Hacker News Reader

These countries are all showing syptoms of first-world economy disease; low-birth rate, government budget deficit, high healthcare expenditure, bureaucracy

There are two other major problems in parts of the U.S. and Europe (in particular) that're underrated: 1. insane land-use control laws that make it illegal to build reasonably price housing (see Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High for more: http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp...) and 2. transfer payments to older people that were originally conceived and executed when the number of workers to retirees was much different than it is now.

The first is important because it impedes family formation and innovation. The second is important because it makes not having children easier, because other people's children will be forced to support you through their contribution to transfer payment programs. Yet neither issue gets much play in the press.

A land value tax would help get land use right. (Because there would be less incentive for the NIMBYs to protest, and more incentive for the government to move to more efficient forms of land use.)

Land value tax would also allows us to untax labour and capital, thus reducing deadweight losses in the economy.

See http://masongaffney.org/blog/index.php/2012/08/the-hidden-ta...

There is plenty of unincorporated land in the us. You can't have it both ways. You want to live in an area that is the way it is because of housing association rules, and then not live by the rules. If you revoke the rules, your neighbors will leave. You may as well build in unincorporated land to begin with.

> If you revoke the rules, your neighbors will leave. You may as well build in unincorporated land to begin with.

Houston has no zoning regulations, and its one of the fastest growing metros in the US.

Houston has super neighborhoods many of which have deed restrictions which accomplish similar things. Houston is a happy a good way to go. As you can have a poor super neighborhood next to a rich one. But I still hear some people in the rich super neighborhood complaining about the deed restrictions, the only thing separating them from their neighbors across the super neighborhood line. They could have bought in the other super neighborhood, but they didn't want that either...

Not to mention, and here I am forced to curse: how much actual fucking food is there in a shop today?

Seriously, get rid of the sweets (<3) and sweet-like items from the store. What's left? It's usually about 1/4 of the store or less.

Food inflation in quality and quantity is a serious problem and it's damaging our health and wallets.

Relatedly; freddo frogs are becoming an extravagance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/18yx14/the...

At least British and Irish schoolchildren will have no trouble comprehending the idea of inflation in economics and accounting classes.

And don't think deflation hasn't been happening already in the U.S. The only difference is, unlike Japan, unscrupulous U.S. food companies have been cutting ingredient quality and content size, rather than raising price for the past 10 years.

You seem to have gotten confused between inflation and deflation. With deflation, prices decrease, not increase.

Your last paragraph is correct, but I was using the term in more macro environment context.

25 year of unchanged nominal price is symptom of deflationary environment. The reluctance by the Japanese company to raise price even when costs were going up speaks volume about the strong downward pricing pressure in the Japanese market.

Though not to the same degree, similar environment has been brewing here in the U.S. for awhile. Companies don't want to raise prices, and only do so as a last resort.

If economy was better, they would do so without fear that their competitors would not follow suit.

> strong downward pricing pressure in the Japanese market

Downward pricing is what one would expect in any stable market, given that price optimization is the primary market mechanic. Technology is getting ever-better, so it takes ever-larger efforts to erase its gains and create the artificial inflation prescribed by the central banksters.

> Yet we enjoy one of the highest standards of living

The US ranks 16th on the Where-to-be-born Index.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index

I guess you meant this as confirmation of his/her statement?

US is #8 in HDI which is the formal measurement for standard of living.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

HDI is actually a really poor estimator of Standard of Living. It is measurement of development, but it really cannot be used to compare Standard of Living, especially in developed countries. HDI before 2010 was useless for comparing developed countries as it was literally just a composed index of life expectancy, literacy rate and GDP per capita: for most developed countries literacy rate and life expectancy are basically at the top of the index, so the only differentiating factor is GDP per capita (PPP) which is a pretty misleading indicator anyway.

They then tried to make it more relevant in 2010 and also created an income inequality-adjusted version. This new index uses GNI instead of GDP and uses years of schooling rather than literacy rate (which is basically 99-100% for all developed countries) which makes it bit better, but it still doesn't figure in life satisfaction or other relevant measures into standard of living which is why it's still mainly a way to rank developing countries. The income inequality-adjusted version is slightly better, but still doesn't measure any psychological well-being.

Yet people line up for years for a chance to immigrate to the US! Weird!

The index seems to conflate countries to be born in and countries to be raised in. For example, if there is one country in the world to be born in, I would absolutely pick the US, if only for the ease of travel/migration to many desired countries in the world. For countries to be raised in, the index seems to be more relevant, at least judging by the metrics used.

There are many countries with more visa free travel than the US. And these countries don't have international income tax.

US seems to be quite close to the top with 154 visa-free countries, while the top spot is held by Germany and Sweden with 157 countries.

https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

(Not) coincidentally the countries in top-15 of this index are also the ones which are on par with US, compared by ease of travel.

Healthcare cost partly the result of an aging population with expensive chronic diseases? Priority would be ironically to research anti-aging to extend youthful lifespan. However, some problems are a result of a screwed up incentive structure in healthcare that is yet to be fixed, and may be harder than the technical problem.

Anti-aging treatments wouldn't fix anything. Don't you get it? Our economy is broken because it relies on an ever growing workforce. For a slowing economy you only need natality to be equal with mortality rates. It's a freaking Ponzi scheme.

It doesn't rely on an ever growing workforce. It relies on ever growing consumption, whether that's by a growing work force or a not-growing workforce that's spending more.

We already have human growth hormone, testosterone, igf etc that can make your body heal and recover like a younger person atleast for sometime.

You can also chose to have one child or 4 children. Just depends: do you get more happiness from 1 pampered child, or 4 modestly raised children.