> It WOULD work, but alas, you don't do it. This is also why the USA has all those anti-strike laws.
My mom did it reasonably often as a teacher. The state made it illegal for her to ever strike again. Maybe not being willing to go to jail for refusing to work is why she doesn't do it? It's crazy to me that the law is basically "show up to work for whatever we decide to pay you, or go to jail" (via contempt of court, usually, if they continue to strike after a judge orders teachers to go back to work and fines them for each day of missed work).
So the other option is to "strike" by quitting and starting over in a completely new career. Enough people have done that that some schools are having trouble opening[0]. Somehow even that doesn't seem to raise wages. So -- for teachers at least, striking literally doesn't work. Enough teachers quit that schools can't stay open, and yet the wages don't rise to hire enough teachers. It's insane.
I don't want to be dramatic here so don't read too deeply into the comparison: I'm sure black people weren't willing to go to jail either some 60 years ago. Or worse. Most of the biggest change was achieved with the biggest sacrifice.
If they throw teachers in jail over not doing their job, the state loses in the long term. If enough refuse to do it they have to bargain, illegal or not. And it wouldn't take long since it'd imoh be a few days (if that) before the parents join in, with kids either not learning or not going to school over the lack of supervision.
The big issue here is the collective isn't big enough in some areas. Or there's enough supply coming in when the old batch walk out (which is partially why the teachers quitting aren't getting the effect. Teaching is partially a passion job and thst keeps supply high).
> If they throw teachers in jail over not doing their job, the state loses in the long term.
British health workers (nurses, ambulance workers) went on strike during 2022 and 2023. Their union eventually accepted a 5% pay increase - down from their initial 19% demand - which doesn't even begin to cover inflation. Most demands fizzle out into nearly nothing and most unions are by now massive bureaucratic machines, staffed with people more focused on their own interests and careers than on those of their members.
The same pattern can be seen with nurses in Sweden. Salaries aren't high enough, funds aren't allocated, nurses quit their jobs. To find new hires, standards must be lowered.
"The state" no longer cares. That's what decline looks like.
Yeah, not all unions are created equal. We saw some of thst with the Hollywood strikes last year. That's sadly a part of why some anti-union sentiment spreads organically; if the people who are supposed to be looking out for your interest end up being another corporation to fight, what's the point?
That doesn't mean collective bargaining can't work. Especially for critical jobs like medicine and teaching. But it falls back to the issues of sole people not being at wits end and needing to be at wits end before going nuclear, instead of seeing the long term and being able to withstand short term sacrifice.
"vote", sure. Many countries vote for their leaders too. I think small groups like a single company have it worse because at least in some ways a nation wide election will somewhat represent the state of the country. The turnout for a union rep must be awful
Sometimes intentionally. I remember the SAG talks last year "voting" on a compromise and so many people not even realizing there was a meeting.
Indeed. The house holds most of the cards. But it's not risk-free per se. It's just a prisoners dilemma that hasn't had a chance to shift to the worst case scenario of "literally everyone leaves". Probably still a safe bet, but it's only as safe as the people they are gambling with.
Sad part is that it's bad but not necessarily "life or death" for many teachers as of now. But it may be that way if we keep going.
Jail is always an option when someone is subject to contempt of court. In other states it's the individual teachers who get automatically fined, not the union. Contempt of court could also apply to the individuals if the judge wanted to make it so.
To many Danes (everyone I’ve ever discussed it with) Americans are simply “ridiculous” in the way you keep electing people who hurt you. It’s like you’re in a continuous abusive relationship with your own democracy.
My wife and I just had twins, and while it went fine they needed CPAP to help their lungs develop fully because they were born with a c-section. Which put them in the children’s intensive care unit for around 12 hours and afterward we lived for 7 days in the specialised ward for children with troubled births. And it cost us around $100 because the lodging for spouses isn’t free for the first 3 days(3 meals a day + fruits and cake and all sorts of drinkable stuff that I don’t know the English names for… mostly concentrated fruit you mix with water).
Now, I do pay around 57% in taxes on everything I earn above $90k and 39% before that (my wife pays 37% since she doesn’t earn above $90k). But I do sort of “cheat” the system by investing 14% of my pay before taxes into methods that will let me pay 25% in taxes on another $10k a year, and some that goes directly into my children’s investments. Anyway, that is what we pay for everyone to have this opportunity in our country.
I’m not going to pretend our system is perfect. Like, I have a private health insurance through my job which led me skip a two year wait time when I was diagnosed with bipolar type2 after having some issues with stress. And that’s obviously not available to everyone, and a two year wait period is obviously terrible for people who can’t turn to the private sector. So everything isn’t perfect.
But when you then read about how US citizens pay ridiculous amount of money to have children… when they live in a nation which is significantly richer than ours… it just baffles the mind.
Similarly we have about 9 months of maternity leave. 2 months of which are with full pay for my wife, and 14 weeks are with full pay for me (I have really terms through my work often it’s only 2-4 weeks for spouses). But even when you aren’t on full pay, you’re still getting around $5k a month from the government. You’re also paid around $1k per child every 3 months for the first couple of years of their lives (something which should probably be limited by income if we’re honest since people like us need it a lot less than most Danes). My wife transferred some of her maternity leave and was decades sick for the first two months, so I’m getting around 30 weeks of paternity leave which does mean a significant decrease in income this year, but then you look at how US citizens basically have no paid leave and again… it’s just so weird.
And you’ve chosen this yourselves. I know it’s not as easy as that, but you are a democracy and you do elect your leaders and a huge part of you are basically wage slaves. I know a lot of HN’ers are likely to also have good terms, it comes with our line or work, but as a whole… I mean, just why?
I'm American and I don't disagree that America has serious problems, but you should be leery of trying to compare your country with another country, especially if you haven't lived there and have only read about it.
I was a military wife for about two decades and had two children during that time and it cost next to nothing to spend two or three nights in the hospital to give birth and then all outpatient visits for me and my kids were completely free. I was friends for a time with a Canadian woman who used to openly hate on America and one of her criticisms was we have apparently a weirdly high percentage of citizens who have served in the military.
So I sometimes wonder how many American children get born while one of their parents is in service. And I spent years trying to figure out how to explain to other Americans what military life and military compensation is like and I eventually gave up. Civilian jobs have relatively high pay and few benefits. Military jobs have relatively low pay but high benefits and it's an apples to oranges comparison and I know when I was a military wife, anyone who wasn't making a career of it seemed to be trying to have all the kids they planned to ever have before leaving service because it's so cheap to have a kid while in service.
I desperately wish America would fix some of its problems. But I genuinely wonder just how bad it really is when I never see mention of details like that and when I have looked for data on just how many Americans get some portion of their medical care covered as military dependents for some portion of their life, I have been unable to turn up stats. So I don't know what to conclude, honestly.
But if I cannot figure it out as an American, my guess is your opinions amount to prejudice, not informed analysis. And although I know why so many people in the world have opinions about the US -- because the US is very influential, so it impacts them -- I don't run around telling other countries how to fix their social problems and it bugs me that so many foreigners feel they know what is best for us, often without ever having lived here.
As a first approximation from a quick google search, approximately 2.75% of US children are born to one or more parents who are in the military. This was not hard information to find, but I can't vouch for its veracity; the language used is sloppy and without sources.
A bunch of pages all say the same line that 100,000 children are born each year to "military families", or about 1.5 million between 2003 and 2016. Google also says that about 3.65 million children are born in the US each year. I used division to reach the percentage. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it gives us some idea.
As to your wider point, the idea that you as an American have been unable to find this information and therefore anyone who is not American cannot have a valid observation of the issue because they are missing this critical info is less than useful.
A quick search shows that TRICARE has 9.5 million beneficiaries, so ~2.8% of population based on 2020 census. I imagine the number you're looking for isn't far off from that.
Americans as a whole have a very high quality of life. If you consider the entire life time of our country, the US has accepted substantially many more poor immigrants than EU per cap - and then brought the median of those people to a quality of life comparable or higher than the EU countries.
If you consider just the descendents of the original population in the US in, say, 1900 - they are doing vastly better than equivalent in Europe. It is only because we let in so many more poor people that the median stays deflated, but people move up.
After eliminating differences due to obesity, the US also has better healthcare outcomes than the EU. Every time I go back to Europe it feels like the society is getting comparatively poorer.
In Poland you pay ~30% of your salary as income and social taxes.
If employed, woman has free access to public health system, with huge waiting lists, as you mentioned in your case.
When getting pregnant, woman can go into full paid sick leave untill the delivery day. And then there is a maternity leave paid in 80% for a year. And there there is possibility to get unpaid leave for up to 3 more years, while woman keep her employment and access to healthcare as working person.
And then you hear about wealthy western countries when at 4 months woman should either leave the job or the baby. Not surprising such wealthy countries getting old fast.
> And then you hear about wealthy western countries when at 4 months woman should either leave the job or the baby. Not surprising such wealthy countries getting old fast.
poland tfr is significantly, significantly below that of the US
>Like, I have a private health insurance through my job which led me skip a two year wait time when I was diagnosed with bipolar type2 after having some issues with stress.
If I had to wait 2 years for treatment, after paing so much taxes, I'd be livid and assume the public system is providing terrible value for what I'm paying.
My mom did it reasonably often as a teacher. The state made it illegal for her to ever strike again. Maybe not being willing to go to jail for refusing to work is why she doesn't do it? It's crazy to me that the law is basically "show up to work for whatever we decide to pay you, or go to jail" (via contempt of court, usually, if they continue to strike after a judge orders teachers to go back to work and fines them for each day of missed work).
So the other option is to "strike" by quitting and starting over in a completely new career. Enough people have done that that some schools are having trouble opening[0]. Somehow even that doesn't seem to raise wages. So -- for teachers at least, striking literally doesn't work. Enough teachers quit that schools can't stay open, and yet the wages don't rise to hire enough teachers. It's insane.
0: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/us/teacher-shortage-lowering-...