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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

#511

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

beezle wrote: post #494
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

So implicit in this is that the poor should have no luxuries at all. Water + a crust of bread. When not working for their betters, can sit in the darkness inside their hovels so as to not be seen.

The median USA income is $40k. Most (not all) people are fully capable of living within their means. They can balance housing+food+medical and even some non essential luxuries. However, they have little slack. A shock to the system (loss of job, car failure, medical problem, or 20% increase in consumer goods within a few months) can force them to make tough choices. Which is where we are now. Basics have gone up, so whatever slack that might have existed has been cut short and people are stressed about how to adapt.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”

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

#512

Post by dang »

bluecalm wrote: post #434
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…

[flagged]

Please edit out swipes and name-calling from your posts to HN, as the site guidelines request: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Edit: You did it elsewhere in this thread too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44840174. That's not cool, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

Fortunately, your recent comment history looks fairly free of this kind of thing (that's good), so it should be easy to fix.

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

#513

Post by dang »

Epa095 wrote: post #441
bluecalm wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Please edit out swipes and name-calling from your posts to HN, as the site guidelines request: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I realize you didn't start it, but we need commenters here to follow the rules regardless of what others are doing. (Otherwise we end up in a downward spiral: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...)

Edit: You did it elsewhere in this thread too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44842213. That's not cool, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

Fortunately, your recent comment history looks mostly free of this kind of thing (that's good), so it should be easy to fix.

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

#514

Post by mathiaspoint »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #364
SoftTalker wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your annual physical ... should not be covered. This is a predictable, moderate expense. You can plan and save for it, or even skip it. An annual physical is of debatable value for a young, healthy person. Insurance is for unpredictable, financially devastating expenses that you cannot avoid. If predictable stuff like annual physicals is covered, the "insurance" is just an inefficient savings account.

I acknowledge I'm using anecdata and deliberately telling a story to pull at your emotions, but my cousin died suddenly at 45 of a heart attack, having been skiing and surfing just weeks prior, IE: seemingly great health. But, because he had been a (successful!) self-employed person but was in a bit of a bad time (wife cheated, divorce, sudden economic shift...) he didn't have health insurance so put off going to the…

He didn't say it's not a big deal, he said checkups are relatively predictable. Those mean very different things. Moving the predictable costs behind insurance and administration artificially inflates it because there's less pressure on providers to compete.

If people weren't doing dumb things with insurance to try and socialize healthcare costs there's a good chance your friend would have been able to afford going to the doctor whether or not he was insured.

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

#515

Post by standardUser »

beezle wrote: post #487
standardUser wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was head of an HOA for about 10 years This fully explains the rest of your screed against the working class.

When I started as head of the HOA, I was out of work and not exactly cup runeth over with money myself as it was 2009 so please, take your snark elsewhere.

The point being that you are a stickler for rules and, like most sticklers, lack the capacity to understand the life situations of people unlike you. Hence the tone-deaf, factless, compassionless screed.

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

#516

Post by mentalpiracy »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #362
hansvm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costco is an interesting one to me. They're widely touted as being cheaper, but most foods there have some sort of upscaling factor -- "organic", some sort of regional variation like "sockeye" salmon instead of farmed atlantic, a few extra steps of processing, etc. Rice, pasta, and fruit are all usually more expensive than other alternatives, even at bigco grocery competitors. You have to be a little careful if that'…

Costco used to be cheaper bc of the bulk factor, but nowadays I think of it as a good curator. The products are usually good quality. Even if more expensive

A good example of this is their meat department, specifically beef as an example. You will generally find that Costco is not any cheaper than your regular supermarket, but the product you’re getting is graded USDA Prime or better.

There was a great comment on Reddit from someone who worked in the meat department that highlighted this comparison with specific examples but alas I am unable to find it.

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

#517

Post by archagon »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #283
epistasis wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big numbers with no context come across as a way to misinform. Viewed in light of total healthcare spending of roughly $5T per year, eliminating insurer profits does not appear to be even a drop in the bucket. Our healthcare costs are certainly a policy choice, but eliminating profit does not fix the system, and many far more cost effective systems around the world are fully profit based. Edit: absolutely wild to see…

If maga will eat shit just so a liberal has to smell it than “communist” jacobin readers will take third world health care just to force MAGA to deal with it.

…what?

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

#518

Post by archagon »

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!

Why Fruits and Veggies Are So Crazy Cheap in Chinatown: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063

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

#519

Post by WalterBright »

grafmax wrote: post #366
WalterBright wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who have less flow and no stock can increase their savings less than those with stock and the same flow. If they have savings they can buy stock. Nobody is sentenced to have savings only. > with the ownership class accruing profit that they receive by virtue of ownership. Anyone can buy stock with less than $100 and thereby join the ownership class.

Workers savings doesn’t change the fundamental dynamic. Their savings are dwarfed by those of their bosses. So when stocks double, workers, even accounting for savings, benefit far less in absolute terms than owners. Assets under capitalism follow a Pareto distribution - a minority owns a majority of the wealth. And having $100 in savings doesn’t free someone from wage labor.

To get big money, you need to start your own successful business. But still, investing in stocks can make you quite comfortable.

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

#520

Post by WalterBright »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #483
WalterBright wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born into a lower middle class family with several siblings. My dad skirted bankruptcy. My first car literally came from a junkyard in pieces, bought with money I earned from my paper route. Hardly 0.1%. (I didn't know how bad things were for him until I went through his papers after he died.) I began investing with my first real job, with another crappy car I repaired with junkyard parts. A good friend of mine…

Setting aside everything else I'd normally say, I do respect that you make an earnest attempt to engage with almost anyone.

Thank you for the kinds words, I appreciate them.
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