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Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

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Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#81

Post by tayo42 »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #37
Zaheer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the produce prices often to be absurdly lower. These items are cheaper to begin with but if you're making fresh food consistently then it probably adds up. The biggest difference I've observed is that the asian grocery stores buy tier 2/3 produce rather than the big supermarkets that have perfect looking produce.

Exactly! The big supermarkets have tomatoes that look perfect, but taste like wax. The Asian groceries have lumpy odd-colored tomatoes that actually taste good.

Like heirloom tomatoes? Those are everywhere now?

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#82

Post by hansvm »

pjc50 wrote: post #42
aeblyve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to learn more about the unit economics of groceries. How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation? [0] If the latter was functioning well in a competitive market, I would expect their play to be on lower margins but higher volume. [0] Mostly I'm referring to offal TBF, which I think most firms are happy to make any money on at all.

The megacorp can provide cheap food, it just doesn't want to. In practice they adjust the margins in a data-driven way on individual goods. UK supermarkets actually provide pretty cheap fresh produce, because the market is pretty competitive. I think the most ridiculous I've seen was a 1kg bag of carrots for 20p. Many countries or locations do not have highly competitive supermarkets. Oh, and there's both volume and…

Costco is an interesting one to me. They're widely touted as being cheaper, but most foods there have some sort of upscaling factor -- "organic", some sort of regional variation like "sockeye" salmon instead of farmed atlantic, a few extra steps of processing, etc. Rice, pasta, and fruit are all usually more expensive than other alternatives, even at bigco grocery competitors. You have to be a little careful if that's where you do all your shopping.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#83

Post by hasnd »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #76

I did some math a while ago on this topic: 40 million Americans live below the poverty line of $15,000 per year. [1] Total U.S. household net worth (excluding real estate) is around $54 trillion. [2] If every household above the poverty line donated 2.5% of their net worth annually to people living below the poverty line, we could erase poverty instantly. Here’s the math: 2.5% of $54 trillion = $1.35 trillion $1.35 t…

You forgot the part where that causes massive inflation.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#84

Post by gabrielgio »

lurking_swe wrote: post #55
tossandthrow wrote: post #35

No, no. The US has the strongest GDP! The world's biggest stock market! So. Much. Wealth! How can this be!?

I know you’re joking / being sarcastic. I will say though, nobody claims wealth in the US is evenly distributed…quite the opposite.

I read it more like that people should start tracking success of country not based on how much health it produces and start caring about the actual quality of live of its people. People can't eat GDP or sleep under it

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#85

Post by chvid »

hasnd wrote: post #83
phyzix5761 wrote: post #76

I did some math a while ago on this topic: 40 million Americans live below the poverty line of $15,000 per year. [1] Total U.S. household net worth (excluding real estate) is around $54 trillion. [2] If every household above the poverty line donated 2.5% of their net worth annually to people living below the poverty line, we could erase poverty instantly. Here’s the math: 2.5% of $54 trillion = $1.35 trillion $1.35 t…

You forgot the part where that causes massive inflation.

It does not.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#86

Post by SkyPuncher »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #66
t1234s wrote: post #18

In the US insurance (of all types: car, house, health) is a major expense and only getting worse.

Vehicles in general. In Houston, I share a car with my girlfriend since I work from home. But some days I don't feel very independent when I want to run an errand while she's at work. I'll look up the price of a used Corolla and think about all the additional expenses, and I'm immediately disabused of the idea. Instead, I decided to book some motorcycle lessons so I can use a $3000 moto. But then I need to pay for li…

It doesn't have to be a expensive. Buy an older cheaper car, don't put comprehensive insurance on it. If you don't drive it much, there's really not that much maintenance work. Pretty much just an annual oil change.

I have an old jeep that I use for local driving. Bought it for about $5k. I live in Michigan, where insurance premiums are top 5 in the nation. I pay $60/month for insurance. Probably could get it lower with a bit more shopping around.

Total maintenance has been $150 for a set of used tires that will dry-rot before I kill the rest of the tread.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#87

Post by nyjah »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #50
whatamidoingyo wrote: post #4

Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix (or any other grocery store), I get like 2-3 bags for $60... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Although I'm not really sure how their prices are so low. If someone could answer, that would be awesome!

The produce quality is often a bit lower. But in the last 5 years, all the grocery stores at least here in the Seattle area have had produce degrade, and they are pretty much the same as H-mart with higher prices.

Where I live, if I don’t shop at fancy grocery stores 30-40min away, it’s generous to call the produce ‘produce’. Literally never knew onions could look this bad. A lot of the citrus is like deflated in the inside, the bananas are trash, and a single bell pepper is $3. I could go on and on. Just think we enshittified the food situation and now it’s more expensive and way worse quality.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#88

Post by aoskskoans »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #30
micromacrofoot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's getting pretty bad, I wonder where the floor is. A growing number of people are using credit to purchase groceries — buy now pay later schemes are also resulting in people putting ubereats on credit https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/business/buy-now-pay-late... ( https://archive.is/Cmzis )

It's important to note that using credit isn't purely an indication of struggling. A lot of those payment programs offer 0% incentives, and from a purely logical standpoint, the correct thing to do is put everything you buy on a 0% loan for as long as possible.

> and from a purely logical standpoint, the correct thing to do is put everything you buy on a 0% loan for as long as possible.

Only because the financial system is rigged in favor of capital owners. Targeting 3% inflation is a death sentence for the middle class when you have fractional reserve banking (coin clipping).

They print money and constantly devalue labor while increasing their own wealth simply because they own things. That anyone still defends the fed or modern monetary policy is deeply concerning, and those that do should be regarded as evil and parasitic.

Every major religion has usury laws. Maybe we should respect chestertons fence a bit more.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#89

Post by shlant »

N_Lens wrote: post #25

The current financial system and various corporations see the majority of consumers like livestock - a kind of resource to be exploited. It's better to be free range organic though, in my humble opinion, but the majority seem to be trending towards battery/cage chickens.

> the majority seem to be trending towards battery/cage chickens.

it's not a trend - 99.96% of chicken sold in the US is factory farmed[1]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/almost-all-livestoc...

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#90

Post by Workaccount2 »

bawana wrote: post #29

According to https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... 1 out of 7 US inhabitants have food insecurity. And this is a govt website likely to underestimate the statistic

I have a bit of a gripe with this "food insecurity" metric.

The stat comes from people reporting that they have felt hungry without having enough food to satiate their hunger. Totally makes sense at first pass.

But here is the rub, obesity is out of control in the US, and it is especially bad in poorer populations.

So now we have two conflicting stats: Poor people are food insecure while simultaneously being overweight...

The reconciliation is easy, when you are obese, you get hungry more and eat more. A 325lb average height male has to eat ~50% (!) more food per day than a healthy weight male of the same stature.

I know this is a bit of the stick in the spokes of the stat, but its blatantly obvious that America does not have a low income hunger problem, it has a low income obesity problem.

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