Phatscotty wrote:So, why would a company continue with full time positions when the cost of employing someone full time is skyrocketing, when they can just hire a bunch of part time employees? I mean sure they would like to have full time employees, ie employees who are severely more likely to actually give a crap about doing a good job, as well as a greater sense of security and better benefits.
If they are allowed to look at it in that manner.. nothing. That is the problem. BUT, saying "let companies just forgo healthcare coverage" is not really an option because it just means that when people get even moderately sick or injured , they lose what few assets they might have and become dependent on society as indigents at that point.
The REAL solution is to have an insurance system that is independent of employment. However, all models outside the US that do this use some kind of "socialized medicine" type model and you have been very, very vocally against ALL such. In fact, you were so negative that you would not even bother to investigate the many variations and pretty much assumed they were ALL like either the UK or Canada. (neither a model that most in this thread liked).
Beyond that, your assumption that part-time workers are necessarily poor is not really true. Far more important is the pay and how people are treated, with the last being probably even more important than the pay. THAT is the real issue with part-time workers. Too often employers see them as "expendable" and the employees definitely feel it. In some cases, particularly for younger workers, there is the hope of a good recommendation leading to something else, but that idea is going away more and more.
Phatscotty wrote:As a lifelong union member, I do agree with and strongly believe that one very important key to the middle class is full time job.
Union member??? And yet virtually everything you say is about how those who are NOT in unions indicates you don't think they have ANY rights at all, that everything you got from a union was somehow just by your own work and graces and that those things are available to all... if only taxes would be cut.
Don't you even see how manipulated you have been by those self same union busting employers?
The ANSWER is very much what unions were able to accomplish in specific industries and factories. ALL of the arguments you are voicing are very, very similar to those voiced by industry who claimed (continue to claim) that they "cannot afford" to pay reasonable wages. NOTE... when I say "reasonable", I mean less than half what most union jobs have garnered.
The middle class system you laud came precisely because working people began to take home decent wages and to have reasonable working conditions. Healthcare coverage became a part of that, though putting healthcare as part of employment was a very bad occurrence.
Phatscotty wrote:What are we going to do about the fact that Obamacare makes full time positions at the majority of companies far more expensive to maintain and less economically viable to create in the future? And how is it (big picture) that eliminating many of the better positions available in the economy is going to have a positive impact on the average persons affordability and access to healthcare in the future?
LOL.. the healthcare reform act is not what is, in and of itself making fulltime positions too expensive to maintain. Nice try at rhetoric.
Healthcare is getting expensive because healthcare is getting expensive. The days of going to a doctor and getting a "full exam" that was basically "tap your knees, breath deep, and (at least for the guys
cough and turn your head" are just gone. MRIs, arthroscopic surgery, organ transplants and years of chemotherapy all cost money. Having speach therapy, orthopedic rehabilitation, occupational therapy, respiratory assistance, plus fulltime nursing care (which is what many elder people need) cost money. No cute gimmick gets away from that.
Ironically, early on, your major objection to "government intervention" , etc was that healthcare would be limited. Well.. guess what? It ALWAYS HAS BEEN LIMITED, by INSURANCE COMPANIES!!! Obamacare doesn't change that. The healthcare reform act does begin to at least require that companies offering insurance
actually offer real insurance, and not just expensive pieces of paper.
The REAL truth is that most business, most of corporate america will ALWAYS complain that costs are "too high". They will skimp in every way they can, for lower level employees anyway. Skilled employees fair a bit better, but as the bottom slides, so do the upper levels, though the VERY top seems to do better when the rest of us suffer. And.. make no illusions. You ain't in that group. (neither is greekdog, though a few here might be).
THAT is what this "debate" is really about.. how much the VERY top is allowed to take before the average people object. Except.. thanks to the internet and a general laziness, people's views today are as divested from reality as in the days of yellow journalism.
Ergo, you arguing on the one hand that we need to build up middle class America.. at the same time you are objecting to other people getting the very things that made the majority of this country middle class.
