Full Coverage Government

[Ziggurat]

You're backwards. Switch the highlighted words and you're closer to disagreeing with the actual argument being made.

Uh, no. Perhaps you are confused about what we're talking about. By oversight, we're not talking about government oversight of business, we're talking about voter oversight of government. So I had it exactly correct: the bigger the scope of government, the harder it is for voters to adequately monitor its operations and apply appropriate pressure to it.

 

[Ziggurat]

You're assuming that private insurance companies have no waste, abuse or corruption, and you're forgetting that high corporate wages are considered expenses and not included in the profits shown. Those high wages wouldn't be as high for the public sector, which is where you would be saving the significant cash money.

Executive salaries are often higher in the private sector. But you're absolutely wrong about worker salaries. When you include benefits, public workers are paid very well, often significantly better than their private counterparts.

But more importantly, you've still got the same problem KofA had: your argument applies generically to any profitable private business, and so if you actually believed it, then you'd be advocating for socialization of most of the economy. But you aren't, so like him, you're either clueless about the meaning of your argument, or dishonest in your advocacy of it.

 

[TraneWreck]

Executive salaries are often higher in the private sector. But you're absolutely wrong about worker salaries. When you include benefits, public workers are paid very well, often significantly better than their private counterparts.

You know, there could be a whole forum dedicated to correcting all of your false assertions:

The adjusted wage gap provides an estimate of comparability, and the estimate suggests state and local workers are, on average, underpaid, controlling for other determinants of wages. In other words, controlling for education and other characteristics, the data show that local government workers are paid substantially less than their private sector counterparts. The major driver in this basic pattern is the fact that government workers have jobs that demand more education, which is not accounted for by raw averages.

http://www.slge.org/vertical/Sites/...ds/{03E820E8-F0F9-472F-98E2-F0AE1166D116}.PDF

Of course, these guys only used 20 years of data.

Please have the decency to avoid responding with some nonsense that doesn't control for education and experience.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Uh, no. Perhaps you are confused about what we're talking about. By oversight, we're not talking about government oversight of business, we're talking about voter oversight of government. So I had it exactly correct: the bigger the scope of government, the harder it is for voters to adequately monitor its operations and apply appropriate pressure to it.

We're talking about citizen oversight of insurance. We would have more oversight if it was done through government where we'd have rights to see exactly what was going on. And taking that essential public good, and running through the government rather than private business (where all sorts of wonderful coverage denial schemes run rampant), increases oversight of the provision of that good, making better government.

 

[King of the Americas]

No need to resort to using fact and statistics...your accurate information has no power here.

-Private companies pay HIGHER salaries that the government does
-Private companies spend MUCH more on advertising than government does
-Private companies MUST turn a profit, which government won't

EACH of these represents sincere savings opportunities if government were to take over the entire insurance sector. I have linked the numbers behind each one of these assertions to no avail.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate..."

 

[stokes234]

Executive salaries are often higher in the private sector. But you're absolutely wrong about worker salaries. When you include benefits, public workers are paid very well, often significantly better than their private counterparts.

Colour me unconvinced. I've never seen any significant evidence to support this, especially in the UK where private teachers and doctors are paid alot more than their public counterparts. I lost my public dentist recently when she realised she could do the exact same job for the private sector and get more than double the pay.

Furthermore, I am quite happy to accept a trade-off of higher standard worker pay in exchange for lower executive pay, if the result is no net gain or loss, because of the resulting reduction in inequality, and because more of a standard workers pay goes towards stimulating the local economy as opposed to being spent on yachts or invested in foreign economies.

But more importantly, you've still got the same problem KofA had: your argument applies generically to any profitable private business, and so if you actually believed it, then you'd be advocating for socialization of most of the economy. But you aren't, so like him, you're either clueless about the meaning of your argument, or dishonest in your advocacy of it.

No, let me explain the difference. A private car manufacturer is motivated by profit to research new, more efficient ways of manufacturing cars, and new modifications etc for the cars that make them flashier than their competition. Similarly, clothes manufacturers are motivated by profit to determine cheaper or more resilient forms of clothing, and to keep up with or create new fashion trends. I can see the advantages that profit motivation provides here, and I am willing to accept a certain amount of overpaid corporate greed that gets wasted on luxuries as an inevitable side-effect.

However, I cannot fathom a similar concept where private companies can find more efficient, or cheaper ways of providing insurance. They cannot themselves reduce the risk of accident or theft and thus reduce the possibility of payout - all they can do is determine the chance of payout as accurately as possible, and I see no reason to believe they can perform this duty any more effectively than the public sector.

 

[Ziggurat]

We're talking about citizen oversight of insurance.

No, we are not. Trace the posts back. The origins of the discussion of "oversight" started with this statement:

It'll 'work' where citizens perform proper oversight of elected officials

So you misunderstood what we were talking about the first time, and have now compounded your error by not checking.

 

[King of the Americas]

No, we are not. Trace the posts back. The origins of the discussion of "oversight" started with this statement:



So you misunderstood what we were talking about the first time, and have now compounded your error by not checking.

And I said government works best at local levels, where citizens have direct oversight of their elected officials.

 

[Ziggurat]

Furthermore, I am quite happy to accept a trade-off of higher standard worker pay in exchange for lower executive pay, if the result is no net gain or loss

That's not a given.

because of the resulting reduction in inequality

Running what should be a business as a social program is hardly a recipe for efficiency and success.

No, let me explain the difference. A private car manufacturer is motivated by profit to research new, more efficient ways of manufacturing cars, and new modifications etc for the cars that make them flashier than their competition. Similarly, clothes manufacturers are motivated by profit to determine cheaper or more resilient forms of clothing, and to keep up with or create new fashion trends. I can see the advantages that profit motivation provides here, and I am willing to accept a certain amount of overpaid corporate greed that gets wasted on luxuries as an inevitable side-effect.

However, I cannot fathom a similar concept where private companies can find more efficient, or cheaper ways of providing insurance. They cannot themselves reduce the risk of accident or theft and thus reduce the possibility of payout - all they can do is determine the chance of payout as accurately as possible, and I see no reason to believe they can perform this duty any more effectively than the public sector.

Your own inability to comprehend what else insurance can do is really quite irrelevant. It's also wrong. Private insurers can and do work to reduce the risk of accident and theft. They do so through a variety of methods, including both sponsoring research on the topic and by providing consumers with price incentives to adopt various safety features. But even ignoring all that, insurance companies can and do find cheaper ways to provide insurance. Providing insurance is work. There are always new ways to perform that work. That includes the switch from paper records to digital records, the adoption of more sophisticated data analysis and handling capabilities, and even service innovations like how claims agents operate in the field. None of this is static, all of it is continually changing to adapt to changes in computer technology, automotive technology, and even customer preferences. The argument you are making is that since you don't understand what insurance companies can do, they must not be doing anything of importance. That is an argument from incredulity, and it holds no weight.

So we're back to where we started: your argument applies to every profitable business, nothing about car insurance separates it from other businesses, and if you aren't advocating socialism of most of the economy, you're not even taking your own argument seriously.

 

[stokes234]

That's not a given.

I didn't say it was, I was simply stating my position on the matter. On the other hand, you've agreed that public executives recieve less pay and provided no evidence that standard workers recieve more.

Running what should be a business as a social program is hardly a recipe for efficiency and success.

Ok.

Your own inability to comprehend what else insurance can do is really quite irrelevant.

It wouldn't hurt to adopt a tone of civility. I'm debating with you, not trying to steal your grandmothers liver.

It's also wrong. Private insurers can and do work to reduce the risk of accident and theft. They do so through a variety of methods, including both sponsoring research on the topic

Give examples, and explain why the government couldn't do the same.

and by providing consumers with price incentives to adopt various safety features.

The government already does this in many aspects of UK life, and I see no reason why this would be any different. The same calculations could be made, the same different insurance packages for different situations could be offered.

But even ignoring all that, insurance companies can and do find cheaper ways to provide insurance. Providing insurance is work. There are always new ways to perform that work.

This is all administrative work. Can you provide evidence that the private sector does administration better than the public sector?

So we're back to where we started: your argument applies to every profitable business, nothing about car insurance separates it from other businesses, and if you aren't advocating socialism of most of the economy, you're not even taking your own argument seriously.

Calm down a little. I'm not your enemy, i'm just discussing the subject with you. You make a good point that incentives to reduce risk can reduce the cost of insurance packages, but the government already provides such services - we get adverts on tv and billboards from the government in the uk advising us on how much is healthy to drink, how much salt is healthy, the chances of killing people while driving at certain speeds etc. My arguement was not that private insurance companies cannot improve, so much as that I see no reason to believe that they can handle these areas better than the public sector. Can you provide evidence to the contrary?

By nationalising the insurance industry we stand to gain from saving costs on advertisements and on executive pay. You have claimed (or appear to be claiming) that we would lose the advantages of better administration, incentives for risk-reducing practice, and workers would be paid more. Can you back any of these claims up with evidence?

 

[WildCat]

Of course, these guys only used 20 years of data.

I'm sure they did, because those numbers have changed drastically in the last 5-10 years. Using recent data and it would be hard to fudge the numbers, you have to do things like compare public school teachers to private CFAs and such, while ignoring the differences in hours worked.

Compare like to like, not the "comparable worth" garbage.

 

[TraneWreck]

I'm sure they did, because those numbers have changed drastically in the last 5-10 years. Using recent data and it would be hard to fudge the numbers, you have to do things like compare public school teachers to private CFAs and such, while ignoring the differences in hours worked.

Compare like to like, not the "comparable worth" garbage.

Do you ever get tired of making these childish errors that could easily be avoided by just reading what's offered?

They used 25 years of data from 1983 to 2008 (the last year for which these solid numbers are available).

The last 5-10 years are included. Every graph goes up to 2008.

And, of course, your point is all the dumber given that the gap between private and public compensation is trending larger over the last 20 years, in the opposite direction that you claimed:

Over the last 20 years, the earnings for state and local employees have generally declined relative to comparable private sector employees.

You never cease to amaze.

 

[WildCat]

Do you ever get tired of making these childish errors that could easily be avoided by just reading what's offered?

They used 25 years of data from 1983 to 2008 (the last year for which these solid numbers are available).

The last 5-10 years are included. Every graph goes up to 2008.

And, of course, your point is all the dumber given that the gap between private and public compensation is trending larger over the last 20 years, in the opposite direction that you claimed:



You never cease to amaze.

Did they compare private school teacher salaries and benefits to public school teacher salaries and benefits? Of course they didn't, that wouldn't give the results they were loking for.

 

[TraneWreck]

Did they compare private school teacher salaries and benefits to public school teacher salaries and benefits?

...

You really can't be bothered to learn anything, can you?

No, they actually compared all public workers except teachers just to make you angry.

Seriously, has this talking out of your ass, making things up as you go approach EVER worked?

 

[WildCat]

...

You really can't be bothered to learn anything, can you?

No, they actually compared all public workers except teachers just to make you angry.

Except they didn't actually compare teachers to teachers, they compared "like" education.

And since teachers make up a large % of the government work force, this skews the numbers. For example, teachers often get Masters degrees because it moves them into a higher pay scale, which would be fine except that there's no evidence at all (and there have been lots of studies) that teachers with a Masters degree teach any better than a teacher with a Bachelor's degree.

I'm not at all surprised that an organization devoted to increasing pay and retirement benefits of government employees "discovers" that government employees are underpaid, I am surprised you tried to pass it off as legitimate on a skeptic's board.

 

[JoelKatz]

rivate companies pay HIGHER salaries that the government does

Right, and the lower salaries are, the better for everyone. Society would be so much better if we could just get wages lower.

Private companies spend MUCH more on advertising than government does

Right, and the less people know about what products and services are available to them, the better. Who needs free ad-sponsored television content when we can just pay for what we want. Society would be better without free content.

Private companies MUST turn a profit, which government won't

Right, and profits are bad, they can be used to pay worker salaries. And they can even be used to finance government employees retirement. So we need to end that if we possibly can -- no more profits.

EACH of these represents sincere savings opportunities if government were to take over the entire insurance sector. I have linked the numbers behind each one of these assertions to no avail.

Quite the reverse, each of these is more harm such a change would do. Salaries would on average be lower in the insurance industry. Less advertising revenue would mean ad-sponsored content couldn't be as valuable. And the absence of profit would mean a lack of incentive to minimize costs and maximize efficiency.

But the worst part of your plan is that by artificially forcing insurance to be underpriced for people who are high risks and overpriced for people who are low risks, you create a dangerously unstable system. People with high risk won't pay the full costs of those risks, so they'll be likely to buy more insurance than they really should. People with low risks will be subsidizing the high risk people who get forgiveness too quickly, so they will buy less insurance than they really should. This will exacerbate the problem because more freeloaders will mean even higher rates for the people with the lower risks, leading to a death spiral.

If I am fully covered for anything that is stolen and even get quick insurance cost forgiveness, what is my incentive to minimize my theft exposure? And if low-risk people are overcharged because they get no benefit from the generous forgiveness and the high tide of high risk people raises all ships, why would they buy your insurance at all?

 

[TraneWreck]

Except they didn't actually compare teachers to teachers, they compared "like" education.

And since teachers make up a large % of the government work force, this skews the numbers. For example, teachers often get Masters degrees because it moves them into a higher pay scale, which would be fine except that there's no evidence at all (and there have been lots of studies) that teachers with a Masters degree teach any better than a teacher with a Bachelor's degree.

I'm not at all surprised that an organization devoted to increasing pay and retirement benefits of government employees "discovers" that government employees are underpaid, I am surprised you tried to pass it off as legitimate on a skeptic's board.

This is just false. Teachers are included in that study, they're included in this one as well:

When state and local government employees are compared to private-sector workers with similar characteristics – particularly when workers are matched by age and education – state and local workers actually earn 4 percent less, on average, than their private-sector counterparts. For women workers, the public-sector penalty is about 2 percent of earnings; for men, it is about 6 percent of earnings.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/wage-penalty-2010-05.pdf

This is just more of your slapdick approach to arguing. The actual data shows you to be completely wrong, so you just keep saying the same nonsensical thing over and over.

Go ahead, provide the study that compares private and public teachers' compensation while controlling for education and experience that proves public school teachers make more.

You will never do this, you will just endlessly repeat the idiotic, uneducated claims you began with.

I also enjoy how you have shifted this debate from the first claim I provided data to reject (public workers make more than private) into a claim about teachers, specifically. This is yet another pathetic attempt on your part, and one you haven't even remotely proven.

If you come up with anything, I'm sure it will be some sloppy nonsense that fails to consider the vast range in quality and type of private school. It will probably include home schooling just to make sure the salaries are artificially low and make aditional foolish claims that I can't anticipate. This will be explained to you, you will ignore it, and keep claiming what you began with. There's my submission for the million dollar challenge.

You begin with bias, stick your head in the sand, and make noises out of the orifice with access to the open air.

 

[WildCat]

This is just false. Teachers are included in that study,

Of course they're included in that study, but they're not compared with private-sector teachers, they're compared with private sector jobs with similar education requirements. And education requirements in the public sector are often inflated, such as teachers with Masters degrees.

Do I have to repeat everythig to you? If you keep pretending to have a severe reading comprehension disability I see no reason to continue to engage you.

they're included in this one as well:
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/wage-penalty-2010-05.pdf

Except that study doesn't compare total compensation, it only compares wages. It ignores benefits, which are ridiculously high in the public sector.

This is just more of your slapdick approach to arguing. The actual data shows you to be completely wrong, so you just keep saying the same nonsensical thing over and over.

Go ahead, provide the study that compares private and public teachers' compensation while controlling for education and experience that proves public school teachers make more.

You will never do this, you will just endlessly repeat the idiotic, uneducated claims you began with.

Except I did do this in other threads, if I do it here again will you pretend you didn't see it in the next thread?

I also enjoy how you have shifted this debate from the first claim I provided data to reject (public workers make more than private) into a claim about teachers, specifically. This is yet another pathetic attempt on your part, and one you haven't even remotely proven.

You begin with bias, stick your head in the sand, and make noises out of the orifice with access to the open air.

If government pay was less than private sector pay you'd expect to see the government having difficulty filling positions. Do you have any evidence at all that this is the case? It's quite the opposite where I live, in fact you don't have a chance of getting a government job unless you have political connections. This is evidence of overcompensation.

 

[stokes234]

But the worst part of your plan is that by artificially forcing insurance to be underpriced for people who are high risks and overpriced for people who are low risks, you create a dangerously unstable system. People with high risk won't pay the full costs of those risks, so they'll be likely to buy more insurance than they really should. People with low risks will be subsidizing the high risk people who get forgiveness too quickly, so they will buy less insurance than they really should. This will exacerbate the problem because more freeloaders will mean even higher rates for the people with the lower risks, leading to a death spiral.

If I am fully covered for anything that is stolen and even get quick insurance cost forgiveness, what is my incentive to minimize my theft exposure? And if low-risk people are overcharged because they get no benefit from the generous forgiveness and the high tide of high risk people raises all ships, why would they buy your insurance at all?

I've not followed the arguement perfectly, but i'll add that while I am in favour of nationalising insurance, I don't support any of the above ideas, in that I don't believe public insurance should offer lower risk insurance to higher risk people. I would favour the same risk calculations and resulting insurance costs being used as are currently being used by private industry, with the main savings passed on to customers in my eyes being on advertising and executive pay.

 

[TraneWreck]

Of course they're included in that study, but they're not compared with private-sector teachers, they're compared with private sector jobs with similar education requirements. And education requirements in the public sector are often inflated, such as teachers with Masters degrees.

Find a study then.

Except that study doesn't compare total compensation, it only compares wages. It ignores benefits, which are ridiculously high in the public sector.

That would almost be a cogent point if the previous study I offered didn't take benefits into consideration. Benefits narrow the gap, but do not eliminate it.

Except I did do this in other threads, if I do it here again will you pretend you didn't see it in the next thread?

If you honestly think what you provided in that thread was "data" sufficient to carry your point, you have more problems than I realized. You provided one example. I'm sure there is one teacher in a public school making more money than one teacher in a private school. That is not how adults carry on an argument.

If government pay was less than private sector pay you'd expect to see the government having difficulty filling positions. Do you have any evidence at all that this is the case? It's quite the opposite where I live, in fact you don't have a chance of getting a government job unless you have political connections. This is evidence of overcompensation.

That is just dullard reasoning.

You are, so far, wrong about everything you say. Provide a study. Until you do that, your argument is worthless. I've read enough of your ignorant personal beliefs. Support your claims with data or stop rambling.

Both studies I provided compared teacher salaries with their private counterparts.