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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy J who wrote (112179)	5/23/2000 6:30:00 PM
From: Joe NYC	Respond to of 1571001

Amy, OT I think we are in agreement on many points, I just wish you stayed with the general case, rather than the specific person, a single woman with a child with skills that earn only the minimum wage about whom I don't know anything. That adds a lot of unrelated points, social pathologies, that makes it difficult to discuss the original point of the need for the federal mandates. Regarding people who are on the edge of being unemployable, raising the bar for the employer too high in order to employ this person is counter-productive. In most countries with the labor market less strong than ours, this person would not have a job. Regarding a single person raising a child, it is a life sentence of hardship in the majority of the cases. A person may end up in this situation due to tragedy, in which case there is (should be) an orphan/widow(er) benefit. In case it is voluntary, than the person brought on the hardship upon him/herself with the failure to make correct decisions in life. The government has programs to ease this hardships on individuals, but in my opinion, transferring these programs from government to businesses is not a wise policy. RE: "Maybe the company is forced by the federal law to overpay a woman of childbearing age (based on the economics of the situation)" It appears these types of companies take advantage of a person's vulnerabilities to the point where laws have to be get created in order to protect the public. I was making a hypothetical point. I don't know specifics how the productivity of a particular gender / age group compares. As far a companies taking advantage of people's vulnerabilities , I think it is a broad statement. Being (how should I put it) dumb is a vulnerability. People are generally born that way, or raised by their parents to be that way. Should there be a law prohibiting rewards / raises / promotions of smart people at expense of not so smart people? I think the employment contract should stick to exchange of work / time / services for money. The social engineering should be left to the government. I concur with intangible costs and am a firm believer in offering a compensation package which allows the employee to choose their plans accordingly - i.e. an employee earns X for the work they do (regardless of whether or not they have a family or not) and X may be distributed into benefits (or it may not). If X is distributed into benefits, then the salary decreases by X-costofbenefit. Agreed. That's the ideal situation, but most employers don't offer this flexibility. My guess is that the convoluted federal law makes implementing such a pay/benefit package a nightmare. But I guess we may have a disagreement about what goes into X, where you may say that a component C of X is a God given right, and it should be mandated by congress, whereas I say the component C is a benefit, should be considered part of the amount X. A person who doesn't want to take advantage of the component C should receive other benefit / higher take home pay. You also incorrectly assumed that the woman (not the man) should be the one to stay home in the case of providing care. That's an extremely old-fashioned and outdated assumption. Despite all of the advantages of modern age, women are still the ones delivering babies, if parents decide (and can afford) to provide ideal nutrition / development of the infant, the woman has to do the nursing. The act of nursing cannot be replaced by a bottle. Sorry if it seems old fashioned to you. But as far as providing benefits, many employers (my previous employer for example) provide generic parental leave (some paid) / flexible work arrangements that both parents can take advantage of. It was well over and above the federal mandate. The company probably figured out that it is a good business that would help retain employees. I believe this is a weak argument for not covering employees with diabetes. It was not an argument against covering people with diabetes. It was an argument that providing benefits has costs that have to be paid by someone, and this someone may be left with less disposable income, not enough to provide a nutritious food, only enough to pay for food that will bring on diabetes later in life. Which just meant to tie the first point to the second. Maybe because the carrier doesn't have to be responsible for the life-time of the patient, they are not financially motivated to create a policy which creates the overall lowest lifetime cost. Rather than transfer the responsibility for one's well being to an impersonal insurance carrier, why not leave it with the individual. Why not make an individual financially motivated to be healthy instead? In the particular case of diabetes you mentioned, (lets narrow it to Type 2), Why not give a financial incentive to people for not bringing on themselves this disease (if being free of diabetes is not enough of an incentive)? I don't thing the insurance company / health care provider way of managing health is very outmoded, and is due for a "paradigm shift", if the government / Congress just got out of the way and let this shift take place. Joe