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Musings Report 2019-49 12-7-19 You're Worth More Than You Might Think
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Welcome to December's MUS (Margins of the Unfiltered Swamp)
The first Musings of the month is a free-form exploration of the reaches of the fecund swamp that is the source of the blog, Musings and my books.
Thank You, Contributors!
Thank you, Bob S., Jeffrey C., John H., Jeffrey N. and Duane S. for your extremely generous support of my work, and welcome new patrons / subscribers Greg W., Sanjay K., Gary S. and Christopher G.--thank you very much!
You're Worth More Than You Might Think
I often cover weighty topics here, and so today I'm taking a lighter look at a serious topic: what are we worth?
The question can be taken two ways, of course: what's our value as individuals, and what's our financial worth.
Let's ask a narrower question: what's our time worth? If we look at median earnings of full-time workers in the U.S., ($920/week) we come up with about $23 per hour as the median wage.
On the face of it, our time is worth about $23/hour on average. But let's ask another question: how much will it cost to replace our labor by hiring a service to do the work? (By specifying "service," I mean a fully compliant enterprise that pays all the labor overhead costs: healthcare insurance, Workers Comp insurance, disability insurance, the employer's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes, etc. In other words, not a cash-only informal laborer.)
Once you start getting prices for services, it's immediately apparent that hiring others to do what we do in everyday life costs a fortune:
For example:
-- caring for an elderly parent
-- childcare
-- yard work (anything above mow and blow)
-- home maintenance / repair
-- preparing a healthy real-food meal
The cost of elder/child care quickly runs into thousands of dollars per month, and even modest home repairs can total hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Sure, fast-food is cheap, but a healthy, real-food meal? Not cheap.
One of the chief reasons for the big gap between typical wages and the cost of services is the labor overhead I mentioned: employers may pay 50% or more on top of the wage for labor overhead, and then they have to add the overhead of operating a business: rent, utilities, transportation, computers, professional services (accounting, etc.), liability insurance, local business taxes, the cost of managing the business and some sort of profit as a return on the investment of the owners.
Add all this up and an employer has to charge $50 or more per hour in order to pay an employee $15 to $20 per hour.
So here's my suggestion to approximate a more accurate value of your time and labor: add up all the services you provide at home for zero compensation (including cleaning house, laundry, etc.) and then calculate a market-rate value for all those services. Wow, that is a lot of money, isn't it?
Calculated in this fashion, you're worth a lot more than you might think.
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Homemade desserts: pumpkin pie (a week after Thanksgiving, perfect timing) and a coconut pie made with fresh-grated coconut. Advice I've taken to heart: "Don't let the dessert cart on the Titanic pass you by."
From Left Field
Is it Time to Throw Out Both Democrats and Republicans? -- yes, yes and yes....
The Holy-Cow Moment for Subprime Auto Loans; Serious Delinquencies Blow Out (via U. Doran)
Forget 'developing' poor countries, it's time to 'de-develop' rich countries
The Fourth Turning: Why American 'Crisis' May Last Until 2030 (YouTube) -- let's just get to 2025....
Cancer Culture: In the byzantine system of proprietary health care, with its complex labyrinth of insurance providers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, the true costs of cancer treatment can be notoriously opaque. What’s certain is that cancer is one of the most expensive diseases; even those with private insurance experience greater out-of-pocket costs. In a study of 9.5 million cancer survivors, 42 percent had drained their life savings within two years of diagnosis. The financial burden can be so great that the National Cancer Institute has introduced 'financial toxicity' into their dictionary of medical terms.
Hollowed out Heartland, USA: How capital sacrificed communities and paved the way for authoritarian populism.
"Since the 1980s, and in intensified form after the 2008 financial crisis, capital has systematically undermined the institutions — mutually-owned banks, credit unions, mom-and-pop businesses, family farms — that fostered reinvestment of locally-produced wealth, especially but not only in rural areas."
Blue-collar jobs like plumbing pay $90,000 without a college degree, and it's driving more workers to trade school
Thanks Obama, but these patronising lectures are getting old
China's countryside returning to poverty: Rural income has been in decline since 2014 and has fallen by 20 percent in the first half of this year. Rural per capita income averages 809 yuan ($114) per month... (the farmer) could earn about 5,000 yuan (USD 707) per year." -- but wait--weren't rural wages supposed to skyrocket as development went West?
Forget the trade war. Beijing’s worst nightmare is a property market collapse. -- no buyers of old flats except in Beijing and Shanghai....
Multimillion-dollar medical scams stopped by whistleblowers (via John F.)
Were other humans the first victims of the sixth mass extinction?
You won’t like downsizing: We are about to enter a period of permanent decline, be sure you know what that will mean.
"The truth is, most startups today aren't actual businesses - they're 'financial arbitrage machines.'" Gary Vaynerchuk
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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