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Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

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Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#281

Post by gooseifer »

conanbatt wrote: post #269
gooseifer wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting people to pay for all of those things is what taxes are for. If it was completely voluntary how many people would actually pitch in to pay for all of these services? What about the communities that are unable to afford these services? It’s very easy to imagine that in your scenario that the very wealthy segment themselves off to pay for private services while everyone else suffers.

> If it was completely voluntary how many people would actually pitch in to pay for all of these services? Government is the system where everyone expects to live at everyone elses expense. I ask you, if you believe nobody wants to pay for it, why do you think people want it at all? > What about the communities that are unable to afford these services? Government does not make it affordable. Government does not pay f…

What is your proposition? How should things be run?

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#284

Post by beat »

gowld wrote: post #249
beat wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick look at education numbers finds that, since 1988, the cost of private four year college has doubled (in inflation-adjusted dollars), and the cost of state four year college has tripled. Again in constant dollars, health care has seen a more than fivefold increase since 1970, from under $2000 to over $10,000 per capita. Constant dollars, mind you. Health care and education costs are more or less fixed and unav…

Health care is amazingly better now than it was for our parents.

Health care in the US costs twice as much as any other modernized nation, for worse results in many key measures (particularly no universal coverage, and high financial risk to individuals even with good insurance).

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#285

Post by EADGBE »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #261
gruez wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, it's an average of what people actually pay, including people who somehow got a sweet deal on housing costs which is arguably the more accurate way of measuring consumer prices.

That not accurate because important information about the spatial distribution gets filtered out. Economists are pretending their statistics are filtering out 'noise' when they are really filtering out data they don't want people to see.

> Economists are pretending their statistics are filtering out 'noise' when they are really filtering out data they don't want people to see.

You could really replace "Economist" with anything in this statement.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#286

Post by EADGBE »

curun1r wrote: post #251
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Aren't rent, healthcare, AND education all included in the eight components of CPI? Isn't that how the government measures inflation? I think one of the big things left off is housing prices. But I'm pretty sure rent, healthcare, and education are part of it: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/medical-care.htm http://webapps.dol.gov/dolfaq/go-dol-faq.asp?faqid=94

They may factor those things in, but that doesn't mean they factor them in correctly or that their calculation ends up matching the realities of many middle-class people these days. From medical-illness-caused bankruptcies to crippling student loan debt to declining home ownership (by equity and age of first purchase), there are common realities that don't mesh with the CPI statistics that are calculated/released. Yo…

This brings up a great point that many people overlook: Inflation is hyper-specific to the consumer.

If the price of bread (and only the price of bread) went up 10x in price, then only consumers of bread would really be affected by it. You could argue all the hands that "touch" the bread, yes, but in the end the person paying $40 for a loaf of bread is actually affected by the inflation of it; for them to consider "inflation" in the large sense to have screwed them over.

Similarly, people without student loan debt (or over-burdening student loan debt) couldn't really give two shits about the inflation of SLD.

For me, guitars are a big deal. And I bring that up because there's a regulation now that effectively bans a type of wood used for guitars for centuries. If I were to want to buy a guitar with this type of wood that already exists, the price of it would be super inflated as the remaining safe-to-buy stock are grabbed up. This certainly only affects guitarists who favor a certain kind of tonewood; but is akin to my bread example above in demand/price.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#287

Post by EADGBE »

alexgmcm wrote: post #274
T2_t2 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That needs a citation. If you cut out everything we have they didn't - cable TV, Netflix, computers, internet, cafes, restaurants, Kindle, better choices in grocery food and alcohol - and ate the sort of cheap food people lived on, things like meatloaf and crappy ingredient dishes, I reckon it would be entirely possible. The only thing that is prohibitively expensive today vs 1980 is housing. The reasons for that are…

I think they had cafes and restaurants etc. in the 70's... Also Netflix is really, really cheap and my computer cost me approx 800 USD and has lasted 5 years. Housing (and in the USA, healthcare and college I suppose) are by far the most expensive things for most people and have soared in price. All the other things are negligible in comparison - it's like the people going on about avocado toast.

Death by 1000 cuts exists, though.

Assume $120 annually for Netflix. A cost almost everyone assumes now, and most people have (58M subscribers in the US/~120M households in the US). $120 compounded yearly at an 8% rate over 18 years is almost ~$5k. Depending on the year attended that's anywhere between 2/3 years of a degree and half of a semester at a public institution (in today's dollars).

Point is, it all adds up. And taking your example; the most expensive things we spend money on are also inflating at an abnormally high rate. The money has to come from somewhere, and when it's leaking out $10/month at a time, it's sometimes hard to find and easy to overlook.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#288

Post by EADGBE »

wasdfff wrote: post #216
sangnoir wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to get all Marxist - but using IRA's/401k's to get labor to go all-in on the stock-market was one hell of a judo move by the American capital class.

A pension might have been swell if you planned on working at pan am for half a century. I can take my IRA anywhere. The worker is unshackled from the pension purse their employer dangled over their head to keep them complicit and loyal to the executive board for decades.

This. They're no longer tied to the employer in hopes of good retirement, they can instead shop around for raises/skills. Which is more money which can be self-invested back into the self-pension/401k. In 401k matching situations, this means more matched, too, instead of an arbitrary salary promise after retirement.

I do not have numbers for comparison of pension vs 401k/self-funded pension. Though I'd love to see what either gets you in similar contributions.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#289

Post by burlesona »

Joeri wrote: post #196
rwcarlsen wrote: post #51

While attempting to refute the idea that the poor haven't improved their station since the 70s, they cite a lot of stats that show most households make more income than their parents did (inflation adjusted), but they completely neglect to account for the huge factor that is the number of people working (or cumulative hours worked) per household in order to achieve that improvement. In the 1970s, there were a lot mor…

The biggest manipulation is they divide household income by the square of household size, which makes the bigger families of the 60’s seem to earn a lot less than they did. The whole thing is based on two studies funded by the same institute based on the same biased dataset, and diving into how they get their numbers is enlightening.

Ugh, which may be completely missing the causality. I’d argue that many people are having fewer kids (smaller households) soecifically because raising them has become so expensive.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#290

Post by conanbatt »

gooseifer wrote: post #281
conanbatt wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was completely voluntary how many people would actually pitch in to pay for all of these services? Government is the system where everyone expects to live at everyone elses expense. I ask you, if you believe nobody wants to pay for it, why do you think people want it at all? > What about the communities that are unable to afford these services? Government does not make it affordable. Government does not pay f…

What is your proposition? How should things be run?

As local and voluntary as possible, in today's framework.
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