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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

#201

Post by ImHereToVote »

garciasn wrote: post #156
Steve16384 wrote: post #73

Exactly the things that a well meaning society should provide to its citizens. What's the point of "progress" if we can't provide the basics to the majority?

Just look at the name of each of the primary groups in the US: - Progressives - Moderates - Conservatives Progressives, by definition, want 'progress'. Conversely, Conservatives do NOT want progress; if anything, they want regression and thus their desire to roll everything back done in the name of Progress(ives). Moderates just want to play both sides and find some sort of middle ground; something that doesn't reall…

Progress towards what? Conserving what exactly? What is moderation between the progress goal, and the conservation of the past?

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

#202

Post by huhkerrf »

garciasn wrote: post #156
Steve16384 wrote: post #73

Exactly the things that a well meaning society should provide to its citizens. What's the point of "progress" if we can't provide the basics to the majority?

Just look at the name of each of the primary groups in the US: - Progressives - Moderates - Conservatives Progressives, by definition, want 'progress'. Conversely, Conservatives do NOT want progress; if anything, they want regression and thus their desire to roll everything back done in the name of Progress(ives). Moderates just want to play both sides and find some sort of middle ground; something that doesn't reall…

> Progressives, by definition, want 'progress'. Conversely, Conservatives do NOT want progress; if anything, they want regression and thus their desire to roll everything back done in the name of Progress(ives).

I don't know what this logical fallacy is called, but it's a logical fallacy nonetheless.

I'm going to take you at face value, and assume you're talking about the idealized state and not the parties as they stand right now. (Because the Republicans are increasingly reactionary and not at all conservative in their governing.)

Saying that someone called conservative means that they, by definition, do not want progress is silly. First, it's better to say "change" than progress, because a lot of what has been put in place by the "progressive" party is not necessarily better and a direction forward. Second, you can want change in a conservative manner, and you can be of the belief that small changes are better for society than massive changes, Chesterton's Fence, all that.

This kind of thinking is something most people leave behind after freshman year in University.

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

#203

Post by piva00 »

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…

> The poorest have additional grants, so life is not that bad for them, even if they don't work.

Have you ever been poor? From this statement alone I'd guess not because saying life "is not bad" when it's a constant stress about how to make ends meet, not only next month but many times the next week or even next day, is far, very far from "not bad".

> In your world, the worst place to be is to be the middle class, because they don't deserve any grants, but still they earn just barely enough to sustain themselves.

If they earn just barely enough to sustain themselves they're poor, not middle class. Middle class can afford their housing, food, leisure, etc.

In my world the rich would be paying much more, they depend on the whole societal machinery to be able to even accomplish being rich, not paying their due share for that is unjust and undeserved. That requires people thinking more collectively though, and the current system doesn't incentivise people to behave that way, you get ahead by being an individualistic asshole instead of someone who is trying to make society better through your businesses, products, and skills.

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

#204

Post by stackskipton »

Aurornis wrote: post #61
mathiaspoint wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid we touch Obamacare though.

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.

>Did everyone just forget what it was like before Obamacare?

Nope, I was adult working at IBM. I had very good medical insurance where it was small copay every time I saw the doctor. I had to get minor surgery on my foot and it was 50 bucks total. I think total cost billed to insurance was 500.

Condition returned in 2023 and I was forced to get surgery again, I ended up paying ~750 dollars because of my Out of Pocket Maximum was not met.

I found IBM health care benefits online (https://www.scribd.com/document/685377925/IBM-Benefits-Summa...) and looks like I would have paid similar if I was still working there.

ObamaCare made things much better for those who could not get healthcare. For most, High Deductible plans becoming the norm left people in much worse state and that's why you see a ton of grumbling about it. Also, since it kept health insurance, it didn't fix root problem so many people are like "We have Health Care Reform? WTF did it reform?"

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

#205

Post by jrmg »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #108
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.

Heh I wasn't an adult then. All I've experienced is being forced to buy insurance with a premium so high my risk adjusted return for self insuring is actually higher. I was so happy when the individual mandate was finally killed. That was just straight theft by incompetent health care administration.

> being forced to buy insurance with a premium so high my risk adjusted return for self insuring is actually higher

This is how all insurance works though. Everyone pays in, and those unlucky enough to experience catastrophic problems get a way bigger payout than those who don’t.

Pooling risk is the entire point of insurance. Without that, it’s not insurance, it’s just a payment system, and those unfortunate enough to have big problems have to pay more.

Perhaps your views of what a society should be ‘for’ means you think that the unfortunate just having to pay more is fair, but I don’t.

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

#206

Post by rocketpastsix »

Aurornis wrote: post #61
mathiaspoint wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid we touch Obamacare though.

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.

as someone with a pre-existing condition (that I didn't ask for), Obamacare was such a huge relief. Before I got into tech I was teaching guitar lessons and really enjoying things. My condition requires more than a once a year physical and my specialist got on me about not having health insurance because we weren't able to get the full panel of bloodwork done. I was routinely denied healthcare because of the condition. I had to pivot into tech as it was one of the few paths available that gave me health insurance. As you said its not perfect but its so much better than what we had prior to Obamacare becoming law.

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

#207

Post by ggoo »

hardanonymity wrote: post #167

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.

Fair distribution of resources is far from a solved problem unfortunately

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

#208

Post by conductr »

Epa095 wrote: post #130
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unintuitive how, but it probably would cause prices to go haywire.

It could, at least temporarily. But there is no reason to belive it won't stabilise again. Increased demand without increased production will increase prices. But then producers will follow, and production will increase, and prices will stabilise. Increased tax on the rich and distributing it to poor moves a tiny bit of the combined 'voting power' we have over production as consumers to the poor, so there will be sli…

Stabilizing means we’ve done this whole thing for nothing.

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

#209

Post by ImHereToVote »

Aurornis wrote: post #141
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…

If you put a 2.5% annual tax on net worth, that net worth would very rapidly find its way to other countries. Wealthy people would learn to structure their earnings to flow into businesses in other countries to avoid this wealth tax. This would reduce income tax in the United States. I would guess the overall effect would trend toward a net tax loss. If you gave 40 million people an extra $15K per year to spend, the…

"If you put a 2.5% annual tax on net worth, that net worth would very rapidly find its way to other countries."

Most of that worth is in assets. If they leave the assets they can go.

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

#210

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

kasey_junk wrote: post #74
hansvm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you control most of the market it works out a little differently. People can only eat so much food, but you can price gouge them relatively easily.

Kroger, the largest grocery in America and one that routinely sets of anti-monopoly interdictions have a profit margin of 1.76%. What profit margin line would you suggest counts as price gouging?

And they do $150B - $200B of gross per year. It's a massive business. I worked at Kroger Central Marketing decades ago when they rolled out the savings cards (which was a way for them to raise prices across the board AND track purchases in real time per shopper) and the strategizing over milk prices for a 1/2 a cent per gallon change was insane.
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