Location, Location, Location

Today’s Sunday Magazine cover story, “Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?”, includes the line, “Studies show you shouldn’t move for location, since what you do is more important than where you do it.”  I’d like to know what studies these are, and who the respondents were, because I take issue with this supposed result.  Where I live is much more important to me than what I do for a living.  That clearly is not true for everyone but I can’t believe that the majority tend to the other extreme.

Work should take up, (for the sort of people who would be facing this job vs. location dilemma, i.e. mid-to-upper-level white collar), as few hours of one’s life as possible —40 hours per week, maybe more in busy periods with overtime.  Most of one’s life is lived outside of work.  Work provides the money to do the things we love—play sports, pursue hobbies, own property, raise a family, travel, etc.  Most people, if they won the lottery, would quit their jobs and move–to the coast, to the mountains, to whatever aesthetic environment appeals to them.  I know a guy who works in finance, for example, who lives to snowboard.  He has an MBA and a 6-figure salary, so you’d think he’d be about as career-oriented as anyone, but his main criterion for location is that fresh powder is within commuting distance.  This is not someone who would be happy with a great job in Florida. 

Speaking of Florida, I have known several people who moved there for jobs and found that, yes, Florida was just as tacky as they feared it would be.  They have all moved at the first opportunity, work not being enough to hold them in a location without any redeeming qualities, (okay, except TWWOHP, but you can't go there every day), not to mention cockroaches the size of Volkswagons.

I realise that some people would take any job to get as far away as possible from their families, and with good reason, but just as many others would be miserable living too far from their close-knit clans.  No job would make up for that.

Speaking of family, people with children tend to prioritise good schools and safe neighbourhoods.  Of course, they have to make a living to support their families, which often means moving for jobs, but location is still particularly important to them.  Most people I know wouldn’t consider raising a child south of the Mason-Dixon line, nor in any red state, with good reason.  When jobs take parents to an undesirable location they often endure unreasonable commutes for the sake of living in a better area for their children.  These long commutes can be both miserable and unhealthy.  Are they worth it for the job?  Almost never.

For myself, I am aesthetically married to New England.  I love the four distinct seasons and I live for fall foliage.  No job could be worth living in the South or PNW and missing out on the seasons each year.  I love the flora and fauna of New England, the historic architecture, the colonial history, the traditions and foods of the area.  I wouldn’t exchange maple syrup and pumpkins and cider and colonial farms and lilacs and autumn leaves for the foods and architecture and traditions of another region that don't resonate with me.

And I haven’t even mentioned politics. What job could be worth living in a red state?  What career move could outweigh being stuck in a place without organic food and coffeehouses?  There are still places in America where they’ll scratch their heads and offer you fish when you tell them you are a vegetarian, where they think that Fair Trade coffee means you want to barter for your cuppa.  I can see visiting such places (provided you are not contributing money to bigots by patronising their businesses) and coming home with some scary stories about how backward, sexist, racist, and ignorant they are, but living there?  Putting down roots and buying property and raising your children there?  What job could be worth that kind of sacrifice?

One of the (many) reasons I haven’t found a job in my field is because I am not willing to move to Outerbumblefuck, Kansas.  I know myself; I know that aesthetics are the most important thing in the world to me.  I don’t live to work, I work to live.  The things I love to do are not lucrative so I just want to make as much money as possible in as few hours as possible so I can devote as much time as possible to doing the things I love.  Giving up everything I love in life for a stupid job sounds like the worst trade-off in the world, especially given how insecure employment is.  If somebody told me that, if I could suck it up & live somewhere I didn't like for 10 years, I could earn enough to buy the farm of my dreams back in New England, of course I’d do it.  The short-term sacrifice, with the guaranteed pay-off, would be well worth it.  It would be an adventure.  But packing up my farm & leaving everything I love for a job that could end in a year, leaving me with no money, no farm, no roots, no money (worth mentioning twice), just adrift in a place I hate and no way to get a situation as good as the one I left?  That would be idiotic.  Moving for a job is a huge risk because nothing today is more unstable than the job market.  You move alone, away from family and friends and support networks and then you get laid off in 6 months and wind up homeless.  Yeah, job over location, smart move.

Within reason, figure out where you want to live, where you would be happiest, and then find a job there.  If you are in a highly specialized field, you don’t have that option, but this survey was clearly not aimed at such people.  Someone who wants to be an actor has to live in LA or NYC; someone who wants to be an astronaut has to live near NASA in Houston.  But I can’t imagine anyone that career-focused cares much where they live, and such driven folk are a tiny minority.  Also, if you are at the top of your profession, you can maintain two homes: one near work, one wherever you want to live.  But that lucky scenario doesn’t apply to most people.  For most people, their company transfers them to Cleveland and they either move or they lose their job.  They are not choosing job over location; they are stuck.

Another common situation would be this:  Let’s say you studied all your life to be a trumpet player.  After you graduate from Julliard, you audition for orchestras.  There are only so many with openings at a given time, so you cannot be choosy about location if you want a job in your field.  You get hired by the Seattle Symphony, but you hate rain.  Does having your dream job, one you literally worked since childhood to achieve, trump living in a place that depresses you?  I cannot imagine that it does but then I cannot imagine having a “career” rather than a “job.”  I cannot imagine caring more about what I do during working hours than what I do outside of them.  I wish I could get inside the head of someone who lives to work, just for a day, to experience that kind of drive and singlemindedness and energy.  I’ve never felt it and cannot fathom it.  I have goals about which I am passionate, but when it comes to making sacrifices or taking risks or working hard to achieve them, they take a backseat to comfort in the present.  That's why location is so important to me:  I cannot imagine being so engaged by a job that I could ignore living in an ugly, tacky, aesthetically-repugnant place.

You got a better idea?

Health care is a human right, not a privilege of the wealthy.  A civilised country ensures that medical care is available to all its citizens, without regard for ability to pay.  The details of the provision of universal health care vary by country, but the basic premise is the same:  Health care is simply available to all, not on a fee-for-service basis.  When I lived in the UK and went to a doctor, there was no paperwork, no bills, no co-pays or dealing with insurance companies, no questions of what or how much insurance would cover.  The medical staff were paid salaries rather than paid on a per procedure basis, so they had no incentive to order unnecessary procedures.  They weren’t paid more if they squeezed more appointments in per day or if they ordered more tests.  Medical costs were contained because there was a single payer, the government; there was no ability of providers to charge higher rates to some customers the way the uninsured pay higher prices than the rates negotiated by insurance companies and the government in the U.S.

The U.S. is the only developed country that does not provide universal health care to its citizens.  It is also the only country where a citizen can be bankrupted, lose their house, and become unemployable due to medical expenses.  In case you are scratching your head over how medical bills can make you unemployable, here’s how:  Potential employers routinely run credit checks on potential employees.  Unpayable medical bills on an applicant’s credit history can cause them to be passed over for jobs, a vicious circle making it even harder for them to pay their bills.  The U.S. is the world’s richest country and the rest of the world is appalled that people can die here due to being unable to afford medical treatment.

The U.S. needs to adopt single-payer universal health care as soon as possible—better late than never.  But that is not politically viable at present.  In fact, an interim measure, the Affordable Care Act of 2010, popularly known as Obamacare, that takes baby steps in the direction of increasing health care coverage for Americans, has generated considerable backlash.  Now, backlash for not going far enough would be legitimate, but this is ire from people who think the Act goes too far in trying to patch together some form of health insurance coverage for Americans who would otherwise be uninsured.

The legislation has many provisions, and you can find someone who objects to each and every one of them, but the gist of the argument against Obamacare seems to be that we, the taxpayers, cannot afford to provide health care coverage for those who cannot afford to pay for it themselves.  Subsidizing coverage for people who cannot pay their own premiums, the thinking goes, will place an enormous and unfair tax burden on those who work hard to pay their taxes and their own insurance premiums.  Moreover, since insurers will not be able to turn away high-risk customers, everyone’s premiums will go up to compensate.

The premium cost complaint is easy to address:  Legally cap premiums.  It is not as if the status quo ante was a paradise of affordable premiums.  Most people without employer-provided insurance could not afford to purchase coverage or, if they found a plan they could afford, the coverage was so meagre that they were egregiously underinsured.  Many Americans are walking around who technically have health insurance but who find the coverage worthless when they need it.  Underinsurance is actually a bigger problem than lack of any insurance.  Small businesses have always struggled to be able to provide health insurance to their employees, many of them gave up long before Obamacare.  Some people stick with jobs they hate because they need the health insurance.  The best option would be a single-payer system that would take private health insurance out of the equation altogether but, until the political power of the insurers can be overcome, an interim solution would be to legally limit what they can charge.  Obamacare does do this, but the limits are weak, and insurance companies have been rushing to jack up premiums before the law goes into effect in 2014 so that the new higher rates are grandfathered in.  A better interim measure would be to mandate minimum coverage to end the problem of underinsurance, and to cap premiums.

What’s that you say?  That if insurance companies were forced to provide more coverage for lower premiums they might get out of the health insurance business?  Gee, wouldn’t that be a pity.  So, they should be allowed to continue to charge extortionate premiums for useless coverage because that is the American way?

Moving on to the complaint about the cost to taxpayers to cover the uninsured.  One obvious point is that the taxpayer already pays when the uninsured use emergency services and/or are unable to pay health care bills.  Those charges are passed on to others.  Another obvious point is that we have a patchwork of taxpayer-subsidized health insurance that covers certain segments of the population, such as the very poor and those over 65.  Extending this coverage to other segments of the population would actually be more efficient than the current system.  As mentioned above about countries with single-payer universal health care, the government can tell providers what it is willing to pay for services and they can like it or lump it.  Costs can be kept down based upon what the government is willing to pay.  I realize there is a counter-argument that providers could stop accepting patients if their profits are limited in this way, but that is an unfounded fear. If it started happening, it could also be addressed with legislation.  This may come as a shock to some Americans, but some countries do not allow the private practice of medicine.  You accept government rates of payment or you don’t practice.  It’s not the American way, I know, but neither is it likely that providers will stop taking public patients.

But Obamacare is a weak law written with the cooperation of insurance providers, to their advantage.  Instead of taking away their customers and putting them in a universal single-payer system, it requires everyone to purchase private insurance, greatly raising the number of customers for the industry.  It is a huge boom to the insurance industry, and it does not decouple health insurance from employment, which is long overdue.  Companies started offering health insurance to employees after WWII as a perk, to lure good workers.  Over the years, employer-provided health insurance became expected, even though it makes no sense and places a senseless burden on employers.  Believe me, most employers would be happy to get out of the health insurance business.  Although they are increasingly trying to pass the cost of health insurance onto their employees, it remains a huge, unwanted expense, not to mention the fact that smaller companies simply cannot afford to offer it.  Instead of disconnecting insurance from employment, Obamacare provides incentives for employers to offer it.  This is a mistake.   In the short term, it can be addressed by states providing counter-incentives for employers NOT to provide health insurance.  In the long run, we simply have got to decouple employment from health care coverage completely.  There is no logical connection between the two.

My last point is a question to those who oppose Obamacare:  How do you propose handling health care costs for those who cannot afford to purchase insurance and do not receive it from their employers?  (I include in this statement those who are underinsured, which is essentially the same as being uninsured except that instead of merely not having coverage you are also flushing money down the toilet every month paying useless premiums.)  There are, as I see it, three options:

1)   Those who cannot afford care do not receive it.  If you cannot afford to pay for your own health care costs, or those of your family, you should suffer and die if you become ill or injured.  Health care is not a right; it is a privilege for those who can afford it.

2)   Individuals and private charities should provide health care for those who cannot afford it.  Such care will be purely serendipitous—if you are ill or injured, there may or may not be a private charity willing to provide care at that place and time.  But relying on the kindness of philanthropic strangers should be your lot if you cannot pay your own health care costs.

3)   The status quo is fine.  If people cannot afford their health care costs, it is the right of creditors to sue them and confiscate their assets.  If they cannot get a job due to a poor credit rating from unpaid medical bills, they should have thought of that before they got ill or injured.

       - Corollary to status quo option can be split two ways: 1) Taxpayers should continue to absorb the costs when people who cannot afford care use emergency rooms.  This is a huge waste of money, but it is more acceptable to us than comprehensive coverage.  2) The law that emergency care must be provided to everyone, regardless of ability to pay, should be overturned.  We should not cover emergency room care for those who cannot afford it, let them die.

So which will it be?

If you don’t want to be judged, why are you posting on the Internet?

**NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS**

NO JUDGING!!!

IF U GONNA JUDGE ME, KEEP UR THOUGHTS TO URSELF!!!

I am increasingly seeing these phrases, or some variation thereof, attached to posts on the Web.  So, I have to ask:  What part of public forum, potentially viewable by anyone in the world, don’t these posters understand?  If you post something that anyone can read and respond to, you don’t get to dictate the response.  If, for example, you post in a breastfeeding Yahoo! Group that you are planning to wean at two weeks because you just don’t want to be bothered and formula is easier, how can you expect a global group of militant breastfeeders not to excoriate you?  I have seen such a post, with “no judging, just supportive & positive comments” stuck onto the end.

This trend of demanding only positive, nonjudgmental comments is alarming and says a lot about how our society values self-esteem over truth, and feelings over facts.  As an adjunct professor, I teach a basic course in civil liberties in which we spend considerable time parsing out the rights contained in the First Amendment.  I always ask the class if there are any forms of speech that are not protected.  A few students are usually familiar with slander, libel, threats, and obscenity, but, without fail, every class there is always at least one student who asserts that speech that is mean or hurts someone’s feelings is not protected speech.  When I explain to them that, whilst saying mean things that hurt someone’s feelings might indicate that you aren’t a very nice person, it won’t get you arrested, they are always surprised.  Inevitably someone brings up whatever story has been in the media recently about a professional athlete being fined for using a racial epithet or an employee fired for saying on Facebook that his boss is a jerk.  At this point I explain the difference between public and private entities, and how private companies are not bound by the First Amendment.  It is obvious that this topic is confusing to people.  Speech rights prevent the government from censoring the marketplace of ideas but they only apply to the government, not private companies or individuals.  Protection from official government censorship is not the same as the complete absence of consequences.  Just because you can’t be thrown in jail or fined for saying something, doesn’t mean that others can’t respond and retaliate.  You can call someone a bitch, and they can call you an asshole right back.  You can’t insult someone in their own home and claim free speech rights when they show you the door.

By the same token, you own your little piece of Internet real estate and you are at perfect liberty to delete any comments for any reason on your blog or Facebook page or in groups you moderate.   If you only want positive comments on your blog posts or Facebook wall, that is your prerogative.  My argument is not with the right to delete comments with which you disagree but with the choice to do so.  By entertaining only viewpoints with which you agree, that validate your behavior and opinions, you are myopically limiting your perspective.

That is not to say you have to let every trollish post remain.  Posts that insult without making a counterargument or that are clearly posted by trolls who are only trying to sow discord rather than stimulate genuine debate, are no more than spam and should be treated as such.  But deleting posts that challenge your position is a sign of weakness.  Do you, on some level, know that your opinion won’t stand up to a factual challenge?  Are you looking for support because you realise, on some level, that what you are doing is wrong?  As an intactivist, I see anti-circ comments deleted all the time by posters who have mutilated their child and don’t want to be told that they made an uninformed decision.  Mutilators don’t want to be confronted with the facts that prove the harm they have done to their own child.  They want to do the Internet equivalent of covering their ears and shouting, “LALALALA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

A closely related phenomenon is the tendency of posters to state that you must respect their opinion.  Even if you disagree, the thinking goes, you have an obligation to respect their views and, by extension, them.  (“You may not want to circumcise your son but I did and you have to respect my choice.  My son, my choice.  You have no right to judge me…” and similar nauseating bullshit.)  I cannot fathom where this idea that opposing viewpoints, and the people who hold them, somehow deserve respect comes from.  Is it related to the fact that we are supposed to debate our opponents in a civil fashion, avoiding ad hominem attacks?  But that doesn’t imply respecting the person or their views.  Is it somehow an outgrowth of freedom of conscience – i.e., because you can believe whatever you damn well please, every opinion is somehow equally worthy of respect?  But that doesn’t make sense either.  It is a mystery where this misguided idea comes from, but it is nearly ubiquitous.  This despite the fact that it doesn’t stand up to even the slightest challenge.  If someone holds the view that women should be subservient to men, or that the clitorises of girls should be removed at birth so the women will not enjoy sex and so not be inclined to cheat on their assigned husbands, I have not the remotest shred of respect for those views nor the people who hold such views.  None.  Whatsoever.  Zero respect.  Less than zero, if that is possible.  Could you respect a misogynist?  A racist?  Someone who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old?  Someone who firmly believes that a 9 year old girl should be forced to carry her rapist’s baby to term?  Can you now see how absurd the idea that you should respect opposing viewpoints is?

All of this nonsense about respecting people’s opinions and not judging them implies that all choices are equal: “Hey, you may make different choices or hold different views, but it’s a free country.  I am free to make my own individual choices and you cannot judge them or criticize them….”  Wait a minute—what was that last bit?  I can’t judge you or criticize you?  Um, why the hell not?  Free speech does not exempt you from criticism.  You have free speech to put your views out there, but so do I, to condemn your views or judge them or refute them, as I see fit.