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Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

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Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#91

Post by almost_usual »

cpsns wrote: post #34
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Could you explain what you mean? Sure. I realize I waste a lot of time in supermarkets, shops or online stores, browsing/walking around and comparing prices just to penny pinch on low value things, when the savings I would make would have no meaningful impact on my yearly net worth, but the time and mental energy wasted browsing/walking around comparing prices could have better return on investment if used on other…

I'm guilty of doing everything you've mentioned as well, for the same reasons, but this especially: >I'm afraid to make investments fearing that the market could crash the second I enter, and erase my money, leaving me vulnerable to being homeless or dependent on doing shitty jobs I hate just to stay afloat, so I just hoard cash like an idiot as that makes me feels safe and lets me sleep well at night. I am terrified…

If I were you I’d reach out to a therapist if you haven’t already. It sounds like you’re dealing with anxiety and catastrophic thinking.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#92

Post by Mezzie »

junofan wrote: post #23
doix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes you penny wise and pound foolish while always having to look over your shoulder monetarily speaking. Could you explain what you mean? I grew up pretty poor, single income PhD student/post-doc salary family with two kids. Eventually my father got a proper position at a university, but until then we were pretty poor. My parents used to sleep on the floor, we had almost no furniture(I remember playing footbal…

You grew up in the modern day priest class, not poor.

This is one problem with socio-economic class: When somebody's 'socio' doesn't match their 'economic', things get weird. I'm a first generation college student who has 3 great-grandparents with college degrees.

It makes it easier to dig yourself out, but depending on the circumstances it can also cause its own issues. For example, my mother ran away from an abusive but well-off home, so I was regaled with tales of upper-middle and well-off hypocrisy and all their problems, which makes it really hard to want to fit in/keep my mouth shut in spaces that I share with those people.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#93

Post by CodeMage »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #28
cs137 wrote: post #12

I worked in a grocery store in the late '90s, and the older customers (who grew up in the Great Depression) always carried penny pouches, because they remembered a time when one had to keep track of cents to survive. This is how I know that, even if we miraculously fixed our medical system tomorrow and outlawed private health insurance by a constitutional amendment, we'll still have, thirty years from now, 60-year-ol…

Doctors say they are the only profession that saves lives. Well they're the only profession allowed to save lives. And the only profession making money saving lives. Charging for saving lives. Price discriminating to save lives. What happens when they make a mistake in what someone is able to pay? EDIT (I tried replying but can't yet): The basic solution to make medicine cheaper is supply more medics. In Chile anybod…

Chile might have cheaper healthcare, although I doubt it, but that's completely obscured by their health insurance. They copied the US health insurance racket almost perfectly, and that's what needs fixing much more than healthcare costs.

The only real solution is to completely abolish privatized healthcare. No more discrimination between the poor and the rich when it comes to something as critical as that. When everyone has to row the same boat, then the rich will finally have a good reason to make sure the poor don't drown.

EDIT: I don't remember Chile having that much cheaper healthcare, either. I lived there for 14 years and it was just as much of a constant drain on my salary as it is here in the US. And those who couldn't afford good insurance were pretty much screwed, just like here in the US. And the real costs were buried deep and obscured by insurance waffle, just like here in the US.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#94

Post by Markoff »

quartesixte wrote: post #73
Markoff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> always took the bread from a breadbasket home Care to explain it to non native speaker from Europe? Is it some bakery chain and she took home some cheap/free leftover bread?

Some restaurants give a free basket of bread with a meal as a sort of appetizer. Most people either consume all of it or just leave the leftovers.

Ah, OK, my (Chinese) wife is like that, she won't leave anything behind, I don't mind leaving it behind, but I can understand trying to avoid waste since many places will throw away bread which was offered to other customer. And often the bread taste actually good, so it makes sense to take it.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#95

Post by AuthorizedCust »

photochemsyn wrote: post #90

Mindless consumption is nothing but a disease, of the mental illness variety. People who get a dopamine burst or some similar neurotransmitter release when they go shopping have been indoctrinated into patterns of behavior that do them no good in the long run. They'll end up with a house crammed with possessions they never use, bought on a whim in order to make themselves feel better. A better mentality is to always…

> what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population

We don’t have a stable population. It’s growing.

We like things to get better even if we don’t have “more”. I don’t have multiple cars just for me. But the car I have now has adaptive cruise control. It costs more, it makes my driving experience better, and I’m glad I have it.

Both of these, among many other factors, influence economic growth.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#96

Post by solatic »

photochemsyn wrote: post #90

Mindless consumption is nothing but a disease, of the mental illness variety. People who get a dopamine burst or some similar neurotransmitter release when they go shopping have been indoctrinated into patterns of behavior that do them no good in the long run. They'll end up with a house crammed with possessions they never use, bought on a whim in order to make themselves feel better. A better mentality is to always…

> what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population and fixed levels of demand for goods and services, anyway?

Because there's no such thing as a steady-state economy. You might as well ask why people need to breathe in and out, why can't they just hold their breath?

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#97

Post by olalonde »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #28
cs137 wrote: post #12

I worked in a grocery store in the late '90s, and the older customers (who grew up in the Great Depression) always carried penny pouches, because they remembered a time when one had to keep track of cents to survive. This is how I know that, even if we miraculously fixed our medical system tomorrow and outlawed private health insurance by a constitutional amendment, we'll still have, thirty years from now, 60-year-ol…

Doctors say they are the only profession that saves lives. Well they're the only profession allowed to save lives. And the only profession making money saving lives. Charging for saving lives. Price discriminating to save lives. What happens when they make a mistake in what someone is able to pay? EDIT (I tried replying but can't yet): The basic solution to make medicine cheaper is supply more medics. In Chile anybod…

> The basic solution to make medicine cheaper is supply more medics.

It's shocking how little this is talked about... This is so obviously the root of the problem. People like to blame the free market but there is no free market in medicine. Corporatism is to blame for artificially restricting the supply of doctors and artificially restricting who is allowed to render medical services, both of which benefit the corporate members, the doctors. Of course, those anti-competitive measures are always sold under the guise of protecting the population.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#98

Post by yobbo »

quartesixte wrote: post #73
Markoff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> always took the bread from a breadbasket home Care to explain it to non native speaker from Europe? Is it some bakery chain and she took home some cheap/free leftover bread?

Some restaurants give a free basket of bread with a meal as a sort of appetizer. Most people either consume all of it or just leave the leftovers.

It's to fill stomachs so that the portion sizes seem bigger.

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#99

Post by twox2 »

dymk wrote: post #64
tyleo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a very well off millennial. My fiancé and I both have high paying tech jobs. We easily make the income of multiple families. That being said we are strained to buy a 3-bedroom house like that of my single Mother who only has a high school education to her name. Given our success, we don’t have the “burn it all down” mentality but I fear it building in many of my friends and totally understand the sentiment of thi…

Depends on where you want to buy. SF? Probably not going to happen. Almost anywhere else? Houses are plenty affordable.

100% also, why do you need to buy a house in the first place?

Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

#100

Post by asimpletune »

solatic wrote: post #96
photochemsyn wrote: post #90

Mindless consumption is nothing but a disease, of the mental illness variety. People who get a dopamine burst or some similar neurotransmitter release when they go shopping have been indoctrinated into patterns of behavior that do them no good in the long run. They'll end up with a house crammed with possessions they never use, bought on a whim in order to make themselves feel better. A better mentality is to always…

> what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population and fixed levels of demand for goods and services, anyway? Because there's no such thing as a steady-state economy. You might as well ask why people need to breathe in and out, why can't they just hold their breath?

I thought that was pretty funny, but after laughing it made me think… is it?

Breathing in and out actually sounds like the respiration equivalent of exactly a steady state economy. Like, I don’t continue to grow in size with each year, thus requiring more breath than the previous year. I grew a lot as a kid/teenager, then a tiny bit as an adult, and now I am more or less the same size (and relatively same breath size) as I will ever be.

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