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Politics and Economics
"Sanders plans to introduce a bill in the Senate on Sept. 5 that would impose a 100% tax on government benefits received by workers at companies with 500 or more employees. For example, if an Amazon employee receives $300 in food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $300." Thousands of Amazon workers get food stamps. Bernie Sanders wants Amazon to pay for them by Abha Bhattarai, The Washington Post Aug 24, 2018
Ok! The total TBI budget would be $567 billion, including 5% administration costs and based on an assumption that in any given year about 45 million Americans would avail themselves of the benefit. Here's where the money would come from…
It's important to remember that labor market participation isn't just the result of collective choices about whether to work or not to work but also about how much to work, e.g., part-time/full-time, seasonal/temp/year-round. These collective decisions also impact labor productivity and the vitality of the economy as a whole (not to mention the tax base).
These aren't necessarily occupations to avoid; they may be good starter jobs. An occupation that doesn't pay well may still be a good stepping stone to bigger and better things. But some people do get stuck in them, for lack of skills to qualify for anything better. My problem-solving mission is to figure out ways to help those who are stuck at the bottom to acquire the skills to move up in the world.
Just last month, the Census Bureau released a treasure trove of ACS data on over 500 occupations, including the median annual incomes for full-time workers in these occupations. Without further ado, here are the occupations with median annual incomes of at least $100,000 a year:
The Challenge:
Alleviate poverty
Incentivize skill development
Increase social mobility at lower-income levels
Increase labor market participation
All without raising taxes very much
What's up with France, which collects taxes up the wazoo but apparently not in the form of personal income tax. Where is all that tax revenue coming from? Maybe from taxing corporations? I've got a chart for that…
After Trump, what? We need a second political party to counter the Democrats, not because the Democrats are bad but because the competition of ideas is good. As John Stuart Mill said, "prevailing opinion and feeling" is a kind of tyranny to be resisted - or at least questioned. You can't think outside the box when the box is all you know.
Incorporating new technologies takes time, money, and a reliable revenue stream. Technical capability is not the same thing as economic feasibility. …Very often the new tasks assigned to workers whose jobs have been partly automatized are newly created tasks, not just a reassignment of what used to be done by other employees. That's because technology expands the realm of the doable. In other words, when more is possible, more will be done to exploit the possible.
Over the period of 2016-2026, employment in 647 occupations is projected to grow, while employment in 168 occupations is projected to decline. Overall employment is projected to increase by 11.5 million, an increase from 156.1 million to 167.6 million. US Bureau of Labor Statistics/Employment Projections: 2016-26 Summary
For instance, "cruel and unusual punishment" may be a legal concept but it is based on the moral principle of proportionality: that a punishment should fit the offense and not exceed what is needed to correct the behavior being punished.
Before you know what you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re doing. And other people see it. That’s why being a newbie on the job can be such an excruciating experience: if not in reality, at least in the imagination.
At the beginning of my entrepreneurial adventure, I was your standard-issue progressive, waxing poetic about social justice while looking down on"corporate America". Judged people if they "looked Republican". Wouldn't date men who were "right-wing". I was even a Democratic Socialist of America.
First, I want to acknowledge that Trump supporters are not a monolithic group. They may stand by their man, but that doesn't mean they agree with everything he's doing. For instance: tariffs. …That said…
…a 31% cut would get us to Denmark, which is good enough for me. The revised goal, then, would be to reduce annual healthcare spending to $2.3 trillion. In other words, we're looking for savings of a trillion dollars. Let the calculations begin!
…3. Increase federal and state budgets for the detection and prosecution of fraudulent medical billing, such as upcoding. 4. Greatly expand the number of nurse practitioners working as "full practice" primary care providers and gatekeepers, a status that allows them to work independently of a physician's clinical oversight. 5. Institute a no-fault medical malpractice system, much like the very successful one in Denmark. …
Take MRI scans, which cost about $1500 in the US. In Japan, the fixed price for an MRI scan is around $100 (depending on body part). Now you'd think that Japanese doctors wouldn't do that many MRIs because they couldn't make any money off them. But no - just the opposite: Japan leads the world in MRIs. What happened is that Japanese doctors asked MRI manufacturers to develop an inexpensive MRI scanner. And they got a cheap machine so they can do cheap MRI scans and still make a little profit. Sometimes the heavy hand of regulation can be a spur to innovation. …I say this as a lover of capitalism, for whom the word "corporate" elicits a sigh of gratitude.
Between the government and private insurers, medical office personnel spend an inordinate amount of time processing bills. What is reimbursable, what is not? What type of documentation is required? What billing code should we use? How much can we charge? And that is one big reason the US spends so much on healthcare administration. Time is money.
Doctors typically get a cut of the profits and that provides incentives for expensive care and/or high premiums (in the case of HMOs). Add in the relative ease of gaming the billing system, and you've got a recipe for out-of-control healthcare spending. It doesn't matter if the medical bills are paid by Medicare or private insurers. If the system of payment can be gamed, it will be gamed.
Last post was about outpatient services, specifically how reimbursement rates and physician profit-sharing arrangements contribute to the cost of outpatient care in the US. This post will address the cost of pharmaceuticals…A recent JAMA study ( Papanicolas et al, 2018) found that annual per capita spending on pharmaceuticals in the US was $1443, compared to an average of $680 for ten other developed countries.