It used to be that employers would, when firing someone, laying people off or closing their business, would give two weeks' notice. Employees were also asked to give two weeks' notice when leaving their jobs. There were no laws requiring this, absent union contracts, but most everyone did it. This changed in the 1980s, when the mergers-and-acquisitions people decided that it was easier when moving jobs somewhere else, to skip the notice. Workers would arrive at their place of employment to discover that they no longer had jobs, and then be escorted into said place of employment under guard to recover their personal effects. Such behavior was so gracious and charming that laws were passed requiring employers of large numbers of people to give the community 60 days' notice that the business was closing.
But the tacky behavior spread throughout the land, and now businesses all over the place close down without a word to the employees. They're notified by email that they no longer have a job, or they find a note tacked to the door when they report for work. Three restaurants have closed in recent months here, and two of them gave no notice to the employees in advance. Given that restaurant work doesn't pay much, most of the employees probably didn't have much in savings to tide them over while searching for a new job, so these employers have a lot of bad karma to work off. One restaurateur, Adam Pechal, did give his workers notice and, not only that, two weeks' notice. While commendable, given the behavior of the other two, this used to be standard practice.
I cannot help but think that the demise of unions, in addition to crashing wages for the majority, also enabled employers large and small to make their contribution to the current meanness of our world. Notice that your job is disappearing is such a little thing, one would think.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Auto-Pay
Some months ago I received a telephone call from my "personal banker" at the local branch of my bank. Now my balance is unworthy of a personal banker, so I was amused at the prospect of a personal banker actually helping me with investments. But he did do one useful thing for me, which was to help me sign up for online access to my bank account. I check in every few days to see what's going on with our account--how much J spent at the grocery store, whether checks have cleared, whether J's automatic deposits have been received and so on. I can also check our monthly spending, but that's pretty worthless, as it all depends on when checks clear. My landlord deposited the rent check before the first, so it shows up in December spending, rather than January.
My "personal banker" also suggested that I check out "auto-pay", which would allow me to pay bills without having to write a check. This sounded like fun, so I investigated it. And was disappointed. In most cases, my creditors allow only the auto-pay that allows them to pull money from my account, rather than the auto-pay that allows me to push money to them. Now I don't give strangers access to my bank account. I don't even give friends and family access to my bank account. So giving someone the right to pull money from my account was not going to happen.
And I was disappointed to find that, in most cases, a push auto-pay just meant that the bank wrote a check and sent it off the the creditor. Gee, I can do that myself, and have been since 1972. Worse, as I discovered by reading up on the Internet, the money is taken from my account when the check is written, not when it is cashed, so I have no proof that it was received. When the creditor either cashes the check or converts it to ACH, I know that they're received the funds. It's proof that they were paid. (Frankly, I'm not concerned that I lose the money a few days early, as I don't have the money in an interest-bearing account. Our interest-bearing account pays 0.03% interest at this point.)
I can't figure out any reason for this, except that creditors may have to pay to receive push ACH payments and are too cheap to do so. Given that, they can receive a check and convert it to ACH or take it to the bank and deposit it. Most irritating, though, is the new way landlords have devised to eke more money out of tenants. Some landlords now want to be able to pull auto-pay payments from their tenants' bank accounts. And they charge a fee for tenants who won't allow this, and write checks for the rent.
Unfortunately tenants can't do much about this, other than passing on the unit. And as more landlords start pulling this one, tenants are going to face a choice between paying more for the privilege of deciding how to give up their money or allowing some stranger to access their bank accounts. Worse than that, the bank won't allow you to terminate the auto-pay without the consent of the creditor, so if your landlord pulled the money, for instance, after you moved, you'd have to go after the landlord to recover the money.
The State Legislature should intervene to stop this practice. I have no other creditors who pull this stunt. If landlords really want auto-pay, they should sign up for push transactions, and pay the cost.
My "personal banker" also suggested that I check out "auto-pay", which would allow me to pay bills without having to write a check. This sounded like fun, so I investigated it. And was disappointed. In most cases, my creditors allow only the auto-pay that allows them to pull money from my account, rather than the auto-pay that allows me to push money to them. Now I don't give strangers access to my bank account. I don't even give friends and family access to my bank account. So giving someone the right to pull money from my account was not going to happen.
And I was disappointed to find that, in most cases, a push auto-pay just meant that the bank wrote a check and sent it off the the creditor. Gee, I can do that myself, and have been since 1972. Worse, as I discovered by reading up on the Internet, the money is taken from my account when the check is written, not when it is cashed, so I have no proof that it was received. When the creditor either cashes the check or converts it to ACH, I know that they're received the funds. It's proof that they were paid. (Frankly, I'm not concerned that I lose the money a few days early, as I don't have the money in an interest-bearing account. Our interest-bearing account pays 0.03% interest at this point.)
I can't figure out any reason for this, except that creditors may have to pay to receive push ACH payments and are too cheap to do so. Given that, they can receive a check and convert it to ACH or take it to the bank and deposit it. Most irritating, though, is the new way landlords have devised to eke more money out of tenants. Some landlords now want to be able to pull auto-pay payments from their tenants' bank accounts. And they charge a fee for tenants who won't allow this, and write checks for the rent.
Unfortunately tenants can't do much about this, other than passing on the unit. And as more landlords start pulling this one, tenants are going to face a choice between paying more for the privilege of deciding how to give up their money or allowing some stranger to access their bank accounts. Worse than that, the bank won't allow you to terminate the auto-pay without the consent of the creditor, so if your landlord pulled the money, for instance, after you moved, you'd have to go after the landlord to recover the money.
The State Legislature should intervene to stop this practice. I have no other creditors who pull this stunt. If landlords really want auto-pay, they should sign up for push transactions, and pay the cost.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Happy Birthday, C
Yesterday was niece C's birthday. It was a shock to realize that she's 18 this year. I still think of her as being about 8. She's old enough to go out on dates, drink alcohol illegally, and other things that aunts shouldn't know about.
Happy Birthday, C.
Happy Birthday, C.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Yet Another Boomer Turns 65
J, who has been a Medicare recipient (your Medicare starts on the first of the month you turn 65) since the beginning of November, is now an Official Senior Citizen, eligible for the Senior Discount almost everywhere and discounted dinners from 4-7 PM at places like Denny's.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Will Everyone Go Shopping This Year?
This is always the question on Thanksgiving. Otherwise we'd be inundated with stories of "turkey disasters." I always hope that people will get sick of being played by retailers trying to entice them into stores with alleged "doorbusters", but the shopping frenzy has gotten worse, not better. Now stores open on Thanksgiving. Hey, skip the turkey and all the sides, grab a McBurger and head off to the mall. (I admit that I am sitting on the sofa, listening to Alice's Restaurant, and smelling turkey in the oven.) We will not be heading out to the shops after dinner, and not just because my knees are not working today. We're going to watch This is Spinal Tap after dinner because I so love the Stonehenge scene.
And it's not because I hate shopping. Economists would put me into the profligate category, pursing their lips and shaking their heads gently, using me as an example of what happens when you shop too much and don't build your assets. But it's because I take capitalism and shopping seriously. Karl Marx pointed out nigh on 150 years ago that capitalism released the productive forces and, in addition to the dark Satanic mills and fracking, capitalism has enabled us to purchase all sorts of wondrous things, things we'd never be able to do as well at home, no matter what people say about the superiority of the handmade. The handmade is better if you have access to very good materials and are a skilled craftsperson. Think Tiffany. When Tiffany is good, it's very good, although I've seen plenty of awful stuff from Tiffany's, and I've often thought on watching Antiques Roadshow that, if I owned some of the stuff, it would head right out the door to the auction block.
In some cases the handmade is very good, but I'm not willing to pay that much for it. Think couture. Just don't care enough, and am not interested in wearing hand-stitched pearls on my clothes anyway. That doesn't mean that I buy my clothes at Target or WalMart. Even Macy's these days is somewhat lacking. I'm a neo-hippie with linen overtones, and that stuff doesn't come cheap. Birkenstock's are more than $100 a pair. Those prices are nothing like couture though.
But before I start posting pictures of my favorite articles of clothing, let's move back to the main point, which is that instead of being offered good products at reasonable prices, Thanksgiving shopping offers us impulse purchases, junk and stuff that you will either give to Goodwill or, in an appalling lack of human solidarity, "re-gift". Worse, as I noted a couple of years ago, it's as though retailers are trying to see how much they can get away with, and ruining Thanksgiving is at the top of the list.
Addendum: Lambert, who works with Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, reports that customers are perceived as cattle, to be run through the stores to the checkout counter like cows to the slaughter. It's an ugly image, but if you see the pictures of the masses as the stores open, somehow appropriate.
And it's not because I hate shopping. Economists would put me into the profligate category, pursing their lips and shaking their heads gently, using me as an example of what happens when you shop too much and don't build your assets. But it's because I take capitalism and shopping seriously. Karl Marx pointed out nigh on 150 years ago that capitalism released the productive forces and, in addition to the dark Satanic mills and fracking, capitalism has enabled us to purchase all sorts of wondrous things, things we'd never be able to do as well at home, no matter what people say about the superiority of the handmade. The handmade is better if you have access to very good materials and are a skilled craftsperson. Think Tiffany. When Tiffany is good, it's very good, although I've seen plenty of awful stuff from Tiffany's, and I've often thought on watching Antiques Roadshow that, if I owned some of the stuff, it would head right out the door to the auction block.
In some cases the handmade is very good, but I'm not willing to pay that much for it. Think couture. Just don't care enough, and am not interested in wearing hand-stitched pearls on my clothes anyway. That doesn't mean that I buy my clothes at Target or WalMart. Even Macy's these days is somewhat lacking. I'm a neo-hippie with linen overtones, and that stuff doesn't come cheap. Birkenstock's are more than $100 a pair. Those prices are nothing like couture though.
But before I start posting pictures of my favorite articles of clothing, let's move back to the main point, which is that instead of being offered good products at reasonable prices, Thanksgiving shopping offers us impulse purchases, junk and stuff that you will either give to Goodwill or, in an appalling lack of human solidarity, "re-gift". Worse, as I noted a couple of years ago, it's as though retailers are trying to see how much they can get away with, and ruining Thanksgiving is at the top of the list.
Addendum: Lambert, who works with Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, reports that customers are perceived as cattle, to be run through the stores to the checkout counter like cows to the slaughter. It's an ugly image, but if you see the pictures of the masses as the stores open, somehow appropriate.
Friday, November 22, 2013
The Obamacare Cliff
This morning our local newspaper reported on the decision by Covered California (our local, and apparently functioning, health insurance exchange) not to allow extension of the insurance plans that don't comply with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. And of course they provided us with a family that would lose its cheaper insurance, and have to pay nearly double for ACA-compliant insurance. And we are supposed to feel sympathy for her.
Well, I do, up to a point. First, she is "out of subsidy," which means that she has an income at least close to $100,000 a year. That's far above the median for Sacramento County. In fact, she's probably in the top five percent, income-wise. Now her ACA-compliant plan will cost her $1,200 a month which, by my calculator-aided computation, is $14,400 a year. That's a lot of money.
It's a lot more than she used to pay, $7,740. But that sum depended on two factors. First, the insurance company never had to cover anyone who was old or got sick. In fact, it might not even cover her family if one of the insured got sick. Insurers regularly went through applications when someone got sick, looking for any forgotten visit to the doctor, over the counter medication, anything that would enable the insurer to claim a pre-existing condition and/or "lying" on the application, and cancel the insurance. Second, the cost of caring for the sick was covered by the government. Our health insurance system was often described as "cherry-picking" and it was very good for those who got picked. Not so much for everyone else.
Now even with an income in the top five percent, she's paying almost fifteen percent of her income for insurance, more if she goes to the doctor. What that should highlight, but doesn't, is that the cost of health care in the US is far more than our income can support. We just don't make enough money to pay for insurance that expensive. That's why we have subsidies for most of the population. If you're within subsidy, you won't pay more than 9.5% of your income for insurance, and the smaller your income, the less you pay.
But for those who fall off the cliff, the cost is very steep, and it's worse for people who are just above the 400% of poverty than for people who are richer, particularly if they are also older. Just off the cliff, people can pay a quarter of their income for insurance, again before they've been to the doctor. That means that, as your income increases, the percentage of income you pay decreases.
Now for the immediate problem, there's a simple solution. Get rid of the cliff. Just change the law to provide that no one who has an ACA policy pays more than, say, 10.5% of income for a silver plan. It's true that there would be a few people with very high incomes who would be subsidized, but the vast majority of rich people already have very good insurance. I don't think we'd find Jamie Dimon searching the exchange for insurance. But given the make-up of Congress these days, that's not likely to happen.
And the two other obvious problems aren't likely to come up for discussion. The first is that the poverty line is, for the parts of the country where people live, a convenient work of fiction. The poverty line for a single person is $11,500. Our rent is more than that, and we don't live in an expensive part of California. The poverty line for a two-person household is $15,500. To give you a sense of how silly these figures are, we need only compute how much rent someone should be paying on that income, assuming that 30% of income makes sense. (It doesn't, but that's another issue.) Again, using my trusty calculator, I find that 30% of $11,500 is $287.50 a month. You can't rent a room for that anywhere in California. Our two-person household could spend $387.50 a month for rent, still not enough for a single room in a shared household or residential hotel. So people who make 400% of poverty aren't really making that much money, if we also look at the cost of living.
The second problem is that our insurance costs far more than providing health care in other advanced capitalist countries. Health care costs are higher here than in France, where new mothers receive visits from a nurse who can help with any new baby problems. (Contrary, however, to popular misconception, the visiting nurses do not do the laundry or whip up a three-course French lunch.) The US system is so expensive that it would be cheaper to send our elders to France, and then pay the government of France to insure them. Dean Baker at CEPR seriously proposed this, although he used Britain as his example. (I'd be willing to accept less subsidy for the better food.)
Only a tiny number of Democrats and no Republicans suggested that we might rein in the cost of care--paying doctors, hospitals and drug companies less, keeping our payments more in line with those of other countries. In other countries the government determines the reasonable cost of various products and services, and that's that. Here we had a discussion of "death panels" and government bureaucrats keeping people from obtaining needed care.
It's so much fun to realize that we're going to waste so much money and cause so much misery because our politicians suck, some because they don't believe that knowledge should play any role in decision-making, and others because they don't have the backbones of slugs.
Well, I do, up to a point. First, she is "out of subsidy," which means that she has an income at least close to $100,000 a year. That's far above the median for Sacramento County. In fact, she's probably in the top five percent, income-wise. Now her ACA-compliant plan will cost her $1,200 a month which, by my calculator-aided computation, is $14,400 a year. That's a lot of money.
It's a lot more than she used to pay, $7,740. But that sum depended on two factors. First, the insurance company never had to cover anyone who was old or got sick. In fact, it might not even cover her family if one of the insured got sick. Insurers regularly went through applications when someone got sick, looking for any forgotten visit to the doctor, over the counter medication, anything that would enable the insurer to claim a pre-existing condition and/or "lying" on the application, and cancel the insurance. Second, the cost of caring for the sick was covered by the government. Our health insurance system was often described as "cherry-picking" and it was very good for those who got picked. Not so much for everyone else.
Now even with an income in the top five percent, she's paying almost fifteen percent of her income for insurance, more if she goes to the doctor. What that should highlight, but doesn't, is that the cost of health care in the US is far more than our income can support. We just don't make enough money to pay for insurance that expensive. That's why we have subsidies for most of the population. If you're within subsidy, you won't pay more than 9.5% of your income for insurance, and the smaller your income, the less you pay.
But for those who fall off the cliff, the cost is very steep, and it's worse for people who are just above the 400% of poverty than for people who are richer, particularly if they are also older. Just off the cliff, people can pay a quarter of their income for insurance, again before they've been to the doctor. That means that, as your income increases, the percentage of income you pay decreases.
Now for the immediate problem, there's a simple solution. Get rid of the cliff. Just change the law to provide that no one who has an ACA policy pays more than, say, 10.5% of income for a silver plan. It's true that there would be a few people with very high incomes who would be subsidized, but the vast majority of rich people already have very good insurance. I don't think we'd find Jamie Dimon searching the exchange for insurance. But given the make-up of Congress these days, that's not likely to happen.
And the two other obvious problems aren't likely to come up for discussion. The first is that the poverty line is, for the parts of the country where people live, a convenient work of fiction. The poverty line for a single person is $11,500. Our rent is more than that, and we don't live in an expensive part of California. The poverty line for a two-person household is $15,500. To give you a sense of how silly these figures are, we need only compute how much rent someone should be paying on that income, assuming that 30% of income makes sense. (It doesn't, but that's another issue.) Again, using my trusty calculator, I find that 30% of $11,500 is $287.50 a month. You can't rent a room for that anywhere in California. Our two-person household could spend $387.50 a month for rent, still not enough for a single room in a shared household or residential hotel. So people who make 400% of poverty aren't really making that much money, if we also look at the cost of living.
The second problem is that our insurance costs far more than providing health care in other advanced capitalist countries. Health care costs are higher here than in France, where new mothers receive visits from a nurse who can help with any new baby problems. (Contrary, however, to popular misconception, the visiting nurses do not do the laundry or whip up a three-course French lunch.) The US system is so expensive that it would be cheaper to send our elders to France, and then pay the government of France to insure them. Dean Baker at CEPR seriously proposed this, although he used Britain as his example. (I'd be willing to accept less subsidy for the better food.)
Only a tiny number of Democrats and no Republicans suggested that we might rein in the cost of care--paying doctors, hospitals and drug companies less, keeping our payments more in line with those of other countries. In other countries the government determines the reasonable cost of various products and services, and that's that. Here we had a discussion of "death panels" and government bureaucrats keeping people from obtaining needed care.
It's so much fun to realize that we're going to waste so much money and cause so much misery because our politicians suck, some because they don't believe that knowledge should play any role in decision-making, and others because they don't have the backbones of slugs.
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