Calling it "insurance" is a linguistic trick politicians use to remove the stigma (little that there is these days) of being supported by the state. Is it really insurance if you're forced to pay for it? Or is it just another welfare program?
I imagine this guy sees it as just another welfare program, and thankful as he was to receive it, he was also ashamed to take it. We'd be better off if everyone was so "foolish."
Maybe this is a natural reaction to the fact that so much of the information we receive is propaganda? Even if, for example, a news story presents a series of facts, other relevant facts are often elided to give a mis-impression.
But the government cannot, by fiat, deem that people should make "Modern Western Wage" because some people's work is not worth that much. Forcing wages to be at that level causes more problems than it solves (i.e. massive offshoring). Minimum wage laws, workplace safety laws, environmental standards, etc, all raise the cost of doing business and make it so only people whose work is worth "Modern Western Wage" can be employed.
The whole point is that "Current trade and industrial policies" favor the former ("Modern Western Wage"), not the latter, which is what is causing the problems in the US. Did you read the article?
This post is silly. No one is forced to work at an unsafe job for any given wage. The job of the government should not be to say "you can only work for this long, for this wage, under these conditions." Shouldn't that question be up to the would-be employee?
And you're not as clever as you think bringing up asbestos. You're far more likely to die in a fire because your building had its asbestos replaced with shitty fireproofing than from the cancer that asbestos can cause.
Wow look at how clearly he answers the questions. Half his answers begin with a "Yes" or a "No." Can you imagine someone thinking and speaking this clearly these days?
No one would complain about unionized teachers if they were doing a good job. All people see is vast sums of money going in and functionally retarded children coming out.
This could be because of bad teachers, bad parents, stupid/unteachable children, etc, but the unions' only solution is always "more money." Is it unreasonable to think, then, that the unions are acting in bad faith? The teachers are the only ones who get to elect the union leaders so they are responsible, directly or indirectly.
There's a huge shortage of qualified teachers because of the nonsense teachers ed requirements for certifying teachers. You've probably seen many articles on how ridiculous and shoddy these curricula are. These requirements exist at the behest of the unions to protect their members from competition.
More like back to the stone age. Look at the Indian stock market: they have transaction taxes on the order of .01-0.1% and the bid-ask spreads are huge. A tax like this would make it even more difficult for average people to get a fair price.
Short term insurance is a bad idea. If you get an illness that requires ongoing care or treatment then they're going to stop paying when the contract is up and not let you sign up for a new one.
There's a difference between not being satisfied and a "step on their throat" mentality. I don't think enough people in the business world know the difference.
I thought that lots of studies had been done like this, and these types of gains always turned out to be short term. The article doesn't say whether the gains stayed with them weeks or months after the games ended.
Looking at the article more carefully, it actually seems to me that these two ideas aren't just not synergistic, but are actually antagonistic. It says you can either buy job application credits, or earn them by farting around with your profile and sending messages. As an employer, I think I'd much rather hear from someone who bought some credits to apply than from someone who got their credits by spending a lot of time on facebook. The social networking angle makes the pay to apply angle less valuable, I think.
The core idea of localbacon seemed really good, in essence creating a market for job applications so that both job seekers and employers would treat the application as if it were worth something (as opposed to most job sites where the applications are largely worthless). Now they took that idea and added social networking, for some reason. The localbacon idea was good on it's own, and the social networking-based job website idea is perhaps good on it's own, but what is the synergy between the two mechanisms? If you're going to help applicants gets recommendations from their friends who already work at a company, why do you need the pay-to-apply mechanism? If someone is paying to apply who cares if they know anyone at the company? Both of these are good methods of screening applicants, so why have both?
It seems to me that this company would be better off focusing on one idea or the other and doing it well.