19 Apr 2013, 7:13 pm
I hate my boss, too.
Wait a minute, I am self employed...
Wait a minute, I am self employed...
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19 Apr 2013, 9:17 pm
hate your boss? "choose" to go on disability!
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20 Apr 2013, 10:15 am
ray
But is it a good thing that the laws governing minimum wage and health care insurance benefits are such that Walmart can pursue the lowest possible labour costs ....while their employees are supported by taxpayers ?
While you fellows continue to avoid this point, consider that what WalMArt (and other companies who have the same policies) enjoys a essentially a government subsidy.
While you can decry subsidies of many kinds (ethanol, electric cars) somehow this subsidy is all right?
bbauska
well, if there were minimum wage laws that rewarded people with a living wage...and universal health care that eliminated from employers the cost of managing health benefits... you might have a lot lower need for food stamps.
But I'll bite. Whats your alternative? If you eliminate food stamps...what do you do with the millions of people receiving them now? Including the Wal mart workers... (And please don't say, "Dey otta getta job....many of them do. at walmart.)
You'll note my complaint has never been about disability insurance OR food stamps. Its the goofy system of health insurance provision and pathetically low standards for minimum wage and labour laws that end up with either companies abusing the programs. Or forcing doctors into decisions that treats the disability program dishonestly. (But morally, in a lot of cases I'm certain.)
so it's a good thing that Walmart is there.
But is it a good thing that the laws governing minimum wage and health care insurance benefits are such that Walmart can pursue the lowest possible labour costs ....while their employees are supported by taxpayers ?
While you fellows continue to avoid this point, consider that what WalMArt (and other companies who have the same policies) enjoys a essentially a government subsidy.
While you can decry subsidies of many kinds (ethanol, electric cars) somehow this subsidy is all right?
bbauska
You're right, RickyP. We should get rid of the food stamp program as well
well, if there were minimum wage laws that rewarded people with a living wage...and universal health care that eliminated from employers the cost of managing health benefits... you might have a lot lower need for food stamps.
But I'll bite. Whats your alternative? If you eliminate food stamps...what do you do with the millions of people receiving them now? Including the Wal mart workers... (And please don't say, "Dey otta getta job....many of them do. at walmart.)
You'll note my complaint has never been about disability insurance OR food stamps. Its the goofy system of health insurance provision and pathetically low standards for minimum wage and labour laws that end up with either companies abusing the programs. Or forcing doctors into decisions that treats the disability program dishonestly. (But morally, in a lot of cases I'm certain.)
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20 Apr 2013, 11:22 am
You don't get much sarcasm up north, do you?
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20 Apr 2013, 11:52 am
Ricky:
I'm not avoiding this point; I just don't think it is compelling. Certainly they would need more government assistance, and not less, if Walmart did not employ them. I think you are aggregating 2 distinct transactions.
Walmart can pursue the lowest possible labour costs ....while their employees are supported by taxpayers ? ...
While you fellows continue to avoid this point, consider that what WalMArt (and other companies who have the same policies) enjoys a essentially a government subsidy.
I'm not avoiding this point; I just don't think it is compelling. Certainly they would need more government assistance, and not less, if Walmart did not employ them. I think you are aggregating 2 distinct transactions.
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20 Apr 2013, 2:25 pm
ray
And why wouldn't Wal MArt continue to employ the numbers they do if the minimum wage went up?
Or if there was a higher minimum wage Wal Mart would close there doors and go out of business I suppose?
No. They would pay the minimum they could get away with legally, and staff the way they currently do. (They already have problems with their logistic chain because of not enough staff...) . And compete in the same way they do now, at the lowest cost level possible.
The only difference would be their employees wouldn't need food stamps.
Oh sure two other things might happen. Their profits might be slightly lower or the price of a dozen tube socks might go up 15 cents.
Certainly they would need more government assistance, and not less, if Walmart did not employ them
And why wouldn't Wal MArt continue to employ the numbers they do if the minimum wage went up?
Or if there was a higher minimum wage Wal Mart would close there doors and go out of business I suppose?
No. They would pay the minimum they could get away with legally, and staff the way they currently do. (They already have problems with their logistic chain because of not enough staff...) . And compete in the same way they do now, at the lowest cost level possible.
The only difference would be their employees wouldn't need food stamps.
Oh sure two other things might happen. Their profits might be slightly lower or the price of a dozen tube socks might go up 15 cents.
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20 Apr 2013, 5:36 pm
or they may employ slightly fewer people. But you are fighting for a principle so you don't have to concern yourself with any collateral damage.
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20 Apr 2013, 6:07 pm
rickyp wrote:And why wouldn't Wal MArt continue to employ the numbers they do if the minimum wage went up?
Or if there was a higher minimum wage Wal Mart would close there doors and go out of business I suppose?
No. They would pay the minimum they could get away with legally, and staff the way they currently do. (They already have problems with their logistic chain because of not enough staff...) . And compete in the same way they do now, at the lowest cost level possible.
The only difference would be their employees wouldn't need food stamps.
Oh sure two other things might happen. Their profits might be slightly lower or the price of a dozen tube socks might go up 15 cents.
And any rising competitor to MalWort would be promptly shut out. You can't have it both ways. On one hand, leftists complain about the so-called monopoly that WalMart enoys (i.e. a dominant market share). On the other hand, they recommend policies that would continue to increase their market share by harming competition.
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20 Apr 2013, 9:37 pm
Going through college, I did not work at WalMart but did work at Kmart ...not a big difference? I got paid just over minimum wage and was only part time, pretty much what you would expect for a college or highschool kid, should I have been paid a "living wage"? are we supposed to pay the part time students willing to work for peanuts a wage that they could live on? If they are requireed to be paid more, fewer would be employed. And WalMart has problems keeping employees because they are bad employers, that's a cost they have to deal with as pointed out. Myself, I happen to like paying low prices and am not willing to pay more so I can feel better about people with no job skills being able to live better, I do not want to pay more so they can be rewarded for stupid life choices.
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21 Apr 2013, 8:23 am
Again, other than economic theory, what is the actual evidence that higher minimum wages lead to higher unemployment?Ray Jay wrote:or they may employ slightly fewer people. But you are fighting for a principle so you don't have to concern yourself with any collateral damage.
Maybe Walmart would employ fewer people, but those they do would have more disposable income, and so in spending it would create more demand in the economy, and so Walmart or other companies could find they want to employ more people.
Is this that 'compassionate conservatism' I keep hearing about?GMTom wrote: Myself, I happen to like paying low prices and am not willing to pay more so I can feel better about people with no job skills being able to live better, I do not want to pay more so they can be rewarded for stupid life choices.
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21 Apr 2013, 8:52 am
http://www.nber.org/papers/w0790.pdf?new_window=1
In the last ten years, roughly twenty time-series studies of the effects of
minimum wages on the employment and unemployment of teenagers (16- to 19-yearolds)
have appeared. For teenagers as a group, most studies found that a 10 percent
increase in the minimum wage would reduce teenage employment by one to
three percent. The range of estimates of the effect of such an increase on the
unemployment rate was considerably wider -- from essentially zero to over three
percent (Brown, Gilroy and Kohen, 1981). Our survey revealed no support for the
popular view that black teenagers suffer larger employment losses than their
white counterparts, although there is some evidence that unemployment effects
of the minimum wage are larger for blacks than for whites. The few studies which
focused on 20-24 year olds found that the minimum wage reduced employment and
increased unemployment for this group, but by lesser amounts than for teenagers.
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21 Apr 2013, 9:18 am
Given that the original piece was highlighting trends over more than just the lifetime of the current Presidency, and unless we find that US demographics have changed significantly since then, I'd say that there are some things we can glean from it.Doctor Fate wrote:Fine, let's start with the paper.
It was written in 2001. So, it's applicability to the explosion of Disability claims in the last 4-5 years is?
Not too high.
Well, we already saw a paper that you linked to and was more recent that showed that the baby boom and aging population had some effect - and quantified it. If I were claiming it caused all of the increase (the straw man you've been burning down since about page 2), you'd have a point. But I was not, am not, and so you don't.Hmm, this seems to throw cold water on your "older people are the reason these claims are going up" argument.
Also, it was the points that it made on obesity and the like which was interesting - and which freeman had highlighted. That is a different factor, and whatever your opinion may be, let's see what the evidence is on increasing obesity in the USA, and whether it is causing an increase in disability.
Well, if that's the case, you'll be able to find some objective source with 'better' statistics, won't you? It's all very well to attack the source as biased, but you didn't even present evidence of their bias (are they like the US equivalent of Saga or Age Concern?), let alone how they had been biased in this instance.Second, is AARP an unbiased source?
Not in my book. Statistics can be used in a variety of ways and AARP invariably leans heavily Left.
If all it took to mean we could ignore a report was the 'bias' alleged of it's source, then we'd have nothing.
Or, because:So, the age is falling, not rising. So, it has nothing to do with an aging workforce.
Also, older workers are disproportionately represented. I suspect there may be many reasons to examine the fraud issue there: Disability might be a nice "nest egg" for those who have not planned and suddenly realize Social Security is not enough.
1) Older workers were always more likely to be represented (I believe at the start there was an age qualification anyway)
2) Older workers are more likely to be disabled genuinely?
3) Older people with disabilities are less likely to recover to be fit for work again
Well, Ricky did post a link to it...(And, that paper was more substantive than anything you, rickyp, or Freeman have posted).
Balderdash. That quote was taken out of context - you deliberately ignored the second part of that sentence. In fact, I was pointing out that what he's talking about is more limited than what you are. I suspect a lot of the people you think should not be able to claim are doing so perfectly legally.Okay, fine, let's be fair. Fraud is a problem, you want to minimize or ignore it, the "conservatives" believe it is something that ought to be looked at in a serious way--as evidenced by:bbauska - disability fraud is really a small issue . . .
I do not want to ignore it - I have (as you seem to forget when you make these accusations) put forward potential ways to deal with it.
By 'minimise', there's two meanings I could read there. If you mean 'reduce the amount of fraud', then yeah, that's what I'd want. If you mean (as I suspect and as the context implies) that I mean to downplay it, then you really haven't got this at all. I think you mean to overplay it. The real question is can it be properly quanitifed, and can we strip out other factors (those I mentioned, for example, but you want to 'minimise or ignore') to get a truer picture.
Because if you don't know how to measure current fraud, how on earth can you know you've reduced it or not?
So far we've pretty much established that it's between about 1% and 33% (although that may be for particular types of claim, rather than as a whole).
No, but it is going to be a reason for more claims - it was not really recognised as a disorder until relatively recently. Still, it's not obvious to laymen is it?Maybe. However, no one has mentioned PTSD that I recall. "Depression" is of another stripe.
Hardy har-har. You are a wag! Was she still working while developing the back pain? Do you have access to her medical records to know she was faking it?Is injury easy to fake? Some are. I know of two people who faked it. One was pregnant and developed "back pain" and was given "injured on the job" status. My response: "Not unless she was impregnated at work."
Really? I've heard of men doing just the same thing. But thanks for the sexism, anyway.The second was under investigation and went off "stress." How did she get away with it? There is a double standard when it comes to males/females in some jobs.
To the actual point, it is a common problem. Of course, being investigated and potentially losing your job can be in itself stressful. Again, without access to her medical records, how do you know it's fake?
Sometimes it isn't hard to prove. I take it that this person has been caught because someone who knows about it has reported it?It's not that hard to prove. I know one person who went off "disabled," retired, moved, and joined a softball league. These days people are stupid enough to put such things on FB. With far less effort than the IRS uses, the government could reduce fraudulent claims substantially.
[/quote]As I say, are these the only factors?And there is actually still the wider debate if people are gaming the system, and that is why they are. You could simplify it to just laziness and greed, and those will be factors to an extent. But are there other issues here, like few alternatives in terms of work that pays (and here comes the minimum wage, zero-hour contract, insecure job argument) or other welfare/out of work benefits to subsist on.
Mooching off other people is laziness and greed. Spin it however you'd like.
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21 Apr 2013, 10:03 am
Ray Jay wrote:http://www.nber.org/papers/w0790.pdf?new_window=1
Well, that only looks at teenagers and to some extent 20-24 year olds, not total employment. It is also interesting in that it notes that most of the studies were based on time-series that ended before 1974 (1974 and 1977 were when significant legislative change took place) and is itself over 30 years old, that comparing the unemployment rate instead of FTEs employed shows a much lower effect - indeed lower than expected, and may be zero.
From the conclusion(my emphasis):
Overall, our study suggests a modest role for the minimum wage in explaining teenage labor market problems. A ten percent increase in the minimum wage will reduce teenage employment, probably by 1 percent. It may increase teenage unemployment, but certainly not to the two or three percentage points reported in some earlier papers on the subject
This is not strong evidence that higher minimum wages lead to higher unemployment. It is evidence that it leads to a small reduction in youth employment (assuming that the labor market of the 60s and 70s is the same as that of today), but other than that is inconclusive.
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21 Apr 2013, 12:33 pm
http://www.moneynews.com/NealAsbury/minimum-wage-increase-unemployment-middle-class/2013/03/14/id/494620
In fact, the Department of Labor's own assessment of the first 25-cent minimum wage in 1938 found that it resulted in job losses for 30,000 to 50,000 workers, or 10 to 13 percent of the 300,000 covered workers who previously earned below the new wage floor.
[url]
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stoss ... republican[/url]
Look at the chart showing the comparison of unemployment and minimum wage. Pretty clear to me.
Theory... Bah.
In fact, the Department of Labor's own assessment of the first 25-cent minimum wage in 1938 found that it resulted in job losses for 30,000 to 50,000 workers, or 10 to 13 percent of the 300,000 covered workers who previously earned below the new wage floor.
[url]
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stoss ... republican[/url]
Look at the chart showing the comparison of unemployment and minimum wage. Pretty clear to me.
Theory... Bah.
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21 Apr 2013, 12:35 pm
danivon wrote:Because if you don't know how to measure current fraud, how on earth can you know you've reduced it or not?
How can anyone measure the breadth and depth of fraud when government is (apparently) indifferent on the issue?
I think you're putting the cart before the horse. The problem has to be acknowledged and then thoroughly scrutinized before we can know whether we've reduced it.
So far we've pretty much established that it's between about 1% and 33% (although that may be for particular types of claim, rather than as a whole).
We agree. I would personally narrow it quite a bit further: I'd guess it's between 10 and 25%. And, no, that's not a wild guess.
Hardy har-har. You are a wag! Was she still working while developing the back pain? Do you have access to her medical records to know she was faking it?Is injury easy to fake? Some are. I know of two people who faked it. One was pregnant and developed "back pain" and was given "injured on the job" status. My response: "Not unless she was impregnated at work."
I don't need them. Nearly every pregnant woman experiences back pain as she gets toward the end of the pregnancy. You don't even need medical school for that--just the power of observation.
Really? I've heard of men doing just the same thing. But thanks for the sexism, anyway.The second was under investigation and went off "stress." How did she get away with it? There is a double standard when it comes to males/females in some jobs.
You know not of what you speak.
How surprising.
To the actual point, it is a common problem. Of course, being investigated and potentially losing your job can be in itself stressful. Again, without access to her medical records, how do you know it's fake?
You're right. I only saw her every working day for several months. I'm sure someone who interacts with her a few times but has a degree would have a much better sense of her anxiety than someone with whom she interacted and for whom she did not need to put on a show. of her "condition."
Sometimes it isn't hard to prove. I take it that this person has been caught because someone who knows about it has reported it?It's not that hard to prove. I know one person who went off "disabled," retired, moved, and joined a softball league. These days people are stupid enough to put such things on FB. With far less effort than the IRS uses, the government could reduce fraudulent claims substantially.
I don't know.
I saw many instances of fraud. I knew a guy who retired because of a shoulder injury and then went back to benchpressing the same weight as he did before the injury. How was he "disabled?"
You're skeptical. That's fine.
There is not enough time left in my life to convince you, I'm afraid.
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