I just wanted to point out that now days, public bad behavior is often permanently documented on the internet. It turns out that a large number of Americans do not know how to properly park their cars. It also turns out that the old adage, "The customer is always right," is actually proven false many times each day. There are tons of idiots, jerks, egotists, and any other brands of people with poor or uncivil behavior out there. It also turns out that many of them are documented in the one place that it is impossible to completely remove data. So, next time you are in a hurry and consider parking in the middle of the path in a parking lot because it will only take a few seconds to return your Redbox movie (yes, I saw this happen last week and it took almost five minutes), reconsider.
If you want to have your faith in humanity destroyed, Not Always Right is a great website documenting some of most stupid and inconsiderate customers on the face of the planet. These are stories about customers who believe that because they are the customer, they must be right. One thing you might find is that many Americans think Canada is part of the U.S. and expect to be able to use U.S. money in Canada. You will probably also discover that a lot of Americans have a hard time recognizing when a problem was created by their own actions.
A great site for making you wonder about the effectiveness of U.S. drivers tests is Bad Parking. There are actually several web sites dedicated to this subject. Bad Parking collects photographic documentation of poorly parked cars. Most images show cars parked crossing the lines in parking lots, making it difficult for other cars to find a space. The occasional image shows a car parked entirely outside of the parking spaces, where they will interfere with traffic. Even more rarely, you may find a car parked in the middle of a public street. It also turns out that there are some Americans who do not realize that it is illegal to park in front of a driveway or other exit. While some sites are kind enough to blur license plates, this one does not. As such, some of its photos may qualify as evidence of traffic violations.
This is not all. There are plenty of other web sites documenting various uncivil or otherwise stupid activities perpetrated by people. YouTube has plenty of videos showing people doing really stupid things and often paying fairly severe consequences. Darwin Awards documents ways people manage to accidentally kill themselves or make themselves infertile by their own stupidity. There are plenty of websites dedicated to stupid things done during the commission of a crime. Thinking before acting or speaking is becoming more and more important, as it becomes ever easier to permanently document poor behavior.
The point with all of this is that doing stupid or uncivil things is exactly that: stupid and uncivil. Really, people should try to be intelligent and civil, even when no one is looking. Now, though, stupid or uncivil acts may result in long term embarrassment and even other harmful consequences. Many employers now search the names of job applicants online to make sure they have not done anything that might reflect poorly on their business. Even a photo from a drinking party can result in rejection for employment, regardless of qualification. Many people have discovered that putting videos or pictures of their bad behavior on Facebook can destroy many of the most desirable employment opportunities. The cost of bad behavior is quickly getting very high, because of how easy it is to document and share. Something like parking inappropriately could jeopardize even a really low end job, like food delivery, if some annoyed person happens to take a picture of your poor choice and post it on the internet. If you cannot even park properly, how can an employer trust you to drive safely? Even if the job does not involve driving, a person who does not conform to social conventions of civility cannot be trusted with any job where they might ever interact with other people.
Serious consequences aside though, and the entire point of this article, publicly documented poor behavior will definitely result in mocking and reputation loss. Even if they never meet you or figure out who you are, consider that every time you are rude to a cashier, park your car poorly, or otherwise behave poorly when other people are around, you could end up on a website where millions of people make fun of your stupidity every day for the rest of your life.
21 August 2014
19 August 2014
Vaccine and Vitamin K Refusal
I just read this article from Scientific American. While I have great respect for the magazine, I find the author somewhat lacking. In fact, I have found a great deal lacking in nearly every author promoting the medical industry and attacking skeptics of modern medicine. Now, I am not saying that the medical industry is wrong, but it is at fault in a large degree for the various movements opposing vaccination and other things like vitamin K shots or eye drops for newborns.
The primary problem is not the media and movements encouraging parents to avoid potentially life saving treatments for their children. The problem is general mistrust of doctors, which has been caused by their own poor behavior. My wife is a doula (a professional labor coach and educator). We have chosen to forgo both the vitamin K shots and the eye drops that hospitals typically give all newborns. Our first child was born in a birthing center, where we were educated on all of the risks involved with both sides. Further, we did some research of our own. We found that the risk of complications is extremely low without the treatments. Contrary to the article, both treatments do indeed carry risks, however they are also extremely low. Based on our knowledge, we chose not to allow the midwives to administer either of the treatments. Similarly, we have been very selective about vaccinations. Now, let me first assure you that we do not believe the claims (which have been proven false) that vaccines cause autism. This is a bunch of crock spread by celebrities that have no medical education. Our first reason to limit vaccination is that many vaccines contain small amounts of latex, and my wife and at least one of our children has shown a sensitivity to latex. Latex allergies can quickly become life threatening with repeated exposure, so we chose to limit vaccinations to limit latex exposure. We have had our children vaccinated for a few things. These are diseases that either have a high probability of fatality or permanent injury or that cannot be cured once contracted. While I have seen no empirical data on this, I have observed that people who get every single vaccine and thus rarely get sick tend to fare less well when they do get sick, while people who avoid common vaccines that are mostly just for convenience (the flu vaccine for most people) tend to get over nearly anything fairly quickly. So, why would anyone choose to forgo even vaccines for higher risk diseases?
As a doula, by wife is present when her patients give birth. This typically occurs in a hospital. Additionally, we have had several of our children born in hospitals. My wife has had multiple experiences where doctors or nurses administer treatments without informing or consulting the patient. In many cases, these treatments have not been strictly necessary and were administered either for the convenience of the patient or for the convenience of the medical professional. I am also aware of instances where a doctor has recommended an unnecessary, high risk treatment to a patient for personal convenience. In one case, the doctor used scare tactics to convince the patient to agree to a cesearan section because the birth was taking too long and was going to cut into a birthday party the doctor wanted to attend. In one case where my wife was present, the doctor and nurses completely ignored a list of documented requests from the patient without any medical reason for doing so. In this last case, the patient is now showing symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder related to pregnancy and hospitals. This is why people refuse vaccinations and other treatments for their children. After an experience where your human rights are blatantly violated by medical professionals, it becomes very natural to distrust the medical industry in general.
The problem is not those who spread lies about potential side effects of vaccinations or other treatments. The problem is the doctors that mistreat patients and breed mistrust. Sadly, the most common place this occurs is in hospitals. Private practices and family doctors tend to be much better at informing patients about treatments, with one small exception (I'll get to this). In hospitals, it is very common for nurses and doctors to treat patients without ever discussing the treatment with the patient. With births, doctors will frequently tell the patient a treatment will be administered without any concern for the desires of the patient (unnecessary C-sections and inductions are a very major problem in the US, and typically the mother is never even offered a choice). This is wrong, and to most people it is clearly a violation of human rights. It really should come as no surprise that many parents are willing to trust unknowns over the people who have violated them and lied to them.
Now I want to look at the one exception. Vaccinations always carry risks. In fact, any time the skin is pierced with something, there is a risk of infection. Modern sanitation practices have reduced this risk to almost nothing, but it does exist. There is also a risk that any given patient is allergic to something in a vaccine. Again, this is typically very small. Most pre-drawn vaccines contain latex, and the rubber stopper on vaccine containers that are not pre-drawn frequently contain latex. For those with a threshold allergy to latex (this is the kind of allergy that becomes more severe with each exposure), even this small exposure to latex can be life threatening. Even if it is not, it can cause the next reaction to be more severe. Overall though, for most people the risk of complications from vaccination is extremely small. In fact, the risks are so small that beyond asking about allergies first, I do not see any reason why doctors should be forced to discuss them in detail.
On the other hand though, there is the risk of serious complications from catching the disease that the vaccination would have prevented. For instance, the flu almost never kills. When it does, it is almost exclusively very young children and extremely old people. On occasion, it kills someone else who has a severely compromised immune system. Outside of these easily identifiable groups, the flu is merely a brief and slightly painful inconvenience. Chicken pox is even less severe than the flu (though it does carry the risk of getting shingles later in life, which rarely kills but is extremely painful). Getting these trivial diseases does little more than cause inconvenience, but they can ultimately strengthen the immune system (something like exercise strengthens muscles). Now, these two diseases are trivial, but fairly common. That is not true of the rest of the diseases that we typically vaccinate against. Most vaccines provide immunity for diseases that less than a percent of a percent of the population will ever be exposed to. Further, many of these diseases, while they can be severe, are no longer as deadly as they were when we did not know how to treat them. The chance of serious complications, when combined with the extremely low chance of exposure, may even start to approach the potential risk caused just by getting the vaccine in the first place. This is what doctors do not tell you. Most vaccinations will never even matter and may even increase the overall risk of harm.
How can we deal with this? First, I think that doctors should be required by law to discuss both potential negative and positive consequences of any treatment with the patient or guardian before administering any treatment (except in serious emergency cases where there is not time, in which case the discussion should take place after the emergency situation is over). Until this happens though, parents and patients will have to figure out how to deal with these things on their own. I would suggest asking you doctor a lot of questions. You can legally refuse any treatment (the doctor may ask you to sign a wavier though). This means that you can tell the doctor that you will not permit treatment until you are fully informed of all potential risks involved. You can also search the internet, but make sure you find sources from both sides of any debate, otherwise you will only get half of the knowledge you need to make an informed decision (also, learn to distinguish reputable sources from random people running their mouths; in medicine, celebrities are not reputable sources). Look for numbers. If you find something saying that some treatment increases the chances of some horrible outcome by 50%, try to find what it is 50% of. If the chances are 1 in 1 million, that means they are only 1.5 in one million with the treatment. Relatively, that 50% increase seems large, but the actual probability is still extremely low.
There is one other thing doctors will rarely tell you. Most vaccinations now are given to improve "herd immunity." What this means is, the chance that your child will get the measles, even without the vaccination, is almost non-existent. Your child will probably not benefit at all from it, in fact. Many vaccines target diseases that are almost extinct (at least in the 1st world). The goal of the vaccinations is to keep the disease isolated or even to eliminate it, not to benefit the individual getting the vaccine. This is called herd immunity, because it benefits the group (or "herd") as a whole, but it almost never benefits the individual. In other words, there is almost no individual risk of getting the disease to balance the negative risks associated with getting the vaccine. Now, in case you are feeling disgust that doctors would value the well being of the abstract herd over the well being of your child, you should know that this herd immunity gained from widespread vaccination is what eliminated small pox. It was so effective that we no longer vaccinate for small pox because the risk is almost literally zero. Now, with that in mind, feel free to form your own opinions.
Here is our solution to the problem. My wife and I avoid vaccinations for trivial diseases like chicken pox or the flu. If there was an extremely severe strain of the flu going around (and a vaccine was made available quickly enough; for the flu, they usually are not), then we might consider getting our children vaccinated. Otherwise, we do not consider the risk, though small, worth the minor convenience. We also opted out of many of the vaccinations for extremely uncommon diseases with very low risk of permanent harm. We did, however, get our children vaccinated for one of the hepatitis versions that is difficult or impossible to cure once contracted. One reason is that we are occasionally exposed to people who have recently come from a country where that disease is more common; the other is that a serious disease that cannot be cured is probably worth getting vaccinated for, even if it is pretty rare in the US. The hepatitis vaccination happens to be commonly administered in combination with a few other vaccinations, so we decided to get the combo, because the difference in risk between the single and the combo is negligible (if existent at all).
Our solution to the vitamin K and eye drops was to opt out. Our reasoning is this: Most complications requiring vitamin K occur in the hospital. Other complications are extremely rare (and at least one is genetic, and neither of us has any family history of it). The eye drops are designed to more or less sanitize the eyes after birth, in case some dangerous bacteria got into the eyes. This is also extremely rare. At the time, the eye drops were made of some silver compound that happens to be toxic to humans as well. There has been no research showing the silver drops to be safe for humans, so we decided the risk was higher than the benefits and opted out. (Note that most hospitals are now using a different compound for this. I do not know anything about the safety record of the new compound.) Anyhow, we have opted out of these two things with all four of our children, without any issues.
Now, all of this is personal choice. I do not want to convince you to vaccinate or to avoid vaccination. Similarly, I am not trying to encourage or discourage trusting doctors. Not all doctors are as negligent as those you frequently hear about. I want two things to come out of this article. First, I want regular people to know that they do not have to let doctors bully them. You never have to accept treatment you do not want. You can ask about the risks of a treatment, and you can refuse it if you are not willing to take the risk (this is even true of "mandatory" things, like the IV our local hospital requires for birthing mothers). You also have the ability to learn for yourself and to keep yourself well informed (most hospitals offer free WiFi; bring your tablet, smart phone, or laptop, but make sure you find reputable sources of information). Second, I really would like to see doctors be held more accountable. An honest mistake or impossible situation can happen where the doctor may not be entirely responsible, but cases where the doctor makes a judgment call without any concern for the desire or well being of the patient should never be permitted. No person should be practicing medicine who is willing to subject a patient to unnecessary surgery to get to a party on time, and a patient who comes away from the hospital with post traumatic stress disorder due to poor treatment from the nurses and doctors should be compensated very well for the suffering (not to mention be compensated for treatment for the PTSD). If accountability were higher, fewer doctors would mistreat patients, people would trust doctors more, and scare tactics and lies designed to trick people into avoiding beneficial treatments would be far less effective.
The primary problem is not the media and movements encouraging parents to avoid potentially life saving treatments for their children. The problem is general mistrust of doctors, which has been caused by their own poor behavior. My wife is a doula (a professional labor coach and educator). We have chosen to forgo both the vitamin K shots and the eye drops that hospitals typically give all newborns. Our first child was born in a birthing center, where we were educated on all of the risks involved with both sides. Further, we did some research of our own. We found that the risk of complications is extremely low without the treatments. Contrary to the article, both treatments do indeed carry risks, however they are also extremely low. Based on our knowledge, we chose not to allow the midwives to administer either of the treatments. Similarly, we have been very selective about vaccinations. Now, let me first assure you that we do not believe the claims (which have been proven false) that vaccines cause autism. This is a bunch of crock spread by celebrities that have no medical education. Our first reason to limit vaccination is that many vaccines contain small amounts of latex, and my wife and at least one of our children has shown a sensitivity to latex. Latex allergies can quickly become life threatening with repeated exposure, so we chose to limit vaccinations to limit latex exposure. We have had our children vaccinated for a few things. These are diseases that either have a high probability of fatality or permanent injury or that cannot be cured once contracted. While I have seen no empirical data on this, I have observed that people who get every single vaccine and thus rarely get sick tend to fare less well when they do get sick, while people who avoid common vaccines that are mostly just for convenience (the flu vaccine for most people) tend to get over nearly anything fairly quickly. So, why would anyone choose to forgo even vaccines for higher risk diseases?
As a doula, by wife is present when her patients give birth. This typically occurs in a hospital. Additionally, we have had several of our children born in hospitals. My wife has had multiple experiences where doctors or nurses administer treatments without informing or consulting the patient. In many cases, these treatments have not been strictly necessary and were administered either for the convenience of the patient or for the convenience of the medical professional. I am also aware of instances where a doctor has recommended an unnecessary, high risk treatment to a patient for personal convenience. In one case, the doctor used scare tactics to convince the patient to agree to a cesearan section because the birth was taking too long and was going to cut into a birthday party the doctor wanted to attend. In one case where my wife was present, the doctor and nurses completely ignored a list of documented requests from the patient without any medical reason for doing so. In this last case, the patient is now showing symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder related to pregnancy and hospitals. This is why people refuse vaccinations and other treatments for their children. After an experience where your human rights are blatantly violated by medical professionals, it becomes very natural to distrust the medical industry in general.
The problem is not those who spread lies about potential side effects of vaccinations or other treatments. The problem is the doctors that mistreat patients and breed mistrust. Sadly, the most common place this occurs is in hospitals. Private practices and family doctors tend to be much better at informing patients about treatments, with one small exception (I'll get to this). In hospitals, it is very common for nurses and doctors to treat patients without ever discussing the treatment with the patient. With births, doctors will frequently tell the patient a treatment will be administered without any concern for the desires of the patient (unnecessary C-sections and inductions are a very major problem in the US, and typically the mother is never even offered a choice). This is wrong, and to most people it is clearly a violation of human rights. It really should come as no surprise that many parents are willing to trust unknowns over the people who have violated them and lied to them.
Now I want to look at the one exception. Vaccinations always carry risks. In fact, any time the skin is pierced with something, there is a risk of infection. Modern sanitation practices have reduced this risk to almost nothing, but it does exist. There is also a risk that any given patient is allergic to something in a vaccine. Again, this is typically very small. Most pre-drawn vaccines contain latex, and the rubber stopper on vaccine containers that are not pre-drawn frequently contain latex. For those with a threshold allergy to latex (this is the kind of allergy that becomes more severe with each exposure), even this small exposure to latex can be life threatening. Even if it is not, it can cause the next reaction to be more severe. Overall though, for most people the risk of complications from vaccination is extremely small. In fact, the risks are so small that beyond asking about allergies first, I do not see any reason why doctors should be forced to discuss them in detail.
On the other hand though, there is the risk of serious complications from catching the disease that the vaccination would have prevented. For instance, the flu almost never kills. When it does, it is almost exclusively very young children and extremely old people. On occasion, it kills someone else who has a severely compromised immune system. Outside of these easily identifiable groups, the flu is merely a brief and slightly painful inconvenience. Chicken pox is even less severe than the flu (though it does carry the risk of getting shingles later in life, which rarely kills but is extremely painful). Getting these trivial diseases does little more than cause inconvenience, but they can ultimately strengthen the immune system (something like exercise strengthens muscles). Now, these two diseases are trivial, but fairly common. That is not true of the rest of the diseases that we typically vaccinate against. Most vaccines provide immunity for diseases that less than a percent of a percent of the population will ever be exposed to. Further, many of these diseases, while they can be severe, are no longer as deadly as they were when we did not know how to treat them. The chance of serious complications, when combined with the extremely low chance of exposure, may even start to approach the potential risk caused just by getting the vaccine in the first place. This is what doctors do not tell you. Most vaccinations will never even matter and may even increase the overall risk of harm.
How can we deal with this? First, I think that doctors should be required by law to discuss both potential negative and positive consequences of any treatment with the patient or guardian before administering any treatment (except in serious emergency cases where there is not time, in which case the discussion should take place after the emergency situation is over). Until this happens though, parents and patients will have to figure out how to deal with these things on their own. I would suggest asking you doctor a lot of questions. You can legally refuse any treatment (the doctor may ask you to sign a wavier though). This means that you can tell the doctor that you will not permit treatment until you are fully informed of all potential risks involved. You can also search the internet, but make sure you find sources from both sides of any debate, otherwise you will only get half of the knowledge you need to make an informed decision (also, learn to distinguish reputable sources from random people running their mouths; in medicine, celebrities are not reputable sources). Look for numbers. If you find something saying that some treatment increases the chances of some horrible outcome by 50%, try to find what it is 50% of. If the chances are 1 in 1 million, that means they are only 1.5 in one million with the treatment. Relatively, that 50% increase seems large, but the actual probability is still extremely low.
There is one other thing doctors will rarely tell you. Most vaccinations now are given to improve "herd immunity." What this means is, the chance that your child will get the measles, even without the vaccination, is almost non-existent. Your child will probably not benefit at all from it, in fact. Many vaccines target diseases that are almost extinct (at least in the 1st world). The goal of the vaccinations is to keep the disease isolated or even to eliminate it, not to benefit the individual getting the vaccine. This is called herd immunity, because it benefits the group (or "herd") as a whole, but it almost never benefits the individual. In other words, there is almost no individual risk of getting the disease to balance the negative risks associated with getting the vaccine. Now, in case you are feeling disgust that doctors would value the well being of the abstract herd over the well being of your child, you should know that this herd immunity gained from widespread vaccination is what eliminated small pox. It was so effective that we no longer vaccinate for small pox because the risk is almost literally zero. Now, with that in mind, feel free to form your own opinions.
Here is our solution to the problem. My wife and I avoid vaccinations for trivial diseases like chicken pox or the flu. If there was an extremely severe strain of the flu going around (and a vaccine was made available quickly enough; for the flu, they usually are not), then we might consider getting our children vaccinated. Otherwise, we do not consider the risk, though small, worth the minor convenience. We also opted out of many of the vaccinations for extremely uncommon diseases with very low risk of permanent harm. We did, however, get our children vaccinated for one of the hepatitis versions that is difficult or impossible to cure once contracted. One reason is that we are occasionally exposed to people who have recently come from a country where that disease is more common; the other is that a serious disease that cannot be cured is probably worth getting vaccinated for, even if it is pretty rare in the US. The hepatitis vaccination happens to be commonly administered in combination with a few other vaccinations, so we decided to get the combo, because the difference in risk between the single and the combo is negligible (if existent at all).
Our solution to the vitamin K and eye drops was to opt out. Our reasoning is this: Most complications requiring vitamin K occur in the hospital. Other complications are extremely rare (and at least one is genetic, and neither of us has any family history of it). The eye drops are designed to more or less sanitize the eyes after birth, in case some dangerous bacteria got into the eyes. This is also extremely rare. At the time, the eye drops were made of some silver compound that happens to be toxic to humans as well. There has been no research showing the silver drops to be safe for humans, so we decided the risk was higher than the benefits and opted out. (Note that most hospitals are now using a different compound for this. I do not know anything about the safety record of the new compound.) Anyhow, we have opted out of these two things with all four of our children, without any issues.
Now, all of this is personal choice. I do not want to convince you to vaccinate or to avoid vaccination. Similarly, I am not trying to encourage or discourage trusting doctors. Not all doctors are as negligent as those you frequently hear about. I want two things to come out of this article. First, I want regular people to know that they do not have to let doctors bully them. You never have to accept treatment you do not want. You can ask about the risks of a treatment, and you can refuse it if you are not willing to take the risk (this is even true of "mandatory" things, like the IV our local hospital requires for birthing mothers). You also have the ability to learn for yourself and to keep yourself well informed (most hospitals offer free WiFi; bring your tablet, smart phone, or laptop, but make sure you find reputable sources of information). Second, I really would like to see doctors be held more accountable. An honest mistake or impossible situation can happen where the doctor may not be entirely responsible, but cases where the doctor makes a judgment call without any concern for the desire or well being of the patient should never be permitted. No person should be practicing medicine who is willing to subject a patient to unnecessary surgery to get to a party on time, and a patient who comes away from the hospital with post traumatic stress disorder due to poor treatment from the nurses and doctors should be compensated very well for the suffering (not to mention be compensated for treatment for the PTSD). If accountability were higher, fewer doctors would mistreat patients, people would trust doctors more, and scare tactics and lies designed to trick people into avoiding beneficial treatments would be far less effective.
27 July 2014
Peace vs Prosecution
I would like to share an LDS scripture with you, but first I want to give some background.
All around, I see people breaking laws or otherwise causing harm to others. I am not talking about things like theft or speeding (ok, I see tons of speeding, but that is a different matter). I am talking about things like doctors forcing or cajoling their patients into accepting treatments that are not in their best interest. I am talking about housing providers ignoring laws requiring them to keep housing suitable for their tenants. I am also talking about businesses cheating their employees deliberately or due to ignorance. These things bother me. I have a policy of social intolerance of bad behavior, but most LDS people seem to think that it is better to sacrifice their freedoms than to do something that could be construed as uncivil or otherwise not getting along with others. The LDS religion teaches tolerance of the beliefs of others, but many act as if they believe this means they should tolerate harmful or illegal actions against them by others. If you are LDS, let me correct your thoughts on this. If you are not, feel free to consider what I am about to present anyway.
The LDS book of scripture called The Doctrine and Covenants (often abbreviated D&C) contains the following verse (D&C 134:11):
While I have found no LDS scripture stating this, in my personal opinion, when a person deliberately chooses to allow illegal or harmful behavior to continue, that person becomes complicit in that illegal behavior. While the law is unlikely to prosecute if the behavior is ever reported by someone else, I believe that God will hold you accountable for harm that happens because you are too lazy or fearful to do your civil duty as stated in the above mentioned scripture.
Here I would like to admit that I am not perfect. I have been in a few circumstances where I chose not to press charges against a doctor or a landlord, where, according to this scripture, I should have. In both cases, I did not want to cause contention. In hindsight, I should have. That doctor has probably caused emotional harm to multiple patients since then, which I could have prevented. I feel bad, and justifiably so, that I did nothing to prevent that harm. Since then, however, I have made some better choices. Long ago I mentioned this, but I will mention it again. I once gained knowledge of a labor law violation involving a minor. Even though I was not directly impacted by the violation, I chose to report it. The employer was raided by the labor department, and evidence of the violation was found. Fines were given (I do not know how much, but fines for minor violations can get into the tens of thousands, and the violation occurred multiple times). That employer will likely never make that mistake again. I am almost certain the employee who was harmed will never have that happen again with that employer either. My action may have hurt one employer (who earned the harm), but it saved a lot of innocent employees from harm. Also, by reporting the violation, I strengthened the law. If violations of the law are never reported, it is almost as if the law does not exist. By reporting a violation, I made it clear to those violating the law that they cannot get away with breaking the law without consequences. A law that is not enforced is worth very little and does almost nothing to protect anyone, but a law that is enforced justly serves its purpose well. My actions helped a law to be enforced that otherwise would have been useless (in that particular case).
Anyhow, any LDS person who believes that convenience and peace are more valuable than enforcing the law is a hypocrite. Besides the above scripture, there are many LDS scriptures stating that even killing is justified when it is in defense of yourself, your family, your friends, your property, or your rights and freedoms. Maybe the U.S. is a sue-happy nation where too many frivolous lawsuits occur. Choosing not to press charges when lawsuits are justified will not improve the situation, and in fact, this act of giving up your legal rights and protections will actually make it worse for everyone.
All around, I see people breaking laws or otherwise causing harm to others. I am not talking about things like theft or speeding (ok, I see tons of speeding, but that is a different matter). I am talking about things like doctors forcing or cajoling their patients into accepting treatments that are not in their best interest. I am talking about housing providers ignoring laws requiring them to keep housing suitable for their tenants. I am also talking about businesses cheating their employees deliberately or due to ignorance. These things bother me. I have a policy of social intolerance of bad behavior, but most LDS people seem to think that it is better to sacrifice their freedoms than to do something that could be construed as uncivil or otherwise not getting along with others. The LDS religion teaches tolerance of the beliefs of others, but many act as if they believe this means they should tolerate harmful or illegal actions against them by others. If you are LDS, let me correct your thoughts on this. If you are not, feel free to consider what I am about to present anyway.
The LDS book of scripture called The Doctrine and Covenants (often abbreviated D&C) contains the following verse (D&C 134:11):
We believe that men should appeal to the civil law for redress of all wrongs and grievances, where personal abuse is inflicted or the right of property or character infringed, where such laws exist as will protect the same; but we believe that all men are justified in defending themselves, their friends, and property, and the government, from the unlawful assaults and encroachments of all persons in times of exigency, where immediate appeal cannot be made to the laws, and relief afforded.Note that the first part says "We believe that men should..." It does not say "can," "may," or even "are justified in." It says "should." This is Church doctrine. While it is not explicitly worded as a commandment ("thou shalt"), it does use very similar wording ("shalt" and "should" are conjugations of the same root). Now, I want to be clear here. This is not just about getting what you are legally entitled to. It goes much further than this. If you read the rest of section 134, you will find more Church doctrine stating that members of the LDS Church (well, and everyone else) have a responsibility to uphold the just laws of the land in part by turning in people who break it. Again, this is not just about getting what you are legally entitled to. This is about enforcement of the law in general. If you are mistreated by a doctor, and you choose not to take legal action against that doctor, you are allowing that doctor to mistreat others by your inaction. If you choose not enforce laws requiring your landlord to keep your home or apartment rental in livable conditions, you are potentially allowing others to come to harm by your inaction. If you do not report an employer who is cheating you out of overtime pay or who is otherwise cheating or harming you, you are allowing that employer to cheat or harm other employees. Some of these people who are coming to harm because of your inaction may not even realize that they are being treated in a way that is prohibited by the law.
While I have found no LDS scripture stating this, in my personal opinion, when a person deliberately chooses to allow illegal or harmful behavior to continue, that person becomes complicit in that illegal behavior. While the law is unlikely to prosecute if the behavior is ever reported by someone else, I believe that God will hold you accountable for harm that happens because you are too lazy or fearful to do your civil duty as stated in the above mentioned scripture.
Here I would like to admit that I am not perfect. I have been in a few circumstances where I chose not to press charges against a doctor or a landlord, where, according to this scripture, I should have. In both cases, I did not want to cause contention. In hindsight, I should have. That doctor has probably caused emotional harm to multiple patients since then, which I could have prevented. I feel bad, and justifiably so, that I did nothing to prevent that harm. Since then, however, I have made some better choices. Long ago I mentioned this, but I will mention it again. I once gained knowledge of a labor law violation involving a minor. Even though I was not directly impacted by the violation, I chose to report it. The employer was raided by the labor department, and evidence of the violation was found. Fines were given (I do not know how much, but fines for minor violations can get into the tens of thousands, and the violation occurred multiple times). That employer will likely never make that mistake again. I am almost certain the employee who was harmed will never have that happen again with that employer either. My action may have hurt one employer (who earned the harm), but it saved a lot of innocent employees from harm. Also, by reporting the violation, I strengthened the law. If violations of the law are never reported, it is almost as if the law does not exist. By reporting a violation, I made it clear to those violating the law that they cannot get away with breaking the law without consequences. A law that is not enforced is worth very little and does almost nothing to protect anyone, but a law that is enforced justly serves its purpose well. My actions helped a law to be enforced that otherwise would have been useless (in that particular case).
Anyhow, any LDS person who believes that convenience and peace are more valuable than enforcing the law is a hypocrite. Besides the above scripture, there are many LDS scriptures stating that even killing is justified when it is in defense of yourself, your family, your friends, your property, or your rights and freedoms. Maybe the U.S. is a sue-happy nation where too many frivolous lawsuits occur. Choosing not to press charges when lawsuits are justified will not improve the situation, and in fact, this act of giving up your legal rights and protections will actually make it worse for everyone.
22 July 2014
Benefits for Children
According to this article child poverty has steadily increased in the U.S. over the last two decades, despite government programs and other non-profit efforts to improve the situation. What everyone seems to be ignoring is adult poverty.
This increase in child poverty points to a bigger problem: Adult poverty. Children are in poverty because their parents are in poverty. Most of these relief programs focus entirely on the children, with little concern for the adults. A few programs (like the Earned Income Tax Credit) take the entire family into account, but even many of those only do so incidentally. This leads to several problems.
The first problem is that providing only for the children will only help the problem partially. A program designed to help children that provides housing assistance will not provide enough to take care of all housing needs, because it does not account for the needs of the adults. This results in the assistance being spread too thin. Likewise, a program like WIC, which is designed to help only the children and the mother will be watered down when the father needs to eat as well. A program that helps children who are in poverty, but not the parents is missing some essential things.
The second problem is that the mental and emotional impacts of poverty are not reduced significantly, if the parents still have to deal with it. A child might go to a free preschool, which will benefit the child, but free preschool will not improve the ability of the parents to care for the child. The child will still have to deal with being in poverty. The child will still be impacted with the constantly high level of stress of the parents, and will likely learn poor stress management and decision making skills as a result. Instead of having uneducated poor people, poor children will grow into well educated poor people. Programs designed to help children in poverty are great, but some of the effects of poverty can only be relieved by helping the parents.
Besides all of this, it seems extremely hypocritical to be willing to help people until they are old enough that we feel comfortable blaming for their own problems. It may be clear that children are not at fault for their problems, it is not always clear that poverty is rarely the fault of the adults either. The recent recession has caused a shift in public opinion over this blame thing. More people are beginning to realize that poverty is often not the fault of those who are in poverty. It seems rather cruel to deny aid to people once they reach an age where they are no longer considered a child. A child who grew up in poverty, with or without aid or assistance, is more likely to remain in poverty as an adult, through no fault of their own. Reliving just the poverty of the children will do little to help the situation, because much of the problem is that parents in poverty are unable to teach their children how to avoid poverty (and this propagates through generations). If we really want to help children to escape poverty, we need to help their parents as well. The article cites studies and data that show that despite better education and many programs designed to help children in poverty, the poverty rate for children is increasing. This is evidence that helping only the children is not enough. We need to help the adults as well, or this problem is just going to get worse. Why, if children have the right to live above the poverty level, can anyone think that adults should not have this right?
This increase in child poverty points to a bigger problem: Adult poverty. Children are in poverty because their parents are in poverty. Most of these relief programs focus entirely on the children, with little concern for the adults. A few programs (like the Earned Income Tax Credit) take the entire family into account, but even many of those only do so incidentally. This leads to several problems.
The first problem is that providing only for the children will only help the problem partially. A program designed to help children that provides housing assistance will not provide enough to take care of all housing needs, because it does not account for the needs of the adults. This results in the assistance being spread too thin. Likewise, a program like WIC, which is designed to help only the children and the mother will be watered down when the father needs to eat as well. A program that helps children who are in poverty, but not the parents is missing some essential things.
The second problem is that the mental and emotional impacts of poverty are not reduced significantly, if the parents still have to deal with it. A child might go to a free preschool, which will benefit the child, but free preschool will not improve the ability of the parents to care for the child. The child will still have to deal with being in poverty. The child will still be impacted with the constantly high level of stress of the parents, and will likely learn poor stress management and decision making skills as a result. Instead of having uneducated poor people, poor children will grow into well educated poor people. Programs designed to help children in poverty are great, but some of the effects of poverty can only be relieved by helping the parents.
Besides all of this, it seems extremely hypocritical to be willing to help people until they are old enough that we feel comfortable blaming for their own problems. It may be clear that children are not at fault for their problems, it is not always clear that poverty is rarely the fault of the adults either. The recent recession has caused a shift in public opinion over this blame thing. More people are beginning to realize that poverty is often not the fault of those who are in poverty. It seems rather cruel to deny aid to people once they reach an age where they are no longer considered a child. A child who grew up in poverty, with or without aid or assistance, is more likely to remain in poverty as an adult, through no fault of their own. Reliving just the poverty of the children will do little to help the situation, because much of the problem is that parents in poverty are unable to teach their children how to avoid poverty (and this propagates through generations). If we really want to help children to escape poverty, we need to help their parents as well. The article cites studies and data that show that despite better education and many programs designed to help children in poverty, the poverty rate for children is increasing. This is evidence that helping only the children is not enough. We need to help the adults as well, or this problem is just going to get worse. Why, if children have the right to live above the poverty level, can anyone think that adults should not have this right?
17 July 2014
Pay for Unhired Volunteer Worker?
I just heard that President Obama and his wife are demanding pay for her, because she is the First Lady. (Here is one source) The President says that his wife works very hard as the First Lady and deserves to be paid for her work. I want to analyze this claim to find the truth.
First, let's start by looking at my personal situation. I am a computer scientist. I develop computer programs for a living. My wife works very hard taking care of our 4 children. She also does a good deal of service for others when she has time. According to the Obamas' logic, my employer should pay her for her work. The work my wife has done was never solicited by my employer. My employer did not interview her or hire her for this position. Is it fair that my employer should pay my wife for her work?
The job of First Lady seems like a very difficult and time consuming job. The fact, however, is that it is not. The hardest thing the First Lady has to deal with is that she gets to spend less time with her husband, because of how hard and time consuming his work is. First Lady is not a job title. No one voted for Michelle Obama to do the work she is doing, she was not appointed to the post, and she was not interviewed or hired for the position. In fact, the title itself means nothing more than that she is married to the President. It carries no responsibility. The First Lady has no responsibilities beyond the normal responsibilities expected of a spouse. In other words, any work done by the First Lady in that role is volunteer work. Volunteers do not get paid. That is just the nature of the work. If Michelle Obama is overworked, she can quit and go on vacation any time she wants, without any notice. This is not a job. This is a hobby. If she is doing a huge amount of volunteer work, it is her own personal choice, and no one should be forced to pay her for her effort. Sorry, but these are the facts. Trying to force someone to pay for unsolicited work is just plain wrong. If President Obama really wants her to be paid for pushing his political agenda, then he can pay her out of his own pocket. (He gets a salary of $400,000 a year. He can afford it.)
I am rather disgusted at our President. We are still in what is supposedly the tail end of a recession (though there is little evidence it is going to end anytime soon), he is paid substantially more than a vast majority of U.S. citizens, our government is in enormous debt, and he is demanding that his wife get paid for her volunteer work that is primarily designed to advance his personal political agendas. President Obama, if your wife is not getting paid enough for her volunteer work, she can quit. I certainly do not want to pay for the labor of a person that was not even hired for the job, and I hope the rest of America is not so deluded as to disagree with me.
First, let's start by looking at my personal situation. I am a computer scientist. I develop computer programs for a living. My wife works very hard taking care of our 4 children. She also does a good deal of service for others when she has time. According to the Obamas' logic, my employer should pay her for her work. The work my wife has done was never solicited by my employer. My employer did not interview her or hire her for this position. Is it fair that my employer should pay my wife for her work?
The job of First Lady seems like a very difficult and time consuming job. The fact, however, is that it is not. The hardest thing the First Lady has to deal with is that she gets to spend less time with her husband, because of how hard and time consuming his work is. First Lady is not a job title. No one voted for Michelle Obama to do the work she is doing, she was not appointed to the post, and she was not interviewed or hired for the position. In fact, the title itself means nothing more than that she is married to the President. It carries no responsibility. The First Lady has no responsibilities beyond the normal responsibilities expected of a spouse. In other words, any work done by the First Lady in that role is volunteer work. Volunteers do not get paid. That is just the nature of the work. If Michelle Obama is overworked, she can quit and go on vacation any time she wants, without any notice. This is not a job. This is a hobby. If she is doing a huge amount of volunteer work, it is her own personal choice, and no one should be forced to pay her for her effort. Sorry, but these are the facts. Trying to force someone to pay for unsolicited work is just plain wrong. If President Obama really wants her to be paid for pushing his political agenda, then he can pay her out of his own pocket. (He gets a salary of $400,000 a year. He can afford it.)
I am rather disgusted at our President. We are still in what is supposedly the tail end of a recession (though there is little evidence it is going to end anytime soon), he is paid substantially more than a vast majority of U.S. citizens, our government is in enormous debt, and he is demanding that his wife get paid for her volunteer work that is primarily designed to advance his personal political agendas. President Obama, if your wife is not getting paid enough for her volunteer work, she can quit. I certainly do not want to pay for the labor of a person that was not even hired for the job, and I hope the rest of America is not so deluded as to disagree with me.
10 July 2014
D&D for Old Folks
I have had a strong opinion on D&D and similar role playing games for some time. Unlike popular opinion, my opinion is not a negative one. Pen and paper role playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, can be highly educational. When played in groups (group play is typical), they also improve interpersonal skills like communication and team work. When played properly (role playing as opposed to pure hack and slash), they also help participants to look at things from other points of view. No computer game can compete with a face to face, pen and paper RPG.
There are some potential problems with role playing games like D&D. Occasionally, we hear stories about people who have become hopelessly addicted to the game. On even more rare occasions, we hear stories about someone doing something stupid that could be linked to their D&D game. These almost always get blown out of proportion (these are nearly always mentally unstable people, and there has never been any evidence that D&D caused the poor behavior), but addiction is a valid concern. Thankfully, there is no evidence that D&D or any other pen and paper RPG is any more addictive than similar video games. In fact, because pen and paper RPGs require scheduling play time around the schedules of several people, most groups play only once a week to once a month (the exception is high school groups which sometimes play 5 days a week during lunch periods and tend to have higher addiction rates as a result). People who play computer RPGs tend to play at least several days a week for a few hours, and many play several hours every day. Addiction to computer games in general has become a big enough problem to get specialized attention from the medical field. Addiction to pen and paper RPGs is so uncommon that people make a big deal about it when cases are discovered. (Ok, so part of the reason for this is that more people play computer RPGs, but the point still stands.)
Now, to get to the point. I have had this idea for over 10 years, but I have not really had time to do much about it. I just read an article that reminded me of it and gave me a very good reason to discuss it here. This article discusses seniors that gamble out of boredom. Evidently, a significant percentage of U.S. seniors gamble because they do not have anything better to do. Some claim they do it for the social interaction, however, upon observation, it is found that almost no social interaction takes place in the casinos aside from lunch time. The rest of the time is spent gambling on very non-social machines. The gambling itself offers no social interaction. All of the social interactions occur during the trips to and from the casino and during meals. In most cases, according to studies funded primarily by the gambling industry (red flag), most seniors gamble responsibly. The problem I see is that they think they are spending their money on a social experience, but they are not getting the actual experience. Besides the false advertising (casino ads typically show groups of people having positive social experiences, when in reality most gamblers are sitting at a machine, ignoring everything else), these people are craving social experience, but they are not getting what they need. In the article, one person is quoted as lamenting that her generation did not invent something better for seniors to do than squander their money gambling. She is wrong. Her generation (or maybe the one directly before her) did invent something superior to gambling.
Most older people choose to gamble out of boredom. When people get old, fun physical activity becomes difficult and painful, so the normal things younger people do for fun are either painful or even outright dangerous for older people. The current older generation is not very computer literate, and thus the computer games with good long term value can be very difficult for them to learn. They also grew up during a time when most social interaction was face to face, and they prefer that to the impersonal online interactions found in computer games. My solution is Dungeons and Dragons (or any other pen and paper RPG).
Dungeons and Dragons allows people to try new things by proxy. An 80 year old man may not have the physical capacity to travel much, but in an RPG, he can role play a 20 year old youth with very good stamina and strength. Through his character, he can experience things and places that he cannot experience in person due to his age. Even further, he can experience things through his character that no one can experience in real life. Though it is often frowned upon, women can play male characters and men can play female characters (it also tends to be more difficult to role play characters that are a different gender from the player). Further, addiction is less problematic for older people, in some degree, because they tend to be less susceptible to addiction, and because gaming addiction is far less likely to interfere with their lives.
Note that not all pen and paper RPGs are based on a fantasy environment. A D&D-like modern RPG system exists called Modern D20. Shadowrun is another RPG system that is futuristic (the genre is often called cyberpunk). There are also superhero RPGs, anime RPGs, steampunk RPGs, and nearly any other kind of RPG you can think of. And if you are worried about claims of a certain RPG being evil and demonic, the involvement of any brand of supernatural power (good or evil) is up to the DM (who hosts the game) and the players. (D&D has some seriously evil monsters, however, it has a selection of monsters so large that the DM must chose a subset of them to use in the game. In fact, a game heavy on role playing and light on combat might not include any of the fantasy monsters available for the game.) Ultimately, the direction and content of the game is up to the DM and the players. If they are really set on gambling, they could even play a game where their characters go on a casino road trip (a good setting for this might be the 1800s, when much of gambling was done face to face with a dealer and other players). At least this way, the money squandered would be fake.
Old people, especially those in elderly care homes, do not have much to do with their time. They often suffer from extreme boredom. Many have taken up gambling as a hobby, because they think it will provide social interaction that they crave. Unfortunately, it does not, and it costs money than many elderly people cannot afford to lose. Role playing games are less addictive and far cheaper than gambling. They offer a wide variety of possible social interactions. They provide good mental stimulation and experiences that can not be had any other way. With a good DM, even the learning curve is quite shallow (players tell the DM what their characters do, and the DM explains what happens in response; the DM can handle most of the rules). I think that we could solve this gambling problem for elderly people by offering face to face, pen and paper role playing experiences.
There are some potential problems with role playing games like D&D. Occasionally, we hear stories about people who have become hopelessly addicted to the game. On even more rare occasions, we hear stories about someone doing something stupid that could be linked to their D&D game. These almost always get blown out of proportion (these are nearly always mentally unstable people, and there has never been any evidence that D&D caused the poor behavior), but addiction is a valid concern. Thankfully, there is no evidence that D&D or any other pen and paper RPG is any more addictive than similar video games. In fact, because pen and paper RPGs require scheduling play time around the schedules of several people, most groups play only once a week to once a month (the exception is high school groups which sometimes play 5 days a week during lunch periods and tend to have higher addiction rates as a result). People who play computer RPGs tend to play at least several days a week for a few hours, and many play several hours every day. Addiction to computer games in general has become a big enough problem to get specialized attention from the medical field. Addiction to pen and paper RPGs is so uncommon that people make a big deal about it when cases are discovered. (Ok, so part of the reason for this is that more people play computer RPGs, but the point still stands.)
Now, to get to the point. I have had this idea for over 10 years, but I have not really had time to do much about it. I just read an article that reminded me of it and gave me a very good reason to discuss it here. This article discusses seniors that gamble out of boredom. Evidently, a significant percentage of U.S. seniors gamble because they do not have anything better to do. Some claim they do it for the social interaction, however, upon observation, it is found that almost no social interaction takes place in the casinos aside from lunch time. The rest of the time is spent gambling on very non-social machines. The gambling itself offers no social interaction. All of the social interactions occur during the trips to and from the casino and during meals. In most cases, according to studies funded primarily by the gambling industry (red flag), most seniors gamble responsibly. The problem I see is that they think they are spending their money on a social experience, but they are not getting the actual experience. Besides the false advertising (casino ads typically show groups of people having positive social experiences, when in reality most gamblers are sitting at a machine, ignoring everything else), these people are craving social experience, but they are not getting what they need. In the article, one person is quoted as lamenting that her generation did not invent something better for seniors to do than squander their money gambling. She is wrong. Her generation (or maybe the one directly before her) did invent something superior to gambling.
Most older people choose to gamble out of boredom. When people get old, fun physical activity becomes difficult and painful, so the normal things younger people do for fun are either painful or even outright dangerous for older people. The current older generation is not very computer literate, and thus the computer games with good long term value can be very difficult for them to learn. They also grew up during a time when most social interaction was face to face, and they prefer that to the impersonal online interactions found in computer games. My solution is Dungeons and Dragons (or any other pen and paper RPG).
Dungeons and Dragons allows people to try new things by proxy. An 80 year old man may not have the physical capacity to travel much, but in an RPG, he can role play a 20 year old youth with very good stamina and strength. Through his character, he can experience things and places that he cannot experience in person due to his age. Even further, he can experience things through his character that no one can experience in real life. Though it is often frowned upon, women can play male characters and men can play female characters (it also tends to be more difficult to role play characters that are a different gender from the player). Further, addiction is less problematic for older people, in some degree, because they tend to be less susceptible to addiction, and because gaming addiction is far less likely to interfere with their lives.
Note that not all pen and paper RPGs are based on a fantasy environment. A D&D-like modern RPG system exists called Modern D20. Shadowrun is another RPG system that is futuristic (the genre is often called cyberpunk). There are also superhero RPGs, anime RPGs, steampunk RPGs, and nearly any other kind of RPG you can think of. And if you are worried about claims of a certain RPG being evil and demonic, the involvement of any brand of supernatural power (good or evil) is up to the DM (who hosts the game) and the players. (D&D has some seriously evil monsters, however, it has a selection of monsters so large that the DM must chose a subset of them to use in the game. In fact, a game heavy on role playing and light on combat might not include any of the fantasy monsters available for the game.) Ultimately, the direction and content of the game is up to the DM and the players. If they are really set on gambling, they could even play a game where their characters go on a casino road trip (a good setting for this might be the 1800s, when much of gambling was done face to face with a dealer and other players). At least this way, the money squandered would be fake.
Old people, especially those in elderly care homes, do not have much to do with their time. They often suffer from extreme boredom. Many have taken up gambling as a hobby, because they think it will provide social interaction that they crave. Unfortunately, it does not, and it costs money than many elderly people cannot afford to lose. Role playing games are less addictive and far cheaper than gambling. They offer a wide variety of possible social interactions. They provide good mental stimulation and experiences that can not be had any other way. With a good DM, even the learning curve is quite shallow (players tell the DM what their characters do, and the DM explains what happens in response; the DM can handle most of the rules). I think that we could solve this gambling problem for elderly people by offering face to face, pen and paper role playing experiences.
01 July 2014
Fair Pay
I believe I have expressed my opinion on this subject before, so I will summarize: Any job that cannot pay enough for employees to live off of is not worth doing.
Minimum wage is starting to become a big deal again, as Obama pushes to have it raised by around 33%. Fast food employees have started a movement to have minimum wage, at least for fast food jobs, raised by almost 100%. Current minimum wage is almost half the poverty level (70% according to the government definition, but according to actual accurate data it is less than 50%). If minimum wage is supposed to provide enough to live on, why has it not been raised sooner?
The Republican Party is largely to blame, along with many large businesses. The claim is that raising minimum wage will put more people out of work. This is probably true. So, I guess they think it is better to let most of the population starve than to make businesses pay fair wages and have less workers but with fair pay. Really, this is an unsolvable problem from this point of view. I have already shown how a basic income would solve this problem, so I am not going to harp on that, but I would like to discuss how some large businesses are actually trying to do something about this problem.
I just read this article. It discusses how some businesses are voluntarily raising their minimum wage. (I would like to point out how absolutely disgusting it is that self interested businesses have recognized this problem before our government, which is supposed to be paying attention to our needs.) Ikea recently announced an internal minimum wage of $10.76 an hour (to be implemented soon). Gap is raising their minimum to $9.00 an hour and already has plans for increasing it to $10.00 an hour in the near future. Costco already pays a minimum of $11.50 an hour, but the article says that bonuses bring it up to an average of $21 an hour. Whole Foods also pays $10.00 minimum (with an average of almost twice that). The last two mentioned in the article are fast food places. Shake Shack and In-N-Out pay a minimum of $10.00 and $10.50 an hour respectively, with In-N-Out also providing vacation and retirement benefits.
None of these companies are doing poorly. Costco says the higher wages pay off in productivity and lower employee turnover, and compared to Sam's Club, which does not pay fair wages, the evidence supports that claim (also note that Costco still manages to charge very low prices despite paying their employees around twice what Sam's does). As far as claims that raising minimum wage will hurt businesses go, the evidence seems to prove the exact opposite.
It is probable that raising minimum wage will make unemployment worse. This is a natural effect of the law of supply and demand. When supply and demand are not a matter of life and death, it might be ethical to consider their impact before raising the cost of such an essential commodity as labor. When it is a matter of life and death, it is not ethical to consider the problem entirely from an economic point of view. Minimum wage is exactly one of these life and death cases. Due to a number of different factors, our economy is incapable of providing enough work for everyone who wants it, and the consequence is that the U.S. is slowly sinking into widespread poverty. There are many solutions to this problem, but they all require more than just changing minimum wage. Businesses should be required by law to pay fair wages, and a minimum wage that pays $15,000 a year is not fair wages. We need a minimum wage that pays more than the poverty level to have a sustainable economy. Raising minimum wage should not even be a question, and if our government cannot see that, then they are not qualified to rule anything, especially not a large country. Bickering about minimum wage and unemployment is a waste of time. Once minimum wage is taken care of, we can start looking at other options to take care of the larger problem. So long as people are relying on minimum wage as their primary form of support though, businesses and the government are morally obligated to make sure it is high enough to provide sufficient support.
I have multiple suggestions to solve the worst of our economic problems, and a basic income is at the top of that list (a basic income would also obviate the need for any minimum wage). A wage cap would help take care of the supply and demand problem inherent in a minimum wage. Even a more robust welfare system would help, though it would cost far more than it is worth, with the current needs based system. Ultimately, we really are living in an unsustainable economy. It is impossible for a business to survive when it pays less for its resources than they cost to produce. Minimum wage was designed to solve that problem for labor. It currently does a very poor job.
Minimum wage is starting to become a big deal again, as Obama pushes to have it raised by around 33%. Fast food employees have started a movement to have minimum wage, at least for fast food jobs, raised by almost 100%. Current minimum wage is almost half the poverty level (70% according to the government definition, but according to actual accurate data it is less than 50%). If minimum wage is supposed to provide enough to live on, why has it not been raised sooner?
The Republican Party is largely to blame, along with many large businesses. The claim is that raising minimum wage will put more people out of work. This is probably true. So, I guess they think it is better to let most of the population starve than to make businesses pay fair wages and have less workers but with fair pay. Really, this is an unsolvable problem from this point of view. I have already shown how a basic income would solve this problem, so I am not going to harp on that, but I would like to discuss how some large businesses are actually trying to do something about this problem.
I just read this article. It discusses how some businesses are voluntarily raising their minimum wage. (I would like to point out how absolutely disgusting it is that self interested businesses have recognized this problem before our government, which is supposed to be paying attention to our needs.) Ikea recently announced an internal minimum wage of $10.76 an hour (to be implemented soon). Gap is raising their minimum to $9.00 an hour and already has plans for increasing it to $10.00 an hour in the near future. Costco already pays a minimum of $11.50 an hour, but the article says that bonuses bring it up to an average of $21 an hour. Whole Foods also pays $10.00 minimum (with an average of almost twice that). The last two mentioned in the article are fast food places. Shake Shack and In-N-Out pay a minimum of $10.00 and $10.50 an hour respectively, with In-N-Out also providing vacation and retirement benefits.
None of these companies are doing poorly. Costco says the higher wages pay off in productivity and lower employee turnover, and compared to Sam's Club, which does not pay fair wages, the evidence supports that claim (also note that Costco still manages to charge very low prices despite paying their employees around twice what Sam's does). As far as claims that raising minimum wage will hurt businesses go, the evidence seems to prove the exact opposite.
It is probable that raising minimum wage will make unemployment worse. This is a natural effect of the law of supply and demand. When supply and demand are not a matter of life and death, it might be ethical to consider their impact before raising the cost of such an essential commodity as labor. When it is a matter of life and death, it is not ethical to consider the problem entirely from an economic point of view. Minimum wage is exactly one of these life and death cases. Due to a number of different factors, our economy is incapable of providing enough work for everyone who wants it, and the consequence is that the U.S. is slowly sinking into widespread poverty. There are many solutions to this problem, but they all require more than just changing minimum wage. Businesses should be required by law to pay fair wages, and a minimum wage that pays $15,000 a year is not fair wages. We need a minimum wage that pays more than the poverty level to have a sustainable economy. Raising minimum wage should not even be a question, and if our government cannot see that, then they are not qualified to rule anything, especially not a large country. Bickering about minimum wage and unemployment is a waste of time. Once minimum wage is taken care of, we can start looking at other options to take care of the larger problem. So long as people are relying on minimum wage as their primary form of support though, businesses and the government are morally obligated to make sure it is high enough to provide sufficient support.
I have multiple suggestions to solve the worst of our economic problems, and a basic income is at the top of that list (a basic income would also obviate the need for any minimum wage). A wage cap would help take care of the supply and demand problem inherent in a minimum wage. Even a more robust welfare system would help, though it would cost far more than it is worth, with the current needs based system. Ultimately, we really are living in an unsustainable economy. It is impossible for a business to survive when it pays less for its resources than they cost to produce. Minimum wage was designed to solve that problem for labor. It currently does a very poor job.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)