[flagged]
No accident. No move. No new vehicle.
My car insurance went up 30%, in one year. Tried pricing around and it's not much better. Took an online "safety class" and got an 8% discount.
What's driving rising business costs?
11–20 of 70 posts
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#12[flagged]
No accident. No move. No new vehicle. My car insurance went up 30%, in one year. Tried pricing around and it's not much better. Took an online "safety class" and got an 8% discount.
Yep! Both private and public insurance funds are nickel and diming wherever possible to make up for losses during the COVID pandemic which went on for 3 years.
Edit: can't reply
> This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable
It's not property insurance that's causing the issue as I as well as the article pointed out.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#13[flagged]
It’s a vicious cycle, but something needs to pump the brakes before the metaphorical engine explodes.
* Stop tying healthcare to private insurers and employers. State-level single-payer models by default via fixed payroll deductions per employee, and let the government dictate or negotiate costs.
* Re-work incentives for efficient utility usage. Incentivize self-generation for power through lower electric rates if a certain percentage of your consumption is generated on-site, for instance. Also, stop subsidizing huge consumers (like data centers) by raising customer rates, and keep expanding renewables and battery storage to depress costs in the long haul
* Those insurance rates keep going up because healthcare continues rising and repair costs are increasingly more expensive or on par with replacement costs. Right to repair can lower auto/property insurance rates over time by making shit repairable, and liability/workers comp can begin coming down once healthcare is meaningfully addressed
* Not being mentioned in the report (but raised by other commenters) is the general cost of living will continue driving wages higher (along with costs to replace those wages from injury or loss via insurance schemes) until and unless we actually address the underlying crises. This means lowering housing costs, lowering rent, lowering transit costs (either through cheaper cars or expanded public transport, ideally both), lowering food costs, lowering utility costs, lowering healthcare costs, lowering childcare costs (universal childcare or incentives for more single-earner/single-income households), etc.
This report hits the highlights, but this is a huge issue that’s only going to get worse if we don’t start seriously addressing the myriad of root causes.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#14State sponsored monopolies is my vote. It's a failure of government to have fewer than ten players (non-Trusting) in any industry.
That makes sense for the "utilities" bucket, and to a small degree for the health insurance bucket, which are the biggest buckets linked.
Utilities have had complete regulatory capture of most states' Public Utilities Commissions. It's blatant and obvious in places like Arizona that have open corruption in their elections and commission decisions. But in places like California it's far more hidden: the massive increase in cost of utilities is mostly from increased costs for the transmission and distribution grid, but CPUC has basically zero information for the public to understand why they keep on handing over more money to the big utilities. There definitely seems to be massive corruption but where is it and what is the actual mechanism? It's so well hidden and sophisticated that if there is corruption nobody understands what the F is going on.
How do you replace a state-sponsored monopoly like a utility into something competitive? I don't know, when I learned econ 101 utilities were given as the example of a "natural" monopoly. But clearly that's not working out... maybe it just needs to be "state" rather than "state sponsored monopoly." The only other state sponsored monopoly we really have is the state itself. What does the public gain by allowing monopoly utilities that giving away the public's money to investors? The incentives are all off.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#15We really need to switch to a National Health Service style of administration of health costs. Right now we have Medicare which makes unilateral cost determinations, and doctors and hospitals end up accepting below-cost reimbursement that because how could they turn away all the retired people, but they end up subsidizing these unilateral decisions with money from private insurance payors (namely everybody who's work…
Potentially. The issue is how do you manage solvency.
State Medicaid and Workers Compensation funds were already insolvent before the 2024 election, and as such most states lack the fiscal overhead needed to fully support a fully funded single payer program today.
It would end up the same way the NHS has in the UK.
Vast swathes of the US are deeply fiscally troubled due to the impact of the COVID pandemic, and if that is not solved then we cannot even start to contemplate single payer.
This should not be used to justify austerity which is not the answer and does more harm than good, but points out that a reckoning is needed. From my personal experience dealing with the current crop of state and local politicos, it's looking dicey in portions of the US.
Edit: can't reply
> Gong single payer is a drastic drop in the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. There’s no fiscal advantage to the current system whatsoever
Yes. But you need capital to build an insurance fund. And a large portion of that is going to service existing liabilities.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
No accident. No move. No new vehicle. My car insurance went up 30%, in one year. Tried pricing around and it's not much better. Took an online "safety class" and got an 8% discount.
Yep! Both private and public insurance funds are nickel and diming wherever possible to make up for losses during the COVID pandemic which went on for 3 years. Edit: can't reply > This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable It's not property insurance that's causing the issue…
This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable, we still refuse to let the government negotiate with or dictate rates, we still tie healthcare to employment, and we still let manufacturers sell top-tier/unrepairable vehicles while constantly discontinuing anything remotely affordable or repairable.
The market isn’t going to correct itself now that we have enough data to know where to squeeze next, and how hard it can go. The only way to unwind this disaster is meaningful regulations and wholesale reforms.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#17[flagged]
It’s a vicious cycle, but something needs to pump the brakes before the metaphorical engine explodes. * Stop tying healthcare to private insurers and employers. State-level single-payer models by default via fixed payroll deductions per employee, and let the government dictate or negotiate costs. * Re-work incentives for efficient utility usage. Incentivize self-generation for power through lower electric rates if a…
> Stop tying healthcare to private insurers and employers. State-level single-payer models by default via fixed payroll deductions per employee, and let the government dictate or negotiate costs.
Most state-run workers compensation and Medicaid funds are already insolvent. Until that gets resolved, no attempt at creating a single payer fund is possible.
> stop subsidizing huge consumers (like data centers) by raising customer rates, and keep expanding renewables and battery storage to depress costs in the long haul
Most DC projects in the US have already integrated renewable and battery storage systems thanks to Biden-era subsidizes and capacity building.
Utilities are using data centers as a scapegoat - the reality is most are stuck with fiscal liabilities due to COVID along with insurance and raising prices as a result.
> Right to repair can lower auto/property insurance rates over time by making shit repairable, and liability/workers comp can begin coming down once healthcare is meaningfully addressed
I support right-to-repair at a personal level as a tinkerer, but that wouldn't move the needle for the insurance problem.
The big issue is the COVID pandemic era liabilities that continue to require to be paid out to this day.
It's the same for workers comp as most workers comp funds are already insolvent.
> Not being mentioned in the report (but raised by other commenters) is the general cost of living will continue driving wages higher...
Becuase that's not something that dramatically impacts the bottom line in most industries - most businesses can afford increasing salaries a couple dollars an hour by reducing capex next year, reducing hours for existing employees, or moving employees to the salaried bucket.
But if my insurance premiums are constantly increase by 7-20% YoY it becomes difficult to manage.
Edit: can't reply
> What do you (sic) proscribe as a solution then?
F#ck if I know.
This is a polycrisis, and each state will have to solve stuff individually because of the federal nature of the US. The pandemic was brutal and we're still facing feeling it's reverberations to this day.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#18[flagged]
No accident. No move. No new vehicle. My car insurance went up 30%, in one year. Tried pricing around and it's not much better. Took an online "safety class" and got an 8% discount.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the catch-and-release of car thieves drove up costs for everyone. If I change my address away from the craziness, my policy drops by half.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#19State sponsored monopolies is my vote. It's a failure of government to have fewer than ten players (non-Trusting) in any industry.
That makes sense for the "utilities" bucket, and to a small degree for the health insurance bucket, which are the biggest buckets linked. Utilities have had complete regulatory capture of most states' Public Utilities Commissions. It's blatant and obvious in places like Arizona that have open corruption in their elections and commission decisions. But in places like California it's far more hidden: the massive increa…
The problem with the health insurance bucket is not the number of players, it's that you're buying a pig in a poke.
Between ghost networks, death panels that deny you treatment, and the nature of deductibles, you have no fucking idea what you're buying, and whether or not you're getting ripped off.
Re: What's driving rising business costs?
#20Unhinged greed