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When and where there was such time?

Now in many cases: farmworker housing, worker barracks in some industries, particularly mining, energy, and sometimes forestry or other remote work (say, employee compounds for US oil workers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East). Factory barracks are commonplace in China and other developing nations. Railroad workers, sailors, and other travelling employees are often lodged by their employers. I've also seen more than one startup in which there was a corporate apartment, though that was usually used on a fairly short-term basis by new hires, or in some cases, by founders or remote employees when travelling to other sites.

One of the earlier examples of this was the Fuggerei in Augsburg, Germany, though more strictly it was an example of social worker housing: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/germany/bavaria/augsburg/sights/...

The "Company Town" Wikipedia article offers more information on the practice. Within the US it's largely associated with extractive industries, as I noted, arising in the mid 1800s and largely dying out by the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

Company towns existed not because housing were unaffordable but because there were no infrastructure in the place where company needed it to be before they came there. In your own link it says the company rented out and old off the property once built, thus negating the claim ownership or renting this property was not possible.

because there were no infrastructure in the place

Not necessarily. Farmworker housing is offered in areas where there are alternatives, but the needs of the worker population often don't match the needs of growers: periodic work, a mobile workforce, and a concentrated area in which work crews can be picked up and dropped off, as well as a generally below-market income for the tenant population. Similarly, modern worker factory housing often exists to support a large migrant population.

The question I was answering wasn't the "why" but the "when", most specifically that it's still happening now.

Correction: s/growers/landlords/

Which is to say: few rentals are interested in people, especially full families, who might be staying only a few weeks or months.

This does, of course, vary, but I'm aware of a few specific farmworker housing complexes which address just these needs.

"It" that is happening now is not "it" we were discussing. Clearly, if you're catering to migrant population, homeownership is not a good solution for them. It's like saying hotels exist in New York because nobody can afford a house in New York. That's not the reason - the reason is that whoever needs to live in New York for two weeks won't buy a house there, unless he's a crazy billionaire. Worker housing exists, but it does not exist because otherwise workers couldn't find a place to live and thus making workers enslaved by the housing owners. It exists because it is a cost-effective solution for providing housing needs of the temporary workers, and it is natural for the employer that needs the workers to take care of their housing in the most efficient manner - thus reducing both their own costs and costs for the workers. It has very little to do with housing affordability and workers somehow being "serfs".

I disagree. The situation describe continues to exist both in the US and (more particularly) outside it. It's not always structured to make the employees utterly dependent and in debt to employers, though (usually for lower-skilled workers) this does remain the case, and is a key argument against "company towns" or other forms of employer-supplied housing in the absence of other competitive housing markets.

And the point you're trying to make about immigrant or periodic labor is precisely the problem that applies to serfs: they lack the means (or legal ability) to make their own discretionary housing arrangements.

For higher-skilled workers, who have other employment options, this typically isn't the case. Also where employees who operate under union or similar collective bargaining arrangements.

> However, earning one's own housing or food or clothing or healthcare is in no way serfdom - it is a natural state of a person

If we take a historical/anthropological view of what the "natural state" of human societies is, they have typically worked to fulfill essential-to-life needs, including defense, water, food, public health, fire response, etc. on a communal basis. The size of the communal unit has varied across times and places in history, from clans to tribes to city-states to nations. And hybrid systems where individuals (or more often, households) are responsible for some things and a larger communal unit is responsible for others have also been common. But the individual standing alone, providing for his or her needs entirely independently of any communal system except for market purchases, seems to only exist in certain philosophers' systems, not as something you really observe historically as the natural state of homo sapiens societies.

I currently live in Zambia, and employees are frequently provided housing; either housing or a housing allowance is standard in most contracts. This is obviously the extreme, but there are tons of people in the world for whom owning property is functionally if not legally impossible.

Why do they provide housing and not pay workers to rent the same housing? Why part of the salary must be designated "housing allowance" instead of just calling it "salary" and let the worker decide to spend it on housing?

Owning property outright might be hard to a lot of people, but there's an easy solution for it - renting. What you describe is functionally renting. The question is - why is it organized this particular way?

Reduce labor mobility to reduce wages.

There's usually a little classist attitude going on. Labor class 27 will only be allowed to live in labor 27 class apartments, etc. No selecting your own personal lifestyle balance allowed, after all we only hire perfect replaceable cogs so it won't be an issue anyway.

Allowed by whom? I.e. suppose I am labor 27 class employee, and I come to class 1 apartment and say "I will pay class 1 price, please rent it to me". Would I be rejected? What would be fueling this rejection? Who will be prohibiting me from selecting my own living arrangements? The parent post say housing allowance is common, who will be checking I spend my allowance on an apartment that matches my class and not instead rent a higher-class one?

Why do they do it? Because it allows the easier control of workers and a direct clawback of wages to the company, while being fairly quality-inelastic.

To be honest, I have a hard time believing you're asking these questions in good faith. This is basic stuff.

Do you have some sources to back up these claims, specifically in Zambia?

I'm not sure why this is the case in this country, but right now in Germany some companies provide leases on the cars. It turns out it's a tax reduction and "support local industry" at the same time - if same amount of money is just paid as salary, combined taxes for company and employee are higher. And it also supports local economy since lease choices are for german cars only. And I heard that same leasing practice is common in Israel as well.

As a strange quirk they also pay for gas used by these leased cars. As a result, my friend with such lease always tries to do vacation in spots reachable by driving - it's just much cheaper for him, even if he has to drive for two days to get there.

Tax reasons are the most common source of fringe benefits. As you mentioned, in Israel, a company car is a commonplace benefit among hitech workers, while in the US it is almost unheard of - because of the differences in how this benefit (and cars in general) are taxed. Though with recent change in Israel's tax code this became less popular, but some decade ago a company-provided car was an assumed part of the standard benefits package.

However, we have been talking about housing being provided by employer because there's no other means to get housing, so this is completely different case - here company cars are the function of government-introduced tax law, not of prices of the cars.

I think you are giving too much weight to the people getting something for free argument...the subsidies are income based, meaning a lot of these people were never going to be able to get insurance even at work.

You can more or less tell who gets employer-based health insurance based what they're paid. I doubt too many people are going to stop working because they qualify for ACA subsidies, you still have a whole lot of things you'll need money for. I see the ACA subsidies as a way to make people more proactive about their health and keep them out of emergency rooms which is significantly more costly to the system.

As far as older folks working less because they are not tied to their employers for healthcare I think this is a good thing. I see more opportunity for younger folks to move into those jobs.

>>> I doubt too many people are going to stop working because they qualify for ACA subsidies

Equivalent of 2.5 million workers is too many or not too many?

>>> I see the ACA subsidies as a way to make people more proactive about their health and keep them out of emergency rooms which is significantly more costly to the system.

This is also proven not to be true. Having insurance, actually, raises usage of emergency rooms by 40%. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/02/s... It was a nice theory, too bad it's not true. But repeating it now, when it is disproven by experiment, is just substituting ideology for facts. It is not going to get us in any place that is good.

>>> As far as older folks working less because they are not tied to their employers for healthcare I think this is a good thing.

What is special in older people that them not working is good? Is that that we want the most experienced workers to be removed from the workforce, so that the productivity would drop, because lower the productivity, richer we are? And when replacing experienced and productive workers with unexperienced workers with much lower output and who also are paid much less, while moving the experienced workers from productive work to tax-sponsored welfare (which the younger workers now have to support with their salary, which is lower to begin with but now becomes even lower from having to support older folks too) - so tell me again, where the good part starts in all this? Because I kind of fail to see it.

I have to agree with you here. The problem with insurance for routine care (the system we have in US) is that it makes the information asymmetry problem worse: since it's someone else's job to negotiate the price of routine day-to-day items, there's no incentive for individuals to make sure they're getting a good deal. This is equivalent to going through automobile insurance for oil changes and other routine maintenance.

The fact is if you have health insurance you are likely to engage in preventative care activities (eg regular primary care visits) that you would otherwise avoid without insurance, however you look at it, this is a good thing.

The fact that people may run to the ER unnecessarily even with insurance is perhaps a reflection of other problems (maybe too many hypochondriacs Googling :)? ), but that isn't a reason to not make healthcare accessible.

If the choice is between people over say 60 desperately holding on to jobs because they can't afford health insurance on their own, versus young people getting opportunities to start their own lives then the choice for me a rather simple one.

PS: I have no ideological axe to grind in this matter. If we are going to live in a modern society, these are problems that have to be dealt with somehow.

I grew up in a place and a time where people died in gutters (no exaggeration) from hunger and disease, that is the difference between a modern civilized society and one that isn't so. It is a choice that has to be made. The dignity that is afforded to people by social programs is a dignity consequently bestowed upon all of us.

The reason those insured by the government go to ER's is because the regular clinics TURN THEM AWAY. The government program doesn't pay enough to the clinics and doesn't force the clinics to accept the patients. Judging by the 3rd degree my wife got from a dermatologist a few weeks ago, those covered by coveredca.gov are going to be in the same situation.

And by "clinics" I mean all those non-ER businesses that purport to offer treatment to the public for a fee, such as private-practice doctors.