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The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

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Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#171

Post by lotsofpulp »

sgerenser wrote: post #166
lotsofpulp wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social security does not (currently) start until 62 or 63, and that’s with a hefty reduction in benefit. I expect by the time I retire, full benefits won’t be available until 75 or something, and it will be means tested (and/or the value of the benefit decreased via decreasing value of USD). I do not know what the ACA subsidies are for people, but the ~$17k annual out of pocket maximum is what kills you. A single hea…

OOP maximums can be the real killer for those with chronic conditions. But at lower to middle income levels even OOP max isn’t always that bad in ACA plans.

OOP max is just a trade off for higher premiums. Either you pay more per month for lower OOP max, or you pay more when the healthcare expenses happens. They’re all actuarially equivalent, per the metal levels of ACA.

If anything, people should chose the high deductible high OOP max HSA plan so you can take advantage of tax benefits.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#172

Post by maxerickson »

syshum wrote: post #147
sologoub wrote: post #114

This chart in the expense share of a typical income illustrates a number of issues well, but healthcare stands out like crazy: https://mobile.twitter.com/_cingraham/status/123195012984367... College, transportation and housing are all pretty high overall, but the healthcare share is just stunning. If we were looking at dramatically better outcomes or services, fine. Unfortunately, doctors get to see patients for less…

>>Most other developed nations put a stop to this a long time ago… hmm I wonder if there might be a connection there... as other nation implement price controls a larger part of the R&D and the costs associated with that are born by the US Further Medicare / medicaid price controls to keep the cost of the entitlement program from going bankrupt has transferred the cost to patients not on those programs Third leg of t…

Lots of people get pretty mediocre care in the US, our high spending isn't delivering for everybody.

Hospitals complain that Medicare and Medicaid underpay, but it's a modest amount, not something that explains the very high costs for other patients: https://www.aha.org/fact-sheets/2020-01-07-fact-sheet-underp...

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#173

Post by [deleted] »

aazaa wrote: post #80

> Inflation: During periods of moderate to high inflation, gold and commodities tend to do extremely well. Equities outperform bonds more often than not, but it depends on the type of equities and their starting valuations, and therefore have a huge variance. Real estate does well, mainly because leverage attached to it gets melted away from inflation. Bonds do poorly in inflationary environments. The article doesn't…

[deleted]

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#174

Post by sologoub »

woofie11 wrote: post #151
gruez wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tracing back to the source of the chart... >Cass calls this calculation the Cost-of-Thriving Index. It measures the median male annual salary against four major household expenditures: > • Housing, defined as the annual rent for a three-bedroom house in the 40th percentile of the local housing market. > • Health care, defined as the annual premium on a typical family health insurance policy. > • Transportation, defin…

Development and economic growth. In the Roman Empire, people lived 30 years and died. Most were illiterate. As a society develops, and has more excess resources, allocating more and more of those resources on keeping people alive, healthy, and educated seems reasonable. What's missing from the charts is quality. We spend a lot on healthcare, but we also now have multi-million-dollar MRIs machines and similar magic.

> In 2017, health-care spending in the United States came to $10,207 per capita. Germany, on the other hand, spent $5, 848 on health care for each of its citizens. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/22/germany-health-care-system-c...

Germans must do without those fancy MRI machines after all... oh wait they have those two. So what’s the catch? Maybe they have fewer people covered? No, not that either:

> Despite spending less per capita, Germany still manages to cover 100% of its population. In the United States, about 8.8% of the population remains uninsured, which equates to about 28 million people. Even more people are underinsured.

What they have less off is overhead. They do have a shortage of doctors, but not due to costs of becoming one - education is either free or nearly free (especially by US standards).

> Tuition loans of over $200,000 are not uncommon for students in the US after graduating from medical schools, which are often private institutions. In Germany, however, the vast majority of medical universities are tax-funded and, for this reason, free of tuition. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5617919/

So we probably have more than enough money in the system already to treat every single one of US citizen, maintain great care and not close local hospitals, but we are too busy allowing profits and helping doctors pay back mega education loans.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#176

Post by inter_netuser »

rvba wrote: post #127
bob33212 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are entering a Post Scarcity Economy. A lot of fiction books write about how this plays out. Regardless of what happens a lot of economic theory becomes less relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy#:~:text=... .

What I will write probably wont be a popular opinion, but I completly disagree that we enter post scarcity. Post scarcity perhaps exists in some richest parts of selected countries (California? Hamburg?), but even in those places it is often just an illusion. Roads still have potholes and there are homeless on streets. Schools still struggle with supplies. There are also people who work, but whose work does not allow…

middle class was an abberation of the post-WW2 era when the world needed to be rebuilt.

We live in neofeudalism.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#177

Post by nostromo »

nl wrote: post #155
omalleyt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold went up a lot in 2020. It’s underperformance in the past few months is because Treasury rates ripped higher, which made owning bonds more attractive. However, rates can’t rise much more, or the UD gov’t will be unable to service its debt. Therefore, gold has begun to climb again

> However, rates can’t rise much more, or the UD gov’t will be unable to service its debt. Treasury rates are less than 2%. Prior to 2019 they have never in history been lower[1], except for one month during 2016. I don't think the market is worried in any way about the ability of the US to service a 2% rate. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/2016/10-year-treasury-bond-rate-...

Interest rates aren’t fixed at 2%. If they rise even to historically low standards, the federal government could have trouble servicing its debt.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#178

Post by flukus »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #129
lupire wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses charge what customers are willing to pay. If they have more money, they are willing to pay more. Competitiuis the countervailing force, but Netflix has exclusives and serials and network effects (fandoms and friends)

"If they have more money, they are willing to pay more." That's like totally wrong. Goods provide some value to the customer, and that determines what they are willing to pay for it. If I wake up a millionaire tomorrow, that doesn't mean I am suddenly willing to spend $500 the same haircut that was $50 yesterday.

> Goods provide some value to the customer, and that determines what they are willing to pay for it

Very often customers will pay twice as much or more for the same or equivalent good that delivers the same value, you're local grocery store will show some examples. People will often pay 5x more for brand name items over white label ones. Stores will very regularly discount some items to take advantage of price discrimination, people not paying attention to specials are effectively paying twice as much for the exact same items. If you go to a different grocery store in a wealthier/poorer area you'll see the exact same items at different price points. These are all ways companies will maximize profits because people willingly pay more for the same items.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#179

Post by chii »

victor106 wrote: post #116
cortesoft wrote: post #34

I've wondered what the effect our modern digital economy has had on consumer price inflation. Normally, an increase in money supply would cause consumer goods to increase in price, since more people are able to buy them and there is a limit on how much of any particular physical good is available. This isn't the case, however, for digital goods. If there are suddenly 100 million new people who want to buy a Netflix s…

> This isn't the case, however, for digital goods. If there are suddenly 100 million new people who want to buy a Netflix subscription, it isn't like we are going to see the price of a Netflix subscription go up because there isn't enough Netflix to go around. Good point but you have to think that if there’s lot of demand for Netflix which means Netflix has lot of hit shows. Say their hit percentage is 10% (which is…

> Which means they have to make more and more shows to provide that number of hits to sustain so much demand

That's a fixed overhead, because the hit shows costs the same if there is 10 million subscribers, or 100 million subscribers. Netflix doesn't not need to have 10x the number of hit shows to serve 10x the number of subscribers!

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#180

Post by clarkmoody »

km3r wrote: post #115
HNfriend234 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true but it is imperative that citizens have a reliable currency to use to do transactions. This is why I think it is imperative that we transition over to cryptocurrencies that are based on strong fundamentals that make money reliable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money

Every economy in the world has and will continue to operate with some inflation, taking away an inflationary currency is dangerous and will serve to further entrench the wealth inequality we have seen grow over the past century. Sure crypto is nice because you don't have to trust a central government, but you already are trusting that government with the other 99% parts of life, rendering this sort of moot. In additi…

Monetary inflation increases inequality because the well-connected interests (banks, large corporations, governments) have access to the new money first. They have better financing terms. They have special arrangements. They can spend the new money into the economy before general price levels rise.

Asset prices rise as people flee from cash, so those with assets see their wealth outpace those without assets.

Inflationary economies based on debt are inherently levered relative to underlying assets, thus are prone to collapse and require more bailouts.

General price inflation hurts those at the bottom of the economic ladder, since it makes their cost of living rise and prevents them from saving to accumulate capital.

"But wages rise to keep track of inflation."

No, they don't: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

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