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>anyone who has visited an electronics store Great, now do rent. Healthcare. Education. But hey at least we have iPhones with 73 cameras and cutting-edge CPUs

>anyone who has visited an electronics store Great, now do rent. Healthcare. Education. But hey at least we have iPhones with 73 cameras and cutting-edge CPUs which we use to browse instagram.

nneonneo 5y ago
Funny, access to healthcare and education don’t seem to be big deals in most of the developed world. I wonder why the US needs to be an exception? I don’t think the answer is financialization and globalization, but rather the aggressive privatization of healthcare and education. That seems like it’d be a problem whether or not the US was economically connected to the rest of the world.
ako 5y ago
Maybe it's the other way around: rent, healthcare, education haven't benefitted as much from globalization as electronics. Rent is based on local supply, not cheap china factories churning out cheap housing. Same for healthcare, mostly limited by local wages. Same for education, mostly limited by local wages. Image no globalization for electronics as well, it'd be as unafordable as the other 3 today.
Barrin92 5y ago
The funny thing is you've picked three sectors that aren't even exposed to globalization! People don't compete globally for American homes or healthcare (and wealthy foreigners actually subsidize schools). The rise in cost is a result of cost disease. Americans now live in houses that are 150% larger than in 1980, with fewer people living in each home. And overall many cities are not building enough of them. Your logic is exactly the wrong way around. If Americans could consume global education or healthcare it'd be much cheaper, the same way everything else has gotten cheaper. Let Asian construction firms actually built some homes in California instead of stopping everyone from doing that and you'd be surprised how affordable your housing is going to be. Right now in the US you can't even buy health insurance across state lines. not only is that not a global market, it's not even a national market! The three sectors uniquely shielded from global as well as local competition are the ones that have exploded in cost. That is a lot of things, but surely not an argument against more open markets.

>anyone who has visited an electronics store Great, now do rent. Healthcare. Education. But hey at least we have iPhones with 73 cameras and cutting-edge CPUs which we use to browse instagram.

nneonneo 5y ago

Funny, access to healthcare and education don’t seem to be big deals in most of the developed world. I wonder why the US needs to be an exception? I don’t think the answer is financialization and globalization, but rather the aggressive privatization of healthcare and education. That seems like it’d be a problem whether or not the US was economically connected to the rest of the world.

ako 5y ago

Maybe it's the other way around: rent, healthcare, education haven't benefitted as much from globalization as electronics. Rent is based on local supply, not cheap china factories churning out cheap housing. Same for healthcare, mostly limited by local wages. Same for education, mostly limited by local wages. Image no globalization for electronics as well, it'd be as unafordable as the other 3 today.

Barrin92 5y ago

The funny thing is you've picked three sectors that aren't even exposed to globalization! People don't compete globally for American homes or healthcare (and wealthy foreigners actually subsidize schools). The rise in cost is a result of cost disease. Americans now live in houses that are 150% larger than in 1980, with fewer people living in each home. And overall many cities are not building enough of them. Your logic is exactly the wrong way around. If Americans could consume global education or healthcare it'd be much cheaper, the same way everything else has gotten cheaper. Let Asian construction firms actually built some homes in California instead of stopping everyone from doing that and you'd be surprised how affordable your housing is going to be. Right now in the US you can't even buy health insurance across state lines. not only is that not a global market, it's not even a national market! The three sectors uniquely shielded from global as well as local competition are the ones that have exploded in cost. That is a lot of things, but surely not an argument against more open markets.