care rather than health care.

Hubris

I'd say we have sick care rather than health care.

Interesting POV, one to ponder.

Mountains

That's absolutely what we have, and in many cases not even very good sick care. One good reason for me to move into the healing arts and away from allopathic medicine as much and as fast as I can.

Great example: the lame-assed health insurance I had through the university last year (for which I paid almost $4000 in annual premium) wouldn't pay the $17.25 for a flu shot because it was "preventative care". Excuse me? You'd rather I not get a flu shot and risk being hospitalized at $2000 a night than pay $17.25 for a flu shot that reduces my odds of the flu by something like 95%? That makes sense...

vixthenomad

That's absolutely what we have, and in many cases not even very good sick care. One good reason for me to move into the healing arts and away from allopathic medicine as much and as fast as I can.

Are you a homeopathy student by any chance? I just noted your use of the term 'allopathic', which, I believe, was first used by Samuel Hahnemann in his Organon of Medicine.

I studied homeopathy for 2 years and have literally dozens of homeopathy books I'm looking to get rid of if you want them. (Although most of them are enormous heavy hardbacks, so I would have to sting you for postage. :eek2: )

Mountains

I'm an RN, but am currently in massage school (as a starter). We'll see where that leads..