Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Obama Administration Confirms Double-digit Premium Hikes [View all]Igel
(35,300 posts)Look at your own life. You have minimum needs. You need food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. That's the cost of your labor.
You were educated, probably partly at your own expense.
There's maintenance. That's investment in infrastructure. Things like health care.
You sell your labor and skills and need to cover maintenance.
Everything above that is profit.
My labor costs far less than my employer pays. My infrastructure maintenance isn't that large these days. And my investment in education is entirely paid off. I could survive on near minimum wage. Even with amortizing education over 35 years--the average useful lifetime, with the occasional upgrade--most people don't need most of what they have.
We like profit in our lives. Working class families near the bottom of their cohort have little profit. Those on welfare are receiving government subsidies for their output.
It's a bleak perspective, but one that's fairly accurate. Profit is what you get after you've paid off your investment and paid for labor and materials. Most of us demand a minimum profit, so we should understand greedy employers who demand a minimum profit.
That includes doctors, whose investment is far larger than most of us so the *same* ROI should yield higher incomes. Just like you'd expect higher income from an investment of $500k than $500.
Want health care to not make a profit, dispose of hospitals that aren't government owned and run. Dispose of doctors who have a say in where they go to college--make their education free and demand that they work for #35k/year, but then immediately idemnify them against losses due to medical errors. Make their equipment free. Make them, in other words, state serfs.