How about this: People would rather be the highest paid person in a group at $50,000 a year. then making $50,000 more ($100,000 a year) and be the lowest paid person in the group.

What's significant about that is that it isn't only the amount of wage that is paid, but the status one has in the distribution of wages in a group. That sort of thing can affect decision making in an unrecognized way. It's a sort of "better to reign in hell than be a servant in heaven".

Yes, neuroscience. Slip of the fingers.

Believing in Fate wouldn't help, as far as I can tell. I was aiming at the idea that there are forces (like the way our brains work) that we do not have control of. What we can do is recognize that urges, wishes, desires... are affecting our thinking (often in non-obvious ways) and that we [or what we think are our consciously deciding minds] are not entirely in charge.

The upshot is to exercise caution and reflect on decisions for awhile (if at all possible) before we put them into action. This is, of course, easier said than done.

Here's a simple example: hunger (low blood sugar) and fatigue can creep up on us without our noticing. Both can affect our thinking and decision making. An event that is viewed as a threat before lunch might well be viewed as irrelevant after lunch--and we won't necessarily be aware that eating lunch altered our mental functioning, slightly.

Maybe study neurology? Westerners don't believe in Fate anymore but a lot of stuff goes on between our ears that we have no knowledge of nor control over that we might as well believe in Fate -- up to a point, anyway.

Oh, yeah... one other thing: A lot of decision making we do is not made consciously, so it is quite often difficult or impossible to know WHY we decided x, y, or z, and sometimes it is difficult to know WHAT our decision actually was.

For example, I’m interested in studying the philosophy of personal decision-making which is a subject matter that very few philosophers study and write about. I don’t think I could find a single good course on this topic in any university. It’s actually even hard to find a lot of helpful material online about this topic. I usually try to focus on studying psychology, personal finance, persuasion skills, value theory, and do research on various important life decisions. Unfortunately, these are just not things they teach you in school. — TheHedoMinimalist

Whether you pursue education within an institution or pursue it outside of the same, it is mostly a practical matter. Do you need a recognized degree? Can you afford college? Will you be admitted? Do you have the personal characteristics required to do well in college (and at the same time, do well outside of college)?

If you do not need what a college offers, and you can get what you want and or need elsewhere, then fine. But I don't know what your situation is; how old you are, how knowledgeable you are, what your history and long-range plans are.

Researchers do study personal decision making, from various angles. Take risk, for example. Whether you are risk averse or risk tolerant will affect the kind of decisions you will make, and to some extent, how you will make them. Risk averse people are likely to be cautious about how they make decisions (gathering safe, reliable information for example) as well as which decisions they make. Risk tolerant people may also gather reliable information, but treat it different than a risk averse person. People are not always consistent from thing to think. An individual may be risk averse about money, but be risk tolerant when it comes to sex.

I think you are probably correct that no single field of research (wherever it is done--on campus or off campus) treats "personal decision making" as its territory. Too bad, because that is where most of us make our worst mistakes.

One of the most important personal decisions is, "What do I want to accomplish in life?" I have sometimes asked college students to think about the next 5, 10, or 15 years. What do I want my life to be like in 10 years? What kind of home will I live in? Do I picture myself being married, partnered, single, with children, no children, how employed? How much money (in today's dollars) do I think I will need to live, and so on. Paint as detailed picture of your planned future as you can, then working backward from the future, "What do I have to do to make that possible?"

my intention was not to say, "Hey, lets compensate people according to a boredom scale" — schopenhauer1

Why the hell not? Look, there is something that can be done about boredom. Assemblng parts doesn't have to be a factory version of Day of the Living Dead or Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The two really horrible jobs here are the circuit board inspectors and the call center workers. The crew laying pipe and the guy doing something with the recycling bins have jobs that would be interesting to the right person. NOBODY likes inspecting circuit boards and NOBODY likes working in call centers. They do these jobs because it beats begging in the streets and living under a bridge.

I would enjoy using a power shovel to dig holes. What I would not enjoy is getting down in the mud and water on a January day when the temp. was -25F and one had to fix a broken water pipe. Not boring, though. Just horrible.

Not all bad jobs are boring. Many people would rather beg on the street and live under a bridge than drive a mass transit bus (considering what the passengers are like) even though the wages are not that bad. The job (the vehicles condition, the passengers, the regulation, the traffic) SUCKS!!!

Have you ever heard of 'hash numbers'? I once had a temp job adding up hash numbers for Cargill Incorporated, a giant ag. product company. The hash numbers were made up of item numbers, maybe a date, invoice number, tons loaded in the box car, one code for corn, another code for wheat, another for beans, and so on. One went through the shipping form and added up these arbitrary numbers. The total was supposed to agree with a number on another form. If it didn't, it meant that somewhere in the data an error was lurking. We were using 10 key adding machines with a paper tape. I did that 8 hours a day for 3 weeks. I think they decided that I wasn't good enough at this crucial job to keep on paying me. Merciful god, they let me go.

Now that was one meaningless, tedious, dull, fucking boring job! It's probably done by a computer now. As well it should be.

We must find a way to measure this boredom output! — schopenhauer1

Sounds like a colossal bore.

Most work is inevitably tedious, dull, dirty, difficult, and a damned drag. That is why they pay people. Nobody would do any of that crap for free.

Just add up the total hours reported by all the workers in the world. Multiply the total number of hours by .93. That's the boredom output. The remaining 7% of hours might be less than boring because some people like routine, and some people (usually liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels) are downright gleeful as they go about their work of ripping everybody off.

So yes, the total boredom output is soooo huge one can hardly grasp it.

Whereas, there are no consequences to refusing to self-educate. People are usually more motivated by loss than by gain. — TheHedoMinimalist

Yes there are costs to refusing to self-educate. Look, all education is self-education. You are the one that has to pay attention in lectures, read the text book, go the library and do research, write the paper, and so forth. The teacher is educating you only in an indirect way.

If you don't somehow educate yourself in something you will be what is known in the field as "stupid".

Quite a few colleges offer students the option of designing their majors. One could, for instance, combine creative writing, physics, chemistry, and art to prepare for a career in science fiction and sci fi film direction. Better educated writers would avoid sci fi errors like "the spider had 6 legs" or "thorax" when they meant human "larynx". Yes I have seen those errors just recently.

My family would disapprove of me getting a philosophy degree due to concerns about debt and few future job prospects — TheHedoMinimalist

That's why you need a community -- not just your family. My family would have been of limited utility as a support group. My parents were in favor of education but were not themselves educated beyond high school (they were born on farms in 1906 and 1907). By the time I got to college they were in their 60s and glad to see the last of their children finally out of the house.

Well, if you are borrowing money, you should be worried about debt and job prospects majoring in philosophy. English lit, sociology, philosophy, biology, etc. are all perfectly fine liberal arts majors as long as you don't tie your job search strictly to your major. A BA in sociology won't qualify you for many jobs in 'sociology'. But the same degree in sociology proves you have certain basic skills and interests that a corporation or government agency might want -- persistence, broad literacy, ability to meet deadlines (papers due next week), interests, and so on. Philosophy does the same thing. So does English lit and biology.

Radical thinkers have proposed an inverse wage scale with the highest pay for necessary and very unattractive jobs like unclogging big sewer pipes (not your kitchen sink); tedious and difficult work (providing personal care for the elderly or paralyzed -- toileting, bathing, feeding, etc); and crushingly boring work, with lower pay going to jobs with intrinsic interest and status rewards like major league sports, surgery, and so on.

I do not foresee a time when we will actually see sanitation workers getting $15,000,000 a year for clearing those underground sewers, and brain surgeons and NFL players getting $20 an hour. But the principle is sound. I was really very well rewarded in therms of satisfaction for the best jobs I have had, and no amount of money was enough for the drag-ass, boring, tedious, pointless jobs I've had.

I'm brain dead — Amity

Let's hope that's an exaggeration.

TheHedoMinimalist is entertaining the recurrent dream of the self-made man. Maybe 1/2 of 1% of the population (too generous an estimate?) are really able to pull off the job of autodidaction. That's 1,500,000 potential self-educated Americans. Does it seem like there are a million and a half Americans grinding away at collegiate level self education?

I wish, but wishes are fishes. slippery and hard to catch by hand.

One hopes that the admissions office is able to decipher the wheat from the chaff. — Hanover

Yes, one would hope. Vaguely interested students had best start at a low cost community college to find out if they can, and want to do college work. If they take a few courses, spend little, and do poorly -- no great loss to anyone.

But sometimes students misapprehend their readiness and ability, dive in and fail. There's nothing wrong with trying and failing, as long as one doesn't draw the wrong conclusions, like "I'm too stupid to do anything." And as long as one wasn't coaxed into borrowing money up front.

Is it perhaps possible to effectively educate yourself online and find a community of educated persons there? — TheHedoMinimalist

The IQ of an average uni student is probably only like one standard deviation above the IQ of the workforce. Instead, you are more likely to meet some pretentious intellectual wannabe in uni who fails to recognize his ignorance. — TheHedoMinimalist

Do you think you won't run into a hoard of pretentious intellectual wannabe's on line? Guess again!

Yes, It is possible to educate one's self (autodidact) but it is quite difficult. One has to have a lot of drive, patience, persistence, and access to a good set of resources -- at least a good library and on-line access. One of the services that college provides is a 4 year guided trip through the process.

In addition to that, it helps enormously if one is part of a community that cares that you are trying to become a learnéd person. If all the people around you do not give a rat's ass what you are doing, then the task is even more difficult. It helps to have ready access to people who are interested in what you are learning.

I took some classics and literature courses through Extension when I was about 35. It was a good experience, but it was not for a degree. It would have been tough at that point in life to start college while working full time. People do it, but they have to have a lot of drive, and be well organized. Plus, it takes longer. Double plus, it's no longer really cheap.

Over the last x number of years, I have known several high school graduates who were exceptionally well educated. They read, they discussed, they inquired, they engaged. They tended to not be well employed (or employed at all) but they had managed to become educated people.

Along with these people, there is another batch of people who went to college and became exceptionally well educated. They read, they discussed, they inquired, they engaged. Some of them were well employed, some not.

The difference between the well educated and the not so well educated is the degree to which they read, discussed, inquired, and engaged.

When you're 40 or 50 the time will seem like nothing, and you'll be glad you did it. — Terrapin Station

Let's see. I finish college at 24 (BA, MA) and then 16 to 26 years later I'll finally be glad I did it. Is this really the right approach?

In conclusion, most philosophers are humourless gits. — Amity

I suspect that many philosophers probably are humorless gits. This is probably associated with their low appreciation of being embodied beings--creatures of flesh and blood with all sorts of drives which which are "in charge" a good share [or all?] of the time. Confidently embodied people understand that their rational facilities are subservient to their emotions--like it or not. (It's emotional drives that sends people to college to study philosophy which foolishly elevates rationality over emotionality.)

To avoid misunderstanding... I'm in favor of people being rational. But we discount and ignore our emotional drives at our peril.

People too wrapped up in their cogitations can't afford to laugh at their ridiculousness.

And the whole, "meeting intelligent people at college" is a joke, unless you get into somewhere like Stanford, MIT, or Cal Tech, where the average IQ is above the norm, in some cases significantly. — Wallows

Oh, come on. It isn't just at Stanford, MIT, or Cal Tech that one will find intelligent people. Sour grapes?

So, he started his own business importing cheap supplements from China, and selling them here in the US, and was making close to 100k a month. Go figure. — Wallows

Well, gee whiz, if he is making close to 100k a month he must really be a wonderful person! And by selling cheap supplements of possibly dubious value. He might have done as well by beginning his importer business right out of high school.

It seems you're searching diligently for a justification to advise others that college is a bad decision, but very rarely is it. You still end up with a better type of job, associate with more intelligent people, make more money, and it will expand your intellectual horizons. Be careful with your loans and what you spend, but it's well worth it. — Hanover

Where college is a bad idea is the situation of people taking out loans to attend college (whatever college), for poorly motivated reasons, and then not finishing. They don't have a diploma, they have new debt, and no greater likelihood of a better life.

College was extremely valuable to me as a means to personal growth (intellectual, interpersonal, social, all that). College helped me get jobs, some of which were great, but it doesn't seem to have enhanced my earning power that much.

What plan in life after high school will pay off the best depends on a lot of factors.

How ambitious one is
How wealthy (or poor), how socially connected (or unconnected) one's parents are
What one's long term objectives are: stay on the farm? play it safe, work for civil service, retire? get rich quick and then get richer?
and so on.

One thing to remember: All colleges are in the business of getting students to buy their services. It never was in colleges' interests to tell students that college may not pay off financially.

Well, first of all, being homosexual doesn't rule out fathering children. For men who are 'exclusively homosexual' -- never have heterosexual partners -- children are out of the question. But many homosexuals are not exclusive. A substantial portion of men who have primarily homosexual relationships also have heterosexual relationships, and father children. This complicates life in ever so many annoying ways, but that's just the way it is.

We don't know exactly what determines sexual orientation. It may be determined by factors present in utero which have the consequence of feminizing the otherwise male brain at just the right moment. The male so affected is altogether male, is quite likely to act like most other males, BUT notably, is more likely to prefer other men for sex. Genes may have such an indirect role to play in sexual orientation that we can not now factor them.

Animals and plants have large genomes and even though we have "mapped the human genome" we by no means know what all of the genes do, or what combination of genes and gene switches is required in any instance. So, inheritance of traits (like homosexuality, permissive attitudes, risk tolerance, etc.) is by no means cut and dried.

Sexual behavior in a population plays itself out as a spectrum ranging from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. The number of men who are exclusively homosexual is a small percentage of the population -- 2% to 3%. When you see figures of 10% of males being homosexual, we're not counting exclusively gay men.

As someone said, the only unnatural sex act is an impossible sex act. People like sex, and whatever happens to arouse them at the moment can lead to sex. That's why many men who are not homosexual have sex with another man sometimes. At the moment it was an arousing possibility. Same thing for more or less gay men. Sex with a woman may, at the moment, be arousing.

otherwise so many people would not have the same problem of getting excited by porn but not as much by regular sex after the fact. It's like if you take 100 people who have watched porn and all of them believe that having regular sex isn't as exciting as porn. The point is that porn is what caused them to believe that sex is boring. — Maureen

Well... has this experiment been done? I would be very surprised if, in one form or another, it had not been done. There is a ton of research published on pornography and sexual behavior. Have a look. It's perfectly safe to read -- it's not pornographic or sexy.

People do tend to like novelty. Porn can become boring and dull. Sex with the same person doing exactly the same moves time after time can become boring and dull (maybe not in a week or two, but give it 20 or 30 years...)

if it reminds us of something we want to separate ourselves from. — Metaphysician Undercover

Does CK want to separate (somebody, himself, whoever) from the American Revolution? Maybe he feels it was an inadequate revolution? Too bourgeois? Just a bunch of privileged anti-tax whiners? Not a revolution for the slaves? Perhaps his criticism was too timid?

The Guardian reader responses are not tightly moderated, and the result is more amusing moments, as well as more pointless (but not rude, crude) response. The New York Times reader responses are very tightly moderated and the result is a high level of comment, very little humor, and no pointless posts. I think the Guardian gets it a little closer to just right than the NYT, but degustibus non disputandem est.

It's a bit like putting a crucifix on the sneaker. — Coben

Might be helpful for the "Hail Mary pass".

Does it really take that much effort not to pick a symbol like that? One imagines the use of the symbol by political groups shows up in basic research. — fdrake

The original flag of the USA is not a 'symbol like that'. It is a distinguished symbol, abused or not. The cross has been abused at cross-burnings, yet we continue to use crosses without anyone thinking that it's display represents racism (unless it is on your lawn, burning away). Proctor and Gamble dithered over the "Satan worship" smear, but in the end they kept the symbol.

It's too late in the advertising game to complain about using the flag to sell products. It's far, far too common.

there must be something about pornography in general that makes it more exciting than regular sex, although it's anyone's guess as to what that is. — Maureen

Pornography is produced to meet a very wide variety of tastes. Practically, no matter what you are into, somebody is making porn that you will like. Because porn images are often shared and re-shared on social sites, Tumblr, BlogSpot, et al, the selection of images becomes even more specific and refined.

Watching a fairly narrow selection of porn is likely to raise one's expectations. Bodies are buff, organs are large, skin is healthy and tanned, the action that is shown is often "the best of". An ordinary person (one's self and one's mate) are likely to fall short.

In the other direction, unsatisfactory sex may lead individuals to seek pornographic stimulation. People who are unhappy, depressed, ill, and so forth may not feel like having sex, or giving the sexual encounter their full attention. Their partner may seek satisfaction using porn.

Pornography of a sort was produced in the Roman Empire. The invention of printing increase the supply of images. In the late 19th century, photography made possible a more explicit pornography. It takes much more time to draw and paint a sexual episode than to capture it on film. When motion pictures came along, still images were supplemented by short films.

Then sound and color were added (enabling us to hear all sorts of ecstatic moaning that rarely occurs in real life). But it wasn't until the late 1960s when the legal restrictions on producing and distributing pornography were removed that high quality porn became plentifully available at an affordable price. Since then it has gotten better and better. (Sex is sex; sex hasn't gotten better. It's the technical aspects of producing porn that have improved. So, our experience with ubiquitous porn is relatively recent.

As good as porn is, most porn productions are exemplars of third rate movie making. If it wasn't for the sex, NOBODY would watch it. Ever. I avoid porn with a plot. I want to look at just the high points of the show. The hottest parts of the hottest scenes. And stills are perfectly acceptable.

I say it's about the dumbing down of the public discourse. — ssu

How can public discourse, involving billions, be anything other than "dumbed down"?

The elderly among us will remember the "Satanic Panic" of the 1970s-1990s. Satan was to those lunatics what being racist or fascist is to the current crop of lunatics. Proctor and Gamble had somehow gotten away with being a satanic cult for decades, when someone noticed their logo. Paroxysms of paranoia! What is America coming to? Satan's soap?

atlasobscura.

Clearly this is a satanic symbol. 13! stars, a bearded man in the crescent moon... obviously satanic. How could anyone interpret it otherwise? Wicked, wicked, wicked.

Nike's job is to make money any way they can. K is apparently helping them do that. All sounds very American to me. — Baden

Making money any way they can is as French as pate foie gras, as Irish as boiled potatoes, as Ugandan as matoke, and as at home in Thailand as pad Thai. All sounds very economic to me.

That fellow appears to be excessively happy. He should probably be investigated.

So, expressing concern that X symbol has been co-opted by others who are racist is not the same as claiming that if corporation Y uses symbol X, it's a racist gesture, so, unless there's something more to this, it looks like you might be raging against a strawman here, Bitter Crank. — Baden

Sigh. I wasn't claiming that Nike was making a racist gesture. The article states that some people think that the Ross flag is racist, because some people (Nazis, for example) have used the flag in their iconography. I'm pretty sure Nike was making a merely shallow patriotic gesture, having nothing to do with patriotism or racism. It's like the plastic Christmas-design bag at Target or Walmart. The bag design has nothing to do with the Incarnation.

That Christmas-design bags or flags on shoes are shallow uses of common symbols doesn't prevent people from freighting the symbols, and then claiming that Walmart is stealing Christmas or that Nike is promoting racism. What I am objecting to is the anachronistic linking of recent usage of the flag to the original (and dominant) usage of the flag.

People could object to the standard design of the flag (alternating red/white stripes and a rectangular arrangement of state-stars). After all, it flew over the state houses of slave states before 1860, as well as over the state houses of non-slave states. The Declaration of Independence was written by a slave owner and (to some people) a slave raper, Thomas Jefferson. The 'Father of the Country' was also a slave owner.

So national, religious, corporate, university, symbols (among others) get this vague aura around them incorporating all the uses to which they have been put. That's life. Get used to it, Colin Kaepernick, et al.

When The Philosophy Forum organizes a house band it should be called "Raging Against the Strawman"

oops - meant to include the link. Here it is.

"the 13-star model, a design associated with the Revolutionary War, the Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross and, for some people, a painful history of oppression and racism." and so on.

An earlier version of the headline did include the word "slavery". It isn't altogether unusual for headlines to be revised, it seems.

The word I was thinking about isn't 'nigger' but rather 'negro' (or, in French 'nègre'). — Pierre-Normand

"The 'N' word" has never represented 'negro' or 'nègre', to the best of my knowledge. And 'nigger' was definitely a term of disparagement and scorn under slavery. We know it was because documents written by slave-holders use the term disparagingly and with scorn. That isn't to say that was the only attitude that slave holders had toward their chattel.

BTW, I wonder if the French use a circumlocution like "le mot 'n'". It seems unlikely.

Further shouldn't we patriots dislike someone putting the flag on a sneaker. It's not illegal, but it is parasitic. — Coben

Correct. Nike and patriotism have no connection. If Nike wanted to prove their patriotic fides, they could start manufacturing their shoes here instead of SE Asia, and pay their American employees a living wage. Nikes aren't expensive because of labor cost. They are expensive because of high profit margins and expensive promotion costs.

Going by the headline in the New York Times which is, after all, the newspaper of record (so they say), the Betsy Ross flag was a design associated with the Revolutionary War, the Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross and, for some people, a painful history of oppression and racism.. The headline on the day the story appeared said the flag was associated with slavery. But then, everything about the Revolution of 1776 was connected with slavery directly or indirectly.

Actually, I doubt very much if Nike IN FACT was worried about anything other than the bottom line and how social media might affect their image and sales IF Kaepernick et al were able to stir up enough synthetic rage.

The American flag has been used by just about everybody under the sun for one purpose or another. And, don't forget, it has also been used by those dedicated to justice; peace; the true, the good, and the beautiful; motherhood; apple pie--used by the angels, in other words. Betsy Ross's flag. Old Glory--13 stars or 50.

Just because some Americans out on the far right used it is no reason to be embarrassed about it.

I don't expect to see a swastika on a Nike shoe or a VW car anytime in the near future. 250 years from now? It's quite possible that the swastika will be a neutral symbol by that time. Betsy Ross is about as far back in time.

I wasn't aware that the KKK or the American Nazi Party were using the Ross flag until I read the story in the NYT, and it doesn't altogether ruin the symbol by these birds using it. The KKK and American Nazis put together wouldn't fill up a minor league ball park. These two small bunches of right wing extremism aren't entitled to sole use of a prime America symbol.

Kaepernick and Nike together have ceded an important symbol to the right-wing lunatics. Bad move.

Besides, one could fly a Boeing 747 through the hole in the credibility of the flag-as-symbol caused by grossly promiscuous use of Old Glory to sell everything from cigarettes to Chevrolets.

I would first dismiss from discussion those who are psychotic and experiencing very negative hallucinations and those who have CD, MI, and other 'comorbidity' factors. It isn't that they don't matter -- they do -- but that their circumstances are quite different from those without major MI, CD, or abuse histories, etc.

There are those who have long-term reasons to think about suicide: those with degenerative diseases approaching terminal status; those with cancer which can be treated with only palliative care; those whose lives have become unsatisfactory owing to illness/injury/age (usually in combination).

Actually, it seems to be the case that most people who suffer from terminal illnesses do not attempt suicide. They may talk about it, prepare for an attempt, or seek help, but generally do not complete the plan (when they could). Life becoming unsatisfactory appears to be a more potent cause of suicide.

Middle aged white men with high school educations or less seem to be most likely to kill themselves. I would submit that this is because their lives have become much less satisfactory than they believed it once was. This group faces many large barriers to achieving greater satisfaction: Their best-fit jobs have largely disappeared; they do not have a large set of flexible skills; because they are "middle aged" (35-45 years of age) they are no longer physically able to compete with younger men, or get new kinds of jobs which offer a bright future. Age discrimination is real. Middle aged men are also likely to have ready access to effective means of delivering their own death.

There are quite a few people for whom suicide seems to be a sudden response to a sudden change in circumstances and who were able to act on the impulse immediately (for this group loaded guns pose a much greater than typical danger).

Young people who experience intense emotional lability are likely to go from feeling great to feeling very dejected in a short period of time. Weaker impulse control which will come with maturity may not stop them from reaching for the means to attempt suicide.

Desperate Housewives's ghost narrator came across a box with a loaded gun in it. She impulsively pointed it at her head and pulled the trigger. Dead. Such a scenario is not common, but it does highlight the danger of guns: a loaded gun can deliver a certain death instantly. (Yes, it can be screwed up...). Drugs, hanging, car accidents, suffocation, etc. all take time. Bang. It's all over (for the trigger puller).

total healthcare, as long as it doesn’t double taxes for the working class — 0 thru 9

A national health care program should not increase the individual outlay for health care, because most Americans are already paying premiums for health care either themselves or as part of their compensation at work. Medicare and Medicaid are already being covered by premiums or tax payments. I would expect that wages would remain about the same, but corporate expenditures on employee health care would be shifted to employee wages.

Government funded health care would cut the ground out from under the health insurance industry. Cutting out their overhead (15-20% of your health care expense) would be an immediate savings. Yes, there would be a bulge in unemployment, since these workers would be redundant.

Medicare and Medicaid have very low overhead percentages.