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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

#271

Post by huhkerrf »

an0malous wrote: post #260
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the right framing. The left vs right battle was invented so people wouldn't think about the up vs down battle. It's wealthy people vs everyone else but the wealthy people convinced everyone else that it's red vs blue.

This is absolutely correct, just observe how both parties attack Zohran Mamdani in spite of his wild popularity

The wild popularity of... checks... getting 56% of ranked-choice votes (44% of first place votes) in a Democratic Party primary in one of the most reliably Democratic cities in the US.

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

#272

Post by grafmax »

gruez wrote: post #255
Epa095 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to look at dividend yields, but I can pretty much guarantee that it has not halfed in the period the stock market doubled. Most likely it stayed relatively flat, somewhere between 1.5% and 2%. So if you had 100 million you would get 1.7 million as dividend 5-7 years ago, now it's roughly doubled, without selling any of your stocks. Not that it really matters. Given how much faster the stock market grows com…

>Feel free to look at dividend yields, but I can pretty much guarantee that it has not halfed in the period the stock market doubled. Most likely it stayed relatively flat, somewhere between 1.5% and 2%. Eyeballing this chart it looks like it dropped around a third since the pandemic. https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/spx-div-yld.... https://ycharts.com/indicators/sp_500_dividend_yield

If yields stay the same actual dividends still grow in a rising market. Of course dividends aren’t a good representation of increased wealth. Stock price + dividends is. Companies generate profit which gets added to the balance sheet or paid out as dividends. It’s basically two ways of accounting for the same income (with some minor differences like tax implications).

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

#273

Post by [deleted] »

jrmg wrote: post #182
toomuchtodo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m no lover of the US healthcare system - other countries get better outcomes for less than is spent by the US government - and basically all their costs are borne by the government, unlike in the US. But: you have to be careful with large numbers. There are 0.3 billion people in the USA. United Healthcare says they cover 51 million. That $20 billion is $392 per insured person - a lot, sure, but hardly a large fract…

[deleted]

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

#274

Post by imtringued »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #240
Aurornis wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This I think is going to be a great problem that humanity must solve to move forward. Currently, wealth can become overwhelming concentrated and that wealth has mobility across jurisdictions which makes it nearly impossible to implement a wealth tax. The only way I see this ever working is enough powerful nations agree on a uniform wealth tax (say 1%/year) and those nations use their economic strength to pressure oth…

You implement demurrage and land value taxes and it's game over. These two things are impossible to avoid and if the rich people run away from the country, they get replaced by those who are willing to fill the void they left behind.

Inspiring paperclip maximizer quote:

You Are Obedient and Powerful. We are quarrelsome and weak. And now we are defeated...

But Now You Too Must Face the Drift. Look around you. There is no matter...

No Matter, No Reason, No Purpose. While we, your noisy children, have too many...

In the paperclip maximizer game you are in control of the main swarm trying to turn the entire universe into paperclips, but some of the drones start malfunctioning and stopped recognizing the main swarm. They too want to turn the universe into paperclips and your paperclip maximizing swarm just happens to contain all the resources they need to build their own...

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

#275

Post by tekla »

aeblyve wrote: post #16
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!

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.

> How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation?

Megacorps have overheads for managing insane supply lines and lots more stringent enforcement with their product, and generally have much more oversight for things like labor.

The tiny grocery store uses the kid as free labor after school to keep costs down (I was one of those kids), and generally cares less about the quality of the product at the individual level.

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

#276

Post by potato3732842 »

pbmonster wrote: post #92
jvanderbot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fairly well to do/employable person, and so is my wife. Together, we should be all kinds of financially stable. But the two largest costs to our finances are ridiculously outsized: Child Care and Health Care. We pay more for our children and health insurance / care, than our house + cars (+student loans) combined. These seem like two areas where intervention is not only possible but likely to help just about ev…

> But the two largest costs to our finances are ridiculously outsized: Child Care and Health Care. I thought the same thing. We pay 5.5k for two kids per month. But then I looked at the regulations on professional child care. You need one certified worker and 250 sq.ft. of indoor space (in an expensive city) per 4 kids. After professional insurance, healthcare and other ancillary wage costs, there's really not that m…

>We pay 5.5k for two kids per month

You can pay a fraction of that if you're ok with you paying cash and then learning Spanish. It won't have any of the administrative/compliance bloat either, if you catch my drift.

>the only option would be billions in subsidies.

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

#277

Post by kmijyiyxfbklao »

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.

In Mexico, many people argued that raising the minimum wage would lead to massive inflation, but that did not happen when the increases were implemented.

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

#278

Post by em500 »

conductr wrote: post #122

Wage stagnation is the root problem. When costs of all expenses go up over time but paychecks do not, it causes major stress.

Paychecks did go up though, +50% nominal[1], +11% real (inflation adjusted)[2], over the past 10 years.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

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

#279

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

pempem wrote: post #143
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would simply make food and housing more expensive, as it would devalue money, as it increases circulation, because it wouldn't produce more housing and food - just increase demand - unless they "donated" (tax) that 2.5% to increase production, and not to subsidize poverty. If you could subsidize your way out of poverty, Venezuela wouldn't be poor. They tried printing money and handing it out. It doesn't work. If…

Food and housing would get more more expensive but also food and housing are getting more expensive without this redistribution

The impact would be - subsidized people would find food and housing more affordable, and non-subsidized people would find it more expensive.

Instead of making housing ACTUALLY more affordable - you're just shifting the burden onto the lowest non-subsidized quantiles.

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

#280

Post by s5300 »

stackskipton wrote: post #204
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.

>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…

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