sounds like the required benefits are limiting peoples income and companies are just finding way around it. I still don’t know why Americans think medical should be tied to employment. Why not remove these required benefits from the employer and find another solution.
Luckily there are multiple functioning health care systems around the world to take inspiration from.
Medi-caid, snap, other benefits that are “Welfare” have very low “max income” mostly less than 20k/year for most states, and they calculate based on your gross income per month, not after adjusted tax income. most people earning that little often arnt living on thier own, or if they do , its usually because they are retire dwith substantial savings, but still need to work.
I think they’re doing it because they’re afraid Americans are going to dump traditional work and go do work or a craft they actually enjoy whatever that might be. Or it could just be the old puritan mentality cemented in the stupid minds of the average selfish citizen.
There’s a lot of reason it’s tied to employment, and it’s all basically to make sure most Americans are basically poor feudal peasants.
We live in the modern equivalent of a feudal monarchy, and if you’re not contributing as a member of the labor class then you won’t be taken care of. Simple as that. Laboratores must labor.
And we simply turn our heads and pretend the rest don’t exist. Those that don’t labor are shunned, and will die off of infection or starvation or due to the elements.
And then we say it’s their fault for being lazy.
I’ve never been the same since it clicked in me that welfare payments are used in a huge part to subsidise the businesses that refuse to pay more than minimum wage. So when the news trumpets that “$COMPANY has made record profits this year”, all I hear is a story about how much profit that company has made while also receiving an indirect government bailout.
It does seem like a company shouldn’t be able to take/distribute profit until it’s repaid all the federal and state programs that the employees rely on.
what’s screwed up is at 2010 a month it also disqualifies you from Medicaid in states that have low income eligibility. It’s not uncommon that if you aren’t getting benefits to self cap your hours at 20-25 hours a week because any more and you lose federal aid, so its cheaper for them to actually work /less/. All stemming from the companies inability to let their workers work.
Yep, these effects are called welfare traps. It’s why benefits shouldn’t have hard thresholds, but instead taper off gradually as income increases.
Although in the case of health care, it should obviously be universal in the same way that every other developed country implements it.
I mean, the better solution is for everyone to get benefits with no taper. That way there’s never any trap and no one has to worry about covering essentials.
Give everyone… ghasp, socialism!
funny they have the tapering effect for the aca plans in many states. the more you earn the less credit you get for it to be lower the cost.
Slavery. It’s slavery.
medicaid calculates your total gross income, and not adjusted by tax. so if you are earn 700 instead of the 1000 before taxes, they will count that 1000. i know a person that works just under limit , shes afraid of going over, eventhough lunch period cuts 30minutes out of the paycheck, so shes actually earning way less than the max income for medicaid in my state.
2010, is actually way over in most states, if not all for medicaid. the highest is ~1840ish in most states per month. depending on the min wage, it can be only 18-19hrs (with out lunch cutting into the hours).
amazon does this too, set thier max limit for part time workers to 19hrs , when they had shoppers still(2018-2022), and maybe the amazon return stations. i think warehouses might be different(since most of them are full time)
Walmart plans for extraordinarily high turnover. If the median worker is there longer than a year, they are overpaying for labor. If less than a year, they’ll bring on new workers at higher rates than their experienced workers. Why give the experienced people higher pay when they’ve proven they will stay on at less?
Walmart is one of the scummiest employers on the planet, and they have an outsized influence on the rest of the labor market.
So this has been the case for over twenty years now with people “discovering” this well known and well documented practice of keeping employees below full time to keep them from giving benefits every couple of years. Hell it was exactly like this when my sister was working there as a teenager.
I mean this is kind of what is wrong with America honestly, memories of a gold fish and one of the reasons why no progress ever gets made.
Tying benefits to employers is idiotic. Even if you want to tie benefits to work requirements, this system fucks the millions of people with multiple part-time jobs.
it’s accomplishing exactly what it’s designed to
Capitalism is all about a few people getting all the capital, if you’re not owning something you’re the worker that they exploit to do so. Billionaires and trillionaires are inevitable in such a system.
Although, the billionaires and trillionaires are a symptom of the endgame. By far, most of our billionaires attained their wealth though financialization, that is to say financial shenanigans that do not produce value and wreak havoc on the economy.
An example is private equity, which is what happened to Toys 'R Us, Radio Shack, Claires, and countless other brands.
Normally, once the feds detect financial shenanigans, we outlaw them under fraud. But the owner class reacts by capturing regulatory agencies and/or defunding them so they can’t enforce their regulations. Citizens United was the death knell for the US.
It’s going to take ending the owner class to get out of this mess, and if wait too long, the ultra wealthy are rich enough to do the same thing to the rest of the developed world.
And we have to do it before we run out of water.
Yeah, it’s a vestigial concept that went into overdrive due to WWII that needs to just F all the way off at this point.
Yup. I worked at Target circa 2010 and it was the same. I was scheduled 38 hours a week, and you would get written up if you were late clocking out.
I remember when I was working at McDondald’s and they never worked me above 32 hours typically. Back then it was 40 as the cutoff. That they’re allowed to scuzz their way around the law through this means we’ll never get equity with our system. They must be punished for such practices.
Back in 1960, the minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average US home was $11,000.00.
When Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, ‘middle class’ was defined as one job paying for a house, a car, and enough money to send the kids to college. In those days $1 million was considered a vast fortune. After five GOP Presidential terms, middle class was two incomes to support a family of four, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
my parents had thier first house in the 80s for 120k, so it fits. it drastically went up in the 90s if they bought it.
That is quite a sum in the 80s. My grand parents bought a 2 bdrm condo for about $20k. It took them a while to save up like $10k and they still had a loan. The loan was also at something like 13% rate.
Many places won’t rent to someone that cannot prove monthly income greater than 3x the rent.
HCOl im near does this, theres like a job-like application for some of these rental units. not a problem for most high paying tech, or a nurse. but even then they would rather live somewhere cheaper and usually have another high income partner.
This happened to me. I provided a bank statement that proved I had a year of rent in savings…
its like a competitive job applicant in these places.
This is how you radicalize a generation btw.
This has been going on for 20 years. Still waiting for that radicalized generation
More than that. But yeah, clearly they’ve figured out a formula to keep people poor and apathetic. So many people don’t vote because they don’t want to get involved in politics. Too bad, cause politics is involved in you - and it’s fucking you over.
Humans are the frog in boiling water made real.
I’m pretty rad.
They’re scrolling tiktok and whatever feeds them a constant supply of propaganda, to numb the pain of life, caused by the controlling systems they support, as a team sport, identity their fragile egos are too weak to choose to change. That takes too much courage and integrity.
genz and some alpha love tiktok, its crack to them. now that usa has bought a portion of tiktok, it will be even more addictive.
Where I work you can only work temporarily for 2 years before they automatically get a permanent contract (it’s UK law basically). I got a colleague come to me for support yesterday saying he’s been told his contract won’t be renewed beyond 1year+11months and they’re going to advertise to hire another person into the role (presumably for another 1 yr + 11 m).
They do this at our Post Office.
The Union says you must get a raise after 12 months of continuous employment.
Well wouldn’t you know it. They only write contracts for 50 weeks employment and 0 PTO. They phrase this contract as if it’s how they “gift” you 2 weeks of vacation. My coworkers didn’t understand it until we got to week 49…
That sounds like it might be a place with somewhat robust worker’s protections, at least on paper. Are there mechanisms to prevent employers gaming the system like that?
Tips help the owner not the employee.
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Depends greatly on the location, honestly. In some restaurants you can get over $500 per night, which is more than what a “pays a living wage” would pay.
This is not a new thing. There’s a documentary from 2005 called “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” that goes into detail about similar actions they were taking back then.
I’m sure it’s gotten progressively worse these last 20 years since
I don’t think it has gotten progressively worse, only because it couldn’t.
All of my life I been lied to
Just found out my boss makes 500 times what I do
And still wants to cut my hours back
To 39 and three quarters ‘cause 40 gets you a health plan
And I got a feelin’ I’m a need it
Losin’ feelin’ in my knees and my lower back
And I’m going back, trapped like a lower class clown
Hold a rat down, so we kill each other over cheddar
Keep us hungry so we never organize for nothing better
Just make it through the day, make it through the week– You Say Millionaire Like It’s a Good Thing, Guante
I’ve been boycotting WalMart for 25 years, but regrettably this has not put them out of business. Fortunately, it meant that not a single one of my dollars went into their greedy, overstuffed pockets.
I’ve been boycotting WalMart for 25 years, but regrettably this has not put them out of business.
Something for “free market” cargo-cultists to remember, when they try to pretend that boycotts are a substitute for effective government regulation.
Exactly! Individual consumer action is close to meaningless, but regulations are broad and sweeping
luckily walmart is allergic to our high tax counties, so there are non in a 50+mil radius, although the alternative is kinda bad too, just bougie markets popping up, ther prices are usually high.
But if you live in the USA your taxes go to subsidize the wages of their employees through Medicaid and SNAP. We need to do more than boycott but most of us are too tired and broke to do even that much. Good job on doing what you can
Exactly, if the owners paid enough wages then people would make too much to qualify for the public assistance and would be happier and healthier. That’s what controlling systems don’t want, gotta keep the majority in scarcity mode so they keep making bad choices from stressed brain, can’t use prefrontal cortex as much which critical thinking requires.
Edit: higher wages also increases the tax base to help pay for all the things we should have, like all the other rich countries have figured out how to do.
Thankfully, I am Canadian. For life! :D
I boycotted them for 15, but now I can’t afford to shop anywhere else. I have never used Amazon tho.
Otherwise known as corporate welfare.
nO 1 wAnTs 2 wOrK nE mOaR!!!1!11!
Pro tip: They never did.
(on YouTube)
