scarring consumption is probably a good thing at an individual level as most people are reckless with money
but the way our society is built we need people to consume to keep the economy afloat
Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
121–130 of 478 posts
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#122Earlier 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.
If you grew up somewhere cheap, you probably encountered the attitude that people moving to big cities and expensive states were insane because of the housing prices (and/or taxes and general living expenses). Actual concern over the wellbeing of friends and relatives who did so. For a large segment of people living cheap places, moving to California (as in, the whole state) New York (ditto, except maybe the extremely rural and also not-popular-for-vacations bits), several entire New England states, most big cities unless you're actually living way outside them, et c., was seen as simply impossible. Not in the cards. Cannot be done without ruining your finances. You don't buy somewhere expensive until you retire, and then it's probably in Florida or the Carolinas. On a local lake if you're not rich enough for those.
From that perspective, nothing's changed except that some people living in those expensive places are starting to realize the same thing, and the people experiencing that are a bit higher up the economic ladder than before. Welcome to the lower classes, folks. Don't worry, you've got plenty of company.
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#123Is it fair to conclude that fossil fuel price shocks are good for the planet? If everyone experiences them early then we will all reduce our carbon footprint for life and slow global warming?
what if i told you a lot of fossil fuels go into producing electric cars, which then drives up the price of them making them out of reach for the avg person
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the cost is equipment, too. Have you seen the regulations that medical equipment must meet? And the certifications that equipment requires? I’m not talking about big ticket items like MRI machines. I mean just blood pressure cuffs.
I promise you, Canada and Germany and Chile and France also have MRI machines and blood pressure cuffs.
Canada doesn't have enough MRI machines. Wait times are long and increasing.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...
All healthcare systems impose some sort of rationing. Canada rations care by imposing long queues for non-emergency cases, with significant variations between provinces. Affluent Canadians frequently travel to the US as medical tourists and pay for treatment out of pocket in order to skip the lines.
There are also major differences in MRI scanners. A 3.0T unit can produce higher resolution images than a 1.5T unit, and this makes a difference in patient care quality. Countries like Chile are more likely to have the cheaper units.
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
My grandma did this. Never left a penny on the sidewalk, always took the bread from a breadbasket home. Even my parents absorbed some of that behavior despite being born in the next generation.
We were surprised to discover after her death (in the late 80's) that my great grandmother kept $1,000 in a pouch in her bra. I can understand not trusting the banks and wanting to always have some sort of cash on your person.
I cannot understand not having at least a couple hundred cash on you, and much more at home. What are people’s plans if the power or payment networks go offline? Earthquake, hurricane, ice storm, volcano, etc.
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 corpo…
Actually the primary bottleneck in the supply of new doctors is lack of federal (Medicare) funding for residency slots. Every year, students graduate from US accredited medical schools but are unable to enter clinical practice because they can't get matched to a residency program. Ask Congress to increase funding. https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-fun...
Using an AMA source is disingenuous since it’s a professional cartel with a massive vested interest in keeping doctor supply as limited as possible.
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#127I 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…
My grandma did this. Never left a penny on the sidewalk, always took the bread from a breadbasket home. Even my parents absorbed some of that behavior despite being born in the next generation.
Same. I always clean my plate (though I try hard not to take more than I can eat), and am always very reluctant to get rid of anything that "still works".
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#128Earlier 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.
There's a reason Fussell puts college professors as a kind of appendix on the side of his "Upper-Middle", and not down in classes that tend to be closer to their income level (Middle, or even Prole).
Still, I'm not sure how much difference that upper-middle-adjacent socialization makes when it comes to poverty thinking.
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#129I had a grandfather who lived through the depression. He never threw away anything that could possibly be useful in the future.
Re: Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life
#130I 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…
The generation of the Great Depression didn't have ubiquitous forms of usury. With credit cards, personal loans and student loans, I imagine the future stinginess of Millennials will be short lived.
It’s not so much about stinginess as unwillingness to seek medical attention because it’s so highly correlated with unbearable medical debt.