In a free society, you can ask for whatever compensation you want for your skills. Does not mean you will inherently get it, but you have that freedom. So as a burger flipper you can say that you want $50 an hour as compensation for your skills. And the company you are applying to has every right to laugh in your face and to you to beat your feet down the street.
With additional competition and with the elimination of many over-the-top government interventions, the market costs of a product (yes, even health care) will go down. It is the nature of supply and demand and basic economics 101.
Okay, I guess this works in your black and white fantasy world. Supply and demand doesn't work when the advantages are skewed toward corporations that collude to ream us due to pure greed.
Pretty rich, you accusing others of greed when you're advocating that YOU be given the right to take what you want from those who earned it.
You're absolutely right that the free market doesn't work when someone comes in and blocks it and slants the playing field. And who is it that does that, hmmm? Who is it that interferes with the healthcare industry's ability to operate as a free market? There is only one entity in the country with the power to truly manipulate the market that way, and YOU are advocating that we give it even more control and power. Brilliant.
Health care is not just a product - I do believe it is a right in the kind of society I want to live in - at least a right to equal access.
No, health care IS just a product. It's something people want, and something other people are therefore willing to provide for compensation. The best products in the world are the ones you can depend on people always wanting. It's completely insane to say, "Well, anything that isn't a frivolous luxury I can do without can't possibly be subject to economics!"
Insofar as we don't LIVE in the society you want to live in - thank God - it's irrelevant whether or not healthcare is a "right" in that fantasy world. In THIS world, it isn't. And who gave YOU the right to dictate the society all the rest of us live in according to what YOU personally think is good?
So, according to you why is it okay for the corporation to exploit my labors without true compensation (being on the lower rung, we do most of the heavy lifting, right)?
No, dumbass. Those of you on the lower rung are just stupid enough to BELIEVE you're doing all the work, which is exactly why you're on the lower rung and not managing or owning the place.
The corporation has the right to "exploit" your labors for the same reason that YOU have a right to "exploit" their need for labor: it's called "commerce". You have something they want (unskilled labor to scrub the toilets, one assumes) and they have something YOU want (money to buy your weekend case of beer). So you make a trade. No exploitation involved.
I can assure you that those on the rungs above you, while perhaps not engaging in as much physical activity as you are, are doing much more to ensure the profitability of the company than whatever penny-ante "a trained chimp could do it" job you have. I can also assure you that you would never in a million years even be able to understand the issues they deal with, let alone do their jobs.
I do not "set" my salary. You take the best that is offered, and in these times, what you can get. Really, stop to imagine the third world country that this would be if everything were your way. Until the oligarchs show up, that is...
Um, dumbass, taking the best that is offered IS setting your own salary. I realize that that leaves you very little leeway down where you are, since your job skill set is unlikely to be worth very much to anyone, but that does change as one becomes more skilled and experienced and learns to do more than simply jobs that any high school dropout could handle.
Third world countries are not created by free markets, retard. They're created by government control and oppression of free markets. See, THIS is why you're still dorking around with an entry-level job.
