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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

#491

Post by beezle »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #355
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…

Lazy Americans conflate anecdotes with reality. Make sure to hit the tropes though. The poor person with a Starbucks cup. The 'leased BMW bros are financial idiots'. The iPhone you have no idea where the person got (my son get's them as a christmas gift from his auntie). The cable bill (who under 50 has cable TV? What year is this post from?). At best old boy discovered that human beings make inconsistent financial d…

I hope you realize that the people that are feeling "stressed" are not just the ones making minimum wage but also those making considerably more yet, somehow not managing to make ends meet.

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

#492

Post by emushack »

tekla wrote: post #267
emushack wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! And they could sell their refrigerators too! They use way too much electricity.

Why would they do that? Refrigerators are incredibly efficient and cheap to run and are a modern miracle of extending food shelf life/

Because "POOR PEOPLE" have so much stuff! Why do they have so much stuff if they're poor!

https://youtu.be/Al5E3KbIfeo?t=24

I mean they should really be more frugal. Having a refrigerator is clearly a ridiculous luxury.

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

#493

Post by whateveracct »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #449
whateveracct wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the additional benefit is a tax benefit, also known as "all the other taxpayers subsidize this behavior"

They're (slightly) subsidizing the fact that I am covering more of my medical expenses out of pocket. Remember it's only tax free if I eventually spend it on health care.

Feels like the equivalent of other things we give tax benefits for. Various things for your and your dependents' well being.

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

#494

Post by beezle »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #386
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lazy Americans conflate anecdotes with reality. Make sure to hit the tropes though. The poor person with a Starbucks cup. The 'leased BMW bros are financial idiots'. The iPhone you have no idea where the person got (my son get's them as a christmas gift from his auntie). The cable bill (who under 50 has cable TV? What year is this post from?). At best old boy discovered that human beings make inconsistent financial d…

No you see, the poors are bad people and deserve to be poor. OP identified say $2000 in annual luxuries. If they lived a completely ascetic lifestyle free of wants, that would put them 0.4% closer to buying that $500k house on their $40k annual salary.

Even if it is just 2K (I think closer to 3), that is 5% of their $40K that could go towards food, healthcare and rent (or mortgage).

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

#495

Post by nazgulnarsil »

US has tensions (lack of broad social agreement) in its regard for several subjects, so those areas absorb infinite money as the incoherent regulations and rent seeking around those black holes festers. Housing, Medicine, Education, Justice/Policing/Prison system. Denial of reality is always expensive. If you ask the median voter questions about any of these areas it is certain that there will be many basic misunderstandings about them.

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

#496

Post by [deleted] »

jrs235 wrote: post #479
delichon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and most of it is taken/given to the owner of the capital, not the provider of labour. I predict that AI will amplify this trend, because it lowers the demand for routine human labor and raises the return on the agentic (e.g. founder) labor that leverages routine labor.

It's going to get dicey when millions are no longer needed for labor or to consume goods (keep the economic engine going). Oh and amoral robots can do the dirty work ...

[deleted]

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

#497

Post by conductr »

surfaceofthesun wrote: post #446
diet_jerome wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The root problem that causes high prices of food/housing/healthcare is the lack of supply for food/housing/healthcare. The root problem that causes low supply of food/housing/healthcare is government regulation. There is enormous market incentive to provide more food/housing/healthcare, increase supply, and decrease prices. However, governments have made it difficult or impossible for the market to provid…

You can't discount Baumol's cost disease. While it's true that government regulation is some part of it, like real declines in home building productivity in the previous decade or two, that certainly is not the root of the problem. Beyond limits to theoretical growth in productivity for these areas, there absolutely are perverse incentives in all of those industries. For example, 40% of corn in the US goes towards Ev…

I don't think building homes is really prohibitive due to regulations. I know it varies a lot by region of course. But I'm in an area that isn't really effected by earthquakes and has no frost line/need for basement/etc. I've built a few houses as a GC. It's land more than anything that's gone up in the past ~15 years since I first started in it. That's purely a market force. Second is skilled labor, even unskilled labor honestly. There's just a massive shortage of people doing manual labor/sweaty work, and I typically have access to a major pool of immigrants as we border Mexico. In terms of materials, there's some regulated things we have to do more of now, like insulation and other energy efficiency things but it's rather small in the scope of things. I currently own a 1950s built mid-century modern that was built in a time of low regs here. If I were to build it exactly as it is (to past codes) and simultaneously build it again (to current codes), the current code version would only be about 10% more. Likewise, if I demolished it and just sold the land, I'd still get about 90-100% of what it's market rate is right now. That market rate has ~quadrupled in the 15 years I've owned that house and to reiterate, the home itself is nearly worthless. I'm not in a fastly gentrifying area either. I'd say it's affluent but it always has been since I owned it, it's become more common to just knock down the original homes and build new.

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

#498

Post by jrmg »

ch4s3 wrote: post #220
jrmg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m no lover of the US healthcare system - other countries get better outcomes for less than is spent by the US government - and basically all their costs are borne by the government, unlike in the US. But: you have to be careful with large numbers. There are 0.3 billion people in the USA. United Healthcare says they cover 51 million. That $20 billion is $392 per insured person - a lot, sure, but hardly a large fract…

> 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…

> 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.

Well, yes, all costs ‘borne by the government’ are in fact borne by people paying taxes - or government borrowing.

[You could follow the chain even further and say that, of course, the cost of those taxes, borne by people, is people’s income, borne by their employers (or investments) but that obviously gets pointless and ludicrous pretty fast because the chain never ends…]

Anyway, that’s not my point - the point is that the US government, in per capita terms, spends more (public money collected in taxes or borrowing) on healthcare than governments of countries where (almost) all healthcare spending comes from the government (public money collected in taxes or borrowing). Private spending is in addition to this.

Again, spending by the US government is more than spending by other countries governments, even though the US supposedly has a private insurance based system (that also costs a huge amount in addition to government spending!)

I looked up a source…

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-costs-how-the-us-...

…and it turns out I’m slightly wrong - US government healthcare spending per capita is beaten by the governments of Norway, Luxembourg, and perhaps the Netherlands. But even they spend vastly less than the US if private spending is also considered.

The US system is unarguably hugely more expensive - less efficient - than the systems of the entire rest of the developed world, for worse health outcomes.

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

#499

Post by ndileas »

boogieknite wrote: post #330
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…

this is something i strongly desire for people close to me to learn i dont think it sticks if i preach at them but think it would if i somehow engineered a way for them to "find out for themselves" are there approachable resources (not Dave Ramsey, please) to make this stick?

I think this is something that's very difficult to learn. It's a set of attitudes more than anything, and it's very countercultural (and not in a cool way).

Mr money mustache isn't my favorite for various reasons, but he's pretty good at evangelizing the diy/fire sprit. Just take it with a grain of salt.

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

#500

Post by insane_dreamer »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #4

Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix (or any other grocery store), I get like 2-3 bags for $60... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Although I'm not really sure how their prices are so low. If someone could answer, that would be awesome!

I don't care if it saves me money, I'm not giving my hard earned cash to Walmart/Kroger/Albertsons/OtherMegaCorp. Not to mention that what they sell at Walmart is mostly unhealthy garbage that I would be a negligent parent if I fed that to my family.

I do make an exception for Costco because from everything I've read they're a pretty standout company as far as treating their employees go, and they curate well. We get some stuff there.

But mostly we shop at small(er) local grocery stores when possible, especially for things like meat, eggs, milk, all of which we can get local (better quality and why ship stuff like that around the world; luckily we're in the PNW). And of course that includes local Asian stores for rice, fresh fish, etc.

We don't buy "fancy" food (no wagyu steaks and the like; we eat a lot of legumes) but we do try to get the healthiest local option when possible (not fanatically so, we're not on Portlandia), and we could probably cut our monthly food bill by at least 30% if we bought the cheapest food at Walmart/Safeway.

So we cut back spending in other ways - rarely eat/drink out, entertainment, etc.

I'm sure we could do better. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it really costs in both time and money to eat healthy. We're lucky that we can, but it's also a matter of what we prioritize in our spending.

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