Business (as usual!)

[merimask]

Well, yesterday certainly was exciting in a geeky cyber artist kind of way.  Final count after my day of being featured on DeviantArt:  over 2,700 hits on my gallery, and over 4,800 hits on the Fire Dragon that was the featured Daily Deviation.   Just to put that into perspective; since I opened the site (November 20th I think) I'd only recieved 291 hits on my gallery in total, until yesterday.  Wow!  My Etsy shop experienced a boost in hits exactly like the kind I get when I buy a showcase...so not bad at all!

I ran out of black dye over the weekend...what to do?  I know; make BLUE things.


This one was a special request, so it was going to be blue anyway...

Both up in Etsy, naturally.

I am doing an awful lot of dragon masks lately.  I just keep getting requests for them...it's not my fault!  It seems very few mask artists make dragon masks, too, so I have cornered the market there.

Not complaining...I really like making dragons anyway.  I just figured I'd better explain myself, since you guys are probably sick of seeing dragons!

In other news; not much going on.  I'm very very worried about our health insurance.  Greg's employer is raising the rates by over $200 a month for our health coverage.  That means over $400 a month out of Greg's paycheck, just for insurance.  Greg is making noises about dropping it, but getting health insurance on your own is an extremely expensive proposition.   I'm afraid we might not have a policy in a month.  Scary...

Comments

[zannachan.livejournal.com]

Socialism is kind of like a compromise between Communism (where all the "means of production"--aka businesses, industries, and services--are all owned and run by the government) and a purely capitalist system, where everything is run by the free market. In socialist country, most of the economy is capitalistic but services and industries deemed essential (such as health care) are owned and managed by the government, paid for by taxes.

Since most governments have at least some key services owned by the government--municipal tap water, for example, though that has been increasingly privatized internationally--being considered a socialist country is usually a matter of degree (Canada is more socialist than the US but less than some other countries) than of rigid, mutually exclusive categories.

Socialism has become aa negative term for some reason in the US, but as near as I can tell few people really understand what it means. For example, a lot of people have accused Obama of being socialist, and yet he has not proposed nationalizing anything--he has proposed some increases in government regulations, but not outright government ownership.

"But all in all, I prefer knowing I CAN get treatment, even if I have to wait (which I rarely ever do) to realizing that I CANNOT pay for the treatment I need (assuming I'm really poor and can't even afford insurance, etc)"

Part of the reason health insurance is such a huge issue in the United States is that the cost of health insurance has gone up the to point that it's not only the very poor who can't afford health care. My mom tells me that her insurance costs her employer $15,000 a year, if I recall correctly--that's a big chunk of change for an individual to pick up on their own, and that doesn't include my father's benefits. Assuming his cost similarly, that's $30,000 a year for a couple--and my parents both have white collar jobs but they aren't all that wealthy. As my mom has a serious chronic illness, it would be very expensive, if not out right impossible, for her to get insurance on her own, which is one of the reasons she refuses--despite her health problems--to retire until she can keep her health benefits.

That's also why they talk about people being trapped in jobs because of health benefits. If my husband were to change his job, we would have a minimum of 6 months between when we lose the one coverage and before any coverage from his new employer would kick in. There are temporary plans you can get to cover those gaps, but they are limited in duration (so if you don't get insured within that period, your are out of luck) and very expensive.

[merimask.livejournal.com]

That's all so true. Greg and I are doing better than average with our combined incomes, and yet we have less expendable income than we've ever had, because all kinds of expenses just keep skyrocketing. I feel like the harder I work, the less I have to show for it these days.

When did "socialism" become such a dirty word? I think in a lot of ways, socialization is the way to go. Heck, we already have socialized education and no one freaks out about that. Canada and all of Europe has had socialized medicine for decades and it hasn't led to armageddon for them yet.

It reminds me of the demonization of the word "liberal"...that kind of happened during the last administration. It's a little frightening how pundits and politicos can spin a term to make it unpalatable to the general public, even if the general public has no real sense of what the term actually means.