How Wage Insurance Could Ease Economic Inequality

I get the idea of unemployment benefits. Millions of idle people could have food on their table. Good. But what about the long run? The article does not say a word about population explosion... Most people have no access to free or affordable birth control devices or legal abortion. The result is legions of unskilled people drifting around with no chance of getting a job, ever.
We are living through an Industrial Revolution on steroids, with mechanization taking over former people's jobs at an alarming rate. How can this problem ever be solved if, at the same time, reactionary forces, like religion, forbid contraception and abortion?

Another complex solution for people to have to figure out who are unable to make more than $50k a year? I have a hard time understanding the whole range of programs we're supposed to navigate, IRAs, 401k's, health insurance, social security, medicare ( or is it medicaid?) Federal, State and local taxes and I make twice that. I need a professional to tell me what to do. Why cant we just have one system, with one deduction that does it all?

How has the current wage insurance program helped the Carrier workers in Indiana? They fit the requirements of the current program. They are clearly impacted by the United Technologies decision to move the factory to Mexico and according to NYT article about the move, the typical wage is $50K. Has it reduced the anxiety of the workers there? Apparently not. They are facing major long term reductions in income.

Unemployment insurance and the small benefits of the current wage insurance will help, but most of them are facing economic disaster. Schiller's article is interesting, as usual, but it is hard to see how private wage insurance or private livelihood insurance will provide much help. Those who need it the most are the ones least likely to be able to afford it and least likely to buy it even if affordable. The same situation exists for health insurance. Obamacare tries to address that with a combination of the mandate and subsidies. That faces furious Republican opposition, and many of those Republicans are the beneficiaries of the program. I would guess, many of the the employees about to be laid off by Carrier are part of that furious opposition.

Any program meant to ease the economic pain of working class people inflicted by world-wide changes in manufacturing (and soon other higher skilled industries) will require political leadership that does not exist.

Finland in Europe is looking at paying all its citizens a universal basic income because of high unemployment and lots of local businesses being offshore. Its a living wage. Our leader of Opposition in NZ is looking at incorporating this into their parties policies as well. There is never going to be full employment in any western world nation when you have jobs outsourced to foreign nations. New approach needed to protect citizens from open market policies. It would most probably pay for itself in savings for policing social and health issues caused by no income.

Love how the leading candidates - on both sides - are married to Big Money. They both are the beneficiaries of this (un)Free Trade. Super delegates were bought and paid for several years ago, the foregone conclusion being that she is forced upon us. Four or eight more years of Establishment rule. NYT, why even write superficial articles about intractable problems, except to pretend as they do that someone cares..

Of course, the "livelihood insurance" industry would be heavily regulated by fed/state government as say the healthcare insurance industry is and therefore exposed to massive political corruption, as with healthcare insurance, and therefore the premium costs and coverage would increase as dictated by said regulation.

Then those on the lower end of the wage spectrum would increasingly be unable to afford said premiums so, government would mandate supplementation of those premiums with taxes/levies on the premiums paid by higher income premium payers or perhaps from corporations who will then (as they do with other taxes) pass those through to their customers.

The system reaches a statis where the regulatory bureaucracy grows, the money skimmed off by government to pay for said bureaucracy grows as does the regulated flows of money skimmed off by big insurance providers who then donate to their most supportive politicians...

The cycle continues with yet another way of taking money from consumers and using it to fund yet another set of government bureaucracies, poltical campaigns and growth of wealth held by large shareholder groups in the insurance sector...

No thank you.

If a job leaves the country the wealth generated by manufacturing leaves with it. Using a safety net generates neither wealth nor taxes.
If you want the safety net you like bigger government and socialism and, of course, higher taxes for the rest of us.
And I'm not a dye-in-the wool conservative. On the other hand, if we could tax Viet Nam like California the jobs could be shipped there.
Smaller government, lower taxes? Keep the jobs here.

I find it amusing that Mr. Schiller proposes to alleviate a problem caused in part by excessive trust in the free market to 'raise all boats', by turning to a free market solution.

While this is thought provoking, it ignores an obvious consideration, namely, that much of our success in life depends on the choices we make. People who chose not to be educated usually have lower earnings potential. People who chose to go into high risk work situations, usually have to face the possibility of finding new employment. People who chose to go into a field for which they are now well qualified will likely not find much success or enjoyment. And these are but a few examples of the impact of the choices we make as we go through life.

Insurance is not well suited for most of life's choices related to careers. It is not to protect us against bad choices, but rather, unforeseen situations beyond our reasonable control.

Put another way, you cannot protect yourself against all risk in life, even when you make good choices.

This is obviously just another deception by our elites to get what remains of the middle class to yet again Taxpayer pay the costs of continual outsourcing of US jobs and the importation of the functional equivalent of immigrant slaves to kill US wages. Like the Earned Income Credit and originally well intended all manner of social program redistributions (food stamps, welfare, rent assistance, free public education ...) this will be bent, probably is now planned to provide just another subsidy to the few percent business owner and Wall Street nobility that now rule/oppress the people in this nation as if they-we were Medieval serfs.

I don't buy the case that Canada favored private wage insurance. Their social system is remarkably different than in America, where social benefits are increasingly privatized. The core problem is retraining an entire generation due to manufacturing jobs that have been reduced or outsourced. Other impending changes appear to be coming via the emergence of the clean energy industry, and a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, as well as the movement toward products that are a launchpad for creative ideas. But retraining just isn't happening in this same creative manner. The USA has failed big in utilizing its best resource—its people. We could start by giving every child access to computers. Or growing libraries. Or dealing with heroin addiction. The individual cannot 'insure' herself into a protected state. The collective has to do the work of developing people with the capacity to become inventive, and take risk. Why not put to use the innovation that America prides itself upon—say teams of artists, entrepreneurs, technology workers—and use government support to ensure their success in raising everyone up?

Dr. Shiller: I) Former Fed chair Allan Greenspan's ideas about the US housing market may apply to wage insurance. Per my understanding of Mr. Greenspan's theory, he thought the US housing market could continually increase in total valuations overall. Since housing was a regional market, as house prices in San Francisco soared, those people priced out of this market would venture to Atlanta, where housing prices would be stabilized by this new wave of buyers entering this market. Similarly, as house prices in NYC soared, falling prices in Phoenix would be restored and its housing market would quickly rise anew from such low valuations, with an influx of NYC buyers. Thus, Mr. Greenspan reasoned. But, the US national housing market did decline overall during the Great Recession; costing many homeowners all of their home equity. II) With the outsourcing of US jobs and IT-directed machines both acting to actually reduce and replace the demand for many middle-management and other worker positions, problems in the US national labor market may be larger than individual sector problems with overall self-cancelling sector wage movements. More convergence of Asian wages with US wages, has ominous consequences for these US wage earners. The reallocation of wages to shareholder dividends to cover the now more valuable rents for providing capital to buy this high ROI IT-directed machinery, and a very few skilled machine operators, impacts badly most workers' wages.
03/15/2016 Tu 11:27a

We already have wage insurance, it's called unemployment insurance and the GOP won't honor it, so why bother with this concept?

I disagree that there should be two systems to administer this. If it isn’t done federally it won’t happen. Look at Obamacare without the federal requirement people wouldn’t get heath insurance. Like Obamacare this is insurance, if it isn’t required people won’t pay.

When one looks at the polarization of incomes in this country it is clear this is not a situation to be ignored. As we watch the slow disappearance of the middle class in this country we see all the gains of the 20th century lost as billionaires that have replaced the robber barons of a hundred years ago and the reappearance of the economic slavery of company towns that existed back then charging rent, selling workers food, etc. all deducted for their slave wages.

It is time to remember 100 years ago when farmers from the Granges stood up against big money. Times have changed but people still deserve a decent chance like this gives.

It is the lower-paying job that are most unpleasant. There is little "moral hazard" of workers choosing lower-paying jobs because they are easier. Who wants to be a fast-food worker or a ditch digger?

Or we could have a decent industrial policy like, you know...a democracy.

Yes, we must do something as the disruptions of globalization and technology create increased anxiety about job security and wages. The unique productivity gap since 1979 is mostly to blame for wage insecurity and stagnation. Huge productivity benefits from massive technology change has not been shared with workers. Rather the owners of capital, the asset class or the 1% at the top maligned by Bernie Sanders enjoying the gains of productivity from technology change. Assets are king today leaving wages in the dust. The wage discontent Dr. Shiller wants to ameliorate is at the heart of the middle-class crisis. There is a need to reorganize our modern economy so there is a broader ownership of assets by workers with less dependence on wages for wealth. How? Stock options have been called – “a stroke of genius” so workers share in the success and wealth of the owners. Why are stock options declining and not enriching the middle class as hoped? First, the ongoing accounting challenge with the FASB rulings that stock options are an expense even before they are real or may never be real. Further the short 90 day rule for exercising ISO stock options after termination weakens options as an alternative to wage insurance. Also the bloom is off after the global recession in 2008 as most options became worthless. I submit a concerted effort is needed to expand the reach of asset ownership from stock options.

What happens to work if production of goods is automated? If someone needs to buy goods he must pay something but where does he get the money if he has none. He must trade something he owns to get money and perhaps his labor can be traded. But what does he do when his labor no longer has value, or it has too little value to be sold for enough to provide him food and shelter.

I see no basic guarantee in economics that all people will be able to support themselves. It will be time sooner or later to face this fact. I think we are almost there now.

I read this with mild interest, somewhat liking the idea. Then at the bottom I noticed who wrote it: Robert Shiller! For those who do not know, Shiler is a Nobel laureate with enormous accomplishments to his credit, including more or less calling the top of the dot com boom.

However, personally I am more attracted to another idea that is being discussed, namely a Universal Basic Income. UBI would give every adult some amount, say 1000 dollars a month, just as a right of citizenship. No idea how to finance it, but the idea has the merit of being extremely simple, unlike the insurance contracts proposed here.

We truly need to do something. I feel we are entering the end of 'the age of work'. We can't just throw all the surplus labor into the river I'm afraid. Have you not noticed all the people living in tent cities around the country? Work is disappearing at the margins, and a response to it is needed.

Where is it guaranteed in economics that if production of goods is automated, then everyone will still have shelter and food even if they can't find a role to play in the economy? I'm an economist myself but that question seems to be above my pay grade.

Professor Shiller wonders in the article if the private sector offers livelihood insurance. Yes, the private sector does offer livelihood insurance. It's called Income Assure. Professor Shiller is correct that there are higher rates for higher risk industries, however most are quite affordable. While the version of "wage" insurance offered by Income Assure isn't everything Professor Shiller envisions, those who have benefited from claims payments report it provided the boost they needed when they needed it.

I don't like the idea of wage insurance. Why not have Medicare for all--universal healthcare. If we separate health care from employment, a great deal of the anxiety of unemployment is removed. As a demonstration project, lower the eligibility age to 55 or 60.

And, stop exporting jobs to foreign countries. This is a scheme where US companies move jobs to cheaper wage countries, American workers are unemployed and then our government, with our tax dollars, backfills the job loss with a pittance of token money. Who profits by this plan? Certainly not American workers. Corporate greed.

Why do we always turn to taxing employment as a source of funds for these types of programs? There are so many things much less beneficial than jobs, that could be taxed: CO2 emissions, financial transactions or finance in general, immediately come to mind. Or better yet, if trade is so universally beneficial as free-trade proponents claim, and its losers are so few and far between, then surely a small residual tariff on imports and exports, sufficient to compensate those few victims of free trade, wouldn't even be noticed.

How about instead of wage insurance for Americans, we make importers from countries exploiting their laborers with barely subsistence wages pay a premium to import goods to the US? Tell them that they must offer pay and benefits comparable to those found in the US or pay steep tariffs when importing their goods.

This really is a Marxian moment. Workers of the world need to unite, just as capitalists across the world have already united to exploit them, not least through manipulations of national governments. Instead of letting the capitalists get rich playing Chinese laborers against Americans, the Chinese and American laborers should unite for better wages and working conditions for all. It really is true that all the workers are exploited whenever even one is.

A better wage insurance policy would be an international labor movement to protect against worker exploitation worldwide. American factory workers have more in common with Chinese factory workers than with their own capitalists. And American capitalists have already recognized their commonality with the Chinese Communist Party capitalists and have conspired with them so that both might get rich at the expense of the working classes of each nation.

As described, this "insurance" is a scam.

Unemployed, the person has no wages t be boosted. He/she has two years of coverage, is "overqualified" and an older worker who will have trouble finding any job if the economy were on an even keel, but is mot likely to need the insurance when the national or at least the local economy is on a downswing and many people need coverage. After 2008, most workers in that situation would not have collected much.

Or does it kick in to boost unemployment insurance and then continue when the insurance runs out? No, for that would discourage the job search.

Private insurance? Sufficient reserves? What rules on pooling? On having diverse industries? On independence of secondary coverage so funds are actually available during a recession?

A bad deal, to be sold to individuals who, deprived by a lack of information and technical knowledge, cannot compute the value of what they are paying for versus the cost.

And the cost of insurance lowers the income of the poor who are barely getting by now.

Back in the early Greek days their leader Solon issued an edict cancelling all home mortgages, thereby giving struggling home owners a boost that caused the Greek economy to expand for nearly two centuries before the Greeks began fighting with their neighbors. In the 1970s, President Nixon proposed a $10,000 boost for the working poor that didn't make it through a Democratic Congress. Livelihood insurance makes a lot of sense in a world that is not populated with budding CEOs, but with folks who often can't figure out what the hell they are doing on this strange world that is assaulted by wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, recessions, depressions, etc. Let us help these people and mine from the knowledge of their experiences.

The fact that you can buy insurance against wage loss due to death, which is inevitable for 100% of the population, but not for wage loss due to unemploment, speaks volumes about how risky it is to be an American worker. If such insurance were offered, who wouldn't buy it, especially after 50?

I'm about as liberal as it comes, but I can also understand math.
We must come to terms with the collapse we endured in 2008, and there's no prescription for it other than facing the recession we're due. It makes no sense to inact "wage insurance", which implies American's are now entitled to a wage - a nice notion, but impracticle given our debt, deferred maintenance of infrastructure and foreign threats.
What would make more sense is to begin pushing for corporate reform that requires multi-national firms, enjoying American corporate protections, to justify the limited liability afforded shareholders. Trade deals accelerated the evolution of a globalized supply chain, with its ability to take advantage of cheap labor in nearly any far off corner of the world, with no regulatory oversight. Yet corporate responsibility, taxation regimes and regulatory enforcement has been held stagnated by overly-powerful, newly-naturalized (citizen united) corporate forces from evolving with this globalization.
Unfortunately for conservatives and Libertarians, this means more government, not less. We have a need to "evolve" our governmental infrastructure to deal with these new realities and conservatives are obstructing that evolution based an outdated notion and powerful industries that are funding the obstruction for self-serving amoral purposes.
A reckoning looms...

How about stagnant-wage insurance? A policy that would top-up the wages of employed people who are the victims of wage-stagnation. Years ago I found myself, several years after graduating college, making substantially less money than the employees five years older had made when they had the same level of education and experience. Stagnant-wage insurance would have been a big help.

I think we are missing the point here. The guaranteed income is supposed to come from those doing well to those not doing well, to compensate and not create barriers to progress. Sounds like we are doing an "American" on it. That is nobody pays and we create a for profit business opportunity for insiders. Good job.

Wage insurance? Oh, you mean welfare.

Another social program so people do not have to work and will be subsidized by the government which has four trillion in debt and keeps on going with reckless spending.

We should provide a safety net for all those are poor, including housing and food as well as medical care. These piecemeal approaches that cover only a small percentage of the poor for very few years miss the point. The point is that no one in a modern society should be homeless, hungry or without medical care.

Wage insurance sounds awfully like unemployment benefits. Similar to unemployment benefits, there'll be some end date. It has to, because no insurer will provide wage insurance for anyone for the rest of their life (same argument as unemployment benefits).

Same goes with long term disability insurance where it's all well and good to pay the premium, but the catch always comes when it comes to making the claim eventually. And it's not even cheap anyways.

I'd say, for anyone who can spare to pay premium for wage insurance religiously, they are better off investing it in some low-cost index funds.

At least we have a proposal for addressing the elephant in the room. Economic distruption from globalization and technology. I would argue that what is needed is a better distribution of the profits from these two factors. Without some incentive, all the profits gained from technology and moving work to the lowest paying countries go to the owners of capital. Instead of trying to offset this effect, the establishment has done the opposite. For example, stock options had become more common in the 90's and were given to many middle management positions. Then,, the FASB decided companies needed to show the expected cost of these plans on their financial statements. Companies immediately reduced the number of people getting a piece of the pie. Profit sharing plans have also declined. We need tax incentives for companies to reinstate these compensation plans for the majority of workers. This will enable them to save, consume and invest which is good for the economy and reduces the risks of job displacement.

The fact that there is serious discussion of wage insurance suggests that the future includes plummeting wages for American workers. Why else would this topic even come up? The Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats want the blows of wage inflation to be palatable by building a platform for wage reduction to occur in stages. The future does not bode well for American workers. It's time for worker empowering legislation, like the Employee Free Choice Act, that make it easier for employees to negotiate collectively. It remains astounding to me that the subject of plummeting wages and the Employee Free Choice Act is ignored by the media and the candidates for President. Every candidate should be asked about the Employee Free Chouce Act. We have heard enough about the opinions on immigration and ISIS.

You should never buy insurance if you can afford to cover the loss yourself. The logic is simple: there's no such thing as a free lunch. An insurance company has to price adverse selection, moral hazard, lavish salaries for its executives, and handsome profits for its shareholders into the premiums it charges, so you're much better off being your own insurance company. Government insurance doesn't have a profit motive, but it also has less of an incentive to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. If you don't believe me on that, just look at the recent explosion of Social Security payouts for hard to disprove "disabilities" and all the lawyers peddling assistance for dubious claims. Bottom line, if you think you might be laid off sometime, put $10K into a savings account.

Big Government has messed up everything it has even thought of touching, so private enterprise offering products such as these is the only solution, if the demand exists. Better yet, isn't this what savings are for?

Unmentioned is moral hazard by employers, where it is probably (proven) most likely. "Off you go old man, here's the toll free number of your wage insurance provider in case you've lost it".

Separately, employers are also the biggest creators of employee risk, with no incentive to mitigate. In fact, when it comes to job risk, the situation is completely twisted: the more risk employers create for employees, the more they benefit.

The non-apportion of risk and reward, or more accurately, blame and incentive, in any insurance scheme, is a sure-fire way to guarantee failure (or mild success at best). In short, wage insurance will only be successful if employers are mandated by law to share premiums. More importantly, mandated to bear the brunt of any and all premium increases down the road, meaning that if/whenever employers create more employment risk, they do so at their premium-peril only.

All of which, one would think, the good professor might have mentioned, at least in passing. Why, then, hasn't he, or anyone else for that matter? Probably because shifting these costs to employers stands absolutely no chance, DOA politically speaking. Worse, costs, even just to mention (except around here of course).

Nevertheless, another thought-provoking opinion from Professor Shiller, which, like, makes the NYT subscription, like, totally worth it dude. Thank you.

The interesting issue is how would insurance companies evaluate the risk? Most insurance operates on the basis of having a large pool for risk, but jobs are quite variable, both in wages and risk of losing one's job. Consider an extreme example of comparing a construction worker who works only during the warm months, not during winter, and a desk job. How would the insurance company have to slice and dice the labor market and different jobs?

If private insurance companies want to offer this type of insurance and can find customers willing to buy it go right ahead. Better yet put aside what you would pay in premiums into a savings or investment account and create your own safety net. The government option sounds like yet another income transfer program. Highest premiums for those who receive lowest/no benefits.

This by another name is called privatization of the safety net. I see this as little different than AIG's role in the bank collapse, insurance to prop up man-made fully preventable events that should be illegal and there be better policy to prevent in the first place. Who's paying the profit to this insurer? Not employers who are creating needless insecurity in the workplace. Will this be as well regulated as we have seen with health insurance, disaster insurance by an industry that pays republicans to say climate change is a hoax?

I will borrow a line from Hillary on this one: If it's too good to be true, than it probably is.

This is one of those clever techniques that could help, in a limited way, some of those unfairly hurt by our (very unfair) economy. But, as the author points out, it has considerable limitations, not just in how it is presently conceived and implemented, but also in what it has the potential to accomplish.

The problem with such 'techniques' is that they perpetuate the delusion that they are the way to solve major economic difficulties. That is, they veer us away from addressing the root causes of the overall problem.

That problem, by the way, is not 'wealth inequality' (which is a euphemism). Rather, it's wealth theft, wealth being unjustly taken from the great mass of people by the rich through corrupt influence on government and unfair economic process.

Until those root causes (lobby money corruption, gutting worker rights, wholesale surrender to market forces, and the like) are addressed, we will be tweaking our system with such 'techniques' ad infinitium with no real impact.

Cronyism, the convoluted tax code, excessive regulations, excessive government spending, the national debt and the Federal Reserve are the major causes of the widening income inequality gap.

Solutions:
Abolish the tax code,16th Amendment and IRS.
Enact the Fair Tax.
Minimize regulations to only what is absolutely necessary.
Balance the budget.
Start decreasing the national debt.
Abolish the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and all bank regulations except one; require full disclosure on full or fractional reserve backing of deposits.
Treat gold, silver and cryptocurrencies as legal tender (not as an asset) for tax purposes.

The income inequality problem is counterintuitive. Big government equals more income inequality. Smaller government equals less income inequality.

The middle class is the byproduct of a free market economy; it is not manufactured by a politician's tax gimmicks, minimum wage laws, or government redistribution of wealth.

Articles like this one is how you know its an election year. They always trot out this idea (over the past 50 years) when the economy has problems and it NEVER gets implemented.

It is all pie in the sky because the only people who could pay for it are the truly rich and they will never agree to it.

Just another program for the American worker to pay for whether they need it or not. And how large will this deduction be; and people want a single payer universal health care system? The America worker will not take home any money. Private sector companies will never go for this in the U.S. because they want to save money and if a computer can do your job so be it. But the government spends like a fool...this will be right up their alley.

How about we address the causes of the inequality and job dislocation instead of putting a band aid on it?

So, if I'm a working stiff afraid of losing my job, I can pay ANOTHER payroll tax or make even more payments to my friends, the insurance industry?

I have a better idea. America can start generating some jobs for AMERICANS, and start paying decent wages.

In a capitalist system, economic inequality is both its effect and the driving force. Economic equality lies low in its dream. Insurances, whether through government and/or the private sector, cannot solve the inequality problems. Market means competition and competition means winners and losers or social pecking order. Grueling work conditions including “You’re fired”, unemployment, etc. are required for survival of the fittest in natural selection in a capitalist society, without which capital accumulation and expansion based on flexible, raise-to-the bottom wages and highest possible productivity would stop and the ruling class would vanish.

Wage insurance when implemented can go only so far as the system permits. Any social benefit it forecasts will have to be compromised by capital’s hegemony, e.g., surplus population should never be allowed to die out, wage level must be under strict control and labor productivity can never be allowed to lag behind by any means. Under these preconditions, wage insurance can offer only rather limited benefits for the working class.

The bottom line is that it's not profitable.

The net cost of a wage insurance program would be reduced by integrating it with unemployment insurance. In principle, with a wage insurance plan, people on unemployment insurance would be quicker to accept job offers that pay less than their old wage. That would save the current system money, which can be used to help fund wage insurance. Of course, numerous details would have to be worked out, but in principle wage insurance could be funded, as is unemployment insurance, with an employer experience-rated wage tax, with some offsetting reduction in the unemployment insurance portion.

To get this rolling, states should be given waivers to modify their unemployment insurance systems in this direction. This is one case where states can truly be laboratories.

Or we could deal with the law of supply and demand and stop importing labor for awhile, until the demand for labor outpaces the supply, at which point wages will rise, rather than come up with yet another massive easily gamed government program.

In the past seven years, the US economy has added four million jobs. In that same time period, we have allowed in seven million *legal* immigrants, not including a few million more refugees, illegal aliens, and H1B visa workers.

We have been doing this for more than five decades, while wages for working and middle class Americans have (inflation-adjusted) declined. Hardly a coincidence.

See the problem here? Because Trump does and if that does not scare people straight, what will?

This idea, like universal income, would be great if there was funding behind it - but there never will be, because it's cheaper to buy lobbyists and politicians than to pay taxes.

An obvious extension: raising the income cutoff; provide that the hiring of an H1-B worker, and/or the person having trained an H1-B replacement (who may have since gone back to India) is proof of replacement by a foreign worker; and finance the coverage by a substantial fee on employers of H1-B workers.

There is also the issue this could become corporate welfare too, just like food stamps are for McDonald's and other low paying companies. The companies cut good paying jobs, pay people less, then the federal government picks up the differential. Doesn't seem like it would take the neerdowells in corporations too long figure this out and take advantage of it. Heck, I'm sure they are licking their chops hoping this goes through.

Also those people who can wrestle themselves into a good paying job for which they aren't really qualified, could then receive a differential pay because they can't find another equally paying job. Or simply work really hard in a high paying position, get laid off and accept a much easier job and have the government insurance pick up the slack.

Sounds like a bad idea to me.

Perhaps if someone wants this insurance a private insurance company will offer a policy. No way should the government be involved in this scheme.

"People in riskier careers would be charged higher insurance premiums."

This needs more explanation. People in manufacturing are either losing their jobs or seeing their incomes go down. This proposal means that individuals will pay more for "insuring" risk that are systemic and mostly predictable. The main problem is that people in manufacturing often don't have alternatives. They won't be able to afford this insurance.

Where do I go to buy it? I'm ready. The alternative would be for our society to somehow magically stop treating workers like disposable serfs, and the chances of that in our Darwinian capitalist environment are nil. My 52-year-old husband was laid off in December after 18 years of loyalty and excellent work at NASA as a contractor. The fact that he has been thrown out in the streets too young to retire and too old for a job market in which employers seem interested only in hiring the young and the cheap, and damn the resulting brain drain, matters to our ruthless society not at all. So bring on the wage insurance. We've all had enough of the status quo, which was pretty much the doing of Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who effectively broke a once basic tenet that bound employer and employee, and the current reality is inhumane and untenable.

It could also freeze or erode the market rate of wages for those still employed in the field.