JohnJohn said:
Minimum wage jobs are meant for those people still covered under parental private healthcare coverage. They should be stepping stones to careers. Aspiring to something more than a Walmart Clerk should be motivation enough to work hard and get a job with benefits. What will happen if that idea dies. We start GIVING them healthcare, daycare, paid time off, etc. 30-40% Federal tax rates to pay for all the social programs needed to help a $7 hour a week worker survive.
All this crap sounds great and makes you all "feel" good inside. You must have extra money laying around.
Mike, seriously do you have a ton of extra cash around to pay for healthcare for Lolita, your local Walmart Clerk's healthcare? How much you would pay each month to have her family covered? $10, $50, $100? What's your budget?
Nice in theory but many of the floor staff at Walmart are poor, elderly, unable to afford to retire, people. Not everyone is mentally qualified to climb the ladder of success. Note everyone is proficient at handling money.
My real problem is with the health insurance companies and the employers.
At the rate we are going all businesses in the USA will eliminate health insurance coverage as too costly to allow them to compete in a global economy. Facts of life in a global capitalist work place where it is an employers marketplace, not a workers marketplace. We already have 40 million uninsured people in the USA (Probably all US citizens, not counting illigal immigrants).
I think this country and it's people are better than that. As soon as someone gets too sick to work they get laid off with no insurance and no income. If they have any savings or assets, they are usually gone in days of early medical treatment leaving them no plav\ce to live and no income to live on. I have seen it too many times. It is a disgrace!
Why can't we have a national health insurance program that supplements the private programs that catches someone that suddenly comes down with a debilitating terminal disease, who is unable to work, and who looses or has no insurance, or who was in between jobs after a lay off in Detroit, or the housing industry.
Altheimers (sp?) is a big growing issue in this country. All I keep hearing from the right is let them fend for themselves, buyer beware, be self sufficient. Hell they can't even remember who they are, much less keep track of a bank account or keep a job. IF they have family with time and money to care for them great, but not all them have family with the reasources to care for them.
There is also the issue of people being unable to afford minor health care, that leads to them getting sicker and ending up in emergency wards where we end spending 10 to 100 times more in medical care to solve a problem that could handled earlier for much less.
I had a friend here who was a volunter emergency EMS director for the small town nearby that was A Lions club memeber, ex-merchant marine, ex-self employed international cargo registry consultant (smart guy), who had heart problems, two strokes, went on early SS retirement. But no kids, no wife, no family. Nearly lost his house ( he still had a year or 2 of house payments to go when the heart attack disabled him), the floors were eaten out by termites years before he died, it was nearly condemed, he had to beg and borrow (permanently) from those that could and would help him out just to buy medecine and food and just to get a ride somewhere to the doctor, pharmacy or grocery store. From what I have seen of todays electricity rate scandals here (Republican mess here that has raised our electric rates 300% in three months, and we have nuclear power here that paid dearly for 35 years ago, another Halibuton Brown Root scandle) he would have used half of his SS income just to pay for electricty this summer. 98 F for an elederly person with heat problems and diabetic to boot is a MF.
My point is this guy was a typical hard core Republican in his day (Other than the lack of a family), but he got the Democratic faith real fast when his world fell apart. Kinda like those atheists that get religion all of a sudden when they end up on the front line of a real war.
I see no problem asking the ultra rich that earn billions of dollars a year that they don't reinvest in new jobs, or productivity, to pay a little more in taxes before they 50 million on their 7th house (Or was it 9 houses that McCain owns?) to help keep their wage slave work force healthy. A healthy work force benefits them anyway, and the money they spend goes right back in their pockets anyway, because they own it all already!
OK, time to get off my soap box and go help a fellow Jeeper test a Renix system that is missing a computer.
atriot: Freedom! 
