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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

#451

Post by bluecalm »

the_real_cher wrote: post #436
bluecalm wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The math in the statement is correct in the short term. If the risk-free rate is around 3% and the equity risk premium is about 4%, the expected return on stocks would be roughly 7% a year, which would double values in about 10–11 years using the Rule of 72. That doubling could occur for a time even without productivity growth, as companies can boost earnings through pricing power, cost-cutting, or financial engineer…

My point was that is that even without any economic growth stock indexes grow quickly because they are cumulative (that is include profits of companies by either dividend paid or stock buybacks). Some indexes are not fully cumulative but they are still close enough because companies often prefer buybacks to dividends these days (for good reasons).

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

#452

Post by Swizec »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #326
Swizec wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need to know about America’s health system is this graph comparing average cost to life expectancy of OECD countries. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health... USA has an order of magnitude higher cost but middling life expectancy comparable to Argentina, Poland, Peru, Colombia etc.

But one can very easily argue that American health outcomes are significantly driven by the average number of steps they take per day relative to other geographic peers. Astonishingly few Americans are getting more than 15 minutes of light aerobic exercise in per day. And that exercise is largely being spent moving between seats.

The actually sad part is that when you split data by race, white American health outcomes are pretty great and in some areas significantly ahead of other countries (if you have a rare cancer, America is the place to be) whereas not-white American health outcomes are ... not great.

> AIAN (67.9 years) and Black (72.8 years) people had a shorter life expectancy compared to White people (77.5 years) as of 2022, and AIAN, Hispanic, and Black people experienced larger declines in life expectancy than White people between 2019 and 2022

https://www.kff.org/key-data-on-health-and-health-care-by-ra...

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

#453

Post by carlob »

bluecalm wrote: post #442
FabHK wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Doubling in 7 years means around 10% growth per year. So, if someone took out 10% of their stock nest-egg per year, it wouldn't have grown at all. Having said that, GP does illustrate Picketty's point in Capital in the Twenty-First Century that r>g, that is return on capital is greater than economic growth, and Picketty did theorise that this would inevitably lead to concentration of wealth (unless war or…

I am sure the point must be more sophisticated as even with 0% growth there would still be significant return on capital (risk free rate + acceptable risk premium). That is to say the world where return on capital is not greater than economic growth doesn't make any sense.

The point is not whether or not it makes sense. The point is that it is fairly natural for a capitalist system to have r>g and that causes concentration of wealth. If you look historically the increasing concentration of wealth only really gets reversed by wars or revolutions. So what Piketty is arguing for is a more gentle way of redistributing wealth, because typically when one gets to 1914 levels of inequality, well… we know what happens.

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

#454

Post by mantas »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #430
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 staye…

3k out-of-pocket for a random mishap could easily get many people bankrupt.

I did scratch an eyeball recently. The cost turned out to be €50 for drops which ain’t covered by single-payer insurance. 3k out of pocket would be pretty bad even naming nice salary. And could cause big issues to a massive portion of people.

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

#455

Post by lordnacho »

Well, I am a bit surprised. How could groceries be a bigger concern than housing/income/childcare?

Surely rent is the big ticket, you have to work to have an income, and you need childcare if you're going to work?

I mean of course you have to eat, but food is the one thing you can adjust more or less continuously in whatever increment you need. You can't just move house, you can't just change jobs, and you can't not have the kids taken care of.

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

#456

Post by prasadjoglekar »

tossandthrow wrote: post #448
prasadjoglekar wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 staye…

In that vain health insurance is never insurance. Getting a kid is not an accident for most modern people, and should never be seen as an event that could bankrupt anybody. Hence, deferring to the definition of insurance is futile. Then again - the US is the only country I know of that insists that health is something you insure.

You need to broaden your horizons then - look at the medical plans that are on offer in India. Or the travel medical insurance that every EU country requires you to carry. They are classic insurance.

Having a kid without complications should not cost $50K. It should be a few grand at the most. If the kid now needs NICU, then yes, that's what insurance is for.

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

#457

Post by Huppie »

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…

It's probably not that simple because at a cursory glance I see quite a few points in history where my country's main stock index was about 50% of its current valuation: January 1998, February 2006, January 2015, July 2016, April 2020.

Sure compared to the last time (2020) or before that (2016) it's a big difference, but compared to the first time we're pretty close to a 100% increase in median salary. Compared to the second time it's still close it 60%.

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

#458

Post by UncleMeat »

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.

Anybody can legally buy stock.

It is substantially more difficult to acquire a large amount of stock if you don't earn a lot of money, since there is naturally far less leftover after your expenses are paid.

And further, stock can be purchased with dividend payments. So the rich can afford an ever increasing piece of the pie even if they don't labor at all.

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

#459

Post by nradov »

ziofill wrote: post #310
Epa095 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

In most places, residential real estate prices are driven mainly by land values rather than construction quality. But if you want to live in Italy they're literally giving away free houses.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/19/travel/italian-village-ollola...

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

#460

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

ch4s3 wrote: post #343
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 es…

What I'm saying is that the better comparison metric would be (total tax load + total direct healthcare spending) per capita
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