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We have very low unemployment and wages are higher. But housing is way more expensive than it was in the 90s. Housing is the big problem. Health care and tuiti
by api 3y ago
We have very low unemployment and wages are higher. But housing is way more expensive than it was in the 90s. Housing is the big problem.
Health care and tuition are the other cost disease centers. People today are better off and richer when it comes to everything except housing, health care, and tuition. I’ve heard these called “the big three.”
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those three things are all areas where we simultaneously restrict supply and subsidize demand.
- pydry 3y agoi.e. the three most necessary things. if you weight inflation baskets by how discretionary the spending is i dont think wages are higher. theyre much lower. you cant live in an iphone but you can easily live without one.
- api 3y ago“Inflation in core needs, deflation in everything else, wage stagnation.” This has been called in-deflation or disinflation and has been the dominant paradigm since the turn of the century, at least in the US and much of the developed world. The terminal end state of the disinflationary economy is desperate people living check to check but carrying supercomputers with instant access to all knowledge and all media in their pockets. Wages have risen a bit lately (in real terms even after inflation) but not nearly enough to undo 20 years of the above pattern.
- School-Cotton 3y agoPost-secondary education is not even close to being more important than food, transportation, clean water, etc.
- pitaj 3y agoFood, water, and clothing are cheaper than ever. Healthcare and tuition are less fundamental needs. So that really only leaves shelter as the one "most necessary thing" that has increased in cost.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pydry 3y agoYou think a new pair of jeans from hot topic is more necessary than cancer surgery or an education huh? Interesting claim.
- Fricken 3y agoI don't personally shop at Hot Topic, however, being largely furless, clothing is essential for the perpetuation of the species in many climate regions. Cancer hasn't been able to stop us anywhere.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> Healthcare and tuition are less fundamental need Eye, people who are sick and uneducated are very employable, have good prospects in life > Food, water, and clothing are cheaper than eve yes and no, we prodyce loads of unhealthy food cheaply, you wont starve. Fresh produce costs, organic, ethicslly farmed stuff us really expensive. The latter is probavly a closer comparison to food as it was produced in good old days
- pitaj 3y agoI didn't say they were unimportant, I said they were less fundamental. Refer to the hierarchy of needs: health is higher on the pyramid than food, clothing, and shelter.
- WalterBright 3y agoMost necessary? People have lived for millennia without tuition and health care. Just think of the settlers that came over the Oregon Trail, not that long ago. Where was their tuition and health care?
- objectivetruth 3y ago[dead]
- gumballindie 3y ago> wages are higher. But housing is way more expensive But that means real wages are lower. > People today are better off and richer when it comes to everything except housing, health care, and tuition. Interesting spin to saying people are worse off and poorer but can afford leased iphones and cars that break often.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoEven the Fed has been guilty of this. > Reuters reports that New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley was heckled at a speech in Queens today when he suggested that the rising cost of food is offset by how cheap iPads are. (2011) https://news.yahoo.com/news/blogs/lookout/fed-official-heckled-t-eat-ipad-20110311-122230-439.html https://news.yahoo.com/news/blogs/lookout/fed-official-heckl... https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE72A4D5/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE72A4D5/
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoits even worse than it sounds: "Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful" - this is idiotic. Just because performance of phones improved 1000x does not mean I can buy a functioning phone for $ 0.1. Just because 5G is 100x faster than 2g, does not mean my mobile phone bill is now $0.1. And they turned off 2G. our inflation calculation is fucked.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago“Assume a spherical cow.”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 3y agoNo, it also means that if you cut costs in those three critical categories, you'll have a better life than people used to have before. Lots of us were able to cut costs in housing. And many of us were able to cut costs in healthcare through preventative care. Tuition is entirely optional. If you've got a mandatory need for a big house, have some pre-existing condition to maintain, and want to get a Harvard Divinity School degree then yeah, life's going to be much much worse. For my part, I'm very glad I was born now and not then. Life has been so much better.
- ethbr1 3y agoFor all three, it's a problem of demand exceeding supply, because supply is artificially constrained (and inefficiently allocated). 1. Housing. Increase supply of affordable housing. Which means upzoning existing land for denser redevelopment. Which means more public transit. (And outlaw the realtor / commission system for transactions) 2. Health care. Increase supply of GPs and allow mid-level providers more independence (within bounds) to take less complex work off their plates. (There's also the inefficiencies created by the ridiculous number of middle layers. To which, single payer) 3. Tuition. Make highly-automated online degrees the new base normal to increase scalability of the system. (And use the stick of government tuition assistance to bludgeon any university that disagrees or exceeds set administration cost caps)
- api 3y agoFor tuition I don’t think you even need the tech approach. Just cut university administrative and construction overhead. Both of those areas have bloated massively, fueled by lots of easy student loan money. Student aid and subsidized loans should require that the admin to teacher ratio not exceed a certain value. That would help a lot. For the others you nailed it. Housing is tough though, because the existing policy is a massive success for older homeowners who bought before the prices rose and property speculators.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> Just cut university administrative and construction overhead. Both of those areas have bloated massively, fueled by lots of easy student loan money. Hence the solution is cutting off the student loan money spigot. Everything else will automatically fall into place.
- bluGill 3y agoAutomatically, after 30 years of pain. There is no easy answer. I'm about the last person ever to pay full tuition while working, no loans or other help. In 30 years we can make that normal, but it will take that long to figure out how, and I pity any youngster stuck in the middle while we work on it.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoFor Americans without rich parents, tuition has gotten cheaper. Sure the base number has gone up, but that's to soak it to the rich and to foreigners. The availability of scholarships and bursaries is much higher than it was 40 years ago, reducing average costs significantly. For example, Harvard is free if your parents make less than $85,000 and not much more if their income is less than $150,000. Life as a college student is definitely more expensive than it was, but that's mostly because of housing. https://fortune.com/2023/10/04/college-tuition-isnt-getting-more-expensive-rising-tuition-student-debt-loans/ https://fortune.com/2023/10/04/college-tuition-isnt-getting-...
- codersfocus 3y agoTry not to include universities with 12 figure endowments as standard pricing.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoAverage pricing paid by Americans for all Universities is flat, according to the link.
- WalterBright 3y agoI.e. the government got heavily involved in all three. Contrast that with the software business, which is very free market. There is pretty much no government interference with it. And costs have trended to zero. Literally to zero!