[ballenf]

Here's what I see: fewer unemployed people around me, but the employed are deep in debt and gradually slipping deeper into it. Standard of living hasn't gone down, but it's financed with debt while interest rates are creeping up.

[nine_k]

"Financed with debt" is another way to say "Can't afford".

You can finance an enterprise with debt because it may produce income, and the debt will be repaid. But financing consumption with increasing debt is... dangerous at best.

[toomuchtodo]

As someone else said in the thread [1], just existing in America is very expensive. It’s easy to conflate consumption vs necessary expenses needing to be financed, but you do what you have to do.

It takes 20 years of nothing going wrong to escape poverty [2]. Imagine how easy it is to get back there.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594826

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/economi...

[falcolas]

Very easy. Just get very sick and survive it. Or have a dependent do the same.

[nine_k]

"Consumption" is just something that does not produce an income. It's not about some excessive consumption.

I mean, if you buy your 100" TV with debt, it's that not great, but if you buy your daily bread with debt, you're in a big trouble.

[toomuchtodo]

> but if you buy your daily bread with debt, you're in a big trouble.

That's the problem. People are funding survival on credit.

How do you fix that? Raise wages. How do you raise wages outside of macro supply/demand factors (interest rates, employment slack)? Politics.

[dragonwriter]

> How do you fix that? Raise wages.

Raise (net real) incomes on the bottom end. Doesn't have to be wage increases.

But, yes, politics.

[pascalxus]

The way you fix that is by making the cost of living lower. We need to get rid of all laws that force people to take on high cost living. Currently, if a builder wants to produce low cost housing by using cheaper materials, small square footage, etc, they're simply not allowed to do it: it's illegal in most places. Plus the land is proibitively expensive, which is a problem with zoning.

Next, for medical care, we need to overhaul the laws that govern medical insurance. Once again, if you try create your own affordable medical insurance that only covers in-expensive treatments, legally it's not allowed. Furthermore, there's a lot financial liability with going to a hospital. Gov't could enact laws that prevent the end customer from being financially liable above a certain amount per treatment: and force the hospital cartels to pay for it. I'm guessing that'll help hospitals become more cost effective in a hurry and prevent all that price gouging.

And third, consumers need to learn to spend within their means. There's so many things you can do to reduce your monthly costs, that most people haven't even begun to scratch the surface. Does your car really need an oil change every 3k miles? no do you really need an 80$/month cell phone bill when a 20$ one can do? do you really need to pay 100$ a month on cable when youtube gives you all the entertainment you could already want for free? (or just go to the library) etc, etc. And stop thinking that McDonalds is cheap. 8$ a meal (24$/day) is not cheap (you could eat oatmeal, beans, rice and bananas for just 1.50$ a day) there's countless more examples of this.

[toomuchtodo]

My personal opinion is that these are all terrible ideas. You’re attempting to normalize poverty. You can’t not live near jobs. You can’t not consume essential healthcare. This is not an argument about avocado toast.

People need their incomes to rise (after stagnanting for the last four decades), period.

[nine_k]

> Gov't could enact laws that prevent the end customer from being financially liable above a certain amount per treatment

This basically introduces gov't-supported insurance for treatments above that sum. If they would say that hospitals should just eat the cost, the hospitals will have to put a large part of this cut into increased cost of other, cheaper treatments.

Not that I know the fix for the cost disease in US medicine. But likely it lies somewhere allowing hospitals compete on price.