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Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

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Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#281

Post by WalterBright »

ceejayoz wrote: post #270
WalterBright wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the US before 1968.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193636/ > Of the members of the general population who reported they had “pains in the heart,” 25 percent did not see a physician (Andersen and Anderson, 1967). Sounds awesome. The article makes a pretty good case for your 1968 date being an attribution error - that years before it, the rise of things like transplants, ICUs, demographic changes, etc. were already messing…

I've seen charts of medical costs over time, there's a knee in the curve in 1968.

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#282

Post by notch656a »

slg wrote: post #272
notch656a wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example, the free market price for insulin is basically infinite because type 1 diabetics need a constant supply of it or else they die. I've been to places in the Philippines where all available water is either on private property or being sold by private vendors. The price of water did not go to infinity, in fact you could buy a 1L bottle for something like 10 pesos, which is like $0.20. I'm not so sure a free…

>I've been to places in the Philippines where all available water is either on private property or being sold by private vendors. The price of water did not go to infinity, in fact you could buy a 1L bottle for something like 10 pesos, which is like $0.20. The "basically" there was meant to show that I was being somewhat facetious. There are of course other factors at play. First the supplier wants to maximize profit…

In insulin sales the biggest barriers are regulatory. I thought you were talking about the free market, not the regulated market.

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#283

Post by [deleted] »

411111111111111 wrote: post #273
c4ptnjack wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually the opposite, we are at an all time high for young people living with their parents, for longer. Approximately 50 percent of young adults 18 - 29 live with their family now[0]. Initially that was thought to be a transient externality of the pandemic but it seems to be sticking[1] thanks to the outfall of the bull market crashing. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-... [1] ht…

Which entirely disqualifies the proposed explanation of the original comment, which considered household income. thus bundling the parents and children's income together.

[deleted]

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#284

Post by phonon »

hedora wrote: post #157
phonon wrote: post #105

The author apparently has no idea how to do CPI calculations. She somehow seems to be calculating inflation adjusted wage increases to CPI changes. Rather-- Median Family income in 1970 was $9,870 [0] Median Family income in 2021 was $79,900 [1] CPI in 1970 was 38.8 [2] CPI in 2021 was 271.0 Ratio of incomes = 8.1 Ratio of CPI = 6.98 So household income has increased more than inflation. Median household income might…

Your numbers don't take into the age bands (you include older, wealthier families). However, the comparing CPI to inflation adjusted incomes (as the article does) doesn't work either. Clearer explanation of the error I think the article made (and that I think you're pointing out): For the sake of argument, say CPI is always proportional to income (which it would be if purchasing power was constant). To make arithmeti…

The original article was not based on incomes in any age ranges either. If they had wanted to do a more rigorous analysis, they would have compared say, 18-34 year olds in 1970 and today.

Anyway, the point is the first half of the article is fundamentally mistaken, There are ways to do more interesting analyses, but this one was mostly incoherent.

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#285

Post by todorus »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #154
rhexs wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be tricky if you don’t speak Japanese though. Do they have multilingual optometrists that cater to tourists? I suppose Tokyo is big enough you can probably find one of anything.

French people are rich enough to be proficient English speakers, as are people in Tokyo. Seems like it'll probably work out. I spent about a week in Japan, split between Tokyo and Nagasaki, and had no problem, having not even tried to learn any Japanese, except that I couldn't get the right train stop because I couldn't even recognize the characters, much less read them.

The ability to speak English is a function of wealth? Sorry, what?

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#286

Post by hot_gril »

kurupt213 wrote: post #240
hot_gril wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, but ok, look at college acceptance rates then. Pick some semi-top one like UCLA https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/university-of-c...

UCLA being flooded with applications doesn’t mean anything in this context

Every high-end school getting lots of applications does mean more students are seriously trying for college, and yes, the same student in 1975 would have a harder time being admitted to UCLA today even if it's just because they're flooded.

You could also look at college graduation rates. https://educationdata.org/number-of-college-graduates What trend shows that 1970s kids were better educated or harder working?

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#287

Post by missedthecue »

Bilal_io wrote: post #278
missedthecue wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens?

Yes. As of 2020 nearly half of immigrants in the USA are citizens according to Pew Research[0] 0- https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

So about 6% of Americans are immigrants

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#288

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

You should compare things that didn't change between then and now.

BigMac, for example, cost 65c in 1970, and $5 today. Average income (from the first graph) was $3.68k vs $44.2k today. So you had to work x1.5 more time for a bigmac in 1970 than today.

A return flight from NY to London cost $550 in 1970, about the same today. So you had to work 10 times more for that flight in 1970 than today.

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#289

Post by hot_gril »

acdha wrote: post #145
nightski wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median after tax income per capita in the U.S. is really high as well, almost at the top.

Less so after you correct for all of the things which we have to pay for out of pocket: health insurance, copays, drugs, etc. but also things like education, childcare, retirement, transportation, and often housing. I’ve known a number of people from Europe or Asia and all of them commented on how they thought they’d be making more here based on the raw income numbers, and how much more stressful it was here because…

So I buy health insurance and save money however I choose for later expenses. I don't see how it's easier or less stressful to bring the government into that loop, unless I don't care at all.

Re: Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

#290

Post by slg »

notch656a wrote: post #282
slg wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've been to places in the Philippines where all available water is either on private property or being sold by private vendors. The price of water did not go to infinity, in fact you could buy a 1L bottle for something like 10 pesos, which is like $0.20. The "basically" there was meant to show that I was being somewhat facetious. There are of course other factors at play. First the supplier wants to maximize profit…

In insulin sales the biggest barriers are regulatory. I thought you were talking about the free market, not the regulated market.

That leads to the same question I asked in the other comment chain. If you think the costs of the US healthcare are caused by the market being too regulated, doesn't that imply that you think cheaper markets are freer markets? Would you say that almost all of our peer nations take a more free market approach to healthcare than the US?
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