...

 JB>> The US Postal Service just announced how much more they are losing now
 JB>> due to retiree healthcare benefits they are now paying in advance.

 BA> These people have absolutely no concept of insurance.

 The issue is the purpose of insurance. All else derives from
 that. Most people believe the purpose of medical insuarance is
 to insure that you get medical care when you need it.

 BA> Shucks, I'm not an expert on the subject but I know more
 BA> about it than Obama and his congresscrook henchmen do. Nor

 Yet all I have seen from you is "risk management". For most
 people the only risk they are concerned about managing is the
 risk they will not get medical care, or go bankrupt getting the
 care.

 BA> am I an expert on business practices - although I do have a
 ...
 BA> graduate level ) - but I know that if the government
 BA> raises the costs of hiring or keeping employees (such as by
 BA> raising the unemployment insurance premiums, which are a
 BA> percentage of payroll, or raising the minimum wage level)
 BA> that businesses aren't going to run out and hire people or
 BA> grant raises.

 Unemployment insurance should be paid on a sales tax, not a
 payroll tax. That being said, the bill has to be paid. The
 minimum wage is still not enough to live on decently. A living
 wage must be the goal.

 BA> Government employees, including congresscrooks and the
 BA> executive, always assume that whatever they do will
 BA> have no effect on the population's behavior - despite a
 BA> century and a half of evidence that they're wrong.  People
 BA> will alter

 On the contrary, they assume it will have an effect. Their
 proble is, they don't recognize what the effect will be.
 That and trying too hard for concensus. Now it's the fear
 of the deficit that is forcing anti-deficit responses when
 stimulus is really needed.

 BA> Some people have been known to refuse overtime, and
 BA> sometimes just quit working for several weeks or months
 BA> (usually they own the company and can do that), to avoid
 BA> making 'too much money.'

 Which is rare, and irrelevant. Someone is going to do the
 overtime, someone is going to do the work. Reagan claimed
 one year he stopped making movies in January to keep from
 paying too much in taxes. Does anyone think those movies
 didn't get made with someone else? Does anyone think the
 art of the theatre was deprived of any great work?

 BA> I remember back in the late 1960s that a fellow in my unit
 BA> - who was independently wealthy and a real SOB of an
 BA> attitude case - tried to refuse a (n automatic) promotion
 BA> from E-3 to E-4 because it would cost him more in income
 BA> taxes than he'd get from the promotion.  IIRC the AF made

 Which, of course, was highly unlikely. He probably bought
 into the idea that all your income is taxed at the marginal
 rate.

 BA> him take the stripe anyway.  Obviously, he did not plan to
 BA> make the AF a career - but a couple of years later I noted
 BA> that a fellow with the same name and initial, now an E-5,
 BA> was being transferred from Wakkanai, japan, to someplace in
 BA> Europe (while I don't KNOW it was the same guy I suspect
 BA> that it was, and he would've been on his second hitch).

 IOW, it didn't turn out to be such a bad deal after all.

 BA> I find it both amazing and amusing that after 80 years the
 BA> American people haven't figured
 BA> out that they're paying ALL of their Social Security and
 BA> Medicare "contributions" - that half that the employers are
 BA> supposedly paying is coming out of the employee's paycheck
 BA> just as surely as the employee's half is, the employer's
 BA> half just doesn't show up on the pay stub or W-2.

 I am amazed that Americans haven't realized the employer
 pays all of the social security and medicare tax. The
 employer pays all taxes of any kind, as well as all other
 bills. Unless you have a money tree in your backyard, that
 is.

 BA> as Obamacare is concerned, were I running a big insuror I'd
 BA> give a year's notice policyholders that the company was
 BA> abandoning the , and then do it. Little known

 Go right ahead. Other will pick it up. Every other
 industrialized country has national health care. Most use
 an insurance based system. Insurance companies still
 compete for clients under those systems, with a much lower
 overall cost.

 It works, deal with it.

 BA> that a LOT of small insurors that marketed various
 BA> insurance products have that market, my former employer is
 BA> one of them.

 And that was before Obamacare. The insurance industry has
 been taken over by a few big players, and the small
 operators have been squeezed out. IOW, insurance does not
 have an effective free market.

BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... "Ho, haha, guard, turn, parry, dodge, spin, ha, whoops!!"
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