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UCGal
ParticipantOne comment on this.
Woot woot!!!!
I never expected it to happen, but have been hoping for years.
ParticipantOne comment on this.
Woot woot!!!!
I never expected it to happen, but have been hoping for years.
Participant[quote=Arraya]
An article just came out saying that 2/3rd of all Americans don’t have $1000 dollars incase of an emergency. I bet you could put another 15 % on top of that with no significant savings. That is a social disaster waiting to happen regardless of fault.Lets say, for the sake of argument, a portion of these people are “over consuming” – have high debt loads and no savings because of this. What happens to employment(in a 70% consumption based economy) if that consumption goes away? Those “unhealthy” patterns of behavior might be saving a lot of jobs!
So, it appears, that “over consumption” and the anxiety that drives it serves a purpose? Are these people being irresponsible or doing what society asks of them?
Another interesting set of data came out. It said 75% of the people think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. While, at the same time, consumer spending was going up, markedly. What does this tell us? It’s either that people, knowing the economy is going into the toilet are trying to help out OR depressed people shop more!
It’s like a big debt-anxiety-consumption driven treadmill that is about to fly off the tracks.[/quote]
I wonder if the increased consumption is due to two subconscious thought patterns
* people realizing in their gut that there is no return on savings/investment in the current climate, so why save when that new item can be used/consumed right now.
* people realize that the economy is bad and unemployment is high.. but there is denial it could happen to them… they feel that their jobs are secure/immune…Participant[quote=Arraya]
An article just came out saying that 2/3rd of all Americans don’t have $1000 dollars incase of an emergency. I bet you could put another 15 % on top of that with no significant savings. That is a social disaster waiting to happen regardless of fault.Lets say, for the sake of argument, a portion of these people are “over consuming” – have high debt loads and no savings because of this. What happens to employment(in a 70% consumption based economy) if that consumption goes away? Those “unhealthy” patterns of behavior might be saving a lot of jobs!
So, it appears, that “over consumption” and the anxiety that drives it serves a purpose? Are these people being irresponsible or doing what society asks of them?
Another interesting set of data came out. It said 75% of the people think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. While, at the same time, consumer spending was going up, markedly. What does this tell us? It’s either that people, knowing the economy is going into the toilet are trying to help out OR depressed people shop more!
It’s like a big debt-anxiety-consumption driven treadmill that is about to fly off the tracks.[/quote]
I wonder if the increased consumption is due to two subconscious thought patterns
* people realizing in their gut that there is no return on savings/investment in the current climate, so why save when that new item can be used/consumed right now.
* people realize that the economy is bad and unemployment is high.. but there is denial it could happen to them… they feel that their jobs are secure/immune…Participant[quote=Arraya]
An article just came out saying that 2/3rd of all Americans don’t have $1000 dollars incase of an emergency. I bet you could put another 15 % on top of that with no significant savings. That is a social disaster waiting to happen regardless of fault.Lets say, for the sake of argument, a portion of these people are “over consuming” – have high debt loads and no savings because of this. What happens to employment(in a 70% consumption based economy) if that consumption goes away? Those “unhealthy” patterns of behavior might be saving a lot of jobs!
So, it appears, that “over consumption” and the anxiety that drives it serves a purpose? Are these people being irresponsible or doing what society asks of them?
Another interesting set of data came out. It said 75% of the people think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. While, at the same time, consumer spending was going up, markedly. What does this tell us? It’s either that people, knowing the economy is going into the toilet are trying to help out OR depressed people shop more!
It’s like a big debt-anxiety-consumption driven treadmill that is about to fly off the tracks.[/quote]
I wonder if the increased consumption is due to two subconscious thought patterns
* people realizing in their gut that there is no return on savings/investment in the current climate, so why save when that new item can be used/consumed right now.
* people realize that the economy is bad and unemployment is high.. but there is denial it could happen to them… they feel that their jobs are secure/immune…Participant[quote=Arraya]
An article just came out saying that 2/3rd of all Americans don’t have $1000 dollars incase of an emergency. I bet you could put another 15 % on top of that with no significant savings. That is a social disaster waiting to happen regardless of fault.Lets say, for the sake of argument, a portion of these people are “over consuming” – have high debt loads and no savings because of this. What happens to employment(in a 70% consumption based economy) if that consumption goes away? Those “unhealthy” patterns of behavior might be saving a lot of jobs!
So, it appears, that “over consumption” and the anxiety that drives it serves a purpose? Are these people being irresponsible or doing what society asks of them?
Another interesting set of data came out. It said 75% of the people think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. While, at the same time, consumer spending was going up, markedly. What does this tell us? It’s either that people, knowing the economy is going into the toilet are trying to help out OR depressed people shop more!
It’s like a big debt-anxiety-consumption driven treadmill that is about to fly off the tracks.[/quote]
I wonder if the increased consumption is due to two subconscious thought patterns
* people realizing in their gut that there is no return on savings/investment in the current climate, so why save when that new item can be used/consumed right now.
* people realize that the economy is bad and unemployment is high.. but there is denial it could happen to them… they feel that their jobs are secure/immune…Participant[quote=Arraya]
An article just came out saying that 2/3rd of all Americans don’t have $1000 dollars incase of an emergency. I bet you could put another 15 % on top of that with no significant savings. That is a social disaster waiting to happen regardless of fault.Lets say, for the sake of argument, a portion of these people are “over consuming” – have high debt loads and no savings because of this. What happens to employment(in a 70% consumption based economy) if that consumption goes away? Those “unhealthy” patterns of behavior might be saving a lot of jobs!
So, it appears, that “over consumption” and the anxiety that drives it serves a purpose? Are these people being irresponsible or doing what society asks of them?
Another interesting set of data came out. It said 75% of the people think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. While, at the same time, consumer spending was going up, markedly. What does this tell us? It’s either that people, knowing the economy is going into the toilet are trying to help out OR depressed people shop more!
It’s like a big debt-anxiety-consumption driven treadmill that is about to fly off the tracks.[/quote]
I wonder if the increased consumption is due to two subconscious thought patterns
* people realizing in their gut that there is no return on savings/investment in the current climate, so why save when that new item can be used/consumed right now.
* people realize that the economy is bad and unemployment is high.. but there is denial it could happen to them… they feel that their jobs are secure/immune…August 14, 2011 at 9:16 AM in reply to: ok: can someone tell me what good is left for the health care reform #719001Participant[quote=EconProf]The bill that was passed had nothing to do with reform. It merely expanded government into the medical sector with a Medicare-style approach. The unnecessarily expensive and doomed Medicare model was used with no thought given to incentives.
Real reform would have allowed insurance companies to compete across state lines, reined in the tort bar, and incentivized both customers and providers to be less wasteful. For example, Health Savings Accounts and minor copays were sidelined.[/quote]I view it in the exact opposite way. The bill that passed was a give away to the private health insurance companies – customers are mandated to buy insurance but there were no cost constraints imposed.
Economies of scale are NOT working in insurance and big pharma. Look at Lipitor – it’s actually MORE expensive now, despite being one of the most prescribed meds out there. Shouldn’t it have gone down in price if true market forces were allowed to be in place?
August 14, 2011 at 9:16 AM in reply to: ok: can someone tell me what good is left for the health care reform #719093Participant[quote=EconProf]The bill that was passed had nothing to do with reform. It merely expanded government into the medical sector with a Medicare-style approach. The unnecessarily expensive and doomed Medicare model was used with no thought given to incentives.
Real reform would have allowed insurance companies to compete across state lines, reined in the tort bar, and incentivized both customers and providers to be less wasteful. For example, Health Savings Accounts and minor copays were sidelined.[/quote]I view it in the exact opposite way. The bill that passed was a give away to the private health insurance companies – customers are mandated to buy insurance but there were no cost constraints imposed.
Economies of scale are NOT working in insurance and big pharma. Look at Lipitor – it’s actually MORE expensive now, despite being one of the most prescribed meds out there. Shouldn’t it have gone down in price if true market forces were allowed to be in place?
August 14, 2011 at 9:16 AM in reply to: ok: can someone tell me what good is left for the health care reform #719693Participant[quote=EconProf]The bill that was passed had nothing to do with reform. It merely expanded government into the medical sector with a Medicare-style approach. The unnecessarily expensive and doomed Medicare model was used with no thought given to incentives.
Real reform would have allowed insurance companies to compete across state lines, reined in the tort bar, and incentivized both customers and providers to be less wasteful. For example, Health Savings Accounts and minor copays were sidelined.[/quote]I view it in the exact opposite way. The bill that passed was a give away to the private health insurance companies – customers are mandated to buy insurance but there were no cost constraints imposed.
Economies of scale are NOT working in insurance and big pharma. Look at Lipitor – it’s actually MORE expensive now, despite being one of the most prescribed meds out there. Shouldn’t it have gone down in price if true market forces were allowed to be in place?
August 14, 2011 at 9:16 AM in reply to: ok: can someone tell me what good is left for the health care reform #719851Participant[quote=EconProf]The bill that was passed had nothing to do with reform. It merely expanded government into the medical sector with a Medicare-style approach. The unnecessarily expensive and doomed Medicare model was used with no thought given to incentives.
Real reform would have allowed insurance companies to compete across state lines, reined in the tort bar, and incentivized both customers and providers to be less wasteful. For example, Health Savings Accounts and minor copays were sidelined.[/quote]I view it in the exact opposite way. The bill that passed was a give away to the private health insurance companies – customers are mandated to buy insurance but there were no cost constraints imposed.
Economies of scale are NOT working in insurance and big pharma. Look at Lipitor – it’s actually MORE expensive now, despite being one of the most prescribed meds out there. Shouldn’t it have gone down in price if true market forces were allowed to be in place?
August 14, 2011 at 9:16 AM in reply to: ok: can someone tell me what good is left for the health care reform #720211Participant[quote=EconProf]The bill that was passed had nothing to do with reform. It merely expanded government into the medical sector with a Medicare-style approach. The unnecessarily expensive and doomed Medicare model was used with no thought given to incentives.
Real reform would have allowed insurance companies to compete across state lines, reined in the tort bar, and incentivized both customers and providers to be less wasteful. For example, Health Savings Accounts and minor copays were sidelined.[/quote]I view it in the exact opposite way. The bill that passed was a give away to the private health insurance companies – customers are mandated to buy insurance but there were no cost constraints imposed.
Economies of scale are NOT working in insurance and big pharma. Look at Lipitor – it’s actually MORE expensive now, despite being one of the most prescribed meds out there. Shouldn’t it have gone down in price if true market forces were allowed to be in place?
Participantsdr –
I’d like to address a couple of points that you’ve made (fairly aggressively).Yes – most households have more tv’s today than they did 40 years ago. They probably have FEWER radios. Technology did not stand still. Most households also have computers, which didn’t really become household available till the early 1980’s… you can’t claim it’s because of entitlement attitudes – it’s because technology developed, and over time became affordable. Your parents weren’t posting on message boards when you were growing up because the world wide web didn’t exist. Does that mean you have a sense of entitlement because you may (or may not) have more tv’s (that are less expensive in real dollars) and have computers and have the internet?
Even cable didn’t really exist in it’s current form till the 70’s. And addressable settops – which allow PPV etc, didn’t come along till the 90’s. Life did not stay frozen in the 60’s 70’s world you describe. Some of the things you’re singling out (flat screens, cable) have come about since you were a kid.
Like you, I grew up in an upper middle class, professional neighborhood. (University City when it was new). Lots of UCSD professors, engineers, lawyers, dentists, etc. Like you, I grew up with one tube color tv (because flat tvs didn’t even exist back then.) We also had the black and white tv that the color tv was an upgrade from. No cable because we had line of sight to the towers. The people down in the canyon near us had cable because they couldn’t pick up signal with rabbit ears or roof antennas.
That said we definitely had families in our neighborhood that lived beyond their means. This is not something that happened exclusively in recent times. Like you, I wore hand me downs as the youngest of 3 kids. But most of my friends, in my upper middle class professional neighborhood, got new clothes with designer labels. I was envious. I was also judged (negatively) by those with the new stuff. Wearing hand me downs was definitely a stigma.
You can’t look at tv’s and say people are living less frugrally than you deem they should. And I’m not going to make judgements about whether you’re frugal enough, by some arbitrary standard of morality, because you drink pricey wine and drive a BMW.
Participantsdr –
I’d like to address a couple of points that you’ve made (fairly aggressively).Yes – most households have more tv’s today than they did 40 years ago. They probably have FEWER radios. Technology did not stand still. Most households also have computers, which didn’t really become household available till the early 1980’s… you can’t claim it’s because of entitlement attitudes – it’s because technology developed, and over time became affordable. Your parents weren’t posting on message boards when you were growing up because the world wide web didn’t exist. Does that mean you have a sense of entitlement because you may (or may not) have more tv’s (that are less expensive in real dollars) and have computers and have the internet?
Even cable didn’t really exist in it’s current form till the 70’s. And addressable settops – which allow PPV etc, didn’t come along till the 90’s. Life did not stay frozen in the 60’s 70’s world you describe. Some of the things you’re singling out (flat screens, cable) have come about since you were a kid.
Like you, I grew up in an upper middle class, professional neighborhood. (University City when it was new). Lots of UCSD professors, engineers, lawyers, dentists, etc. Like you, I grew up with one tube color tv (because flat tvs didn’t even exist back then.) We also had the black and white tv that the color tv was an upgrade from. No cable because we had line of sight to the towers. The people down in the canyon near us had cable because they couldn’t pick up signal with rabbit ears or roof antennas.
That said we definitely had families in our neighborhood that lived beyond their means. This is not something that happened exclusively in recent times. Like you, I wore hand me downs as the youngest of 3 kids. But most of my friends, in my upper middle class professional neighborhood, got new clothes with designer labels. I was envious. I was also judged (negatively) by those with the new stuff. Wearing hand me downs was definitely a stigma.
You can’t look at tv’s and say people are living less frugrally than you deem they should. And I’m not going to make judgements about whether you’re frugal enough, by some arbitrary standard of morality, because you drink pricey wine and drive a BMW.
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