I know this post is like a decade late and very boring, but I gotta post it anyway
Basically, with employer-sponsored health insurance the employer pays half and the employee (you) pays half. The cost of your insurance goes way down if you have a high deductible, and a deductible is basically what you'd have to pay before the insurance actually pays anything. So 'high-deductible' means you have to pay a lot before insurance pays anything, and it's a lot cheaper to buy that insurance cause the insurers often just don't pay anything ever. If it's $5,000 before insurance pays a dime, often times you have to just pay as though you had no insurance. This is obviously bad, but it's also cheap so like maybe you just luck out an never get sick or injured, right...?
Anyway, HSAs. Yeah, it's called "Health Savings Account". It's marketed as a tax-advantaged, investor-y, bougie-"we're comfortable" lifestyle way to really feel like a keen insider. Picture this: what if health insurance was individualized in the same way 401k and retirement stuff was, and you could "call your broker" at your "health savings account" to tell them to invest your tax-free "medical dollars" in the latest gizmo or whatever. Just deeply bad for solidarity and also very weird. And this is how basically everyone thinks about HSAs. A "tax-loophole" for the rich that I can also use because "I'm actually very financially savvy, just like the rich, who got where they are because of a weird hyper-individualized investment thing rather than any underlying systemic basis of societal organization".
And you're probably thinking: "But I already hate the suburban petite-bourgeois and their annoying mannerisms for reasons that are way less boring and meaningless." Well you're right, but also: high deductible plans are a requirement of HSAs so the employer's half decreases significantly. Your employer doesn't contribute to the HSA (they technically could, but if you're reading this post they don't [incredibly silly losing battle available there for libs]), so hopefully you do at least up to your deductible, but it's pretty likely that's not possible even if you had the money (no one does) because you literally aren't allowed to due to contribution limits. (if people did have the money it would probably be better to get different / better / additional health insurance anyway.) But importantly and I guess obviously: nobody contributes to their HSA. It's basically the chance for each person to individually manage an insurance fund for only themselves, which is almost exactly the same as paying out of pocket, the main difference being the additional bank account and a make-work program for MBAs. I've talked to almost a dozen office workers about this and they mostly have no idea what I am saying at all or say "yeah, I added money in onboarding, but I canceled it once I realized it came out of my pay."
There's no non-scam option btw if that wasn't clear. And, yeah, obviously all health insurance is a scam, but this is a different scam run by a slightly different set of people (there's def overlap though don't get me wrong). The office job benefits world is basically a choice between varying levels of high-deductible plans + HSA (ie. $1.5k, $3k, $5k...) with maybe one ridiculously expensive low-deductible plan.
Anyway, thoughts? I needed to get this rant out, I guess. Maybe I just missed the discourse on this because I was a child at the time lol.
We've had threads on how D&D itself has a colonial mindset, but I think that undersells how fucked up and racist players can be. I want this thread to be about players who go out of their way to make characters that break the fourth wall and ruin friendships outside of the game.
I'll start: I had a player come to me with their character: "Gucci, the rapping goblin bard". The details were what you would expect. Like he literally put a picture of Gucci Mane in the chat. I told him that this was blackface and I wouldn't allow it. He had a tantrum about being called racist, and now we no longer speak (lol).
https://yesnowave.bandcamp.com/album/phantasmagoria-of-jathilan
5 track album
https://redsails.org/on-anthony-bourdain/
As of March 2018 Patrick Radden Keefe, a journalist who typically covers El Chapo and ISIS, can add to his list of accolades a nomination for a James Beard award, given for excellence in culinary writing. What’s a writer who used to work for the Department of Defense doing…
https://archive.ph/1H0MZ
I promise this is not trying to have a hot-take or anything. I don't understand what I'm supposed to be getting out of the book. I've read like 3/4ths of it now and it seems like mostly normal pretty standard speeches and government stuff.
Some parts gave me a pang of sadness realizing this is what a competent government would look like, especially in the beginning sections where it's like "we should eliminate poverty starting with rural extreme poverty" because I know that they succeeded. It's kinda a reminder that these are problems that could be solved and it's not utopian to believe things could be better.
But most of the book seems to be "we should ensure peaceful, cooperative, and friendly relationships with other countries and expand existing trade relationships....". + Belt and Road stuff.
I understand that this is a collection of speeches rather than a book about ideology or a textbook, but is there something I'm supposed to be getting out of this that I'm not? Sorry that this question is really open ended.
@thebartermyth
@hexbear.net