Dewey McBrewster

https://imgur.com/a/3LDP7VW

My grade in business, just a few weeks ago…

My post is supposed to illustrate some baseline. I used just an off-the-cuff, arbitrary yet heuristic figure from my experience working in, of all things, elderly care. I was a nurses aide and certified as a one-on-one for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, helping the nurses feed and bathe, keeping the patients occupied…. Walking walking walking… and not falling out of bed etc.

I did this for 5 years.

So if you are running a business, and you have nurse employees, there are expenses, overhead, risks, and profit to take for your efforts. What should that number be? I picked 20% in the hopes someone would give perhaps a more realistic figure. Instead I get cut down.

And no, Im not copy and pasting anything.

What strikes me is, who can pay 3000 a month to watch granny? and that was just nurse salary, not meds, housing, etc. My numbers are made up, I chose 22 per hour for nurse pay, I have no idea what it really is, just wanted to get to get something going and im looking for others to post more data, though the conclusion will probably be the same… its a no win situation unless you’re extremely wealthy, granny dies.

I was thinking more like 20 percent markup as a profit margin. Other fees not included yet

Well, let’s look at the math briefly.

First, what should a nurse make?

Add 20% cut to this for your risk and management.

Then, how many people should the nurse care for?

(Nurse pay * 1.20)/patients=cost per patient

(22*1.20)/5=5.28 per hour 24 hours per day So 126.72 a day Roughly 3,8000 a month per patient just for nurse care. Not including housing, utilities, food, or medication.

Alternatives could be mandatory civic or military duty at 18 for a few years and nursing duty could be in there?

Another alternative could be inmate care, paying minimum wage in municipal bonds, as a way to work off a sentence?

Pay nurses less, requiring less certification?

Outsource nursing to countries where wage arbitrage can be leveraged?

Obviously this was fast and dirty but illustrates the expense.

I want a BYD very badly. A lot of people to blame here, Government for propping up a subpar product, unions for going too far with demands, aging and complacent workforce, lack of reinvestment, executive greed, piss poor repair record… Damn I want one of the Chinese EV’s. Let free market be free.

Local stores have very little locked up here. My area has industry, which provides wages. Wages produce taxes. Taxes are used for police. Through surveilance police arrest shoplifters.

Complacency of theft only backslides society. I will agree that a waning industry, or that our hyper-fixation on growth effects society negatively, but that’s another discussion.

If someone offers a free item, someone will take it whether they need that item or not, whether they can afford that item or not. Nature takes the path of least resistance. It’s easier to take than to work.

As such, there is no incentive to work if the item is free. If there is no incentive to work nothing gets made. Yet people will need things so you’re forced to make items people need. Which makes items not really free after all to the dismay of many an anti-capitalist.

Regardless there will always be some percentage of the population that will feel above the rest, mainly due to mental deficiency or addiction, independent of the economic system. For punishment of theft I would prefer to see forced induction into the municipal workforce for 5 years, flat sentence with a minimum wage earned in municipal bonds, held in a community barracks with a tapered reintegration into society. A sort of forced communism for those who can’t cope.

I’m ready for the downvotes.

I just read a report that said there are many jobs available and in my hometown, I see a steady request for help wanted, technical and other.

I also know that many people find certain categories of jobs menial such as factory work or farming. Maybe it’s an ego, perception thing, maybe because it’s hard work.

AI is taking and going to take jobs, but it would also open jobs, just look at the jobs we need right now that have appeared. Construction of data centers, water more important than ever, copper mining and refining, networks and sysadmin, energy sector, semiconductor manufacturing and many more like photonics (should reduce power and water usage.)

Yes it’s moving very fast and that’s scary. Propping things up, bailing out, however does nothing to improve the situation. Spending the money that would be incurred by UBI on training workers and providing them with equipment would be far more effective.

Maybe, Pixelfed.

If you consider this from an evolutionary standpoint, and I’m too lazy for this to be a research paper so just winging it for now…

The human race is built upon many layers. Some of those layers are highly social. Think clans and tribes for thousands of years. If you didn’t fit in that was it for you, it was the collective that made survival easier. Because of this we constantly judge and compare ourselves. It’s ingrained in us, a behavior perhaps built out of necessity that lives on, more for procreation now and less about survival. Old habits die hard, and you are seeing them manifest in different ways.

Want to know more? Richard Wrangham, R. Douglas Fields, and René Girard have some interesting theories on the origins, mechanics, and triggers associated with what you see in society.

Yes! Vote 60 or 65 age cap.

This will be heavily downvoted but… people make childporn, not ai. Can’t blame the paintbrush for the artists intent.

Reading and Listening: “Chemistry 2e” Openstax

Many many years ago, I had returned home from a friends. Think rural country road, cinder block garage a few yards off a dusty road that was separate from the house. A single industrial lamp fixture burning a 100 watt bulb swarmed by moths and insects. The night is heavy, hot and humid. Crickets and katydids turn nights silence away.

Like I’ve done many nights, before going inside I would walk to the other side of the road to take a leak in the bushes, and as I was finishing up… What the hell was that?!? Something was moving toward me.

Now I’ve been scared, gun pulled on me etc, but whatever I was seeing had me frozen, I literally couldn’t move, I was affixed as the little character bent down to climb through a hole in a rusty cattle fence overgrown with brush. A grey body, big eyes, hard to make out in the dull glow of the garage light and whatever faint moonlight existed, approached to within a few feet and stopped. All I could do was try and think of how much I love the Earth, the science of the universe and my reverence for nature and that of the natural world, and it stared, seeming to read my thoughts.

And like that it turned around and went back through the hole in the fence from whence it came, diminishing into the darkness of the night. Finally I was released and my muscles began to work. Half-way to the house, I began to wonder if that was real, like my memory of it was already fading quickly. I never said I saw an alien or anything like that, however I have told the story about the grey thing with little hands that had me paralyzed with fear.

Not so long ago I witnessed a raccoon walking and I sometimes wonder, was it a raccoon? Was it just the low light, brain filling in faint details of an out of world visitor??? I certainly would like to know.

Mmmhmm right, because ICE totally singled out and executed an innocent person.

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