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 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?

In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.

Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?

This was the last time a major change to my health care plan happened, the birth of my son. Since he is on my plan it really wouldn't be an apples to apples comparison if I went before that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.

It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.

So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.

This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.

While this is true, men also do work in and around the home that women reap the benefits of. Heavy lifting, furniture moving, home repairs, yardwork, car repair, extermination, and other jobs are all mostly
"men's work". Now, when they say women do 68% of housework, that's all based on time right? ( I couldn't read the study as I am currently work blocked). It could reasonably be argued that the more technical work men tend to do, and the more strenuous physical nature of it, could be counted as more than simply hours worked. Personally I know I'd rather watch a child for 2 hours than haul furniture up stairs for 2 hours.

Also, when men and women do the same jobs they tend to tackle the tasks in different ways. Shopping for example, is a job that could be considered equal work no matter how long it actually takes. Women do tend to take longer shopping than men do.

 cuda1179 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.

It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.

So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.

This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.

While this is true, men also do work in and around the home that women reap the benefits of. Heavy lifting, furniture moving, home repairs, yardwork, car repair, extermination, and other jobs are all mostly
"men's work". Now, when they say women do 68% of housework, that's all based on time right?

No. The several decades worth of research on the topic generally dismisses this. However you weight efficiency, however you split tasks, women almost always come out with the bum deal.

Also worth remembering that women are also well-demonstrated to perform the bulk of emotional and unpaid labour in the workplace, too: baking cakes, organising parties, being reaponsible for 'morale', and general 'housework' (if no employed cleaners etc).

The key thing is we have a tendency not to recognise many 'women's tasks' as any kind of work at all, if we even notice they're tasks that exist (enotional support of children and so forth), whereas 'men's' tasks have more frequently been seen to be work because they map onto 'real jobs' like labouring or whatever.

'Yeah but picking up heavy things' is kinda the equivalent of responding to a claim that throughout history, in almost all contexts everywhere, women have been responsible for almost all food processing with 'yeah but bbqs'.

If you put all those tasks on one end and put "primary caregiver for child" on the other I certainly know which one I'D pick.

 Vulcan wrote:

nareik wrote:
Well at least doctors still do visits in the US!

Wait, what?

No they don't. You go to them, period. Then you sit in a waiting room for half an hour past your appointment, get called into the exam room where you wait another half-hour during which a nurse takes your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then you get to see the doctor five minutes - ten MAX - and go pay your copay and/or deductible on the way out.

Clearly you need kids with Flu as this was the post i was replying to:

 cuda1179 wrote:
The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.

So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?

Anecdotes are not data and your suggestion is incorrect (as written, at least - if you mean that in the majority of single income households it is the man earning then sure, but it seems like you're saying either that those represent the majority of households, or that this is the situation in the majority of households where women do the bulk of domestic labour, both of which are false).

The point is that women do the overwhelming majority of domestic and unpaid labour in almost all circumstances. It is a consistent cross-cultural phenomenon irrespective of other variables. In the west, it has remained largely* unchanged over the last half-century as women entered the workplace in significantly increased numbers (hence, Second Shift), though women have started doing nost of the unpaid labour at their work, too.

*meaning that the ratio of women to mens domestic labour imbalance has moved slightly towards the centre, but that remains heavily weighted towards women, even in households where both work full time.

My wife gets very annoyed when I do laundry like its an attack on her identity ... I just like to make sure I am responsible for having the right clothes prepared for work and let her do the rest.

Work is very important for the esteem and psychological balance.

and yet clearly you are supposed to tell here due to findings that she has no right to complain about that in any way shape or form because you should do more work at home,, because clearly you and your wife seem to lack individual free will or the capacity to communicate with each other.

Father state will bring you to the true form and way of living in combination with an ideal that may or may not be adaptable or healthy for you.

* this is to be understood as sarcasm.

Vulcan wrote:On the flip side, someone who is very conscientious and hard working, but saw all the promotions go to the brown-noser who did the bare minimum to get by so he remained fairly poor tends to be very judgmental of the rich, since he can very easily connect the dots between their lack of hard work and subsequent success....

Which I admit is every bit as unfair a judgement, but there it is.

That's certainly possible, but conscientiousness maps to conservativism for a lot of reasons. It's not just "hard working," it's also about valuing hard work, order, hierarchy.

queen_annes_revenge wrote:So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?

The tangent about division of domestic duties was in response to the argument that women earn less because they don't work as many hours for pay. which is true, but ignores the reality of so called "second shift" labor.

Hell, I've seen studies showing that female physicians do more domestic works than their husbands!

Not Online!!! wrote:
and yet clearly you are supposed to tell here due to findings that she has no right to complain about that in any way shape or form because you should do more work at home,, because clearly you and your wife seem to lack individual free will or the capacity to communicate with each other.

Father state will bring you to the true form and way of living in combination with an ideal that may or may not be adaptable or healthy for you.

* this is to be understood as sarcasm.

I can understand that you personally do not have this issue in your household, what with all that straw you had to get for that post...

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
and yet clearly you are supposed to tell here due to findings that she has no right to complain about that in any way shape or form because you should do more work at home,, because clearly you and your wife seem to lack individual free will or the capacity to communicate with each other.

Father state will bring you to the true form and way of living in combination with an ideal that may or may not be adaptable or healthy for you.

* this is to be understood as sarcasm.

I can understand that you personally do not have this issue in your household, what with all that straw you had to get for that post...

Where's the straw?

The only straw i see is the assumption that an ideal must be followed through to the bitter end. Preferentially enforeced by the state as if the average Joe and Jane suffer from lack of selfawareness and agency.

If you cannot see that what you posted is a caricature of what we are arguing then I can't help you. No one is arguing that people are lacking free individual will, we're not arguing that the state should somehow solve everything, and no one in this thread has said anything normative about how domestic work should be distributed.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
If you cannot see that what you posted is a caricature of what we are arguing then I can't help you. No one is arguing that people are lacking free individual will, we're not arguing that the state should somehow solve everything, and no one in this thread has said anything normative about how domestic work should be distributed.

No but implied, E.g. The Un Resolution.

See there's the issue, is such a demand legitimate on the actual ground level.

Ultimately that is an answer that at most the people directly hit by it can answer.

Basically it's the problem that is on another sphere entirely.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?

In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.

At least we can all agree at this starting point, but from there everyone has radically different solutions.

 Easy E wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?

In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.

At least we can all agree at this starting point, but from there everyone has radically different solutions.

maybee one could try to NOT use radical solutions and instead make a packet with multiple solutions?
It's relative coommon praxis here, however to state that the political landscape is vastly different is also a fact.

Most would be pretty happy with looking around, seeing that our neighbors get better results, and seeking to replicate that.

nareik wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

nareik wrote:
Well at least doctors still do visits in the US!

Wait, what?

No they don't. You go to them, period. Then you sit in a waiting room for half an hour past your appointment, get called into the exam room where you wait another half-hour during which a nurse takes your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then you get to see the doctor five minutes - ten MAX - and go pay your copay and/or deductible on the way out.

Clearly you need kids with Flu as this was the post i was replying to:

 cuda1179 wrote:
The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.

A “doctor’s visit” is when you, the patient, visit the doctor at his (not-a-hospital) office. It is not a house call.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?

In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.

At least we can all agree at this starting point, but from there everyone has radically different solutions.

maybee one could try to NOT use radical solutions and instead make a packet with multiple solutions?
It's relative coommon praxis here, however to state that the political landscape is vastly different is also a fact.

The solutions themselves are not radical, only the differences between them is radical.

When one group thinks you need to go up, and the other thinks to go down, that leaves some pretty big differences between the two solutions. Hence, radical differences.

These differences in solution lead to gridlock and no action being taken since the solutions are so diametrically opposed to each other. You can not both go down and up at the same time.

nareik wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

nareik wrote:
Well at least doctors still do visits in the US!

Wait, what?

No they don't. You go to them, period. Then you sit in a waiting room for half an hour past your appointment, get called into the exam room where you wait another half-hour during which a nurse takes your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then you get to see the doctor five minutes - ten MAX - and go pay your copay and/or deductible on the way out.

Clearly you need kids with Flu as this was the post i was replying to:

 cuda1179 wrote:
The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.

Then you have EXCEPTIONAL coverage, because everyone I know or have ever talked to have to bundle the kids up and take them to the doctor for the process I described when said kids need treatment.


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 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?

While that is the traditional division of labor - and even then is not necessarily fair, as many stay-at-home mothers start working before the father goes to work rousting the kids and fixing breakfast, work all day long cleaning and watching the kids and other such, and then work long past the father's work hours cooking dinner, doing dishes, getting the kids bathed and to bed and so-forth - I hope you are aware that the single-income household such as yours is VERY MUCH the minority anymore. MOST families can't afford to get by on one income, not if the kids expect to go to college and the parents expect to retire.

So the normal situation is BOTH people work their eight hours... and the woman does 2/3 of the housework on average, while the man does 1/3.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:

Vulcan wrote:On the flip side, someone who is very conscientious and hard working, but saw all the promotions go to the brown-noser who did the bare minimum to get by so he remained fairly poor tends to be very judgmental of the rich, since he can very easily connect the dots between their lack of hard work and subsequent success....

Which I admit is every bit as unfair a judgement, but there it is.

That's certainly possible, but conscientiousness maps to conservativism for a lot of reasons.

Oh, it's not just possible, in much of the American business world it's LIKELY. The person the boss likes gets promoted. The person the boss depends on to get work done, gets more work to do. Or as many of us put it, "The reward for working hard is the requirement to work harder in the future."

When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.

Now I know peolle who have a job, a side hustle, another side hustle who can't afford a house, period.

I bear peolle pretty much working over full time at a couple jobs and uber saying the can't afford a 40k army.

That didn't just happen.

 Sobekta wrote:
When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.

When our parents were kids, "a guy in America working 40 hours" implied "white guy".

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Sobekta wrote:
When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.

When our parents were kids, "a guy in America working 40 hours" implied "white guy".

 Sobekta wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Sobekta wrote:
When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.

When our parents were kids, "a guy in America working 40 hours" implied "white guy".

Yeah, I know. I mean, I'm far from the IdPol type... but back then, there was also a huge boom in jobs and it was considered 'trashy' to have both parents working. Also, a college education didn't put you in debt until you were a senior citizen.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Sobekta wrote:
When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.

When our parents were kids, "a guy in America working 40 hours" implied "white guy".

Contrary to popular belief, well-paid manufacturing jobs wasn't an exclusively white people thing.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Most would be pretty happy with looking around, seeing that our neighbors get better results, and seeking to replicate that.

America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system, or degrees Celsius, or simple voter reform like giving everyone election day off to increase the representation in our government. If someone else does it first, it's a good bet Americans won't until we can claim it's ours.

And we certainly can't do universal healthcare! That would make us just like the communist hellscapes of the UK, Canada, and Australia.

I wish we were able to analyze policies and reforms with more logic and less ego.

dyndraig wrote:

Contrary to popular belief, well-paid manufacturing jobs wasn't an exclusively white people thing.

You say this, mean while I grew up with people who would detail how the need for more people in manufacturing jobs helped drive Italians to be considered white and thus be hire-able rather than the considerably sized black community in the area. It worked out well for the people I knew, and even they knew it was a damned shame what was going on. Or at least they thought of it that way 20 years later while talking about it with me.

Otherwise the demographics of where they worked would have been rather wildly different based on it's location.

 Sobekta wrote:
When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.

Now I know peolle who have a job, a side hustle, another side hustle who can't afford a house, period.

I bear peolle pretty much working over full time at a couple jobs and uber saying the can't afford a 40k army.

That didn't just happen.

When your parents were kids the average home size was about 45% of what it is now, the house had a single land line, and if they were lucky a single 16-inch black and white TV with an antenna that got 4 channels. They also likely had one car to split amongst the family.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system

This is the most galling since metric is so self-evidently better than what we use instead.

 cuda1179 wrote:
When your parents were kids the average home size was about 45% of what it is now, the house had a single land line, and if they were lucky a single 16-inch black and white TV with an antenna that got 4 channels. They also likely had one car to split amongst the family.

And aside from the house and the car the rest of this has plummeted in real cost. Mean while boomers built massive houses no one else wants to buy and are wondering why fifty year old ranches disappear from the market in the time it takes them to list the McMansion, and cars have stayed remarkably on par for inflation compared to most other house hold goods.

Take it from someone with a smaller and cheaper house than the one his parents sold when they divorced, you're full of it on this one. Even living frugally these days can be pretty rough. I'm doing damn well and have been reasonably restrained with my expenses so I have savings, but paying attention to all that makes it so I can tell you exactly how screwed anyone who isn't as well off as I am is.

Not to mention the fact that relative poverty matters too, not just absolute numbers.