Still not enough cookies. Nice improvement though.
Ran the numbers and if that dude’s cookie represents $50K, Elon Musk’s pile would have about the same volume as a large, two-story house.
Anon needs to redirect his hatred.
born in 1949 Don’t have to fight in a war
Hmmm
Putting it in context, it’s probably right. There are a lot of different swathes/classes of boomer, and the ones that would be able to do the listed in lines 7-10 are probably not the ones that were targeted for conscription in vietnam.
No doubt, but at least we’re acknowledging 'Nam.
It’s Korea that typically gets ignored in the US. In fact, that war does fall under the time-frame we’re looking at and wikipedia says about 1.5 million were drafted for it.
Someone born in 1949 would not have to fight in a war that ended when they were 4 years old.
Korea wasn’t legally considered a war for bullshit political reasons for far too long and as a result veterans and families of veterans were denied benefits they should have received after giving some or all for the country now fucking them over
nam wasn’t a ‘war’ /s
My dad was born in 49, he never had to fight in a war. On the other hand it would have been a hell of a ride for him to tramp to Woodstock from western Europe.
Worth it for that hippie kitty🥰
you could pay not to fight iirc, like straight up just pay to not go. didn’t even have to fake it via some bullshit doctors note like vietnam
Dog whistling bullshit. “Obongo”, “waahh socialised medicine is the reason i’m trapped in a poverty spiral” get faaarked
To be fair, the requirement to provide health insurance and other benefits for full-time workers is definitely one of the leading causes of the reduction in full-time jobs. If lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Look I’ll be honest with you. As someone outside the US the idea that your workplace is responsible for your private insurance / healthcare is bug fuck insane and open to exploitation on a mind boggling scale.
Not just open to exploitation; openly exploited. Disruption to coverage and questions about what could be covered differently are significant factors that cause people to choose not to take a job elsewhere.
The trick is that health insurance can be bought directly, but it’s just so insanely expensive to do it that way so nobody does. Companies get a huge discount to buy bulk enterprise packages, and then their employees pay for a lot of it themselves. The portion that the company pays for is just an expense of labor, the same as salary, and offering better than the company across the street is an incentive to get better hires.
The ACA basically was just “hey, you know that discount that companies are getting? Now do it for the state and we’ll offer it to everybody. And insurance companies will like it because people are given incentive to buy this because we’re gonna fine people for not being insured.” Pretty shitty deal, but at least people had the freedom to jobhop or become unemployed and keep their doctors.
It’s cheaper and easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion in this shithole country.
Classic US capitalism: Take a product, triple the price, and then offer a generous 50% discount if you sign up on unfavourable terms.
But yeah, I guess I am preaching to the choir here.
Look at it like this: in America, a sizeable portion of people think that your direct economic utility is a good measure of if you deserve to live. They’ll justify it by saying things like “they don’t think it’s governments place” to provide social services, and that it’s better handled through charity.
If you don’t have a workplace you need to go for real American style socialized medicine: GoFundMe.(The history behind it is that before anyone was really doing socialized healthcare workplaces in the US started offering health insurance as a way to increase compensation during the WW2 wage freezes. Eventually it was so pervasive that it was a recognized form of compensation, and then it was the easiest way to dictate that everyone had insurance, since a lot of people listened to the fear mongering that was going on. “Nothing changes you just can’t get kicked off for developing cancer”. It also lined up with the beliefs of those who think that people who aren’t working don’t deserve support)
If lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they’d pass socialized medicine
lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Then shitty jobs would only give people up to 10 hours per week so they’d have to work 4 jobs to get close to 40 hours, and of course that quarter benefits wouldn’t cover jack shit. Quarter benefits and people working 4 jobs would also make it a 75% chance that any employee you hire and schedule at ~10 hours per week doesn’t accept the benefits thereby saving the business money
Better solution would be single payer healthcare, i.e. Medicare for all, plus expanding social security to pay more than a starvation amount would also be ideal. I’ve also previously outlined the thoughts of expanding SNAP/Foodstamps to all, housing assistance vouchers to all and Social Security to all to effectively reach UBI based entirely off of existing programs that tens of millions of Americans are already on right now. Work becomes how you fund hobbies and a better lifestyle and economic downturns don’t hurt normal people as much
Obamacare isn’t perfect and made some things more expensive for some people. Yes it helped others and overall I think it’s beneficial, but covering your ears and pretending that anon is blaming socialized medicine entirely is just inaccurate.
Criticism, when factual, is good.
Schedules one hour under benefits have been a feature for a lot longer than Obamacare.
yes, which would make this specific criticism of Obamacare nonfactual, but anon is still not blaming socialized medicine like the person I replied to thinks
Anyone using the word Obongo to refer to Obama does not make that distinction. Anything left of YOYO plans is socialized healthcare to them.
Anyone using the word Obongo to refer to Obama does not make that distinction
idk, that’s a strawman. Obongo is often just used as a funny word because it’s 4chan
That’s not the vote of confidence you think it is.
He called it “obongocare.” He isn’t operating in good faith.
Sure, that’s plausible, but that’s also just 4chan lingo.
can only get 25 hours because obongocare
That’s not exactly a criticism and more of a dog whistle, as the person you replied to said.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Obongo
Congratulations on not hearing the whistle, but this is not the “other side” discourse you were looking for.
Sounds like he has plenty of free time, and a car, so get a second job. That’s what MAGA wants him to do.
I know what obongo means, don’t know what “other side” discourse you think I’m looking for, but you seem to have made up your mind about what kind of strawman I am, so have fun I guess.
I assumed you were acting like this was a fair and factual criticism of Obamacare, since you responded to someone calling it bullshit by defending fair and factual criticism.
Since you also said you thought Obamacare was a net positive, I assumed you were arguing that we should be open to listening to criticism of things we approve of, or listening to the “other side of the conversation”, and just misunderstood what you were defending.I really don’t see this as a negative strawman, but I’m quite curious to know what you thought I was arguing against.
I really don’t see this as a negative strawman
All strawmen are negative, if a person (or their argument) needs to be caricatured to be attacked, it shouldn’t be attacked. If it can be attacked and you’re just caricaturing for fun, then you’re diluting the argument and shouldn’t.
Do you think that my description is negative, a caricature, or a strawman now that I’ve said what I was responding to? How was I misrepresenting your opinion by, I thought, assuming positive intent?
It’s 4Chan, “Obongo” is one of the more polite names they could say.
Obamacare is corporate medicine, designed to give more money to the health insurance industry. Anyone in support of socialized medicine should not be a fan of it just because it’s marginally better than before.
Democrats tried to offer a single payer option. However, EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted against it, and as a result, it was possible for two Democrats, Dick Durbin and Joe Lieberman, to vote against it and force the removal of Single Payer and the Public Option from the bill.
And as a result, we get the BOTH SIDES SAME bullshit. Republicans stand firm and vote 100% against a bill, making it possible for 1 or 2 Democrats to derail it, and as a result, people get mad at Democrats as a whole and ensure Republicans keep getting enough seats to keep this strategy alive.
What’s amazing is how well this works for Republicans. So many idiots in the world.
You forgot to mention the Dems got slaughtered in the following midterms. And folks wonder why the party is the way it is
The ACA is not socialized medicine. It is health insurance reform and only partial at that.
Also, I don’t agree that “Obongo” is a dog whistle. It is so openly racist no one is going to miss it.
It’s just an expression of the republican fantasy that a strong welfare state causes people to be lazy
When in reality they make it so you have to choose.
Yep, at that point I just said “Suffer MAGA, you voted for this.”
One of my first jobs in 1984 would not give me more than 24 hours a week because they would be required to pay healthcare. This was a thing long before the ACA
Ah yes, “I don’t care who pays for my benefits or how much they suffer, they’re probably racist dickheads anyways”.
Very compassionate indeed.
Where to even start with your fallacies here. So many places.
How about “you’re racist”? That’ll negate anything and everything I could possibly say in my defense.
eh, you keep going to that well then you’re kinda hanging yourself.
I’m sorry I said a bad word 😢
What does Obamacare have to do with working 25hrs a week max?
Obamacare mandates employers offer healthcare to people working 30 hrs a week. A lot of places will only allow you to be scheduled for less than 30 hours a week, even if you are able and willing to go full time. It’s stupid, but some people have convinced themselves that it’s Obamacare’s fault that their employer is shitty and the subsequent governments have been unwilling to close that loophole. It’s also worth mentioning that employers did this even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren’t.
Thanks. So OOP just has a shitty boss. Got it.
OP also has a shitty mind set because he sides with the oppressor (his boss is the one denying him healthcare) and not the oppressed (everyone that can’t afford healthcare).
If he understood the situation he would not call it “Obongocare”
“Obongocare” also reeks of racism, but that’s a given- it is 4chan after all.
They just work for a typical capitalist company. They’re all like that.
Obamacare didn’t start that…
Employers definitely used it as an excuse to cut a lot of people’s hours. It was a big deal at the time
i’ve personally had more than one job that limited our hours to under 30 because of (i thought federal) laws requiring employers to offer health insurance plans to employees who work 30 or more…
in multiple states….
well before obamacare… now get off my lawn.No one said otherwise. The ACA bill lowered the amount of hours that qualified as full time, which lead to the shittier employers cutting hours again.
no it was already 30 hours
Your state may have had stricter standards than federal
From my comment:
It’s also worth mentioning that employers did this even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren’t.
one of them is health insurance
Also from my comment:
Obamacare mandates employers offer healthcare to people working 30 hrs a week.
even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren’t.
before Obamacare … other things.
one of them is health insurance
obamacare isn’t what you think it is
People often refer to the ACA as Obamacare. Obamacare did change requirements for employer provided health care, not just marketplace plans. So, prior to the ACA full time employees had certain benefits that part time employees did not. Post ACA there were changes to mandatory minimum benefits that employer healthcare packages provided. If you can articulate what the issue you are raising is, that would be helpful.
Also called it Obongocare which made me immediately lose any empathy to them for the racism, but it is 4chan I guess.
99% likely they vote Republican based on the attitide also, which is the root cause of a lot of their complaints (min wage, shitty employee protections, expensive Internet [almost certainly one of the monopoly ISP areas], has to rely on a car because public transit is socialism).
Yeah, the Democratic party sucks by and large for many other reasons, but id rather live in a D city than an R one any day of the week. /end obligatory response to “but Dems”
99% likely they vote Republican based on the attitide also
Are you sure it’s real? Maybe they’re just doing the racism bit for the shock value. You can post anonymous shit in 4chan without actually having any opinions on anything, and half the point of 4chan (AIUI) is getting reactions from people.
4chan users love playing Schrodinger’s Racist, so we’ll never know for sure.
I just treat racism as racism, unless it is set up with the most obvious irony or sarcasm beforehand - this ain’t, seems like a genuine whine at their real situation.
Even ironic racists are racist. There’s no middle ground to be found there.
Same with ironic nazis just being nazis.
No middle ground! None.
Also curious about that. Why not work more and cry less?
I commented above, but in the US some employers will refuse to give you more hours to keep you as a part time employee, since full time employees are guaranteed certain benefits. Those benefits include access to healthcare. They would rather hire 2 people part time than 1 person full time. This is not Obamacare’s fault, but for some reason people in the middle of nowhere who make very little money have convinced themselves that it’s Obama who’s to blame instead of the shitty companies and their shitty owners.
I would also like to add, that it’s sometimes almost impossible to have a 2nd part time job because one or both are not regular schedules. People won’t know when they are working until the week before. If both jobs do this you will end up with scheduling conflicts.
Like it would be better if you were scheduled the same 3 or 4 days a week and had the rest of the week off.
At least then you could either chill or find other activities. But they want you at their mercy and constantly in crisis.
Like you said, All Obamacare did from a company standpoint was make people no longer reliant on their employer for healthcare. So it has no bearing on 25 hr work weeks. Although with subsidies going away, a lot of people are becoming uninsured again.
FMLA was 1993, so Clinton Required lunch breaks, etc are state laws, so not Obama OT pay and some other federal protections were pre-WW2
Oh, definitely. And having 2 part time jobs, if you can manage it, often means you end up working more hours (25+25), and are still not given the benefits of a full time employee because you aren’t technically full time anywhere. It’s terrible and for what it’s worth I do feel bad for anon here. They are drinking the right wing kook aid, which sucks, but it’s an awful position to be in. There’s comments calling them a moron or that they just have to make minor changes etc, but the reality is, especially in these small towns, there’s not a lot of options and acting like it’s the fault of individuals is really missing the point.
For what it’s worth, Obamacare did technically add to the employer burden by making good healthcare a mandatory offering for full time employees, so I understand why some people have convinced themselves it’s the ACAs fault, but employers were doing the 25 hours thing to skirt other benefits way before Obamacare.
Interesting! In summary:
Anon brags with above-average hourly wage. In the meantime, their employer will not let them work more to dodge paying social security.
Anon proceeds to cry that they don’t earn enough money, even though they’re payed above-average.
Anon‘s a moron.
We were paid 19/h doing barista work working 30-39 hours (never allowed to hit 40 because they would have to give us more rights blah blah stuff) had to live in a tiny illegal room for rent and was barely surviving. After we saved up a little bit of money we moved into a van and now we’re in EU.
Mind you, not flashily, not rich, not even making it. Had to get so much help friends and family and especially our significant other just to get here by the skin of our teeth and now that we’re here we’re struggling to even stay due to visa issues. So fucn scared to go back we literally cry almost nightly every day our last chance to stay here slips away only because we just need 1500€ euro more… hhh when will this stress end?
Damn, that sounds rough, sorry to hear - hang in there ❤️
I hate to break it to you 4chan dwelling normie fucking stupid shit head, but that 25 hrs a week is not because of the Affordable Care Act. It’s because of greedy capitalist fucks who are squeezing you for every cent they give you to maximize profit margins well beyond what they need to for a healthy business model.
Yeah that stuck out at me too. I love how the conservative media has thoroughly convinced the average dimwitted moron from flyover states that all of their problems are because of Obamacare and not because of the greed of their employer and the laws that they have enticed Congress to enact in their favor to prevent them from having to employ people full time.
Obamacare includes a minimum hour exemption and it should have been obvious to the authors of the bill that employers would cut hours to hit that mark.
It’s because of greedy capitalist fucks who are squeezing you
A healthcare system that makes everyone dependent on employers really makes it easy for them.
Medicare For All is about a lot more than just healthcare.
It’s kinda both. The ACA was based on Heritage Foundation work that was done for the benefit of insurance companies. Not much consideration was put into the behaviors it would incentivize in employers.
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Healthy businees model will not cut it these days. Infinite growrh or your investors abandon you.
The capitalist fucks are swinging the whip. The 25-hour limit is the whip they are swinging. Both are a problem.
So it’s because of Biden? I will not listen to your sourced explanation BTW
And this is why some people are voluntarily living in their cars, you can’t save for shit when rent eats 2/3 of your paycheck
“Voluntarily”
For many, they get the air quotes
Which seems like a decent plan, untill your house breaks down or runs out fuel in the middle of nowhere, or your apartment gets impounded while you’re at work or using the gym shower, or even just while you’re sleeping in it…, and then auctioned off after the mail notice they sent to your last physical address was not responded to in time.
Its basically not legal, anywhere in the US, right now, to live in a car and park it almost anywhere.
You have to be hypervigilant, to survive this way, and … that just is PTSD, it’ll make you worse at your job, more likely to lose it.
So we’re basically just making a permanent, sub-proletariat class, thats just gonna get funneled into jail or some kind of concentration camp, probably just turned into some kind of functional, if not formal slave class, whether by debt or criminal conviction or both… within, I dunno, 5 years or less?
I wish we lived in a society where the common belief was that a rising tide lifts all ships, instead of this pull yourself up by your bootstraps rugged individualism nonsense.
Funny thing about that one, the original meaning of that bootstrap idiom was to mean basically impossible, and yet it’s used about as unironically as trickle down economics was
I don’t think I’ve heard the bootstrap phrase unironically in the past decade. I truly don’t remember even hearing it outside of contexts like this on reddit or similar.
it’s mostly a boogeyman.
Ah well, last guy who talked like that got his cranium evacuated by the CIA in broad daylight, so uh…
… yeah …
who is coming to help you? or anyone?
until then all you can do is help yourself.
and if you refuse to do that… well you get what you get.
The American experiment has succeeded, because the suffering is the point and the system is working as intended.
Exactly. The wealthy are living beyond reality now and have adapted the population to working for pittance, living in squalor, and are above the law.
America is the nicest 3rd world country anywhere in the world! America #1
It’s a nation of individual freedom taken to the extreme. That includes the freedom for wealthy individuals to exploit everybody else. And Anon is on the side of the exploited. Anon does seem as a person that will always argue for complete freedom, so finally maintaining the exploitation of themselves and the situation they find themselves in.
Why am I not free to ingest what drugs I want if we are so free?
Usually because a group beneficial to rich folks didn’t like it.
Drugs makes the chattel lazy. Can’t have that. It might hurt GDP.
Nixon wanted to legally bash up hippies and black people.
If you’re rich you can.
It’s a nation of individual freedom taken to the extreme.
It is ?.Have you not lived with a HOA ?
No
Thats exactly the point they were making.
The HOA is not a government body its a group of unregulated individuals who claim damages against you and eventually take your home away as per a contract between individuals.
It’s weird to see this kind of comment and also a Ukrainian flag in the username.
It’s weird to see this kind of hypocrisy and also… no, wait, it’s the same username who thinks adult women can’t have small breasts. Kindly fuck off.
I have never made any such claims.
I just ran the numbers through a tax calculator for my province (Quebec). It says that on a salary of $18,000, I would pay about $1,200 for the pension plan and employment insurance. $0 paid for taxes, and I would actually receive a $4,000 as a tax refund.
And, of course Healthcare is free, Quebec has pharmacare so prescription drugs would be free, childcare is about $10/day if I need it, and since my salary is less than $90,000/year, I would qualify for free dental care.
There would also be a few things like the GST refund that would be about $500/year in my pocket.
Canada is not paradise, but I sure prefer living here.
Les enfants étaient un peu traumatisés quand on est allé à LA cet été. Beaucoup de gens qui se parle tout seul ou qui font dodo dans le gazon.
Immediately identified the biggest problem with Canada right there.
What do you mean?
It’s an anti-French-Canadian joke I think.
That was my guess also. I’m just surprised the bigots are also here in some capacity.
“American experiment” I hate that phrase.
America is just an arbitrary area on the ground some of us were born inside. It’s not some erudite experiment and it never was. It’s five corporations in a trench coat pretending to be a country.
This is what people mean by that:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
In its conception is very much was an experiment. “A republic, if you can keep it” so to say.
They’d already failed the experiment before the ink dried: 34 out of 47 founders owned slaves. I guess the natives weren’t too equal, either. Oops!
I mean, I agree, but that’s what people mean. And the perception of a thing is (like it or not) often just as important as the reality of the situation when it comes to how people make decisions. I’m not arguing that America was some shining city on a hill, I’m arguing that people perceived it that way. That said, I think the republic was a step in the right direction and the DOI and constitution had some really forward thinking stuff in them. I think several influential Americans really did care about doing the right thing. Nuance can exist
All governments are experiments in how we organize and order society. Some experiments (governments) lead to greater flourishing than others, like socialism and communism (in theory). We’d have better evidence that those forms of government actually bring what they promise if oligarchies didn’t shut that shit down as soon as it takes route (see South America).
$115 a month phone/internet? Are US prices really that insane? My phone is £4 a month for unlimited calls/SMS and got an unlimited data SIM for a 4G router that costs £24/month.
Yes, in fact that’s on the cheap side for unlimited with decent speeds for both services.
That’s about correct, idk what everyone else is on about, but my phone costs me $70 a month, and my Internet costs $60, and those were the cheapest plans I could get. Not to mention that the reason my phone bill isn’t higher is because I had to buy my phone outright at $600.
Shits expensive here, for no reason other than corporate greed.
Phone service is only expensive because your paying for the privilege of priority. Go with MVNOs and its reasonable, just the service is slower in congested areas.
Anecdotally: I’ve lived in the sort of place he’s describing and the internet was an overpriced monopoly. Farmers and people in larger cities both paid much better prices for better service. But the ISP had some deal where they had exclusive rights to run equipment on the power poles (or other companies needed their technicians present first or some bullshit which they would delay to the point of impracticality).
At $115 he probably didn’t get the lowest speed and could have done like $60 for internet and $40 for phone but yeah, I can believe it.
4/5G, fuck their monopoly. If people leave they will have to actually compete. It’s fine for gaming too, been using 4G for years without an issue. At some point I should upgrade my router to 5G though.
If people leave they will have to actually compete
Assuming people even have the option for a speedy, uncapped 4G/5G, or one with a very high cap. USA is known for abusive pricing on bandwidth, like “every GB used over 50GB will be charged 10 dollars”
Regional mobile companies sound crazy
Most ISPs and cellular plans charge out the ass for arbitrary data limits and faster speeds in the U.S. Some areas have decent ISPs not trying to nickel and dime you but not super common.
Can you only get regional 4/5G plans?
It depends on the plan but for a premium you can get international coverage through most carriers that is to some extent 4G/5G?
that’s cheap. i oftne pay well over $150 a month for basic interent and phone plan for single person.
If he wasnt stuck working 25 hours a week and was able to do 40hr a week he’d be living pretty well.
Why is obamacare limiting him to 25 hours?
Their employer is a scumbag. Instead of being mad the actual problem, they choose to believe their exploitative employer, who throws their hands up and claims “it’s not MY fault you aren’t paid enough!”
Part-time employees don’t get benefits, so they limit you to just under what is considered full-time employment because they hate you.
Isn’t being poor cool?
For similar reasons in my current independent contractor role I’m limited to working less than 32 hours per week, presumably to prevent claims of being misclassified as a contractor.
Now as for why I’m an independent contractor and not a full time employee that’s down to freaking corporate politics following being laid off, leaving for another role and then being begged to come back because they needed my expertise and organizational knowledge (I’ve been heavily trained to pick up the torch for an employee who’s retiring in 2 years, which with the amount of undocumented nonsense and organization-specific decisions it would take a solid 2 years just to get anyone trained up on everything and I’m the only one with the technical and organizational knowledge in the organization right now) so in short they’d greatly reduce costs by bringing me on full time but the CFO won’t approve the job offer (and that’s literally the only stakeholder holding it back)
I worked for one of those for a while. Worked in their office, on their computers, on their schedule, but somehow I was still 1099?
I just stopped showing up one day and let all of their maintenance systems fail. 🤷
They’re taking advantage of you.
I hope you’re spending all your time looking for a new job (I know, I know, go down to the jobbie tree and just get a job, right). But if you can get any kind of leverage or safety net to walk away you might be able to get the job offer by threatening to leave. Best of luck to you
I absolutely have been, but holy crap this job market sucks. I’ve gotten so close on multiple interviews just to get passed up at the last minute (or scarier, they’ll announce they’ve decided not to fill the role at all!)
On the upside, with this contracting gig I’m making more than I made when I worked for them full time while only working ~30 hours a week fully remotely so it’s not a bad gig at all. I’m just frustrated that my boss wants to get me a job offer, the CTO wants to get me a job offer, I have the director of safety saying he wants me to get a job offer, but the CFO just isn’t budging
It’s not, his boss is.
I was born into one of those nowhere low wage “right to work” shitholes and I have some advice for people in them.
Leave. GTFO. Get a passport or move to a state with a high minimum wage. Your family doesn’t matter. Your education options don’t matter. You will be better off somewhere else, I guarantee it.
Move to a state with a high minimum wage
You’d be right back in the same boat. You might make more, but now you live where the cost of living is way higher, too.
California has the second highest minimum wage in the cou try at $16.90/hour, and it’s still not enough to live off of in California.
your quality of life will be much higher. in high wage states you get way more for your dollar in terms of opportunities and services.
in CA op wouldn’t need a car, would have way more opportunity/choice for jobs, and probably could take classes at a community college to improve their life.
in CA op wouldn’t need a car
Maybe if they choose to live in LA or the bay area. You definitely need one in the central valley, foothills or Sierras.
You would not be back in the same boat. Your life will improve. Make the move.
I am 100% doing this. My family doesn’t matter. Fuck my family. My wife is a piece of shit and the kids are too. A random stranger online said it and that’s fucking gospel to me. Good luck to the kids. I’m outta here. Thanks buddy. You are SO right.
I was implying the family as in the larger social network of parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. The leading cause of homelessness is not having exactly that sort of network, I think about a third are foster care children who aged out of the system.
If you have a wife and kids then you’ve already made your bed. Best you can do is take them with you to Colorado or Washington.
How is Obamacare limiting your hours? Are you a truck driver?
I can’t recall the details because it’s been too long since I worked in the States, but it was something like if you work more than 30 hours per week the employer has to pay certain benefits. It’s cheaper for them to hire two 20hr workers than one 40hr worker, and then the two employees aren’t seeing any of the benefits they’re supposed to be getting. I assume that loophole is by oligarchical design.
When I worked in California I had to turn down raises/promotions because they would have knocked me past the cutoff for socialized healthcare, and the increased cost of mandated private health insurance would have been a massive pay cut.
That shit was true long before Obamacare.
While admitting that my recollection is flawed as hell, I remember it being the case that you couldn’t get a full 40 hours, but that you could easily get 30+ hours so long as you didn’t hit 40 enough times to count.
I’m not trying to agree with OOP that the ACA ruined everything, but it is a truly bizarre and flawed alternative to universal healthcare.
For some reason people thought if they used the Republican’s plan for healthcare then republicans would have no choice but to support it.
All that happened is they got a shitty healthcare plan and the Republicana had nowhere to go and nothing to offer as an alternative.
It never ceases to amaze me the way Americans are dealt such a shitty hand these days
Send military help. It took wwii to get rid of (some) of the nazis from power, and it’s looking like it’s going to be the same course of events in america. They’re starting by bullying their neighbors and wanting to take land (greenland, canada, mexico, now venezuela is actually getting attacked), and you wanna bet that we’re going to see a repeat of germany/russia’s agreement to not attack each other and split poland (the eu)?
My personal bet is that everything will kick off because trump decides to froth out enough hatred about china to have a fishing dispute escalate into military actions.
imo, everyone right now left, right, and center are all coping on the idea that things “return to normal” (ie. unsustainable ratfucking) when trump croaks.
i…don’t think this happens, what ends up happening who the fuck knows, but i doubt it’s good. personally, my guess is the people who said violence will be required to remove them require violence to be removed, but i would be happy to be wrong there.
i definitely tell you nobody from outside the US will be coming to save america though
It happened to me a decade ago before I switched careers. I did substitute teaching and once I hit 29 hours for the week they’d send me home so I wouldn’t qualify for healthcare. I was regularly told I was one of the good subs, and I loved working with the staff and kids.
I tore my rotator cuff one summer and just had to grin and bear it for a year because I had no coverage and was worried about the bills. Thanks Uncle Sam!
I was working floating hours (unpredictable shifts, can’t work second job easily) for a chain store, I did this for the promised health care plan after six months employment.
I was fired one week before my insurance was to start; I was accused of stealing by a manager (who was doing the stealing himself).
I have had the exact same thing coincidentally happen at two other shit jobs, all three times it was actually the night manager. So they all had insurance and much higher pay, and they still stole from the business and screwed over their poor coworkers who had to be available for three different shifts every day of the week (unlike them, they worked the same shift every day).
Things are much worse now, sorry kids.
Class traitors suck. People that lean into the crab in the bucket mentality is part of the reason we’re in this mess. Sorry you dealt with that.
businesses with over 50 full time employees are required under obamacare to offer minimum health insurance. it doesn’t have to be affordable. most full time workers can’t afford their company’s family insurance, and don’t qualify for any subsidies because their employer offers insurance.
some places it is cheaper to hire only part timers. other places they just get the option with the lowest employer cost share.
health insurance in the US is a byzantine maze of combinations that change radically from state to state, town to town, and business to business.
edit: so, aflac offers a supplemental insurance, so your employer can buy a high deductible plan, and aflac steps in to pay enough of the remainder to make it a low deductible plan. you have two insurance cards, and a third party insurance management firm who takes a cut just to manage it all.
Those companies would be screwing you regardless, you can’t get a company to do anything but acquire profit without government to restrain them, otherwise they run the show and would own you as a slave. Only government limits their power, which would be absolute otherwise.
Unfortunately, our government is now under the control of corporations and has been for some time (since at least “money is free speech” and “corporations are people” court victories), defeating it’s purpose. We used to break up monopolies and remove business licenses for unlawful practices! The good old days.
Hmmm, if corporations are people, and they make and employ AI, that means AI is people or something. So that’s kinda neat.
Clearly government has failed in limiting their power.
I will not consider a corporation or AI a ‘person’ until Texas publicly executes one.
The killer is volatility—irregular hours + fixed bills = constant crisis mode.
I don’t blame anyone who works a job for it not paying a living wage.
You do our masters arguing for them
This is killing me in a different way.
Weekly pay for monthly bills.
Most of my bills land between the 10th and 20th of the month, which means I have to set aside and reserve money from my other paycheques to cover that range.
I am bad at doing so.
Open an account for rent and other known monthly expenses put 25% of that total from each check(or 50% if paid 2x a month). For utilities that are variable use an average of the 5 highest bills you gotten for each account. direct deposit some amount into a account for emergency savings. And the rest to your main account. NEVER steal from your bills account. You can add an amount for fun money as well.
That would be a great idea if I had any discernable savings. I expect I need at least half a month of money in my bills account to balance everything out, for those weeks that I am paid less than what I need to pay for bills.
That’s the point of setting up the bills account. If you deposit directly to it each check the amount you need based on how many checks you get. You won’t have to worry about finding your bills money when they are due and you’ll know how much you have to spend on other stuff because bills are already accounted for. If paid weekly put 25% of your total bills(rent, phone, Internet, gas, electric water ect.). For easy math let’s say total bills are $1600 a month you’d but $400 each pay check into the account ideally using direct deposit so it’s automatic. If paid every 2 weeks $800 a check. For usage based bills (water electric ect put enough for worst case bills in each month) over time you’ll build up extra money but leave it alone until you have at least 3 months extra in the account ( it could save your ass some day).
Let’s say your take home is $580 a week $400 to bill which leaves you with $180 a week for food and gas and fun. Seems pretty shitty and I’d recommend finding a cheaper place to live or get a roommate if possible in this scenario but at least you can clearly see how much you can actually spend while your bills are already accounted for. Is still recommend taking another $30 out leaving $150 for food and gas and put it directly into a savings account. Or split it $20(emergency fund) $10(fun stuff).
Don’t buy fun stuff (games, drugs, alcohol, movies, eating out) unless you can cover it from fun stuff account.
Emergency fund is for car repairs medical bills loss of income not a new TV or vacation.
If you get a raise 90% of the new take home should go to 80/20 split emergency/ fun stuff. If you can get at least 3 months of income (6 months would be better) saved in your emergency fund you can re-allocate some of it to food /gas day to day account and fun stuff account but only do that if you need to save your sanity, because in my experience every time you feel like you’re making progress some big bill will come along and wipe it out.
This all sounds great until you realize that you need time to run up to this, or a modicum of savings in order to make it happen.
Your numbers are optimistic at best. My bills vary and they’re more than 70% of my income (roughly).
It’s more efficient to deposit my money into a bill payment account, then take out what I can spend from that.
Guess what I already do?
Guess how much “spend” I have, per week, that needs to cover all of my gas, food, and everything else? I’m not even saving a dollar, and my available money per week is around $200.
That seems great until you realize that I’m Canadian and it’s Canadian dollars, and $200 CAD is around $150 USD.
I’m employed, full time, in a specialized field, and I can spend $100 USD a week on food because I need the extra $50 for incidentals and gas.
I don’t need a budget. I have a budget. I need a raise.
Ask for a raise. One thing that might help you stretch your money a bit further is utilizing a food pantry or food bank. Not sure if they are as common in Canada.
I was only off by $30 in my scenario compared to your situation. Having multiple accounts and using direct deposit to help divide your budget upfront just makes it easier.
I’m lucky that money isn’t a major concern for me at this point in my life, but earlier in my career when my ex-gf had a significant amount of credit card debt doing our budget this way really helped and got her to be debt free.
I’m not sure why you think my scenario requires savings to start, If you’re already paying all your bills. This is just a tool to help manage your budget.
I need savings because all my bills land in the same week-and-a-half timespan.
So there needs to be all of the money in the account before that happens.
I know, it’ll balance itself out in the long term, but the weeks I don’t have bills to pay are usually the weeks that I need to refill the pantry, and end up spending more than I have allocated for that week so that I can eat.
I need to accumulate the base amount to pay all my bills when they come due, before I can really get started.
I know it seems really simple, once all my bills are done for the month, start then! Except there’s probably incidentals, like the food that I mentioned, that need to be purchased, that I just can’t afford on the $100 available for me that week. So I take what’s needed, and then I’m behind again. The cycle continues.
I had a very good system for this when I was getting paid twice a month. I took the ~400 or 450 or whatever (again CAD) from each paycheck, and I split my bills so that, by cost, they were roughly split between before-the-15th and after-the-15th pay periods. I’d get paid, take my share, let the bank do the rest, and when I get a notification for a bill I need to pay by hand, from my calendar app, I go and pay it in full.
Then I ended up with weekly pay and suddenly, I’m paying 130%+ of a weeks income to pay my bills on the same week.
It fucked me up man. I’m still pretty wrecked by it and it’s been like this for more than a year.
If you can afford $9/mo, YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a great app for managing income and expenses that don’t necessarily align on a calendar schedule.
I get that budgeting won’t make up for insufficient income, but if it’s actually the financial habits that are holding you back, this app works wonders for learning how to properly plan your expenses.
If you’re into open source stuff and are willing to spend more effort tinkering, ActualBudget is the same concept, but lacks some QoL features (notably, auto-importing transactions from your bank/credit card statements). But all the data stays in your hands, not some company, so that’s good.
