Everything is so expensive - eviltoast
    • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.eeEnglish
      131·
      15 days ago

      Elder care wealth is extracted using service companies as services. E.g. they hire their for-profit cleaning service for astronomical money while their non-profit elderly care facility claims to make no profits. Since the service takes the money and the elder care facility is paying for a known cost (cleaning, supplies, whatever) then they can still claim to be non-profit. The non-profit pays no taxes so they aren’t doubly taxed either.

      This is a widely known scheme in the north east, combined with the fact that when it’s inspection time to see staff levels the business owners mysteriously are given a heads up before they show up so they can make sure just enough staff is there. They routinely understaff these facilities because each person there is just another wage to pay.

      Bottom line, for profit healthcare is appalling and corruption is everywhere.

        • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.eeEnglish
          8·
          14 days ago

          I took a few courses about public policy at my university and met with the groups trying to create change. Did a research paper on this topic even.

          The ones in the industry know the secrets and the ones in the government turn a blind eye because lipservice and inspections on paper sound great when you’re trying to get votes from older people. They want to believe that when they need care that the providers will be doing the right thing. Sadly, they are not doing the right thing. There’s so much money in it when you’re charging over $400 per day per patient.

          Here’s an article that talks about it.

          They use nicer words to make it sound less predatory:

          Providers have wide latitude in how they utilize MassHealth and other funds, since there are no limits on self-dealing transactions/contracts and no ceiling on administrative costs.

          The growth of for-profit ownership in nursing homes, including significant investment by private equity firms and real estate investment trusts, makes it clear that nursing homes are profitable businesses.

          A Boston Globe 2014 study of Massachusetts nursing home finances found that many nursing homes directed cash to subsidiaries “…paying million-dollar rental fees and helping to pay executives’ six-figure salaries…”

          If you reach out to the authors of that article, including a former state senator, they’d be glad to talk to you about it. They won’t remember me though, it’s been a while. The things that can be said aloud go way beyond what is written down. No one wants to air their dirty laundry but trust me, the nursing homes are generally given a heads up before inspections take place so nobody gets fined and there are no problems. Unless something changed very, very recently.

    • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      37·
      15 days ago

      Hey there and solidarity from the disability care world. We need a damn union, I heard like 25% of the millenials are in human care positions, so I’m hoping we do something soon, we got the people for it.

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      14 days ago

      Damn y’all must bounce from flu to flu every month of the year lol

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    1642·
    15 days ago

    It seems that they do understand this economy. It’s capitalism.

        • skittle07crusher@sh.itjust.works
          5·
          14 days ago

          Is the dogwhistle the word “consoom”, I take it? Super curious to hear more. I understand dogwhistles but haven’t heard about this one.

          But I always got weird feelings from the people on the internet spelling ‘consume’ that way. For instance there’s this guy on YouTube called Luke something who makes videos on Linux and some other open source stuff, but began at some point to seem extremely condescending about everything and misanthropic generally really. Then he had a video that showed a house he bought and at some point you could see his tiny little bookshelf and it was just full of right wing garbage, lol. That and he moved to apparently middle of nowhere because that’s what he decided to spend his sweet doge gainz of what looks like maybe $100k max on, lmao. Super weird vibes. Oh and lots of Pepe the frogs, too, IIRC…

        • skittle07crusher@sh.itjust.works
          22·
          14 days ago

          Sorry, ignore my other comment, I think I see you were referring not to “consoom” but the comment it was replying to, and the “parasitic forces,” which I assume is the dogwhistle you meant and I guess is trying to say to those in the know “iT’s ThE jEwS”

          • atomicorange@lemmy.world
            12·
            14 days ago

            “Consoom” and the clown emoji are all dogwhistles from old reddit nazi groups like clownworld. This guy was also talking about “money changers” elsewhere in the comments which is some ancient protocols of the elders of zion kind of stuff. It’s like he can’t help himself.

      • atomicorange@lemmy.world
        139·
        14 days ago

        Let me guess, you think it’s the “globalists” running everything by which you mean the Jews? Take your Nazi shit elsewhere.

  • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.mlEnglish
    107·
    14 days ago

    Don’t worry because you are free to exploit people as well! Oh, you’re not exploiting, fucking over, and scamming literally every human being you meet? What’s wrong with you. Maybe you’re just not smart enough to screw people over. /$

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
    85·
    14 days ago

    It’s almost like there’s greedy fatcats in every industry stuffing all of the profits down their fat gullets while everyone else barely holds off starvation.

  • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
    84·
    14 days ago

    I used to work as a building superintendent in a condo. I did the math and the corporation brought in around half a million a month in maintenance fees and the operating costs aren’t anywhere that high. I used to get paid minimum wage. I did the math on the amount of units in comparison to my paycheck. It was something like a dollar per unit was going towards my pay. So whenever anyone acted like I should bend over backwards for them, I remembered that their particular issues and complaints were only worth $1 to me

    In the condo and building maintenance industry, the less you do the more you make, the super and cleaners do everything and get paid shit, the manager and offsite manager’s boss make a fortune

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      14 days ago

      So whenever anyone acted like I should bend over backwards for them

      In theory, there should have been a dozen of you with what they were paying. That’s something they failed to understand (or refused to understand) as tenants. It is - at some level - something they needed to be made more aware of.

      Renters can and do unionize. And when both renters and apartment workers realize they share economic interests, they can exert a ton of leverage over a building that has effectively been abandoned by its official title holder.

      the super and cleaners do everything and get paid shit, the manager and offsite manager’s boss make a fortune

      It’s all a pyramid scheme.

    • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
      6·
      14 days ago

      It’s beyond immoral that anyone could be employed to provide labor to an apartment complex without being paid enough to live in one of the very units they maintain. Having maintenance live on-site is a win/win for the maintenance person and for the tenants. But it would result in ever so slightly less wealth being stolen by the owners, so it’s not allowed.

  • Overshoot2648@lemm.ee
    721·
    15 days ago

    Worker and Consumer Cooperatives should be the only way to form a business. Fuck external and unequal capital ownership by shareholders.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
    695·
    14 days ago

    This is generating the typical anti-capitalist hate, but we should also consider that this is also a reflection on the kinds of unpaid work that women have been doing for generations. The problem isn’t necessarily profits or middle-men, it’s just that some things are always going to be expensive if people are actually paid for the work they do.

    Take daycare. In the US the government says that one adult should care for no more than 3 infants, no more than 4 toddlers and no more than 7 preschoolers.

    Take someone working at the US poverty line at about $15,000 per year. That’s $1250 per month. For 3 infants that’s $415 per month each, for 4 toddlers that’s $312 each, for 7 preschoolers that’s $180 each. That’s the absolute cheapest you could possibly go, where a worker is at the poverty line, and there are no costs for rent, supplies, and also zero profit.

    But, as a parent, you probably don’t want the absolute lowest “bidder” to take care of your kids. You probably want someone who’s good with kids, kind, gentle, patient, etc. So, let’s not even go all the way up to the lowest possible teacher’s salary of $34,041 in Montana. Let’s say the daycare worker is great with kids, but doesn’t have the teaching background to get even the least well paying teaching job available in the country. Let’s say you’d be willing to have someone who makes $24,000 per year for easy math. That’s a wage where the caregiver is going to struggle to make ends meet in most of the country, but maybe it’s worth it for them because they like working with kids. That’s $2000 per month. For infants it’s $667 per month each or $8000 per year, toddlers it’s $500 per month each or $6000 per year. preschoolers it’s $285 per month each or about $3500 per year.

    Again, this is before you consider any profits. That’s money straight from the parents to the caregiver’s salary. That’s before you consider rent, before supplies, before snacks, etc. That’s no reading nook, no library, no arts and crafts, that’s presumably just using someone’s living room.

    Now, if the daycare worker is going to be able to take sick days or vacations, you’ll need to pay part of another person’s salary who will cover. So instead of 1 person watching 7 preschoolers, you have 10 people watching 70 preschoolers plus 1 who rotates in to cover when the main workers are unavailable, so make that another 10%. We’re up to almost $9k per year for an infant, and we still don’t have cribs, baby food or a cent in profit, and we have a worker who is barely scraping by.

    The point is, any job that involves a lot of human supervision is going to be very expensive. Caring for babies and old or sick people involves a lot of human supervision. Much of this work used to be done by women who didn’t work outside the home. Now that women are working outside the home, even when they have young children, we’re realizing how expensive it is. None of what I’ve talked about involves capitalism or profits, it’s just purely paying someone to do child-care work while the woman does other work.

    But, this is where the capitalism / socialism aspect comes in. If we want women to be able to work outside the home, and we also want kids to be something that isn’t financially ruinous, society needs to help pay for those things. In a purely capitalist, no socialism, winner-take-all world, having kids is a major liability. Having an option to not have kids is great, but in the long term society is doomed if nobody is willing to have kids anymore.

    • sweetpotato@lemmy.ml
      28·
      14 days ago

      This is a very interesting thing to point out, but I believe you are not realising how intrinsically tied the generations of women unpaid work is to the economic system.

      “mainstream economic theory is obsessed with the productivity of waged labour while skipping right over the unpaid work that makes it all possible, as feminist economists have made clear for decades. That work is known by many names: unpaid caring work, the reproductive economy, the love economy, the second economy.”

      “the household provision of care is essential for human well-being, and productivity in the paid economy depends directly upon [the core economy]. It matters because when – in the name of austerity and public-sector savings – governments cut budgets for children’s daycare centres, community services, parental leave and youth clubs, the need for care-giving doesn’t disappear: it just gets pushed back into the home. The pressure, particularly on women’s time, can force them out of work and increase social stress and vulnerability. That undermines both well-being and women’s empowerment, with multiple knock-on effects for society and the economy alike.”

      Doughnut economics - Kate Raworth

      Capitalism thrived and keeps thriving in concentrating capital because it is able to get away with not accounting for the value it extracts. This is true for this example of unpaid labour as well as for natural resources extraction, ecosystem damage etc(we are beginning to realize this with carbon tax). That’s the cornerstone of the system function, not just a side effect. The unpaid labour may be starting to be dealt with in the West, but this just means it is aggressively outsourced in third world countries. Without these so-called economic externalities there is no profit (or extremely little of it).

    • recklessengagement@lemmy.world
      14·
      14 days ago

      This is a really good point. Historically communities have always relied on unpaid/underpaid labor in some capacity. Even mowing your neighbors lawn once in a while could be considered a value of a few hundred dollars (fuck lawns btw) - there has always been this invisible layer of communal support that is now becoming commodified.

      Marginalized groups being fairly compensated is an objectively good thing, but the financial stress is real. As society continues to grow even more individualistic, we will probably see additional pressures mount until another fundamental shift happens. I have no idea what that will look like, but it is interesting to think about.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
        1·
        14 days ago

        The only way it will work is taxes. There’s an irreconcilable gap between what people can afford and what is a fair wage for proper supervision.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
      321·
      14 days ago

      Not just the staff either, providers are making significantly less every year.

      I work in orthopedics and rehabilitation, and even though the cost of school, licensing, and insurance has skyrocketed. My field is basically being paid the same amount they were 30 years ago, and that’s not even accounting for inflation.

      In some ways it’s nice, as medicine doesn’t attract people who are just in it for the money any longer. But, hospital organizations now know that providers are basically locked in a sunk cost fallacy to pay back their loans, and on top of that they have a calling for it.

      • Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de
        10·
        14 days ago

        That is the main reason my wife and I are moving to a different state. As a nurse, she has seen her income decrease with her 1.5% raise with inflation going up 3-5% year over year.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
          8·
          14 days ago

          Hope she cashed in during COVID. Our hospital administration was trying to get everyone to turn on all the nurses making bank during lock down, but pretty much every provider I know was just happy there were people hitting the administration where it hurts.

      • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
        7·
        14 days ago

        But, hospital organizations now know that providers are basically locked in a sunk cost fallacy to pay back their loans, and on top of that they have a calling for it.

        Sounds like slavery with extra steps.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.eeEnglish
    53·
    14 days ago

    If you went 100 years back in time and told people that school teachers would be dead broke despite making the best financial decisions possible and be nearly homeless despite working long hours they would be fucking shocked.

    Being a school teacher, even one for elementary school kids, in the late 19th century was not only a respectable profession, but also decently paid. I think Horrible Histories said that the average school teacher in the 1880s and 1890s in the UK made around 60 pounds sterling a year, which was a fairly decent wage at the time.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      The problem is there’s not a good historical context for the high cost of daycare and nursing homes. Just 60 years ago it was considered normal and good parenting for kids to be left unattended for most of the time. We’re taking 3 year olds wandering around town unattended. This is where some of the outdated expectations of children come from is teaching kids to survive in a world where they’re expected to be on their own for such a huge amount of their childhood

      And on the flip side of the spectrum people are living far longer than they ever have so end of life care has become a decades long investment. Social security was first implemented because people who didn’t expect to live long enough to need to think about retirement suddenly found themselves too old to work but needing to make ends meet

      The only window of historic context we have for the sheer cost of daycare and nursing care would be from about 1970 and later, since that would be after civil rights protections had been passed (meaning you couldn’t just pay a minority person a pittance to do the work) at a time when women really started entering the workforce in earnest, and expectations had largely become that children were not left unmonitored

    • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      14 days ago

      Like someone else said, £60 in today’s money is £9k. Per year. What am I missing because that does not sound like a decent wage.

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      191·
      13 days ago

      Our current population has emotional breakdowns when told they have to wear a mask to keep old people from dying. I am not at all confident that we will ever reach the same level of energy that led to organized, cohesive revolution and war unless some outside power starts taking away people’s internet and pizza rolls.

      • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        13 days ago

        Not when more than a third are too apathetic and disengaged to care, and another third are beholden to the robber baron cause through blind consumption of propaganda disguised as ‘fair and balanced’ news.

  • FreakinSteve@lemmy.world
    41·
    13 days ago

    Private equity, shareholders. No publicly traded business is in the business of providing service and goods of value.

  • booly@sh.itjust.works
    372·
    14 days ago

    I do volunteer office work for a non-profit childcare center, and have looked at their budget and their books. It’s basically impossible to efficiently do at the scale of a single center in a high cost of living city.

    If you’re paying teachers an average of $30/hour and maintaining a ratio of 4 kids to 1 teacher at all times, and covering 50 hours per week of operational time (for example, operational hours between 8am and 6pm 5 days per week), and you actually have enough staff to not pay overtime, that’s $1500/week in wages per teacher, or $375/week per student. Throw in taxes, healthcare, paid vacation, and staffing in redundancy so that you can handle illness and the unexpected, and each kid might be at $400-450/week in labor costs of the direct work of watching and teaching the kids.

    But in reality, childcare is in crisis now because a qualified worker could probably get a higher paying nanny job for 1 or 2 kids at a time, so there’s a severe shortage of workers even at that $30/hour average wage. And so there needs to be overtime, and that creeps up to $450-500/week for workers.

    And then you have the ongoing overhead: rent, utilities, furniture/equipment, toys, books, other supplies, etc. Most centers provide food, and have to contract out for that, too.

    And then there’s the cost of management. Someone needs to run the place, there might need to be something like a receptionist, and these centers often have to contract out their bookkeeping, electronic records, or even basics like running a website. Most have extra features like electronic reports and maybe even pictures/video for parents, and that costs money, too.

    So even on the non-profit side, without a profit motive or distributions to shareholders, the industry as a whole has a mismatch between the prices parents are able to pay versus the bare minimum acceptable cost of providing that service. (In fact, the nonprofit I’m thinking of has donations coming in to cover things like tuition assistance for parents who need it, or a lot of the supplies, and volunteers like me who can provide specialized labor for no cost to the center.)

    Childcare should be subsidized by the government, and there’s basically no way this industry can continue to exist based purely on revenues from parents alone. Otherwise the industry will enter a death spiral and the number of people simply unable to afford kids will grow out of control.

    • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
      171·
      14 days ago

      Or, hear me out here, fix the economy so that people don’t need between 2 and 3 incomes per household to survive.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
        2·
        13 days ago

        On the childcare side of things just increasing wages would end up increasing wealth inequity if childcare isn’t heavily subsidized. The fact is, for a safe adult:child ratio in a daycare each child has to pay for about 1/4 of a teacher

        • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
          1·
          13 days ago

          You’re not wrong, and I’m not against massively subsidizing it. In fact I think we should do both. My point is that childcare places wouldn’t be so overwhelmed if we could have a stay at home parent.

    • acchariya@lemmy.world
      11·
      14 days ago

      MBA consultant:

      Increase the ratio to 35 kids per teacher, add in a minimum wage helper to assist, and have an intern work reception while building the website. Extra services are subscription add ons.

      Boom

    • Philo@lemmy.ca
      38·
      14 days ago

      Childcare should be subsidized by the government

      It is. Ever heard of TANF and other CCW programs?

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        13·
        14 days ago

        You mean the programs that Republicans defund every chance they get, and are constantly trying to eliminate? Those programs?

        If only ~30% of the population was able to learn something (or oftentimes simply admit they’re wrong) and stop voting against their interests, we wouldn’t have to be constantly worrying that these programs are going to go away and/or get starved.

        People literally voting in the people who will (and have in the past) taken food directly from their own childrens’ mouths. It’s infuriating to see. Then when it happens, they’ll find a way to blame “liberals.”

      • vortic@lemmy.world
        13·
        14 days ago

        Those programs are income limited and don’t really provide much support compared to the cost of child care.

        Cost of child care

        I my state, child care runs between $1,500 and $2,200 per month ($18,000 to $26,400 per year) per child (I pay about $1,800 per month).

        TANF benefits

        TANF benefits are income based. They decrease as income increases and end at $75,000 household income.

        • The maximum possible benefit of $592 per month ($7,104 per year) is provided for a family with one parent and two children with zero income.

        • If that single parent earns $1,000 per month ($12,000 per year) their benefit drops to $330 per month ($3,960 per year).

        Availability of care

        To top that off, child care facilities are not required to accept TANF because it places limits on how much they can charge. Most place limits on the number of TANF recipients they will enroll and some simply don’t accept TANF.