> rugs possession offenses also drop noticeably once a plasma centers opens – by 14.3%. We posit that this relates to the drug and blood-quality regulations implemented plasma centers.
I would think people would have more money for rugs, carpets too.
jihadjihad · 5h ago
Does compensating people reduce the number of rugs micturated upon?
vpribish · 5h ago
so the do-not-remove tag inspectors work at the plasma center?
blindriver · 5h ago
The implied end result is ghoulish. Open plasma centers in poor areas. Sooner or later they will ask for kidney donation centers. The rich literally feeding off the poor.
This is a perfect case for UBI instead of feeding off the poor.
stewx · 5h ago
It isn't just "the rich" who need blood plasma. It's everyone. And paid plasma is the only mechanism in the world to date that yields enough plasma to meet demand.
cogman10 · 5h ago
Plasma donations may actually be a net positive for your health (so long as not done too frequently).
It removes PFAS, heavy metals, and microplastics from your blood. All things that won't really come out without the donation.
OutOfHere · 3h ago
Regular whole blood donations also remove them, just slower.
Fiber also removes some of them by binding bile.
cogman10 · 3h ago
> Fiber also removes some of them by binding bile.
I don't think this is the case, certainly not for microplastics and PFAS. I'm not sure how it'd work for heavy metals.
AFAIK, fiber doesn't cross the stomach->blood barrier so it really wouldn't have the ability to bind to anything other than what's already in the digestive tract. I could see it potentially reducing the amount of plastics/metals/PFAS that end up in the blood stream but not actually reducing what's already there.
vpribish · 5h ago
It's only vampiric, not ghoulish.
No comments yet
SubiculumCode · 4h ago
I actually expected the article to be something about how blood donations get sequenced and used to solve crimes.
idle_zealot · 6h ago
So in summary, a large portion of crime is due to economic deprivation. Giving the poors the opportunity to sell their blood alleviates that deprivation enough to notably reduce crime in the area surrounding donation centers. Am I getting that right?
docsaintly · 6h ago
It also points out that the requirement (or belief one exists) to have "clean" blood causes would-be donors to avoid drugs, which also has a benefit. I'm guessing less drugs consumed means better health, better choices, and more money available for necessities.
SoftTalker · 5h ago
And lower crime, since a lot of crime is related to buying and selling drugs.
sc68cal · 6h ago
yes this is my read too. In true classic American fashion, instead of investing money to help uplift disadvantaged communities, we treat them as a resource to extract
vpribish · 5h ago
blood is a top-ten US export (#7 in 2024) - like 2.5% of our exports by value. It's a surprisingly big business.
Heck, if that happened in a book or a movie, I'd think that the metaphor was too heavy-handed - extracting and selling the literal blood of the poor. And it might be better than it sounds like, all else being equal in this timeline.
BobaFloutist · 3h ago
It probably helps that they don't let you sell enough to damage or endanger your health.
hombre_fatal · 6h ago
Dunno, I sold blood plasma in uni. IIRC I made $75/week doing it.
I think the trade offs are all sensible here.
1. It doesn't depend on politics, it already works today
2. You have to plan for and show up to a place to get the money and ensure your blood remains valuable, all of which promote a basic semblance of order in your life, especially when you're on the ropes.
3. You save lives and are compensated for it
4. In the area between having no money vs having a job, pretty much anything I can think of to make money is worse than selling plasma.
It's a lucky quirk that you can sell your plasma, because you usually can't sell your blood even though countries, industry, hospitals, and insurance companies pay each other good money for it, just not to the person who created it.
pkaye · 5h ago
Only five countries allow payment for plasma donations: US, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary. The reality is the countries that don't allow payment for plasma donations don't produce enough plasma drug products for self sufficiency within their country. They have to import it from one of the other countries (primarily US because it has the biggest population of those five.) This is all due to a policy pushed by the WHO recommending countries not pay for plasma donations.
Avshalom · 5h ago
It does depend on politics, the USA being on of the few countries that allows payment for plasma is result of politics, to the degree that blood products make up ~3% of US exports.
Like yeah, I give (double red) blood as often as I am able because, well civic duty and all but it's still real fucked.
hombre_fatal · 5h ago
True.
But what I mean is that cash handouts are a constant contentious political battleground that feels like a pipe dream where I live while selling plasma was a political decision made before we arrived and probably not something most people feel quite as strongly about.
The danger as I see it is that we can let perfect be the enemy of good, though I suppose you aren't suggesting that it's bad that people have the option to sell their plasma as everything currently stands. I do see it better than the alternative of prohibiting it.
SoftTalker · 5h ago
It's not just giving out money. We've tried that in a number of ways and it mostly doesn't work, or incentizes the wrong behaviors. It's an economic exchange; there is a sense of having provided something of value for the payment.
altruios · 6h ago
Blood, like the sun: is renewable... up and until a point. /s
People get all huffy when you suggest criminal activity isn't an innate trait of a person but due to life circumstances and desperation, as if they would never steal to eat/survive.
It's an attack on a person's identity to insinuate that the only difference between them and a 'criminal' is one of circumstance. For some, such is too much to even consider. This is the real barrier to fixing the problem: a lack of imagination and empathy.
mc32 · 5h ago
Not innate but some people will breach mores more readily than others under similar circumstances. Some people feel deep shame and failure if they have to steal, others not so much. So there are degrees.
altruios · 4h ago
> some people will breach mores more readily than others under similar circumstances
> Not innate
These two thoughts seem to be in conflict. You are describing an innate difference.
I agree there is nuance. We are a product of our environment and innate nature. I suspect the environment is (far: by orders of magnitude) easier to change. I don't think we only need to change the environment, but I would venture the 80/20 estimation here...
This says nothing for 'truly evil' people, which - I suspect - is a vanishingly small number of people. I also think that such people require a degraded environment to operate effectively (according to their goals) and by focusing on improving the conditions people are in: we remove a lot of leverage for those people to act as they wish (maliciously).
RobGR · 5h ago
My gut feeling is that is what is going on. But, the creation of new plasma donation centers is not a random process, so we've identified a correlation, not a definitive cause and effect. What if areas that are on an upward economic trajectory are more likely to have new businesses open ? Maybe those are the areas where it is easier to get the necessary zoning or building permits.
potato3732842 · 4h ago
>Maybe those are the areas where it is easier to get the necessary zoning or building permits.
Which, at least on the highly regulated coasts and comparable midwest areas, are the areas that are/were depressed by manufacturing pulling out.
potato3732842 · 5h ago
Exactly. You walk out of the plasma center, sawzall in hand and $20 in pocket, and because of that $20 in pocket you walk a little further before cutting the cat off anything. Metaphorically of course, but also almost literally.
mc32 · 5h ago
It’s “giving the poor…” You don’t have to pluralize poor.
In rural America you do have some poor people selling their plasma to afford gas. Drug screening means they avoid doing drugs. Not being on drugs lowers propensity to engage in petty crime. I knew a couple like this.
hollywood_court · 5h ago
It's not just rural America and it's not just the people we'd normally consider poor.
Next to the plasma donation center in my town, there's a children's trampoline and activity center. I take my son there at least once a month, sometimes more often if the weather’s bad.
While he plays, I sit near the front windows and keep an eye on him while also looking outside and seeing the various individuals who go and sell their plasma at the donation center.
There are people from all different walks of life. You've got people walking in from god knows where (my town and this area in particular are not very walking friendly), people driving up in trash cars about to fall apart, people driving up in $60k+ cars, folks with multiple children in tow, etc.
It seems that many people other than the folks we'd normally consider poor need to sell their plasma to get that bit of extra cash.
pavel_lishin · 5h ago
> It seems that many people other than the folks we'd normally consider poor need to sell their plasma to get that bit of extra cash.
AMaybe some of them are doing it for altruistic reasons.
jdeibele · 4h ago
If you want to give away your plasma, you can do that through the Red Cross and maybe get a $10 Amazon gift card and/or a T-shirt.
It takes about 3 hours on a gurney.
I donate blood every 2 months. It takes about 30 minutes. I was doing it for altruistic reasons but it turns out that I have an iron deficiency and everyone is tested for an adequate hemoglobin level before they can donate. I have been turned away because my level was too low. Because I donate blood, I get a nice chart that I can show my doctor of what the levels are.
A while ago, the Red Cross was testing for COVID-19 antibodies so that blood with those could be given to immuno-compromised people.
My thought is that the Red Cross should find some tests that are relatively inexpensive to do but would be popular with certain people. Like testosterone or Vitamin D levels. That'd be a much bigger incentive than a $10 gift card.
pimlottc · 5h ago
"The poors" [0] is a satirical way of mocking how poor people are disdained by the elite, it's almost certainly an intentional choice of words.
Correct. I'm commenting on how we would sooner milk desperate people for their blood than help and uplift them.
Glyptodon · 5h ago
"Poors" is a specific expression with connotation. Presumably used sarcastically, but potentially not.
mc32 · 5h ago
When making an argument, using slang like that kind of lowers it’s impact.
idle_zealot · 1h ago
Thanks for the tip. I'll make sure to avoid using slang, allegory, metaphor, or sarcasm when communicating in the future.
On a related note, I find that making elementary grammatical errors, like using the wrong "its" or "there", can detract from the impact of an argument.
Glyptodon · 2h ago
I mean I didn't use the term, it just wasn't clear if it was known based on the message I replied to.
lupusreal · 5h ago
This reinforces my belief that legalizing and incentivising casual labor would be immensely helpful to the lowest rungs of society. The money they make from selling their plasma cannot add up to much, getting a job would give them much more money, but regular employment is beyond the capabilities of people who have very irregular lives due to drug abuse, mental illness, etc. Making it easier for people to work even just a few hours, on short notice whenever they can muster the energy and willpower, would allow them to have a much better source of income than is available to them currently.
cogman10 · 5h ago
Casual labor is by and large quiet legal (at least in the US).
The problem is it's not available or easy to find.
I think bringing back something like the CCC [1] would do wonders for the US. It could even be made more available and accessible in the modern era. Imagine, for example, if you had something akin to a small jobs board. Citizens could apply for tasks to be done and the government could fund (or partially fund) the completion of those tasks. Could be things like scrubbing graffiti off a wall. Filling a pothole. Or any other community improvement (like taking care of a park).
> Could be things like scrubbing graffiti off a wall. Filling a pothole. Or any other community improvement (like taking care of a park).
All of that requires funding. Where would that funding come from? If the answer is "just spend more money", why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
cogman10 · 4h ago
> Where would that funding come from?
Taxes. Ideally higher income taxes or even better a wealth tax (but that has dubious constitutionality).
I also wouldn't mind pulling $100B, $200B, or $500B away from the military budget for such projects.
> why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
Means testing requires someone to do the means testing along with additional bureaucracy to enforce it. It's, in fact, more expensive than just having an open program. Why would I actually care, for example, if we paid extra money for a billionaire's kid to get healthcare if that meant the 99% of the population that isn't billionaires got healthcare?
A public works program is a welfare program. With the benefit that beyond just giving money to people that need it, it also improves public spaces for everyone. And, I think nobody would actually object to allowing anyone to participate in public works. Would you really care if a millionaire got a little extra cash cleaning a highway?
But beyond that, it's better to spend money on people with the least amount of money because they drive the economy way harder than everyone else. A dollar given to someone poor is far more likely to be spent in the economy than a dollar given to a rich person. A healthy economy is one where money moves more frequently.
A good example is what's predicted to happen with the medicaid defunding. Rural hospitals are likely going to shutdown as the majority of them receive their funding from medicaid. That hurts everyone in a rural community even if they aren't on medicaid.
Now imagine the reverse. If that rural community had government works jobs, that'd be more money in the community which would ultimately mean more opportunities for new businesses in the community to exist. Where it previously may not have made sense for a grocery store to exist, now it might because more of the population has a stable income they are willing to spend.
gruez · 4h ago
>Means testing requires someone to do the means testing along with additional bureaucracy to enforce it. It's, in fact, more expensive than just having an open program. Why would I actually care, for example, if we paid extra money for a billionaire's kid to get healthcare if that meant the 99% of the population that isn't billionaires got healthcare?
How is means testing (ie. reviewing some paperwork) going to be cheaper than running an actual public works program where you need to decide what needs to be done, plan the thing that needs to be done, recruit people to do the thing, procure equipment/material so those people can actually do the thing, supervise/train those people to do the thing, inspect their work, and remit payment for them? Sure, a public works program might produce beneficial outcomes that justifies some of the costs, but the hassle of herding a bunch of casual workers (compared to having full time staff) and paying them is probably going to take orders of magnitude more money than means testing. If your argument is just that the government should tax more and use that money to spend on full time government jobs, that's just a generic "tax and spend" argument, not a "small jobs board" or whatever.
cogman10 · 3h ago
> How is means testing (ie. reviewing some paperwork) going to be cheaper than running an actual public works program where you need to decide what needs to be done, plan the thing that needs to be done, recruit people to do the thing, procure equipment/material so those people can actually do the thing, supervise/train those people to do the thing, inspect their work, and remit payment for them?
Means testing is not just "reviewing some paperwork". It can be a quiet laborious effort up to and including enforcement actions. It doesn't just happen once; it has to happen frequently as salaries change. And further, because it's generally based on things like salaries/net worth, it requires background checks and verification that isn't necessarily readily on hand. There's also the need to review the work of the person doing the means testing.
I'll grant that it'd be a smaller portion of the cost for something like a CCC program. However, for other welfare programs such as heating assistance, the means testing can quickly outstrip the cost of just giving the assistance in the first place. Hiring a department of people to make sure someone doesn't get assistance costs money.
> If your argument is just that the government should tax more and use that money to spend on full time government jobs, that's just a generic "tax and spend" argument, not a "small jobs board" or whatever.
Yes, I believe tax and spend is in fact more beneficial to the economy and public good as I've outlined. Absolute government efficiency is not an absolute good.
The small jobs board, though, is something that we could actually do more efficiently in the modern environment. You could track that information far more efficiently then you could in the 1940s. That means you don't really need the full blown work camps of the 40s to get most of the same benefit that CCC provided.
analognoise · 5h ago
"How we keep the poor inline by ghoulishly selling their literal blood"
Not a very advanced society at all. Gross on multiple levels.
crossbody · 5h ago
Yes! Let's campaign to stop this exploitation!
Drug use shots up, crime rises as a result, people die due to plasma shortages, but at least it's not gross, right?
analognoise · 5h ago
Yes there’s nothing we can do.
Not socialize medicine and return to a 90% top marginal tax rate for a new deal - you’re right, our only option is increased crime and violence or ghoulishly profiting on the blood of the poor.
No other options. /s
crossbody · 4h ago
"Socialize medicine and 90% top marginal tax rate" - great ideas of you ignore all second order effects (well researched and proven).
But then you propose to take away a clearly beneficial opportunity to donate plasma just because it sounds personally gross to you (while people make their own free choice to take this opportunity or not), so not sure a nuanced conversation about 2nd order effects can be held here
analognoise · 4h ago
You’re arguing the “second order effects” are literally worse than selling the blood of the poor. Gonna need a source for that trash, chief.
Considering we’re the only “advanced” country that does healthcare this poorly, and we have a wild oligarch class that desperately needs to be put in its place, I’m really curious how “healthcare for all and not requiring the poor to sell their own plasma” is the worse option.
dlachausse · 3h ago
So where are we supposed to get plasma from? Taxing the rich more and socializing medicine doesn't accomplish that part.
analognoise · 2h ago
Here goes: people can donate it without the threat of losing their lives and homes (social violence).
You know what sucks? Having what, 150+ “mass casualty” incidents a year, extracting the blood of the poor, then trying to say “hey that reduces crime!” while 5 families have more wealth than 50% of America combined, and the only “advanced” country where medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy.
There’s no sane washing any of this shit.
dlachausse · 2h ago
> Here goes: people can donate it without the threat of losing their lives and homes (social violence).
Where is the incentive for people to donate plasma other than paying people for it?
If people were donating it for free in adequate quantities there wouldn’t be companies paying people for it.
I’m not even arguing against socialized medicine, just pointing out that you haven’t provided a better solution to the demand for plasma.
crossbody · 2h ago
I am referencing 90% marginal tax and social healthcare for second order effects that include: lack of innovation, shortages, inefficiencies, mass tax evasion, etc.
I see that some people being crazy rich is infuriating and very often unjust. And I wish socialism worked. But it doesn't. Look at history and consider second order effects of 90% tax and similar policies. Or more narrowly, imagine you are poor and rely on plasma donations, now that option is gone, what do you do next? Are you better off with that option no longer available?
DantesKite · 5h ago
If true, sounds like a strong argument for removing minimum wage laws, so as to provide more economic opportunities for people and create a skill ladder they can climb.
soks86 · 5h ago
Working and not being able to live is not an "economic opportunity."
It's more likely the reason some of these folks aren't employed.
Lowering wages doesn't create anything except depravity on the part of employers.
mjamesaustin · 4h ago
Sounds more like an argument for universal basic income. Plasma donation is much closer to a cash grant than it is to a job.
hollywood_court · 4h ago
That will only increase 'socialism'.
If a business doesn't pay a living wage, that effectively means that said business is being subsidized by a different entity. It could be the employee, the employee's spouse, the government, etc. But someone is subsidizing businesses that don't pay living wages.
gruez · 4h ago
>If a business doesn't pay a living wage, that effectively means that said business is being subsidized by a different entity. It could be the employee, the employee's spouse, the government, etc. But someone is subsidizing businesses that don't pay living wages.
I never understood this framing. If the person in question wasn't being employed, it's not as if he suddenly won't need food/housing/whatever, so why call it a subsidy when he decides to get a job?
This is rather wild as a fact, but also correlates well with previous studies, showing financial incentives do indeed help regulate health for example weight loss (https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2024/may-2024-news/cash-incentiv...).
This is a perfect case for UBI instead of feeding off the poor.
It removes PFAS, heavy metals, and microplastics from your blood. All things that won't really come out without the donation.
Fiber also removes some of them by binding bile.
I don't think this is the case, certainly not for microplastics and PFAS. I'm not sure how it'd work for heavy metals.
AFAIK, fiber doesn't cross the stomach->blood barrier so it really wouldn't have the ability to bind to anything other than what's already in the digestive tract. I could see it potentially reducing the amount of plastics/metals/PFAS that end up in the blood stream but not actually reducing what's already there.
No comments yet
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/why-blood-makes-up-over-2poi...
I think the trade offs are all sensible here.
1. It doesn't depend on politics, it already works today
2. You have to plan for and show up to a place to get the money and ensure your blood remains valuable, all of which promote a basic semblance of order in your life, especially when you're on the ropes.
3. You save lives and are compensated for it
4. In the area between having no money vs having a job, pretty much anything I can think of to make money is worse than selling plasma.
It's a lucky quirk that you can sell your plasma, because you usually can't sell your blood even though countries, industry, hospitals, and insurance companies pay each other good money for it, just not to the person who created it.
Like yeah, I give (double red) blood as often as I am able because, well civic duty and all but it's still real fucked.
But what I mean is that cash handouts are a constant contentious political battleground that feels like a pipe dream where I live while selling plasma was a political decision made before we arrived and probably not something most people feel quite as strongly about.
The danger as I see it is that we can let perfect be the enemy of good, though I suppose you aren't suggesting that it's bad that people have the option to sell their plasma as everything currently stands. I do see it better than the alternative of prohibiting it.
People get all huffy when you suggest criminal activity isn't an innate trait of a person but due to life circumstances and desperation, as if they would never steal to eat/survive.
It's an attack on a person's identity to insinuate that the only difference between them and a 'criminal' is one of circumstance. For some, such is too much to even consider. This is the real barrier to fixing the problem: a lack of imagination and empathy.
> Not innate
These two thoughts seem to be in conflict. You are describing an innate difference.
I agree there is nuance. We are a product of our environment and innate nature. I suspect the environment is (far: by orders of magnitude) easier to change. I don't think we only need to change the environment, but I would venture the 80/20 estimation here...
This says nothing for 'truly evil' people, which - I suspect - is a vanishingly small number of people. I also think that such people require a degraded environment to operate effectively (according to their goals) and by focusing on improving the conditions people are in: we remove a lot of leverage for those people to act as they wish (maliciously).
Which, at least on the highly regulated coasts and comparable midwest areas, are the areas that are/were depressed by manufacturing pulling out.
In rural America you do have some poor people selling their plasma to afford gas. Drug screening means they avoid doing drugs. Not being on drugs lowers propensity to engage in petty crime. I knew a couple like this.
Next to the plasma donation center in my town, there's a children's trampoline and activity center. I take my son there at least once a month, sometimes more often if the weather’s bad.
While he plays, I sit near the front windows and keep an eye on him while also looking outside and seeing the various individuals who go and sell their plasma at the donation center.
There are people from all different walks of life. You've got people walking in from god knows where (my town and this area in particular are not very walking friendly), people driving up in trash cars about to fall apart, people driving up in $60k+ cars, folks with multiple children in tow, etc.
It seems that many people other than the folks we'd normally consider poor need to sell their plasma to get that bit of extra cash.
AMaybe some of them are doing it for altruistic reasons.
It takes about 3 hours on a gurney.
I donate blood every 2 months. It takes about 30 minutes. I was doing it for altruistic reasons but it turns out that I have an iron deficiency and everyone is tested for an adequate hemoglobin level before they can donate. I have been turned away because my level was too low. Because I donate blood, I get a nice chart that I can show my doctor of what the levels are.
A while ago, the Red Cross was testing for COVID-19 antibodies so that blood with those could be given to immuno-compromised people.
My thought is that the Red Cross should find some tests that are relatively inexpensive to do but would be popular with certain people. Like testosterone or Vitamin D levels. That'd be a much bigger incentive than a $10 gift card.
0: https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/199e6mc/...
On a related note, I find that making elementary grammatical errors, like using the wrong "its" or "there", can detract from the impact of an argument.
The problem is it's not available or easy to find.
I think bringing back something like the CCC [1] would do wonders for the US. It could even be made more available and accessible in the modern era. Imagine, for example, if you had something akin to a small jobs board. Citizens could apply for tasks to be done and the government could fund (or partially fund) the completion of those tasks. Could be things like scrubbing graffiti off a wall. Filling a pothole. Or any other community improvement (like taking care of a park).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
All of that requires funding. Where would that funding come from? If the answer is "just spend more money", why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
Taxes. Ideally higher income taxes or even better a wealth tax (but that has dubious constitutionality).
I also wouldn't mind pulling $100B, $200B, or $500B away from the military budget for such projects.
> why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
Means testing requires someone to do the means testing along with additional bureaucracy to enforce it. It's, in fact, more expensive than just having an open program. Why would I actually care, for example, if we paid extra money for a billionaire's kid to get healthcare if that meant the 99% of the population that isn't billionaires got healthcare?
A public works program is a welfare program. With the benefit that beyond just giving money to people that need it, it also improves public spaces for everyone. And, I think nobody would actually object to allowing anyone to participate in public works. Would you really care if a millionaire got a little extra cash cleaning a highway?
But beyond that, it's better to spend money on people with the least amount of money because they drive the economy way harder than everyone else. A dollar given to someone poor is far more likely to be spent in the economy than a dollar given to a rich person. A healthy economy is one where money moves more frequently.
A good example is what's predicted to happen with the medicaid defunding. Rural hospitals are likely going to shutdown as the majority of them receive their funding from medicaid. That hurts everyone in a rural community even if they aren't on medicaid.
Now imagine the reverse. If that rural community had government works jobs, that'd be more money in the community which would ultimately mean more opportunities for new businesses in the community to exist. Where it previously may not have made sense for a grocery store to exist, now it might because more of the population has a stable income they are willing to spend.
How is means testing (ie. reviewing some paperwork) going to be cheaper than running an actual public works program where you need to decide what needs to be done, plan the thing that needs to be done, recruit people to do the thing, procure equipment/material so those people can actually do the thing, supervise/train those people to do the thing, inspect their work, and remit payment for them? Sure, a public works program might produce beneficial outcomes that justifies some of the costs, but the hassle of herding a bunch of casual workers (compared to having full time staff) and paying them is probably going to take orders of magnitude more money than means testing. If your argument is just that the government should tax more and use that money to spend on full time government jobs, that's just a generic "tax and spend" argument, not a "small jobs board" or whatever.
Means testing is not just "reviewing some paperwork". It can be a quiet laborious effort up to and including enforcement actions. It doesn't just happen once; it has to happen frequently as salaries change. And further, because it's generally based on things like salaries/net worth, it requires background checks and verification that isn't necessarily readily on hand. There's also the need to review the work of the person doing the means testing.
I'll grant that it'd be a smaller portion of the cost for something like a CCC program. However, for other welfare programs such as heating assistance, the means testing can quickly outstrip the cost of just giving the assistance in the first place. Hiring a department of people to make sure someone doesn't get assistance costs money.
> If your argument is just that the government should tax more and use that money to spend on full time government jobs, that's just a generic "tax and spend" argument, not a "small jobs board" or whatever.
Yes, I believe tax and spend is in fact more beneficial to the economy and public good as I've outlined. Absolute government efficiency is not an absolute good.
The small jobs board, though, is something that we could actually do more efficiently in the modern environment. You could track that information far more efficiently then you could in the 1940s. That means you don't really need the full blown work camps of the 40s to get most of the same benefit that CCC provided.
Not a very advanced society at all. Gross on multiple levels.
Drug use shots up, crime rises as a result, people die due to plasma shortages, but at least it's not gross, right?
No other options. /s
But then you propose to take away a clearly beneficial opportunity to donate plasma just because it sounds personally gross to you (while people make their own free choice to take this opportunity or not), so not sure a nuanced conversation about 2nd order effects can be held here
Considering we’re the only “advanced” country that does healthcare this poorly, and we have a wild oligarch class that desperately needs to be put in its place, I’m really curious how “healthcare for all and not requiring the poor to sell their own plasma” is the worse option.
You know what sucks? Having what, 150+ “mass casualty” incidents a year, extracting the blood of the poor, then trying to say “hey that reduces crime!” while 5 families have more wealth than 50% of America combined, and the only “advanced” country where medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy.
There’s no sane washing any of this shit.
Where is the incentive for people to donate plasma other than paying people for it?
If people were donating it for free in adequate quantities there wouldn’t be companies paying people for it.
I’m not even arguing against socialized medicine, just pointing out that you haven’t provided a better solution to the demand for plasma.
I see that some people being crazy rich is infuriating and very often unjust. And I wish socialism worked. But it doesn't. Look at history and consider second order effects of 90% tax and similar policies. Or more narrowly, imagine you are poor and rely on plasma donations, now that option is gone, what do you do next? Are you better off with that option no longer available?
It's more likely the reason some of these folks aren't employed.
Lowering wages doesn't create anything except depravity on the part of employers.
If a business doesn't pay a living wage, that effectively means that said business is being subsidized by a different entity. It could be the employee, the employee's spouse, the government, etc. But someone is subsidizing businesses that don't pay living wages.
I never understood this framing. If the person in question wasn't being employed, it's not as if he suddenly won't need food/housing/whatever, so why call it a subsidy when he decides to get a job?