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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
SAN FRANCISCO — When John Battelle's teenage son broke his leg at a suburban soccer game, naturally the first call his parents made was to 911. The second was to Dr. Jordan Shlain, the concierge doctor here who treats Mr. Battelle and his family. "They're taking him to a local hospital," Mr. Battelle's wife, Michelle, told Dr. Shlain as the boy rode in an ambulance to a nearby emergency room in Marin County. "No, they're not," Dr. Shlain instructed them. "You don't want that leg set by an E.R. doc at a local medical center. You want it set by the head of orthopedics at a hospital in the city." Within minutes, the ambulance was on the Golden Gate Bridge, bound for California Pacific Medical Center, one of San Francisco's top hospitals. Dr. Shlain was there to meet them when they arrived, and the boy was seen almost immediately by an orthopedist with decades of experience.
For Mr. Battelle, a veteran media entrepreneur, the experience convinced him that the annual fee he pays to have Dr. Shlain on call is worth it, despite his guilt over what he admits is very special treatment. "I feel badly that I have the means to jump the line," he said. "But when you have kids, you jump the line. You just do. If you have the money, would you not spend it for that?"
Increasingly, it is a question being asked in hospitals and doctor's offices, especially in wealthier enclaves in places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and New York. And just as a virtual velvet rope has risen between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else on airplanes, cruise ships and amusement parks, widening inequality is also transforming how health care is delivered. Money has always made a big difference in the medical world: fancier rooms at hospitals, better food and access to the latest treatments and technology. Concierge practices, where patients pay several thousand dollars a year so they can quickly reach their primary care doctor, with guaranteed same-day appointments, have been around for decades.
But these aren't the concierge doctors you've heard about — and that's intentional.
Dr. Shlain's Private Medical group does not advertise and has virtually no presence on the web, and new patients come strictly by word of mouth. But with annual fees that range from $40,000 to $80,000 (more than 10 times what conventional concierge practices charge), the suite of services goes far beyond 24-hour access or a Nespresso machine in the waiting room.
Indeed, as many Americans struggle to pay for health care — or even, with the future of the Affordable Care Act in question on Capitol Hill, face a loss of coverage — this corner of what some doctors call the medical-industrial complex is booming: boutique doctors and high-end hospital wards.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday June 05 2017, @04:54PM (57 children)
No seriously.
Kill these people, consume their flesh, and use their skeletons to construct a marginally less shitty society.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @05:01PM (4 children)
Don't be an idiot. You are what you eat. Nothing will change! :)
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @05:41PM (3 children)
Wait, so if I eat the rich....
Let me make sure I have this correct.
1. Eat the rich.
2. ???
3. Profit!
I don't see a downside here!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @07:07PM (1 child)
you forgot "4. Be eaten"
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday June 05 2017, @11:15PM
And so the great wheel turns...
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:45AM
You got it wrong, it's:
And remember to check it's the meat you wanted to eat, otherwise how would you ever know?
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday June 05 2017, @05:08PM (30 children)
I fear it will come to violence. These sociopaths are only human in the biological sense; their souls are empty.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday June 05 2017, @05:16PM (28 children)
Don't be a hypocrite. You would do the same thing if you had that kind of money. It may be disgusting, but that's a reflection of the society we've built more than of any individual's choices.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday June 05 2017, @05:39PM (22 children)
Oh, whether or not they'd do the same if they were rich has nothing to do with the fact that literally guillotining the richest half a percent of people(and their inheritors) in every country would magically solve more problems than it would cause. No policy changes, no justice served, nothing else, it would still improve matters.
I'm well aware that it's immoral. It is explicitly wrong to kill someone for being a rational, non-violent part of a broken apparatus. Only part of me really can't help but think about how much good it would do everyone else.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @05:53PM (21 children)
What you propose is not only dangerous and unethical, but also unlawful. It would do neither.
1) It would cause shit-storm of problems.
2) 30-100 years later (depending on how long it would take for dust to settle) the same exact thing would still take place. So at best you are just advocating for a band-aid. Unfortunately this has been the case time and again in history. With ever more interesting array of idiots believing they have somehow stumbled upon the real solution where no one else had for thousands of years. Eating the rich has been done many times before. The outcome was shit for everyone involved. And it lead right back to square one eventually.
Also, whatever this article says is just propaganda by Marxists meant to stir up "class struggle." It is not a real fucking problem, and it does not need fixing. The example that was cited is actually quite possibly a symptom of inefficiency that is being corrected by free-market solution. If there is a line in one place, but no line in another, the sick who are not in danger of expiring SHOULD be routed somewhere where they can get the help they need without waiting in a fucking line, making everyone else who comes in after them wait that much longer. By this guy paying out of pocket to go elsewhere EVERYONE is better off.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @06:04PM (1 child)
Hohoho.. hahaha... "lawful"... that's funny... hihihi...
As if laws are somehow meaningful or their content objectively desirable.
You silly goblet, the law is not there for you, it's there so it can be used against you when your time comes.
(Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Monday June 05 2017, @07:12PM
Back in my day, kids used to say: "the law is powerless to help you, not punish you."
They also said those things semi-seriously, as if though they were quoting something with bitter sarcasm, but hey....
(Score: 1, Troll) by ikanreed on Monday June 05 2017, @06:59PM (15 children)
I'm not a Marxist, but you have to be goddamn blind to not see the problem with 8 lives being weighted equally to 3.6 billion as the current world wealth distribution seems to suggest is correct.
Dead rich people is becoming a necessity now from crying Marx at every attempt to redress an increasingly severe systemic issue.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Monday June 05 2017, @07:11PM (10 children)
I like it. All of the purported disavowal of "I am not a racist", but a more subtle and understated appeal to social justice! What is not to like? A few suggested applications:
"I am not a marxist, but, it seems to me that throwing shade on workers unions is cutting your own throat! 'Right to (not) work' laws are stupid!"
"I am not a marxist, but, discriminating against people based on skin color or ethnic background has no basis in economics."
"I am not a marxist. but this coffee tastes like crap!"
Now, you try!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday June 05 2017, @07:53PM (9 children)
Oh, no see, here's the thing, fucking marxists will tell you there marxists, you goddamn idiot. They're proud-as-fuck of it. I'm not one because I don't buy into: classesless society, dialectics, any of the anarcho-whatever variants that don't account for how to maintain a stable state.
I just think we've let conservative ideologies drive social mobility and gini coefficients into the fucking ground, and even course, vile measures would improve the situation. We address the goddamn problems the can basically be described as "the people we now call republicans ever having even a sniff of power", and capitalism works just fine.
That's not marxism.
That's not socialism.
It's honeslty not even social democracy, but it's probably the closest of the 3 "leftist" ideologies you might be familiar with.
It's not "not racist but" it's "you accused me of having a political position that is not mine but I still respect a fuck ton more than yours", and it's not true.
Sorry your brokebrain ideology caused you to incorrectly identify mine.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday June 05 2017, @08:25PM (5 children)
Ah, so this is what happens when I try to show support for one of the more rational Soylentils! I am on your side, icanreed! No attribution of leftist gradualism or Bernsteinian revisionist Marxism! Trotsky all the way, bro! And viva la Che! All I am saying, is give communism a chance. But then, I am not a Marxist, and neither was Karl.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday June 05 2017, @08:31PM (2 children)
I always wonder at people like you who will burn every shred of intellectual honesty you have in order to checkmate a strawman.
You want to debate a marxist? I can direct you to several. But my experience with your kind is that you just use the term and run away when faced with someone who actually gives a fuck about marxist ideology.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday June 05 2017, @08:48PM
Chill, dude! I am not the anti-leftist you are looking for.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JNCF on Monday June 05 2017, @09:04PM
For what it's worth, I'd take aristarchus' last message at face value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:49PM (1 child)
You fucking Greek.
Speak proper Latin when talking about The Leader. Or shut up and go home!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:51PM
Latin? Look, Espanol is about my sixth or seventh language, and it seems that it is all Chinese now, anyway. 白左
http://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2013/10/23/viva-la-che-johor-company-bags-rm197bil-contract/
(Score: 1, Troll) by ikanreed on Monday June 05 2017, @08:26PM (2 children)
And there's a bed-wetting mods I've come to know and love from this site's right wing.
"Calling me on my bullshit is exactly the same as trolling right?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @11:39PM (1 child)
Why can't we just have a nice, polite discussion with the guy who literally wants to murder a lot of people simply because they're too successful?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @04:42PM
Why can't we just have a nice, polite discussion with the rabid dog?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Monday June 05 2017, @07:33PM
Clearly, and I'd ignore anyone saying otherwise. Many people here think anyone to the left of Ayn Rand and/or less racist than Richard Spencer is a Marxist.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @08:30PM (2 children)
You are going beyond the pale with this. How does the Wealth distribution matter on a global scale when discussing medical care in a single country? Apples and Oranges.
But I will bite nonetheless. Tell me, why does a goat herder in some African backwater need whatever your desired level of wealth would be? What does it matter to him that he doesn't have a 3 bedroom house with white picket fence when there is no public utilities? Why does he need 2 cars when there are no fucking roads and he doesn't need to commute anywhere? What is the ideal outcome of your Marxist redistribution of wealth?
You know he doesn't give fuck all about any of it, he just cares how many goats he has to eat/fuck and trade for his next 12 year old wife.
Men like you are definitely Marxists, but not the puppet-masters behind the curtain. You are the useful idiots that are tied to the strings. You think you know what is going on and you have great intentions, but you fail to realize the most basic reality. The currency is not the measure of Wealth. It is only a poor proxy, a simple result of the use of true Wealth by those who chose to spend their true capital. The real measure of Capital and wealth is BULLSHIT. People feed you bullshit, it fills your head, you turn around and spend some of that bullshit to others, like a well paid pawn, and you get the wheels of some shit-storm rolling. Then the person who is indeed wealthy will sit back and collect on his investment as you and your fuck up everything around you. And at the end of the day you will all be fucking poor, and the real bullshit-artists will hold all the cards.
This article is just pure, unadulterated, gluten-free, organic BULLSHIT. Bon Appétit
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday June 05 2017, @09:52PM (1 child)
If you're going to call someone else a troll, it would help your credibility if you did NOT go on to insinuate that Africans are backwards, goatfucking pedos.
Jut saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @04:46PM
Well, at least he didn't confine the backwards, goatfucking pedos to Africa. Hell, we've got our own, right here in the US. They claim some faith descended from the Mormon church. At least the Mormons have given up the goat fucking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @08:07PM (2 children)
Heh, at least the propaganda terms are becoming more erudite. "Marxist" is sure a step up from "damn reds" or "commie scum".
So you're probably an opponent of the US Revolution against Great Britain? For better or for worse violent overthrows seem to be the common method of changing society. Once a system stagnates and allows selfish greedy people to sit at the top then it is near impossible to peacefully change anything. The people at the top exert their power to prevent real change, and eventually it boils over into violence.
The only way forward is for conservatives to get with the times and get single payer healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy, and probably one or two other items. We can discuss what liberals should compromise on, but for the good of the country we need to prioritize those first two. If you want to argue either point in the slightest, then congrats you'll be keeping us on track for some violent shit.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 05 2017, @08:36PM (1 child)
Liberals absolutely should compromise on all of the following because they're popular but not right:
restricting GMOs,
Promoting organic farming,
uh... dumb twitter hashtags? Damn, I ran out fast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @09:24PM
Well we never got far in restricting GMOs so that doesn't seem like a big deal.
Maybe more open to updated and properly funded safe nuclear reactors.
I'd say something along the lines of stop religious persecution, but I think that amounts to saying "Merry Christmas" and never "Happy Holidays".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @05:56PM
Yeah, pretty much. I don't blame him for doing for his kids the absolute best.
Blame the system that allows this shit. Blame the system where this kind of shit is built in.
But maybe this is one of those instances where greed is good. I don't know. I'm just an AC on the internet. This one single guy using a medical concierge (with all the ethical questions we may and should have for the doctor providing this concierge service) is not the bigger issue. Millions of people in a first world country who cannot even get in any line for health care is the bigger issue.
However, mostly blame ourselves for allowing the system to exhibit that bigger issue.
That means we have to take responsibility for the system being shit and start to fix it instead of worrying about bathrooms/weed/birth control/gay marriage/whatever distraction issue of no significant consequence. We need to stop being so emotionally invested in those distraction issues. Yes, some of those things are very important (one or two especially to me) but they are unimportant until we fix the system. What does fixing the system look like? My suggestion is instant runoff if Condorcet voting is too technical and very strict campaign finance laws.
Also protip: the existing system is not going to fix itself. It is fundamentally broken. It's not a question of if only we can get the correct D or the correct R in the correct office, then it'll just magically be all better. WolfPAC seemed like a good idea to me. Local systems tend to be less broken than bigger federal systems. This is probably something that will require an Article V convention... before we have another civil war... if there even is any way at all to avoid that in the next 20 years.
Maybe also eat the rich just in case. It can't hurt ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @07:55PM (1 child)
Can we stop it with this bullshit arguement? Everytime someone says a person with X shouldn't have done Y, down smug cunt says "you'd do the same if you could". Every day there are countless people doing the right thing, not always out for themselves, keeping the fucking shit together so it doesn't all come crashing down. So how about we give some FUCKING credit to all the decent folks by not using that line any more?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 05 2017, @08:15PM
Bullshit. There are approximately half a dozen people in history who would go stand in the long line for healthcare when they could afford faster and better treatment for themselves. For their children there are zero.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:41PM (1 child)
But why doesn't he have that kind of money? Is it because he isn't clever enough? Because he doesn't work hard enough? Or is it because he isn't willing to make the ethical compromises required to become that rich?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:45PM
More likely because he wasn't in the right place at the right time. We idolize hard work and risk taking, but while you need both to succeed, you also need a great big helping of luck. Hollywood is full of would-be actors busting their chops on auditions while spending the rest of their time earning enough money to stay in close proximity to the opportunity to live their dreams. Not many succeed. The rest of the economy is pretty similar. And that's even after you idolize the people who can just drop everything to chase the slim chance at success; some of us have responsibilities.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:54AM
Dehumanization is a common sociopathic behavior. I think your attitude is indeed strong evidence that you'd act the same, if you had the wealth. I don't consider hypocrisy all that important, but it's something you should think about.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @05:15PM (13 children)
I came here to say exactly that. This is what you get when you let money and avarice run literally everything in your society. When money is in of itself a goal that sets aside all compassion, empathy, and humanity.
You end up with a shitty society that mimics the Psychlo society, which is based entirely on sociopathic avarice and holding leverage over others to exploit them.
At least the fucker feels guilty about it, but if he felt so fucking guilty, is he increasing all of wages of his staff to living wages? Is he making sure it is at least possible for his wage slaves, that made him so fucking rich, to have plain and simple access to the line?
If this fucker wasn't so stupid, he would realize the ONLY reason why he need to feel guilty about spending $80,000 a year for health care for his kids is because other avaricious fucks have made the U.S medical system a fucking joke with maybe 30c on the dollar spent on your care. It's only expensive because of the parasites that have made it expensive.
There are other countries where kids play soccer and their parents don't have this drama in their lives. They just take their kids to a doctor, the bone is set, and life goes on. Only in this fucking shit-hole does a father need to exploit the shit out of everyone else to get on top, so their kids have access to medical that literally tens of millions of wage slavers will no longer have access to at all.
All for greed. All for money.
Kill the entire 1%. Gut them. Watch their blood flow through the streets, and then watch all of our lives get better when their avarice is no longer sociopathically driving us to extinction.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @05:19PM (10 children)
And then the new top 1% takes their place, acting just like the assholes they replaced.
People suck.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Monday June 05 2017, @05:58PM (2 children)
That's a story the sociopathic rich tell themselves to excuse their actions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @11:44PM (1 child)
What do the sociopathic poor do?
Go on the internet and bitch about it, accomplishing nothing but feeding their own egos.
(Score: 2, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:13AM
No, they mostly go to jail for THEIR anti-social behavior.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday June 05 2017, @06:28PM (5 children)
It's an iterative process: Cull the top 0.1% every year.
See how they try to escape it: The "Good" ones will realize they have way too much cash and don't need to live the threat, and give back enough to drop safely in the safe zone. The others will try to run or hide, or pay someone else to hide some of their assets (like they do now, but with slap-on-the-wrist consequences only).
Want a moon base built in a decade? Threaten the wrong people.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @08:43PM (4 children)
I'm seriously proposing that iterative process. My problem is not income inequality, but the undue suffering of the American worker, which is largely representative of the American People. I believe we can have a society where overachievers can rise to billionaire status, without brutally exploiting those around them.
That suffering is simple to understand. They were never paid a living wage, and the engineered inefficiencies of our society cause money to trickle up and pool at the top. That money never trickles back down to help the worker out, as the myth goes.
If everyone is WORKING, not gold bricking, and their performance is adequate enough to continue working, they should get what they NEED to survive. All too often living wage is conflated with access to the excesses of wealth and consumerism. It's not, and instead means the ability to eat, clothe, and shelter yourself while having access to medical care.
We all know what happens when you don't. Walmart creates "wards of the state" the moment somebody starts to work for them, unless they are in the special section of society... the MBAs and executive scum that are deluded enough to believe they are worth anywhere from several times more, to dozens of times more income than the average worker.
This fucker is complaining about having a job that is obviously high 6 figures, possibly 7 figures, and being guilty about getting privileged access to health care personnel who sold their souls and only care for the rich. That doctor deserves to be culled too.
I think at this point our society can only be saved by continually culling the top 1% until things get better. That is the only thing that will motivate them to give back, although I disagree with the idea they are giving back. It's more truthful to represent it as they are returning the goods that they stole from weaker people who were desperate enough to take a work offer that doesn't sustain them. The 1% engineered that environment of duress, specifically to profit from the exploitation of their leverage. That leverage being the worker starving, or watching their kids starve.
That, is the problem in a nutshell; The average American cannot sustain themselves from their own work production on a daily basis. That's a critical problem that has been going on for decades. We all know the consumer debt bubble is coming, precisely because we must go into debt. Debt is preferred and insidious by the 1%. We don't get paid enough to live, so we pay even more to go into debt, to not get enough to pay off the debt, and then.......
Kill the rich. Kill them now. It may already be too late, and I strongly suspect that on a planetary basis we are experiencing a cascade failure in process. An unrecoverable cascade failure. The 1% caused this cascade failure. Period. Fuck them, and whether we kill them or not, their paths are almost universally believed to be leading the 1% to hell anyways. So hell, karma, the death of our planet, at some point the 1% will suffer the consequences. It's a tragedy of epic proportions that they take the rest of us with them.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 05 2017, @09:28PM (3 children)
> although I disagree with the idea they are giving back. It's more truthful to represent it as they are returning the goods that they stole
"Give his toy back to your brother, now!"
The confusion might stem, and we see it with some of the regulars here, that getting money doesn't intrinsically make it "my money", in the sense that every dime taken from it is stolen from me. My boss knows that I pay taxes, and pays me based also on how much of that raw paycheck will then go to various civilization-supporting organizations. Similarly, any ROI is (should be) subject to some kind of contribution back to the networks that made it possible. Yet, the US has extremely low levels of taxation, high deficits, and people with the most are always eager to scream bloody murder at the idea that one can live without billions.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @11:36PM (2 children)
I believe what you are trying to say is that the deductions on pay are now always theft. Meaning, the government taking taxes from you isn't theft. OK. I can see that, but that is not what I'm saying.
All of the money given to my for my work production is in fact, in totality, MY FUCKING MONEY. Immediately, more often than not, the government satisfies the taxation portion. That's not the employer or company paying them, that's ME paying them from MY money. Likewise, anybody that is receiving money from it, is in fact, being paid by ME. So it is all of money, intrinsically, explicitly, implicitly, diagonally, whatever fucking way you want. Not to be confused with matching employer contributions to the government. The employer paid, and I paid. The employer with capital from the corporation, and myself from my own money that I made from the corporation in exchange for my work production.
The Boss does very well fucking know how much of that raw paycheck will go to places, because he controls the accountants that make it possible. The Boss also lives in the same fucking community I do (most of the time I suspect that is true) and is FULLY aware of how much food costs, how much water costs, how much gas costs, etc.
When the Boss decides to pay me less than what I need, then the Boss is STEALING from me, the government, and our community. That "raw" paycheck was too light to begin with, the government should've had more in taxes, and I should've ended up with MORE of MY FUCKING MONEY. Where does that money go? Into the BOSS's pockets. For what? MY WORK PRODUCTION, NOT HIS! Then it is compounded by the Boss STEALING from EVERYONE. When we need to collect our taxes to put them into social programs that really only exist at the scale they do because the Boss couldn't be bothered to pay a living wage. So when he doesn't, he is fully aware of the burden he places upon the social security nets. The BOSS steals the money from all of us, because now I'm just a dirty fucking poor person, with obviously bad character and habits, that can't make it, needs help, and the government now has to take care of me. Yet, I put in a full day's worth of work. The average American worker, does in fact, work much harder than the soft handed executives that never knew what work actually was.
They're fucking parasites, and they do steal from us. Every day. Billions upon billions per year, stolen from the American worker in shitty work offers in failing communities full of duress and an ever increasing homeless population. Those affordable places to live within the wages being currently proffered? GONE. Other rich hell bound avaricious fuckers swooped in and raised the prices. All of those fucks on AirBnb offering their places as 100% rentals should be flayed alive and dipped in salt.
It's from all sides dude. They raise the prices of commodities, they raise the prices of energy, they raise the prices of housing, but they NEVER raise the wages. They raise THEIR OWN wages, but they never raise OURS.
I'm not confused about anything. When I make less than a living wage and suffer material deprivation, while some MBA Ivy-league fucktard takes long lunches and does practically no fucking work, then yes, very much so, he has stolen from money that is rightfully mine. I don't give a fuck how much he makes, as long the company stays solvent, stays active, and continues to pay me a living wage.
The problem is not billionaires, but the billionaires stealing from the little guys to become billionaires.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:06AM (1 child)
I agree with your points starting at paragraph 3...
Yet I can't agree with:
It's like the stupid US habit of adding taxes at the register: You're seeing a number that doe not correspond to the reality, whether it's the paycheck's top line or the burger's cost...
What your employer pays vs what you pay isn't fucking relevant, because they are both numbers taken off the total cost to your employer (the one they care about), and the number that you care about is the one at the bottom. Someone artificially draws a line and says "that's the employer taxes for that employer cost, and this is the employee's taxes for that employer cost". It's gotta get paid, and if you got to chose between paying 0% (employer pays all charges and taxes, still pays you the same bottom line), or 100% (scumbag employer pays nothing, but pays you more, and you get tax-raped yet still arrive at the same bottom line), you'd choose 0% because evil.gov wouldn't steal from you, and your neighbor would choose 100% because he prefers the higher top line.
The bottom line is indeed your fucking money (or drug money, or booze money, let's not be vice-ist). You can't change the bottom line anymore than you can change the fact that you ain't paying the stupid pretax number for that burger.
It's a question of perception, but the result is the same. Feel free to chose to interpret it in the way which makes you angry.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:19AM
Maybe, maybe not. This is really an accounting question. My view is that the total raw amount, is very very much, and indeed, MINE. If it wasn't, then it could never be counted as income towards me. Yet, I think if we both looked, the government would consider whatever garnished as part of MY income, and not a direct expense of the employer. With matching contributions, whatever I have matched, is still income towards me at the end of the year. Heck, you can discharge debt in such a way that it switches to income for the person that borrowed it. USAA was giving the big fuck you to people who defaulted on them by not even selling the debt. They FORGAVE it. Which is basically USAA reporting to the government that they gave you all of that money, inclusive of any interest or penalties. That's a real vindictive fucker for you :)
Plus, I think you've misconstrued tax withholdings with matched contributions. Whatever the employer garnishes from me (which is kind of the correct word here), is consensual, and 100% goes towards my tax bill at the end of the year. That is simply an accounting preference we all get to make, whether we want no withholding or max. There is no theft of any kind here, but the employer acting on my behalf in accordance with law.
Not angry, but I wholly disagree with you. Still, we're talking about accounting semantics at the moment and missing the overall point. Which is that the bosses (MBAs, board, and shareholders) are stealing from all of us, with the amount stolen being the difference between a living wage and the raw amount of one's check. All of the taxes and whatnot, are being paid by me direct with money given to me for work production. The employer does not pay my taxes for me, I do. So whatever taxes do exist, are they for me to satisfy, and are hence included in the living wage, and are treated as an expense by me. You can't treat something as an expense without the corresponding (double entry accounting) credit.
The original overall point again being, if the 1% were killed off, and the corresponding avarice removed from our society, you would see the cost of medical fall, while at the same time wages would raise to cover them. Eventually, we would look at each other, realize we live in wealth and abundance, and it's not even a thang to get your kids broken bone set at the hospital. No Soviet style bread lines to get seen, and no drama. Just an advanced society at work with sustainable practices and behavior. Nothing is more sustainable than paying people living wages, as that is a sustainable wage by definition.
Likewise, any wage that is not a living wage, is unsustainable. Until, and unless, we truly become comfortable with watching people die in the streets while existing in abject poverty (like India) we will continue to argue bitterly about our social programs.
We bring it all on ourselves by being so fucking weak and not engaging in extremely strong and persuasive group representation. By strong, I mean pre-American Revolution strength where we burned down the tax collectors house and ran them and their family out of town on a log so to speak.
That's why I'm so disappointed in the American coal miner. What fucking pussies they've become. They used to unionize and fight the hell out of the coal barons. Instead of taking the coal baron out back and beating the living fuck out him till he pays them well enough, they listen to the avarice and entitled whining of the dude.... and then vote for Trump. At the end, we share responsibility for accepting the unsustainable work offers, and then not fighting for something better. The time to start fighting again was over 20 years ago, and now we have no fight left. Too weak.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @07:14PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @08:32PM (1 child)
Money is the most efficient tool man has ever invented. It is probably 100x more instrumental to human progress than the wheel. Nothing you see today would be possible without money. Deny this if you want, but I doubt you could do better.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @11:48PM
You're a fucking dumbass then. We've come up with plenty of ways to do things better, without money even, and make sure that we prosper and thrive. Japanese researchers even modeled a resource distribution system that eliminated bias and corruption. That would be interesting to try out in a special economic zone.
Its a myth, that people addicted to money, tell the rest of us; You can't live without money!
Yes, you absolutely fucking can. Yet, you don't even have to do so in order to address the problems we have. Money is not exactly the problem, but what it engenders in our society, and that is avarice and the brutal exploitation of others to get more money. Money is intrinsically related to the evil actions man is capable of.
The human relationship to money is what has become toxic. You add a fuckton more humanity back to it, and create the checks and balances against the currently sociopathic elites, then maybe we could still do it with money. Like I said before, I don't care if somebody has 14 zeros in the bank account while the average is 5.
Just as long as that 5 is livable.
Ultimately, money is an economy based on fear. The fear of not having money, and then becoming without while everyone else watch's you die in the street. It's based on fear, not worthy of the human spirit, and I strongly believe that it would possible to live in an economy that doesn't fundamentally operate on fear.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 05 2017, @08:34PM (5 children)
The scenario described happened to me in first grade:
I broke my arm at school, school called my parents, parents came and picked me up and instead of taking me to the ER, they drove me directly to a specialist's office where he set my arm so well that the 4 break lines were virtually undetectable after the cast came off (some 6 months later...) Were we "wealthy"? Well, no deep family money, grandparents were a mechanic, bumper plating salesman, hairdresser and teacher, parents were public middle school teachers - so, no, I don't think we quite qualified as "wealthy," it's just how my parents chose to spend their money at that time.
I also broke my arm in 6th grade, dad dumped me at the local ER where the doc made a half-assed attempt at setting it, he did O.K., but anyone looking at x-rays to this day can see where the set was less than perfect. If anything, we had more money at that time, I guess that the "precious children" just didn't rate as highly anymore.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @11:23PM
Perhaps your father remembered his out of pocket cost from 5 years previous and wasn't going to do that again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:25AM
Perhaps that bone-setting specialist was no longer available?
- joined a medical group
- became a salaried "hospitalman" MD
- system required a referral to go to a specialist
- retired early (possible from large earnings)
- ...
When I dislocated a small toe, the ER doc never even found the problem, only took an X-ray straight down. The swelling hid the problem from manipulation. Later I went to an independent doc who requested X-rays from the side that showed the little dislocated bone starting to knit onto its neighbor. Paid an osteo (very strong fingers) who tried and failed to rebreak it (huge pain, even with local numbing) and now I have a fused joint.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:44PM (1 child)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:02PM
Your point is also true (double jointed, break prone), but the point is that you don't have to be "super wealthy" to go to a specialist when you want to, you just have to be willing to pay the extra price.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:24PM
The younger you are, the more easily and cleanly bones mend after fractures.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:42AM
This fantasy is stupid on several levels. First, this is the best humanity has ever been. And second, we got that way by expressly not eating the rich or anyone else for that matter. Third, why would you even think that eating the rich, metaphorically, is a thing that works? It never has in the past.
Moving on, what is supposed to be the problem with the story? Is it people breaking in line or is it the line itself? Sounds to me like the latter. People spend such huge amounts on medical care - why isn't there more of it?