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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

#301

Post by exasperaited »

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…

Right now if indexes show massive gains it's based in large part on developments in AI, which is a corporate-friendly development predicated on destroying jobs by replacing people with AI tools and human effort with AI effort.

The markets stopped correlating well with consumer sentiment a long time ago but since ChatGPT launched it is easier to assume that if the market is doing well, ordinary people are worse off.

This gulf only gets more obvious over time, and it is one of the key differences between this bubble and the dotcom bubble (the latter revitalised many niche businesses by finding them global markets or a viable business model).

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

#302

Post by Aunche »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #257
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…

The end result of this logic is that poverty must exist for society to function and I just don’t accept that.

Poverty isn't hard to solve because "society needs it" but because it is a statistically likely outcome. If you live in a world where everyone has $100, and every day, each person randomly gives $1 to a random another person, you end up with a highly unequal society within a year.

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

#303

Post by __turbobrew__ »

imtringued wrote: post #274
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> demurrage and land value taxes and it's game over

I don’t think that actually solves the problem. For example, if a citizens entire net worth is stored on the New York Stock Exchange and you are not the USA how do you plan to tax the individual? The NYSE is bound by the laws of the USA — which has strong property laws — not the other country.

> they get replaced by those who are willing to fill the void they left behind

If only a single country has a wealth tax, there are going to be no wealthy people who come in to replace the void when they have a choice of many other countries that do not have a wealth tax. You could possibly argue that a country is better without billionaires anyways as they don’t pay into the tax system, but I believe that if a country implements a wealth tax without coordination with the rest of the world they will simply no longer have wealth.

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

#304

Post by GoatInGrey »

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…

Once you factor in P/E ratio inflation on those higher equity prices and replace salary with total benefits (i.e. including healthcare benefits), the scenario is revealed to be decidedly NOT simple.

It would be nice if solving a web of problems affecting multiple billions of people was as simple as thinking "The rich are fucking us".

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

#305

Post by toomuchtodo »

epistasis wrote: post #285
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…

Your comment has been edited extensible since you first posted some misleading numbers, so I'm adding this new comment on one of your additions: > As long as a profit motive exists, there will be incentives to reduce or avoid care for more profits. This is reversed from reality. Insurer incentives are to increase care and costs all the time. Their profits are tied to a fixed percentage of total expenditure, so the on…

I mean no disrespect whatsoever, but we have no common ground if the belief is a continued for profit system or more profits are going to fix any of this, based on the overwhelming evidence. At some point, one must admit that the US has entirely failed at a functional healthcare system considering the costs compared to care delivered and outcomes. If for profit insurer incentives are to increase costs as you say, we must eliminate insurers and fulfill any need for that function through public systems, where cost controls can be implemented to drive down costs. Incentives drive outcomes. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

From another comment I posted in this sub thread: https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-international-comparis...

Additional citation: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...

> Goal: Compare health system performance in 10 countries, including the United States, to glean insights for U.S. improvement.

> Methods: Analysis of 70 health system performance measures in five areas: access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes.

> Key Findings: The top three countries are Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, although differences in overall performance between most countries are relatively small. The only clear outlier is the U.S., where health system performance is dramatically lower.

> Conclusion: The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its health care sector. While the other nine countries differ in the details of their systems and in their performance on domains, unlike the U.S., they all have found a way to meet their residents’ most basic health care needs, including universal coverage.

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

#306

Post by cloverich »

smileysteve wrote: post #118
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACA was a huge compromise and didn’t really do anything to tackle why American healthcare costs are so high. I can see it being washed away for a plan that is actually better, and that isn’t going back to the way things were before it.

It originally did a substantial number of things to limit cost increases - the individual mandate - % required spending on actual Medicare care by health insurers (limiting administrative and marketing expenses) But each of those elements were later removed either legislatively or judicially.

Also they removed the requirement to have end of life care discussions ahead of time. Demonized as "death panels" by the right IIRC. Which was ironic given it would surely have saved a ton of money.

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

#307

Post by phyzix5761 »

conductr wrote: post #135
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…

This assumes the wealth transfer doesn’t affect the price of assets and services which is of course bonkers. More than likely the transfer will happen and affordability will not improve due to inflationary pressures.

Inflation, which means a steady rise in prices overall, happens only when the total money supply in an economy grows. This increase in money, often called "printing money," can be physical cash or digital money created through lending and government policies. Without more money in the system, if prices go up in one area, they have to go down somewhere else because the total money available limits how much can be spent on everything. Sometimes prices rise temporarily due to supply problems, but that is not true inflation unless there is more money chasing goods. This key idea, highlighted by Milton Friedman in his Nobel Prize winning work, shows that lasting inflation is mainly caused by increases in the money supply.

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

#308

Post by phyzix5761 »

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.

Inflation, which means a steady rise in prices overall, happens only when the total money supply in an economy grows. This increase in money, often called "printing money," can be physical cash or digital money created through lending and government policies. Without more money in the system, if prices go up in one area, they have to go down somewhere else because the total money available limits how much can be spent on everything. Sometimes prices rise temporarily due to supply problems, but that is not true inflation unless there is more money chasing goods. This key idea, highlighted by Milton Friedman in his Nobel Prize winning work, shows that lasting inflation is mainly caused by increases in the money supply.

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

#309

Post by sirbutters »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #286
thuuuomas wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, the working poor are considered deserving of their burdens in an immutable, moralizing, Calvinist way. “They make bad choices.” “They have bad culture.” “They have bad genes.”

[flagged]

Define "strong". sipstea

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

#310

Post by ziofill »

Epa095 wrote: post #294
gruez wrote: post #255

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%. 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

(First, I apologise that this message must be hasty, I must do life stuff). I really feel like your first graph proves my point? OK, at times it goes up, at times it goes down. But since 2002 the dividend is the same, but the S&P 500 is 7x. So the lazy capitalist puting in 10 million there in 2002 got 132k in yearly 'income' then, now he gets 925k yearly. You wanna figure out how much average salary increased the sam…

I fully agree. Additionally, stock price is driven also by expectations of further growth, which in order to keep happening, something's gotta give so it must chip away at quality of the final product too (cheaper materials, cheaper manufacturing, etc) with a consequent enshittification. My parents, who live in Italy, could afford a stone house from the 1800s in their thirties. I live in Canada and everything's made of wood and snot and and costs a fortune.
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