Comment by nemothekid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nemothekid | Hacker News Reader

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>You don’t have a smartphone, don’t use wireless networking and telecom, have no flat screen TV, don’t use the internet, and so on?

Bread and circuses? I mean sure, some things are cheaper, but other things are also much, much more expensive. And maybe it's because I'm older now, but I don't think "flat screen TVs" are a good benchmark for overall wealth (I don't even own a TV).

Yet, things like healthcare, housing, childcare and education have exploded in price despite the gains of "productivity". The former are necessities to live and it's dubious that to argue that I've "gained" from productivity if you have traded the ability for me to own a home with an iPhone. The balance isn't there - and I think you have a political undercurrent of people waking up to this. What good is a flat screen TV, if I can't own a home? Have I really benefitted from productivity gains if the equation is so out of whack? Simple math tells me that while a 50in has gone from $9,000 to $1,000, a "starter home" has gone from $200,000 to $800,000. Telling me I've benefitted in this situation is to take me for a fool.

Don't conflate lack of wage growth to the underlying reasons for those costs exploding. Why have those exploded?

Housing: NIMBYism and lack of ability to build, mainly by strict government zoning and people who petition their local governments to not build more lest it devalue their house.

Healthcare: insurance companies trying to get away with as much as they can, while hospitals try to charge as much as they can, effectively creating a price bidding war with the consumer in the middle.

Childcare: More people working, lower supply of childcare services but demand goes up, thus price goes up.

Education: Government effectively making student debt undischargeable in a bid to get more people to get college degrees but this backfired. Administrator costs for colleges ballooning.

So, even if wages had kept up with productivity, if you don't solve the underlying reasons as to why these costs exploded, you'll have the same issues as before.

Anything the government subsidizes (healthcare, mortgages, education) has exploded in cost because it’s built on a foundation of moral hazard. In essence the policies, which try and mix central economic planning with free markets, are lining the pockets of banks (guaranteeing mortgages), university endowments and admins (giving anyone with a pulse tons of money to learn), and healthcare providers (Medicare and Medicaid demand saturating resources by paying under market for the highest risk people).

I’m not saying socialized or free market approaches are better than one another. But the approach we have taken is the worst of both.

You can’t just insure the sickest demographics - you need a distribution. Either make it universal or let the free market compete for it.

You can’t just give anyone a ton of cash to learn what they want. Either make it free for all or let the free market lend to students based on expected return.

You can’t just guarantee every mortgage which keeps interest rates artificially low. Either build social housing or let the free market set interest rates.

I agree wholeheartedly. The mixture might work in other regulated domains like finance, but for the above, it only hinders true growth and development for the tax payer.

I know that comparing averages is not always correct, but. Median home price around 1975 was $100K (give of take), median family income: $14K. Today the median family income in MA is $75K. The median home price in MA is around $550K. You were saying prices went up and you can't afford a home anymore? Then you couldn't afford it in 1975. Should we go back a couple of centuries? And yet we have TVs, Internet, smartphones etc.

Indeed, commenters here seem to be looking at housing as a fixed good with the same supply without considering that maybe the fact that housing is still expensive is that we aren't building more housing, not necessarily that our wages stagnated.

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