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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

#421

Post by qualeed »

NotGMan wrote: post #337
qualeed wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say: > .5% of wealth also means non-liquid assets such as house But they said: > Total U.S. household net worth (excluding real estate) The rest of your comment, to be honest, just sounds like you fundamentally don't like poor people and have some strong biases against them.

You are free to give them 2.5% of your money, see how it works out. Reality supports my case.

You may find it unfathomable to do so, but I already donate quite a bit more than 2.5% of my salary, as well as hours of my time every week, helping people less fortunate than myself.

Whatever "reality" you're referring to isn't the same one I'm living in.

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

#422

Post by nemomarx »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #360
alexjplant wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...in what world does it make sense to charge the cost of a motorcycle for a few minutes of a doctor/NP's time and $15 worth of drugs? Jumping through bureaucratic hoops to avoid this is a waste of everybody's time.

Urgent care is pretty widely known to be a scam that preys on those too impatient to "jump through buerocratic hoops (make an appointment in the future with a highly-paid professional instead of paying the premium for the surplus staffing it takes to always have someone available for walk-ins)"

"make an appointment for several months for now or get treatment this week" is maybe a better explanation.

your GP is good if you have a long term medical issue you want to ask about, less so if you think you've just gotten injured or sick in some way.

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

#423

Post by Exoristos »

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…

Taking political labels at face value is stunningly naive. Parties' rhetoric is similarly untrustworthy to the point of irrelevance. In reality, major parties are just different combinations of graft, which for obvious reasons is not shared with the public. But even if that were not the fact, taking some label that arose a century ago (progressive) or four centuries (conservative, in England) -- under circumstances that are barely remembered and may have been mendacious even at the time -- and have changed continuously since -- is common enough, I guess, but sheer childishness.

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

#424

Post by tossandthrow »

gabrielgio wrote: post #84
lurking_swe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you’re joking / being sarcastic. I will say though, nobody claims wealth in the US is evenly distributed…quite the opposite.

I read it more like that people should start tracking success of country not based on how much health it produces and start caring about the actual quality of live of its people. People can't eat GDP or sleep under it

First, my comment was overly snarky - I can see the karma counter jumping up and down like a rabbit which is fair.

Personally, I see the central governance responsibility as ensuring a peopsperous society.

This must necessarily include a high level of equality.

Equality can be achieved using capital systems and market economies.

The US is failing hard at being a good country these years.

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

#425

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

gruez wrote: post #162
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…

>And it really is as simple as that. It really isn't, because your "simple" comparison is bunk. For one, it's measuring stock vs flow. Stock prices measure stock, eg. the size of a piggy bank. Salaries measure flow, eg. your annual salary. Directly comparing the two results is meaningless. It's easy to demonstrate this with the piggy bank example. If your salary was 50k/year, you saved 5k/year, then your piggy bank w…

It's not quite as bunk as that. If you take the time-derivative of the stock price it becomes a flow, and as stock prices are approximately exponential, the growth rate will be half of what it is today at approximately the same time range that the value itself was half of what it is today. (Obviously, with a lot more noise added).

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

#426

Post by BobaFloutist »

whateveracct wrote: post #396
BobaFloutist wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's also nuts that a lot of people are on a health insurance plan that encourages avoiding medical care because it offers tax-advantaged investing. You get how that's nuts, right?

It doesn't seem nuts to me? I have a good emergency fund and a stable job and no big debts (cuz I'm good with money generally), so I can choose to use my health insurance to make a little more money. That's only fair given all the pre-work I did to set it up for myself.

Of course it's fair, my criticism isn't with your outcome but with designing an insurance plan to work this way.

It's weird to tie your little extra money to your health insurance plan.

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

#427

Post by emushack »

tekla wrote: post #264
emushack wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I'm at a loss for words with this comment. So, in case you aren't from America, you might not know this: the food that is the cheapest also happens to be the food that is the least nutritious. Americans who are poor cannot afford fresh vegetables, fruit, meats and gym memberships. They can afford cheetos. It is quite the spurious correlation to say that obesity causes hunger. Just wow.

This completely false talking point is a disease. "Normal" foods like rice and beans are dramatically cheaper than "junk" food.

You know, you make such a good point here. The easiest solve for this is for the fat poor people to simply eat rice & beans. That will surely fix both problems.

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

#428

Post by prasadjoglekar »

Epa095 wrote: post #236
gruez wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And it really is as simple as that. It really isn't, because your "simple" comparison is bunk. For one, it's measuring stock vs flow. Stock prices measure stock, eg. the size of a piggy bank. Salaries measure flow, eg. your annual salary. Directly comparing the two results is meaningless. It's easy to demonstrate this with the piggy bank example. If your salary was 50k/year, you saved 5k/year, then your piggy bank w…

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…

This is the definition of an asset bubble in my books. In 2007 +/-, this is exactly what happened with housing prices. People would buy an asset and watch it appreciate doing nothing.

Why go to your forklift operator job at Home Depot if you can make $50K per year in asset appreciation by sitting and doing nothing?

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

#429

Post by whateveracct »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #426
whateveracct wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem nuts to me? I have a good emergency fund and a stable job and no big debts (cuz I'm good with money generally), so I can choose to use my health insurance to make a little more money. That's only fair given all the pre-work I did to set it up for myself.

Of course it's fair, my criticism isn't with your outcome but with designing an insurance plan to work this way. It's weird to tie your little extra money to your health insurance plan.

That's why it's not the only option. It's a benefit not a restriction. The powers that be saw an opportunity for insurers to cover less and insurees to leverage that into a different benefit. It's all just about shifting risk around and taking a little off the top.

It's a nice incremental addition to the existing system. Way more feasible than changing the system.

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

#430

Post by prasadjoglekar »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #265
kccqzy wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I have good health insurance I think your example illustrates how low people's expectation can be when it comes to calling health insurance "good" in the U.S. If I were asked to pay $3400 for urgent care or $250 for an ophthalmologist I would not consider the health insurance "good" for its intended purpose of insuring against medical expenses. (It might be good for other purposes like enabling you to invest wi…

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

Au contraire, that is much closer to the definition of insurance. We don't want people to get bankrupt with an unforseen medical issue like cancer. Insurance should cover that.

Routine care, including shit that's a little unlucky should be paid for out of pocket.

In the US, health care and health insurance have become synonymous such that all the good bits of insurance are out the door and all the bad ones have stayed. And polluted the true cost of getting simple, routine care.

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