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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

#501

Post by potato3732842 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #359
potato3732842 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these "doubled since 2015/2019/20whatever" stats tie back to a dirty word that starts win In and ends with "flation" And, as everyone who wasn't lying for various reasons predicted and anyone can see by looking at prior comparable events in history can tell you, wages are one of the last things to go up.

Bro, the CEOs said on conference calls it wasn't about inflation and bragged about their profits. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/27/inflation-c... https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/big-profits-in-smal...

Bro, they have to. If they said they were making double because dollars worth have stonk no go up.

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

#502

Post by gopher_space »

carlob wrote: post #453
bluecalm wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, we…

> because typically when one gets to 1914 levels of inequality, well… we know what happens.

When it comes to resource sequestration this is a fundamental law of nature. There's no safety in a world where random people on the street see your death as a biological imperative.

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

#503

Post by kccqzy »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #351
whateveracct wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is when you take into account the tax advantages of an HSA. If you're like me and can shake off a few grand medical expense out of pocket, suddenly it's the best plan. I have a HDHP and paid less than $10k all year for my family's medical expenses and we had a freaking baby lol.

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?

Exactly. I also think conflating health insurance and investment is a terrible idea. It should just be a simple credit system for accumulating unused deductible.

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

#504

Post by [deleted] »

Ntrails wrote: post #250
username332211 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the 8th of August 2018, the FTSE 350 closed at 4320. The current level is 4980 giving us a 7-year rate of return of around 15%. I assume the United Kingdom of Great Britain must be a paradise for the workers, right?

> I assume the United Kingdom of Great Britain must be a paradise for the workers, right? As a proud citizen and indeed worker of ol' Blighty I assure you it's a paradise of unequalled benevolence. Every worker a member of the board.

[deleted]

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

#505

Post by rconti »

I'm surprised that the cost of groceries is a bigger source of stress for most people than the cost of housing. I guess, generally, it's weird to break these things into categories because money is fungible, but food vs housing is the one that stood out to me.

Also: Of course people under financial stress rely on credit more! Of course younger people use newer sources of credit that older people are less familiar with!

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

#507

Post by krapp »

rconti wrote: post #505

I'm surprised that the cost of groceries is a bigger source of stress for most people than the cost of housing. I guess, generally, it's weird to break these things into categories because money is fungible, but food vs housing is the one that stood out to me. Also: Of course people under financial stress rely on credit more! Of course younger people use newer sources of credit that older people are less familiar wit…

>I'm surprised that the cost of groceries is a bigger source of stress for most people than the cost of housing

Most people pay for groceries more often than they pay rent, and the cost of food rises more quickly than rent.

Also, you can survive being homeless, but no one survives being foodless.

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

#508

Post by Epa095 »

csomar wrote: post #235
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. As society we have tremendously increased productivity, and most of it is taken/given to the owner of the capital, not the provider of labour. You know that the increase in price could be simply... ehm.. inflation. So no productivity increase out there.

Inflation is important yes, but it hits the stocks and salaries the same. So the ratio between them are the same, and the moral of the story, that most of the wealth goes to the owners, remains.

But yeah, how amazing the productivity increase actually is is a bit more complicated.

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

#509

Post by Epa095 »

hasnd wrote: post #241
Epa095 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could, at least temporarily. But there is no reason to belive it won't stabilise again. Increased demand without increased production will increase prices. But then producers will follow, and production will increase, and prices will stabilise. Increased tax on the rich and distributing it to poor moves a tiny bit of the combined 'voting power' we have over production as consumers to the poor, so there will be sli…

If they could produce more they already would. The only way of fixing this is decreasing demand by reducing the population numbers.

Why would they produce more if they could? It must meet the demand at the current price point. More money goes to poor people, more demand for food at the current price. That will increase the price, which will increase production. Short term the price might go up a lot, but then new production will come online, and the prices will fall back to today+delta.

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

#510

Post by Epa095 »

conductr wrote: post #208
Epa095 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could, at least temporarily. But there is no reason to belive it won't stabilise again. Increased demand without increased production will increase prices. But then producers will follow, and production will increase, and prices will stabilise. Increased tax on the rich and distributing it to poor moves a tiny bit of the combined 'voting power' we have over production as consumers to the poor, so there will be sli…

Stabilizing means we’ve done this whole thing for nothing.

No, because more poor people get to eat, which is a good thing.
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