4 ms·

What's driving rising business costs?

39 points by jnord 8mo ago

stanleykm 8mo ago
Our economy is an oroborous of middlemen all using tariffs and inflation as excuses to raise their prices
- kurthr 8mo ago
  The ammount of shrinkflation in the last year is just stunning. Sometimes they bother to make the bottle/box/can incrementally imperceptibly smaller. Sometimes they just put less in. I track macros so I'm always looking at weights, and they're generically down 20%, while prices are up.
cc-d 8mo ago
That's us actually. It's pretty much all busy work at this point.
burmask 8mo ago
Insurance
- bobthepanda 8mo ago
  It's worth noting that at least a lot of the (non-health) insurance rises are driven by the reinsurance market responding to ever higher dollar amounts of claims annually due to disasters.
  - alephnerd 8mo ago
    This underestimates the SUI premium hikes following the COVID layoffs. Most states charge businesses a risk premium when employees are terminated, and given that most states UI and Workers Compensation funds are now insolvent [0] they fight tooth and nail to increase premiums. [0] - https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/trustFundSolvReport2025.pdf https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/trustFundSolvReport2025...
anotherhue 8mo ago
State sponsored monopolies is my vote. It's a failure of government to have fewer than ten players (non-Trusting) in any industry.
- epistasis 8mo ago
  That makes sense for the "utilities" bucket, and to a small degree for the health insurance bucket, which are the biggest buckets linked. Utilities have had complete regulatory capture of most states' Public Utilities Commissions. It's blatant and obvious in places like Arizona that have open corruption in their elections and commission decisions. But in places like California it's far more hidden: the massive increase in cost of utilities is mostly from increased costs for the transmission and distribution grid, but CPUC has basically zero information for the public to understand why they keep on handing over more money to the big utilities. There definitely seems to be massive corruption but where is it and what is the actual mechanism? It's so well hidden and sophisticated that if there is corruption nobody understands what the F is going on. How do you replace a state-sponsored monopoly like a utility into something competitive? I don't know, when I learned econ 101 utilities were given as the example of a "natural" monopoly. But clearly that's not working out... maybe it just needs to be "state" rather than "state sponsored monopoly." The only other state sponsored monopoly we really have is the state itself. What does the public gain by allowing monopoly utilities that giving away the public's money to investors? The incentives are all off.
  - vkou 8mo ago
    The problem with the health insurance bucket is not the number of players, it's that you're buying a pig in a poke. Between ghost networks, death panels that deny you treatment, and the nature of deductibles, you have no fucking idea what you're buying, and whether or not you're getting ripped off.
alephnerd 8mo ago
[flagged]
- kurthr 8mo ago
  No accident. No move. No new vehicle. My car insurance went up 30%, in one year. Tried pricing around and it's not much better. Took an online "safety class" and got an 8% discount.
  - alephnerd 8mo ago
    Yep! Both private and public insurance funds are nickel and diming wherever possible to make up for losses during the COVID pandemic which went on for 3 years. Edit: can't reply > This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable It's not property insurance that's causing the issue as I as well as the article pointed out.
    - stego-tech 8mo ago
      This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable, we still refuse to let the government negotiate with or dictate rates, we still tie healthcare to employment, and we still let manufacturers sell top-tier/unrepairable vehicles while constantly discontinuing anything remotely affordable or repairable. The market isn’t going to correct itself now that we have enough data to know where to squeeze next, and how hard it can go. The only way to unwind this disaster is meaningful regulations and wholesale reforms.
      - nradov 8mo ago
        How much has the sea level actually risen? Our most expensive flood in terms of insurance losses was the Great Flood of 1993 which had nothing to do with sea levels.
  - 8mo ago
epistasis 8mo ago
We really need to switch to a National Health Service style of administration of health costs. Right now we have Medicare which makes unilateral cost determinations, and doctors and hospitals end up accepting below-cost reimbursement that because how could they turn away all the retired people, but they end up subsidizing these unilateral decisions with money from private insurance payors (namely everybody who's working). Medicare might not technically be a monopsony, but it acts like one, and all the rest of us working folks end up paying the gap that rounds out the rest of the costs. We have a few generations that have had easy lives, where they had easy access to homes, to higher education, to wealth building, and decided to cut off access to the same as soon as they got it, while still living off the labor of current working people that are not even allowed to build new apartments next to these wealthy people while they pay for all their health care. The economy is a massive multiple player rpg with a point system economy that's fixed by federal and state laws, and it's been rigged both at the health care level and at every level to extract wealth for those that had it easy in the past.
- alephnerd 8mo ago
  Potentially. The issue is how do you manage solvency. State Medicaid and Workers Compensation funds were already insolvent before the 2024 election, and as such most states lack the fiscal overhead needed to fully support a fully funded single payer program today. It would end up the same way the NHS has in the UK. Vast swathes of the US are deeply fiscally troubled due to the impact of the COVID pandemic, and if that is not solved then we cannot even start to contemplate single payer. This should not be used to justify austerity which is not the answer and does more harm than good, but points out that a reckoning is needed. From my personal experience dealing with the current crop of state and local politicos, it's looking dicey in portions of the US. Edit: can't reply > Gong single payer is a drastic drop in the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. There’s no fiscal advantage to the current system whatsoever Yes. But you need capital to build an insurance fund. And a large portion of that is going to service existing liabilities.
  - Retric 8mo ago
    Going single payer is a drastic drop in the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. There’s no fiscal advantage to the current system whatsoever. The core issue is it suddenly destroys a large number of companies and removes millions of unnecessary jobs from the economy. That’s a great deal of wealth and a great number of voters who don’t want you to save hundreds per month by making them redundant.
mcs5280 8mo ago
Unhinged greed
collabs 8mo ago
Let us not worry about "the whole economy". Yes, we know there is massive Executive overreach with tariffs and immigration. Yes, we know Congress is deadlocked to the point of being worse than useless. Yes, the SCOTUS also has its own problems with a majority of the public no longer having any faith in the judiciary. Lets start with things the FEDeral Reserve can fix, right here, right now. Narrow banking now. This is something the Federal Reserve can actually fix. Give every single US person (I am not a lawyer and I can't define what counts as a US person) a fee-free bank account with the Federal Reserve. Cut out the middle men of commercial banks. I think that alone will go a long way to drive down business costs.
- testing22321 8mo ago
  And in the process make every member of congress less more rich tomorrow. Never, ever going to happen.
  - collabs 8mo ago
    Right, also turns out the regional banks of the FED are de facto owned by commercial banks. Why would they vote against their own interest if they can get money from the Federal Reserve at about three percent interest and then turn around and lend it at six percent?
- burntpineapple 8mo ago
  fee free banking + KYC + free instant transacting = ooo eee modern banking infra
  - collabs 8mo ago
    If we had a functioning Federal Government, we need this like yesterday. I know the EU and the China Mainland are showing ridiculous incompetence today but they won't be incompetent forever. Digital Euro and Digital RMB are coming, perhaps as soon as within a decade. We are essentially playing catch up with the US Dollar at this point. Fed Now is a good start but it really is not enough. What you said, fee free banking + KYC + free instant transacting is something we definitely need, even if it hurts JP Morgan Chase a little bit.
underlipton 8mo ago
Financialization and the diffusion, across the economy, of the risk of dozens of major bad-bet nuclear detonations in the securities and commodities markets. The bets were never closed - not really - because the losses would have lead to immediate collapse. You're still paying for 2008 (and earlier debacles, and later ones, too). The economic output of the next few decades is already spoken for. This hits TFA's culprits, rising insurance and utilities costs. They're just the symptoms, not the source.
h4kunamata 8mo ago
Enshitification and the weird desire to please modern audience, are the only reasons. Until the early 2000s, things were built to last, solid build, simple. Now, even fridge has AI in it like what the actual f!!! Cars are tablets on wheels, Tesla and others, rather than just being cars. And this weird desire to please modern audience costing movies, products, videos games billions of dollars, closing studios thousands of jobs lost unable to make the investment back as consequences and yet, companies seem to do not read the room.

39 points by jnord 8mo ago

stanleykm 8mo ago

Our economy is an oroborous of middlemen all using tariffs and inflation as excuses to raise their prices

kurthr 8mo ago
The ammount of shrinkflation in the last year is just stunning. Sometimes they bother to make the bottle/box/can incrementally imperceptibly smaller. Sometimes they just put less in. I track macros so I'm always looking at weights, and they're generically down 20%, while prices are up.

cc-d 8mo ago

That's us actually. It's pretty much all busy work at this point.

burmask 8mo ago

Insurance

bobthepanda 8mo ago
It's worth noting that at least a lot of the (non-health) insurance rises are driven by the reinsurance market responding to ever higher dollar amounts of claims annually due to disasters.
- alephnerd 8mo ago
  This underestimates the SUI premium hikes following the COVID layoffs. Most states charge businesses a risk premium when employees are terminated, and given that most states UI and Workers Compensation funds are now insolvent [0] they fight tooth and nail to increase premiums. [0] - https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/trustFundSolvReport2025.pdf https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/trustFundSolvReport2025...

anotherhue 8mo ago

State sponsored monopolies is my vote. It's a failure of government to have fewer than ten players (non-Trusting) in any industry.

epistasis 8mo ago
That makes sense for the "utilities" bucket, and to a small degree for the health insurance bucket, which are the biggest buckets linked. Utilities have had complete regulatory capture of most states' Public Utilities Commissions. It's blatant and obvious in places like Arizona that have open corruption in their elections and commission decisions. But in places like California it's far more hidden: the massive increase in cost of utilities is mostly from increased costs for the transmission and distribution grid, but CPUC has basically zero information for the public to understand why they keep on handing over more money to the big utilities. There definitely seems to be massive corruption but where is it and what is the actual mechanism? It's so well hidden and sophisticated that if there is corruption nobody understands what the F is going on. How do you replace a state-sponsored monopoly like a utility into something competitive? I don't know, when I learned econ 101 utilities were given as the example of a "natural" monopoly. But clearly that's not working out... maybe it just needs to be "state" rather than "state sponsored monopoly." The only other state sponsored monopoly we really have is the state itself. What does the public gain by allowing monopoly utilities that giving away the public's money to investors? The incentives are all off.
- vkou 8mo ago
  The problem with the health insurance bucket is not the number of players, it's that you're buying a pig in a poke. Between ghost networks, death panels that deny you treatment, and the nature of deductibles, you have no fucking idea what you're buying, and whether or not you're getting ripped off.

alephnerd 8mo ago

[flagged]

kurthr 8mo ago
No accident. No move. No new vehicle. My car insurance went up 30%, in one year. Tried pricing around and it's not much better. Took an online "safety class" and got an 8% discount.
- alephnerd 8mo ago
  Yep! Both private and public insurance funds are nickel and diming wherever possible to make up for losses during the COVID pandemic which went on for 3 years. Edit: can't reply > This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable It's not property insurance that's causing the issue as I as well as the article pointed out.
  - stego-tech 8mo ago
    This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable, we still refuse to let the government negotiate with or dictate rates, we still tie healthcare to employment, and we still let manufacturers sell top-tier/unrepairable vehicles while constantly discontinuing anything remotely affordable or repairable. The market isn’t going to correct itself now that we have enough data to know where to squeeze next, and how hard it can go. The only way to unwind this disaster is meaningful regulations and wholesale reforms.
    - nradov 8mo ago
      How much has the sea level actually risen? Our most expensive flood in terms of insurance losses was the Great Flood of 1993 which had nothing to do with sea levels.
- 8mo ago

epistasis 8mo ago

We really need to switch to a National Health Service style of administration of health costs. Right now we have Medicare which makes unilateral cost determinations, and doctors and hospitals end up accepting below-cost reimbursement that because how could they turn away all the retired people, but they end up subsidizing these unilateral decisions with money from private insurance payors (namely everybody who's working). Medicare might not technically be a monopsony, but it acts like one, and all the rest of us working folks end up paying the gap that rounds out the rest of the costs. We have a few generations that have had easy lives, where they had easy access to homes, to higher education, to wealth building, and decided to cut off access to the same as soon as they got it, while still living off the labor of current working people that are not even allowed to build new apartments next to these wealthy people while they pay for all their health care. The economy is a massive multiple player rpg with a point system economy that's fixed by federal and state laws, and it's been rigged both at the health care level and at every level to extract wealth for those that had it easy in the past.

alephnerd 8mo ago
Potentially. The issue is how do you manage solvency. State Medicaid and Workers Compensation funds were already insolvent before the 2024 election, and as such most states lack the fiscal overhead needed to fully support a fully funded single payer program today. It would end up the same way the NHS has in the UK. Vast swathes of the US are deeply fiscally troubled due to the impact of the COVID pandemic, and if that is not solved then we cannot even start to contemplate single payer. This should not be used to justify austerity which is not the answer and does more harm than good, but points out that a reckoning is needed. From my personal experience dealing with the current crop of state and local politicos, it's looking dicey in portions of the US. Edit: can't reply > Gong single payer is a drastic drop in the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. There’s no fiscal advantage to the current system whatsoever Yes. But you need capital to build an insurance fund. And a large portion of that is going to service existing liabilities.
- Retric 8mo ago
  Going single payer is a drastic drop in the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. There’s no fiscal advantage to the current system whatsoever. The core issue is it suddenly destroys a large number of companies and removes millions of unnecessary jobs from the economy. That’s a great deal of wealth and a great number of voters who don’t want you to save hundreds per month by making them redundant.

mcs5280 8mo ago

Unhinged greed

collabs 8mo ago

Let us not worry about "the whole economy". Yes, we know there is massive Executive overreach with tariffs and immigration. Yes, we know Congress is deadlocked to the point of being worse than useless. Yes, the SCOTUS also has its own problems with a majority of the public no longer having any faith in the judiciary. Lets start with things the FEDeral Reserve can fix, right here, right now. Narrow banking now. This is something the Federal Reserve can actually fix. Give every single US person (I am not a lawyer and I can't define what counts as a US person) a fee-free bank account with the Federal Reserve. Cut out the middle men of commercial banks. I think that alone will go a long way to drive down business costs.

testing22321 8mo ago
And in the process make every member of congress less more rich tomorrow. Never, ever going to happen.
- collabs 8mo ago
  Right, also turns out the regional banks of the FED are de facto owned by commercial banks. Why would they vote against their own interest if they can get money from the Federal Reserve at about three percent interest and then turn around and lend it at six percent?
burntpineapple 8mo ago
fee free banking + KYC + free instant transacting = ooo eee modern banking infra
- collabs 8mo ago
  If we had a functioning Federal Government, we need this like yesterday. I know the EU and the China Mainland are showing ridiculous incompetence today but they won't be incompetent forever. Digital Euro and Digital RMB are coming, perhaps as soon as within a decade. We are essentially playing catch up with the US Dollar at this point. Fed Now is a good start but it really is not enough. What you said, fee free banking + KYC + free instant transacting is something we definitely need, even if it hurts JP Morgan Chase a little bit.

underlipton 8mo ago

Financialization and the diffusion, across the economy, of the risk of dozens of major bad-bet nuclear detonations in the securities and commodities markets. The bets were never closed - not really - because the losses would have lead to immediate collapse. You're still paying for 2008 (and earlier debacles, and later ones, too). The economic output of the next few decades is already spoken for. This hits TFA's culprits, rising insurance and utilities costs. They're just the symptoms, not the source.

h4kunamata 8mo ago

Enshitification and the weird desire to please modern audience, are the only reasons. Until the early 2000s, things were built to last, solid build, simple. Now, even fridge has AI in it like what the actual f!!! Cars are tablets on wheels, Tesla and others, rather than just being cars. And this weird desire to please modern audience costing movies, products, videos games billions of dollars, closing studios thousands of jobs lost unable to make the investment back as consequences and yet, companies seem to do not read the room.