Random Musings

Compensation: A Matter of Perspective

When you think of what you get paid, do you consider your benefits? How do you differentiate between pay and benefits to begin with? Have you ever gotten a job offer like this?

“We’ll pay you $90,000 per year

• $55k in money paid directly to you
• $20k for health insurance
• $10k for retirement
• $5k for several other benefits”

If you have, I’d love to hear about it. I certainly never have. I’ve never seen a job listing like that either. I see things like:

• Competitive salary
• Health Insurance
• 401/k with company matching up to 3%
• 2 weeks of vacation your first year
• 8 paid holidays per year

Okay, maybe if you’re being offered a job as CEO of a major corporation you might get offered $X million in stock options or whatever, but you’re playing a different game than the vast majority of us so I’m not counting you.

I would argue that about the only one who looks at it from the first perspective is an employer and only when the bills come in for that matter. It’s been a bit of a hot button issue where I work as health insurance costs have sky-rocketed and employees have been asked to shoulder more of the burden. I completely understand that, from my employer’s perspective, they have to pay more money to have me work there, plain and simple.

Maybe compensation should start being pitched from the first perspective. “I’m going to pay you $90k/year and here are some benefits that are available to you and they cost X amount right now and typically go up about X% per year.” Then it would be like any other cost of living going up. I didn’t all of a sudden get paid more when the price of gas went through the roof, so why should I get paid more when health insurance goes up? As I write that, I start to think to myself who stands to benefit from these costs being essentially hidden from much of the public? I suspect the outrage from the public towards corporate America would be even greater if they directly felt the pain of the rising costs of benefits. Instead, people with employer provided health insurance and retirement take it for granted for the most part. It’s just something we get, like Labor Day off. That way, the insurance companies have made it into a fight between employer and employee, not them vs the employer and employee on the same team.

One of the most striking examples of this is the fight between teachers and the “rest of us” in Wisconsin. Yes, it’s more than just teachers, but it’s basically about the teachers. This post is a result of an article on Forbes essentially about how teacher’s pensions were part of their pay and not some sort of handout, so by asking them to put part of their pay into is really asking them to take a cut in pay. I now wonder if that’s where things went wrong in the first place. When the airlines were going bankrupt - okay, so when aren’t the airlines going bankrupt - the unions make concessions in the form of pay freezes, pay cuts, benefit cuts, all  to keep their jobs. In our case though, we didn’t ask our workers to take a cut in pay for the good of many. We went out there and painted a picture of greedy teachers living in their ivory towers, unwilling pay their fair share. Then we told them we were cutting their pay and we told ourselves that we were actually cutting back on lavish bonuses basically. These aren’t Wall Street bankers getting $10 million bonuses when their customers were losing their life savings. A good teacher is worth their weight in gold. We all know there are serious problems with our education system, but there’s a lot right with it too. Where would we be without it? It’s certainly not going to get any better by working against each other.

All Else Being Equal… But It’s Not

Yet another article in the fight over teachers unions. I amended that opening statement because I think the fight really is far more with the unions than teachers. Given recent events here in Wisconsin, I absolutely feel that the unions really only care about preserving their own existence and will throw their members under the bus without hesitation if they think it will help that.

In my opinion, the problem with this article is the same problem with so many others: it’s a commercial disguised as journalism and skews reality by being selective with information and making apples to oranges comparisons.

It makes me wonder if the union actually paid the writer for the piece, if she’s just that bad of a writer, or if she’s just that out of touch with reality. It may actually add up to people living in metro areas. I can’t say since I don’t, but I know it won’t add up to many of us country bumpkins, which there are quite a few of. The biggest factor not brought up in the piece in my opinion is the difference in cost of living between Brooklyn and say, rural Wisconsin where I live. The woman given as the primary example in the article has a $75,000 salary but gives the impression that she has to have a second job just to survive. In what strikes me as a contradiction to that, she goes on to say, “When I hear about what teachers are making in Arizona or Texas, I think New York City is in a different place that that, and it’s the union that’s fought for us to be in that place. At least for me, it’s something I’m grateful for.” So, she has to have a second job but seems happy with her salary? Um, okay. The average household income around here, let alone individual income, is nowhere near that, not to mention that there will be no pension waiting for most of us when we retire and most of us pay a significant portion of our benefits.

So here’s the thing. Are they living on easy-street? Maybe not, but the fact is that it’s a damn bit better living than many have, so it’s going to be difficult for many to muster up any sympathy. As the middle-class erodes, those no longer in it naturally resent those still managing to hang on to it. Now, in the middle of New York city, $75k probably doesn’t go as far it does here, so they may already be amongst those who have lost their grip on the middle-class. In that case, they’re probably feeling quit unappreciated for the critically important service they provide the public. The article states that the average teacher salary in the US is $39k and roughly $45,500 in the city, which I can only assume is in reference to New York city in this context. That’s not quite a 17% increase. I suspect the cost of living in New York city is a heck of a lot more than 17% more than here. She actually talks about a maximum salary of slightly more than $100k as if it’s paltry, and maybe it is in the “city” for all I know, but it sure as hell isn’t here. She doesn’t talk about any of that though. For what it’s worth, a quick Google search led me to a site that claims that $39k where I live is roughly equivalent to just over $70k in New York city.

So maybe this concept of teachers as a “collective” is at the heart of the problem. The cost of living in one locale could be almost twice another’s, and yet they don’t get paid anywhere near twice as much. Then there’s the issue of merit based pay. Why is pay based on a damn spreadsheet essentially? Why shouldn’t someone really good at their job be recognized and rewarded for that? A person’s internal drive to make the world a better place only goes so far.

I’m not claiming to have all the answers, or even any of them, but it’s something to think about.

(Source: The New York Times)

How not to be constructive 101

I don’t know the “whole” story here, and quite frankly, nobody seems to for that matter. All I’m able to find on this whole state budget proposal fiasco is a bunch of vitriolic propaganda like the ad above. However,I certainly don’t like the way people are responding to this. I don’t care if you think the proposal is good or bad, this is not a civilized, mature, or intelligent way to respond. It’s what gives unions a bad name and just makes people go, “See what I mean? They need to be taken down a notch.”

Read More

Converting iTunes music to MP3s

I noticed a few people having problems getting their music to players that presumably do not handle AAC format files, so I thought I would type up a little how-to.

Music purchased from the iTunes store is an M4A file. They’re similar to MP3s and playable by iPods and many other players, but they use AAC encoding instead of MP3.

If the player only handles MP3s, you will need to convert the music. To do that, you need to make a change in the iTunes preferences. Where that is will depend on your version of iTunes and if your in Windows or if you are on a Mac. The current version of iTunes is 10.1.1 for both Windows and Mac, so I will cover those.

On a Mac, Preferences are always under the application’s main menu, which is always the first menu on the top left of your screen, just to the right of the Apple logo, and is the title of application. In Windows, the Preferences is under the Edit menu.

Once you are in Preferences, the first tab is the General tab, and towards the bottom you will see a button labeled Import Settings…. After clicking on that, you should see a drop-down for Import Using: and Setting:. Change Import Using to MP3 Encoder. It should automatically change Setting to High Quality (160 kbps), which is fine. Now click on the OK button, and then OK again.

How, select the music you want to convert. You may find it easier to add all the music you want to convert to a playlist first so that you can simply go that playlist and select all rather than accidentally releasing the Control/Shift/Command key while trying to select multiple songs and having to start over. Once you have the music you’d like to convert selected, go to the Advanced menu and click on Create MP3 Version. If you are currently in a playlist, the new files will not show up there, so go back to Music in the LIBRARY on the top left of the window.

There are a number of ways to sort out the files you create from the originals. The easiest may be to simply sort by Date Added since they will have just been added to the library. This cannot be done in Grid View, so make sure you have the 1st, 2nd, or 4th button selected amongst the 4 view buttons just to the left of the search box at the top right. If the Date Added column is not showing up, you can add it by going to the View menu, selecting View Options…, and then check the box for Date Added. You may also want to check the Kind box here as well so that you can see which files are MP3 without guessing. I wouldn’t advise leaving these files in your library permanently since they are essentially duplicates. Do what you need to do with them, drag them to your Desktop, whatever, and then delete them from your music library.

Health Care Reform

I was just wondering if somewhere in that monstrosity of a bill there was anything about requiring care providers to bill patients in a timely manner?

Have you ever gotten a bill from a provider like six months after the date of service and then they have the stones to put “Upon receipt” as the Due Date? The hospital and clinic here do this all the time. You don’t get a bill for months and months and then they practically call you a deadbeat the first time you’re hearing anything about it.

I’ve learned to keep an eye online to claims submitted to my insurance. I usually get an Explanation of Benefits for services long before I get a bill from the provider. We’ve gotten burned in the past because of what I believe is an intentional lag on the part of the provider. By the time you get your bill, you’ve gone in a half dozen more times, only to find out that this particular provider is considered “out of network” or that you’ve reached the annual limit for that particular service. Silly you for not knowing that a “unit” of service was a pathetic 15 minutes, meaning that you already burned through the 40 units (10 hours) of physical therapy allowed per calendar year and you’re responsible for the half a dozen hours at over $250/hour that you’ve received before you finally got anything that would have given you a heads up that you were going to get hosed. Hospitals deal with these insurance companies all the time, and yet they’d have us believe that they don’t know damn well what’s going to end up in the patient’s lap. It’s like making a deal with the devil. We’ve gotten to the point of seeking pre-authorization for services that don’t even technically need it, but then you also need to make sure you cover all your bases; is this in-network?, is there a limit of number of visits per year?, etc. If you don’t ask, they won’t tell. They want to keep you as ignorant as possible so that you’ll slip up. The providers aren’t going to do anything to discourage you from racking up as many charges as possible, and the insurance company certainly doesn’t want you to understand your policy enough to fully utilize everything it has to offer.

That reminds me of another bullshit trend in insurance lately - separate deductibles for in network and out of network. It’s not enough anymore that they only pay 80% or so for out of network, but now I have another $3000 deductible to reach before they pay a nickel. This isn’t often an issue, but small practices providing more specialized services are much less likely to be in-network.