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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

#161

Post by rtp4me »

Epa095 wrote: post #138

I encourage everyone to do the following simple exercise: look at the main stock market in your country, and see how far back you must go for the main index to be half of what it is today. The answer is probably somewhere between 5 and 7 years. Then find salary statistics, and see how much the average salary has increased in the same time. The answer is probably somewhere between 20 and 30%. And it really is as simpl…

Speaking as someone from the US, how is this a meaningful comparison in anyway? Honest question. Sure, wage growth sounds good in an upward trending market, but let's say the market has gone down 30% over the past five years. Would you expect everybody to take a 30% pay cut? If Walmart had a blockbuster year because their suppliers charged less (more efficient means of production), how are Walmart employee wages interconnected to the supplier charges?

I suppose what you are saying is the profits of the company should be poured back into worker salaries. I agree to an extent. But, what if the company undergoes very hard times (3-5 years of negative growth)? Should the company take back wages? I think this is a double-edge sword.

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

#162

Post by gruez »

Epa095 wrote: post #138

I encourage everyone to do the following simple exercise: look at the main stock market in your country, and see how far back you must go for the main index to be half of what it is today. The answer is probably somewhere between 5 and 7 years. Then find salary statistics, and see how much the average salary has increased in the same time. The answer is probably somewhere between 20 and 30%. And it really is as simpl…

>And it really is as simple as that.

It really isn't, because your "simple" comparison is bunk. For one, it's measuring stock vs flow. Stock prices measure stock, eg. the size of a piggy bank. Salaries measure flow, eg. your annual salary. Directly comparing the two results is meaningless. It's easy to demonstrate this with the piggy bank example. If your salary was 50k/year, you saved 5k/year, then your piggy bank would be growing much faster than your salary growth, but it doesn't say much about the economy, or whether you could quit your job or not. In fact, if you started with $0 in savings, your piggy bank growth would be infinite, which really shows how absurd stock vs flow comparisons can be.

Moreover stock prices incorporate a variety of factors that are irrelevant to wealth distribution. Low interest rates makes stocks more valuable by reducing the future discount rate, and corporate consolidation makes stock indices go up, but neither of those factors directly affect inequality. For instance, a simple DCF model would value a company with earnings of of $1/share/year at $16.67/share if the risk free rate was 6%, but $33.33/share if interest rates were at 3%. However it's unclear whether such drop in interest rates would double inequality, as a direct comparison would imply. After all, most people hold on to debt (eg. mortgages) as well savings.

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

#163

Post by 9dev »

cvwright wrote: post #104
Aurornis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did everyone just forget what it was like before Obamacare? Apparently you didn’t know anyone excluded for pre-existing conditions Obamacare also mandated coverage for basic care like your annual physical and many mental health conditions. It’s not perfect, but I guess it’s been long enough that people are forgetting how bad the situation was before.

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health insurance to cost more than their housing. The people who are mad are those who are paying more and not experiencing the benefits.

Those people seem incapable of considering that being surrounded by healthy people is a lot more enjoyable than being surrounded by the sick and poor. You don’t live in a vacuum. You interact with a lot of people every day, consciously or not, that probably earn less than you do, and clean your streets, wash your car, care for your elders and children, handle your food, serve your beer, and do a myriad of other things they can only do at good health.

That’s where those benefits go - to a functioning society where everyone gets a basic shred of dignity. Is it really so inconceivable to keep a little less of your disposable income in exchange for that?

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

#164

Post by Swizec »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #142
cvwright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health insurance to cost more than their housing. The people who are mad are those who are paying more and not experiencing the benefits.

https://penncapital-star.com/uncategorized/americans-suffer-... > In 2022, UnitedHealth Group made over $20 billion in profit. Cigna made $6.7 billion, Elevance Health made $6 billion and CVS Health made $4.2 billion. All told, America’s largest health insurers raked in more than $41 billion of profits in 2022. Universal healthcare is good. America's for profit system is bad. You have to get rid of for profit insurer…

All you need to know about America’s health system is this graph comparing average cost to life expectancy of OECD countries.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...

USA has an order of magnitude higher cost but middling life expectancy comparable to Argentina, Poland, Peru, Colombia etc.

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

#165

Post by pengaru »

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…

Motorcycles are better at making your cost of living permanently higher via serious injury than any minor cost savings over automobiles.

aka penny-wise pound-foolish

They are a lot of fun though (I rode a liter bike for years)

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

#166

Post by epistasis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #142
cvwright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health insurance to cost more than their housing. The people who are mad are those who are paying more and not experiencing the benefits.

https://penncapital-star.com/uncategorized/americans-suffer-... > In 2022, UnitedHealth Group made over $20 billion in profit. Cigna made $6.7 billion, Elevance Health made $6 billion and CVS Health made $4.2 billion. All told, America’s largest health insurers raked in more than $41 billion of profits in 2022. Universal healthcare is good. America's for profit system is bad. You have to get rid of for profit insurer…

Big numbers with no context come across as a way to misinform.

Viewed in light of total healthcare spending of roughly $5T per year, eliminating insurer profits does not appear to be even a drop in the bucket.

Our healthcare costs are certainly a policy choice, but eliminating profit does not fix the system, and many far more cost effective systems around the world are fully profit based.

Edit: absolutely wild to see somebody more focused on fringe political goals than caring about the health of the most vulnerable of our nation, and the bigger systemic changes that are needed. Fringe, frequently innumerate, and frequently wrong political rags like Jacobin are about politics, not about achieving better outcomes for the American precariat.

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

#167

Post by hardanonymity »

Why is food still a source of stress? Food is a solved problem. The amount of food waste alone is just staggering. Healthcare and housing are harder problems. There's no abundance there. But there is something seriously wrong with the link between food production and food consumption.

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

#169

Post by mathiaspoint »

9dev wrote: post #163
cvwright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health insurance to cost more than their housing. The people who are mad are those who are paying more and not experiencing the benefits.

Those people seem incapable of considering that being surrounded by healthy people is a lot more enjoyable than being surrounded by the sick and poor. You don’t live in a vacuum. You interact with a lot of people every day, consciously or not, that probably earn less than you do, and clean your streets, wash your car, care for your elders and children, handle your food, serve your beer, and do a myriad of other thing…

It doesn't seem to me like the current configuration makes people less sick or poor.

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

#170

Post by ambicapter »

self_awareness wrote: post #151
piva00 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, the question is why would anyone want to work, if you would be given money for free even if you don't work anywhere (I mean, you're below the poverty line)? Because people want more comforts than just being barely above the poverty line, of course there will be freeloaders just as in anything (there are even freeloaders at many companies right now, shocker!) but it doesn't mean everyone that gets some cash to…

It always comes down to the same set of arguments. The rich doesn't pay the price because money is nothing to them. The poorest have additional grants, so life is not that bad for them, even if they don't work. And who pays the most expensive fee for this? Middle class. The actually working class. The class that nobody thinks about, and the class that always funds everything. In your world, the worst place to be is t…

??? If they earn barely enough to sustain themselves, they're not middle class by any sane individual's definition. They're poor.
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