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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

#341

Post by poulsbohemian »

beezle wrote: post #311

Americans confuse need with 'nice to have' which leads to the "I don't have money for food/rent/hc" problem. You do not need cable tv or home internet. You do not need an iPhone or top end Samsung. There are many mid-range Android phones much cheaper that can add a MVNO phone plan for around $20/mo that has more than enough data for necessary internet. Key word: necessary. OTA HDTV is available to many millions at th…

>You do not need cable tv or home internet.

I get your point and I generally agree with everything you've written, but I'm a bit at a loss on the home internet thing... our society is entirely tied to our connectivity at this point, so are you simply recommending people use their internet-connected mobile devices and forego another home provider? With you on the cable thing - even the streaming providers that were supposed to save us have become prohibitively expensive at this point.

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

#342

Post by kccqzy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #327
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wouldn't consider any HDHP (High-Deductable Healthcare Plan) to be "good insurance".

Why not? Do you expect to not pay any part of your normal, expected annual heath care costs? Insurance is for unexpected expenses that (a) you cannot foresee and (b) would be catastrophic to your finances. Thinks like major storm or fire damage to your house. A car accident that results in a total loss or worse, liability for someone's injuries. Your annual physical, eye exam, and dental hygiene vists, and other rout…

It's not that people don't expect to pay. It's that plans like HDHP do not have predictability. An average person getting an average number of injuries cannot reasonably work out how much it will cost them to treat these injuries and whether the HSA is enough. The fact that there is the distinction between in-network and out-of-network means the deductible isn't a constant.

Your idea that insurance is only for things that are catastrophic to your finances is wrong. Health insurance is mandatory for the common good, even if your net worth is in the millions. You can't forgo health insurance just because you are rich enough. There have been long debates about ACA that led to mandatory health insurance that I will not rehash. And auto insurance is another example: you are still required to buy it even if covering liability for accidents and covering the loss of your car would be completely affordable for yourself.

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

#343

Post by ch4s3 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #296
ch4s3 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and basically all their costs are borne by the government The costs are born by people paying 20-25% VAT. The government just collects and disperses those funds. This may be more efficient, but the cost is born by everyone in society. > Compared with other countries, the inefficiency of for-profit healthcare The US health system(s) are a patchwork of non for profit entities, for profits, government programs, and em…

Does VAT really go entirely to healthcare? If not, we'd have to compare with the total taxloads borne by citizens of compared countries

It varies country by country and funds are essentially fungible. France for example nominally has special payroll taxes that go towards healthcare. Some OECD nations have mandatory insurance schemes where you pay some premium monthly. It really varies a lot. It is however true that VAT is pretty much universal to OECD nations with single payer systems and make up a significant chunk of government tax receipts. Its essentially impossible to dodge.

But when comparing most incomes levels, Americans pay much lower taxes than OECD counterparts.

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

#344

Post by GoatInGrey »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #308
hasnd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spen…

Inflation is caused by a greater number of dollars chasing the same number of goods and services. Look at the used car market, or the housing market, or the GPU market during the crypto craze several years back. It all falls back to basic supply versus demand mechanics. Inflation can be caused by printing, but it can also be caused by redistributing money from location X (Microsoft stock) to location Y (food spending).

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

#345

Post by ge96 »

beezle wrote: post #311

Americans confuse need with 'nice to have' which leads to the "I don't have money for food/rent/hc" problem. You do not need cable tv or home internet. You do not need an iPhone or top end Samsung. There are many mid-range Android phones much cheaper that can add a MVNO phone plan for around $20/mo that has more than enough data for necessary internet. Key word: necessary. OTA HDTV is available to many millions at th…

It's crazy how cheap a decent phone can be, I'm talking a $160 Motorolla phone with 8GB of RAM

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

#346

Post by cool_dude85 »

WalterBright wrote: post #325
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…

Keep in mind that anyone can buy stock. And stocks in the US historically outperform passive real estate investing.

Careful with "can". It is possible for the homeless guy on the corner to buy stock in the sense that he is not prohibited from doing so. But on the other hand, the actual fact is that he can not purchase stock.

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

#347

Post by diet_jerome »

Housing and health care are really expensive and are increasing in price in the usa. And yet, the prices of almost everything else (entertainment, clothes, cosmetic surgery, etc) is going down over time in the usa. I wonder if it has something to do with how much the local, state, and federal governments involves themselves and regulate housing and healthcare? (hint: it does)

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

#348

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #292
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…

Go back 50 years, and 95% of Americans should be raising Cain. Of OECD countries, the US has ridiculous income inequality distribution and effective reductions in purchasing power over time. https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM Anecdotally: Someone would need to make $350k/yr to live where I grew up in a not great area where there were robberies, shootings, and thumping radios all the time. Also, where my blue-collar grandpa…

Going back 50 years is the mid-late part of the post-WW2 economic boom. Sure, you can have that kind of growth back but only if you're willing to go through World War 3 to get to it.

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

#349

Post by darth_avocado »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #266
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…

A wealth tax is just not feasible because almost none of the rich will accept it. See almost any response to your comment as evidence. What we need is strong labor laws and the will for unions in the working class. A wealth tax doesn’t actually change any power dynamics. The rich are still powerful and the poor reliant on them. If the working class can band together, the power dynamics change and we can see some actu…

Democracy should in theory put needs of the majority over the minority but our representatives would never and we don’t hold them accountable.

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

#350

Post by Projectiboga »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #292
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…

Go back 50 years, and 95% of Americans should be raising Cain. Of OECD countries, the US has ridiculous income inequality distribution and effective reductions in purchasing power over time. https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM Anecdotally: Someone would need to make $350k/yr to live where I grew up in a not great area where there were robberies, shootings, and thumping radios all the time. Also, where my blue-collar grandpa…

The tax cuts and other regulatory shifts allowing things like share buyback and the carried interest loophole (might be closed now) have shifted up the share of the GDP held by the top 10%. This has slowed the velocity of income, as a wealthy person doesn't spend their income the same month the way a person in lower quin-tiles does. This has caused a stagnation in middle class standards of living. This is a headwind that didn't exist 60 or 70 years ago. There was also a demographic advantage as WW2 had thinned the heard and there was a once ever level of economic prosperity. The tax code encouraged big business to invest in labor, which isn't happening now.
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