> When it boils down to it, every perk is an entirely cosmetic abstraction layer over money.
That's only sort of true. What large corporations offer in addition to things that can be abstracted as money is collective bargaining / purchasing power.
The important inequality is that there's not fundamental equivalence between a dollar spent by Google and that dollar given to an employee to be spent on the same aim. Real benefits, as opposed to those which are simply redirected salary, are those where the corporation leverages its collective power to obtain a significant discount or make possible things which would otherwise be unavailable.
Google can in bulk buy insurance policies that might even be wholly impossible for individuals to acquire at any reasonable price point. Certainly there are some benefits (insurance or otherwise) that would not be reasonably available to individuals to buy a la carte.
This, however, is probably not one of them. Extra life insurance benefits are probably something that could rather easily be rolled up in a standard life insurance policy. That said, Google probably does get more bang for their buck than the average consumer would.
Large companies aren't the same as individuals when it comes to insurance. If you have enough employees, and you're covering an relatively small risk, you don't need to /buy/ anything at all. You just self-insure and you save a ton of money relative to what an insurance company would charge for the same coverage.
I've worked at several large companies where almost all of the insurance (health, life, etc) was done on a self-insured basis, with an insurance company providing providing administrative oversight (validating claims) for a flat fee. (But not actually providing insurance coverage.) If necessary, a company can buy reinsurance to cover claims above some (very, very high) deductible, the same way that your insurance company does.
And the reason why large companies do this is that, in fact, they do get a lot more bang for the buck than any of their employees could as individual consumers.
That's only sort of true. What large corporations offer in addition to things that can be abstracted as money is collective bargaining / purchasing power.
The important inequality is that there's not fundamental equivalence between a dollar spent by Google and that dollar given to an employee to be spent on the same aim. Real benefits, as opposed to those which are simply redirected salary, are those where the corporation leverages its collective power to obtain a significant discount or make possible things which would otherwise be unavailable.
Google can in bulk buy insurance policies that might even be wholly impossible for individuals to acquire at any reasonable price point. Certainly there are some benefits (insurance or otherwise) that would not be reasonably available to individuals to buy a la carte.
This, however, is probably not one of them. Extra life insurance benefits are probably something that could rather easily be rolled up in a standard life insurance policy. That said, Google probably does get more bang for their buck than the average consumer would.