Karl Huber
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He's painting a much broader picture than you've seen, Scott. Much broader.
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Burning down the Library of Alexandria...
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Good luck to you. In the upcoming 2-3 years it will be very tough... much rougher than what has transpired in the last 2 years. if this is how you look at reality, you will need a ton of luck to survive.
Huh? The past two years have been great in the U.S. economy. I don't know how other countries have been doing, but across the U.S. the economy has been mooming. Everyone who wants a job can get a job. Companies like McDonald's and Walmart are paying twice as much as they used to for entry level positions, like cashiers. Meanwhile cars and boats and most food has hardky gone up in price. Sure, gas has almost doubled, but it has just come back up to where it was for the few years before President Bush left office. Rents are about twice what they were thirty years ago, but so are wages. The prices of cars, computers, televisions, furniture, clothes, bed linens, dishes, kitchen knives, laundry detergent, and a host of other things have stayed almost constant during that time. Sure, Coca-Cola has doubled over the past 30 years, and a Big Mac meal has tripled, but many things, such as a steak with a baked potato and salad at Outback Steak House or half-a-dozen Buffalo wings with fries and celery sticks at Hooters have actually gone down in price, relative to what an entry level job pays. For example a typical McDonald's employee need only work two hours today to have a meal like those I just described. Thirty years ago the typical fast food worker would have to work for three hours to pay for such a meal.
Yes, houses have gone up in price, just like they did in 2004 and 2005. Eggs have spiked recently in the U.S. too. Very little else has though. Health insurance has been going up like crazy for the past fifteen or twenty years, so that's nothing new. A few months ago I got a pretty good new Dell notebook computer at Best Buy for $400. Today I can get a similar deal. Last year I got a pretty good Samsung 55" 4K TV on sale for $350. That's about what a similar size Samsung TV costs today. Cameras and lenses seem to be about the same price ranges they were fifteen years ago, though they're 45 MP rather than 12 MP. They have wi-fi and tilt screens today, and of course they work a lot faster, and they offer more dynamic range today. Oh, and most do video too.
I can't imagine the next three years will be as bad as 2007,2008, and 2009. I'm sure unemployment levels will go back up to more normal levels. That's to be expected.
Jozef you should come for a visit. You'll see it's much better than your media has lead you to believe. The U.S. is a wonderful country . . . the best in the World. I've been on every continent except Antarctica, traveling to many many countries, and my dad traveled to far more countries than I have. We both agreed, while he was still alive, that the U.S. is the best country on Earth. We came from Australia, which is also a wonderful country, but even after going back there many times, my dad was always confident he had made the right decision, when he moved his family to the U.S. I went back to Australia for a few months years ago, and frankly I saw no reason to think it was better than the U.S.
I've been to England, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Honduras, Chile, and, of course Australia. I've also been to a few smaller countries, like the Bahamas, Belize, Lichtenstein, and Monaco. Like the U.S., they all have their good and bad. Over-all though, the U.S. is the best, with more to see, more to do, more choices of places to live, eat, work, play, and more freedom, more opportunity, etc.
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Do you even go to grocery stores at all? Do you buy gasoline or pay for services?
Yeah, it is great...depending on a metric : 20% inflation in 1970s metric in just 2021. Cumulative inflation for 3 years is around 50-60%. The fed simply changed the inflation metric so it shows as 8-9% instead of 20-25% like it would have been.
normal consumer products on average are 150%-200% of what they were. Gasoline is up around 100% increase (aka x2), normal food stuff about 90-130 up%. Eggs are up 300-400% of what they were in 2020. Milk has doubled in price. Used car prices are 150% of what they were in 2019-2020...
The fed gobbled up $8T of nonexistent "derivatives" they bought up on the market to prop up your 401ks and stock market fakery so you can sleep well... until your food runs out at some point, of course.
State and fed pension liabilities are unbacked and sum up to around 210T dollars that no one will be paying.
which of this is a sign of a good economy?
Oh, did I mention that the central banks and the Bank of International Settlements (aka Central bank of Central banks) have been buying gold/silver hand over fist in the last 2 years while telling you that it is just old useless metal and that you should rely on government bonds and currency + stocks in your portfolios?
Like I said, you are in for a very rude awakening soon.
DavidMillier
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How do retirement pensions work in the US?
I spent my working life enrolled into what's called the Civil Service Classic pension scheme.
The scheme contribution were mostly paid by the government department you worked for, although that changed in recent times and members had to pay between 5-7% of salary into the scheme by the time it closed in 2015.
The Classic scheme pays out an annual index-linked pension for life of half your final salary at retirement, plus a one-off lump sum cash payment of 3x your annual pension if you have been a member for the full 40 years of the scheme.
I think the classic scheme is perhaps just about the best pension scheme ever available here. Lots of questions have been asked about future affordability and new, not-quite-so-generous, schemes have been introduced to replace it in recent years. It is only available to central government public sector employees.
There are other similar schemes that differ in detail for other public sector workers. I don't a lot about occupational or private pension schemes in the private sector, I don't think they are usually as good. The govt has made changes to ensure every employee enrols into some kind of pension plan in recent years. There are still many older people with no pension arrangements who will have to rely on the state pension.
In the UK, the state pension (currently payable from age 67 but slowly moving upwards) is roughly £10,000 per year. Almost everyone is entitled to that and there is some kind of backstop for those that aren't. I wouldn't fancy having to live on nothing but the state pension (£185 per week), but some pensioners are in reality better off than many full time workers which seems a bit weird. No one ever said these arrangements had to make rational sense....
I spent my working life enrolled into what's called the Civil Service Classic pension scheme.
The scheme contribution were mostly paid by the government department you worked for, although that changed in recent times and members had to pay between 5-7% of salary into the scheme by the time it closed in 2015.
The Classic scheme pays out an annual index-linked pension for life of half your final salary at retirement, plus a one-off lump sum cash payment of 3x your annual pension if you have been a member for the full 40 years of the scheme.
I think the classic scheme is perhaps just about the best pension scheme ever available here. Lots of questions have been asked about future affordability and new, not-quite-so-generous, schemes have been introduced to replace it in recent years. It is only available to central government public sector employees.
There are other similar schemes that differ in detail for other public sector workers. I don't a lot about occupational or private pension schemes in the private sector, I don't think they are usually as good. The govt has made changes to ensure every employee enrols into some kind of pension plan in recent years. There are still many older people with no pension arrangements who will have to rely on the state pension.
In the UK, the state pension (currently payable from age 67 but slowly moving upwards) is roughly £10,000 per year. Almost everyone is entitled to that and there is some kind of backstop for those that aren't. I wouldn't fancy having to live on nothing but the state pension (£185 per week), but some pensioners are in reality better off than many full time workers which seems a bit weird. No one ever said these arrangements had to make rational sense....
Just ignoring what I wrote won't get you any brownie points. And yes, I do shop, I do have a full-time job, and I do go to grocery stores, including Fry's, Walmart, Sprouts, and Trader Joe's. I buy stuff like spaghetti sauce, spaghetti, canned chile, orange juice, soup, milk, bread, etc. I can show you new receipts and old receipts, which orove you wrong. Like I said, gasoline is not up much compared to 2005, 2006, and 2007, and that's about fifteen years ago. Sure, gas prices went down to unprecedented levels in the last half of George Bush's last year in office, and stayed down for a few minths, but they doubled in Obama's first term in office. We heard very little about that, of course, but that's probably because everyone remembered the $4 per gallon gas during most of Bush's presidency, and of course there were more pressing concerns. When Trump was in office he did things to help lower the price of oil, and gas ended up down around $2 per gallon, but as could be expected, that sort of thing just isn't normal, but it's disengenuous to complain that we have huge inflation just because prices came back up to about where they were fifteen years earlier. Housing is back up to 2005 prices (maybe a bit higher). So what? Did anyone really expect housing to stay down at the ridiculously low prices we had after the housing market crashed in 2007 and 2008?
Used care are up about 50% from where they were a few years ago . . . not 150%. They were higher a couple of years ago because there was a temporary shortage of new cars, during the pandemic. There is no shortage of new cars now though, so used car prices have dropped. Most likely they'll drop a bit more, of course. As this booming economy slows that is what will happen naturally.
How bad will the next two or three years be? Frankly I don't know. Neither do you. I seriously doubt it will be as bad as 2008 and 2009 though.
That's hard to imagine. I guess we have it a bit better in the U.S. I know gas gere costs a lot less (just over $1 per litre - about £1 per litre). Social security here pays out about $1,000 per month (though it varies, depending on how long the person paid into it, how much they paid into it, when they started taking payments, etc. - people can opt to retire early, and then they get less per month, or they can retire late, like at 68 or 70, and their payments end up bigger that way).
Many people work part time, and get paid "under the table" in order to supplement their retirement income. Many have pensions as well as Social Security. Some elderly people have retirement savings. I have an 81 year old friend, who lives in a 33 ft. long RV. He has a little less than $100,000 saved up, and he lives on the money he gets from Social Security. He seems fine, for now, but his money could easily be wiped out by health problems. I guess he's lucky to be alive though. One of my brothers died at 52, and my sister died at 41. My dad made it to 93, but he owned his house, so for the last few years of his life he didn't have financial worries, because he got a reverse mortgage on his house, which paid for everything, and then some. He worked all his life, and never wanted to quit. Some people are just like that, right?
Inflation was running around 6% when I was in college. In 1980, about ten years earlier, it was much higher than that though. Today's inflation is the highest in the past 10 years, but not ridiculous. It will probably go diwn a bit over the next couple of years, I would guess. Gas prices certainly can't stay as high as they are with Tesla making millions of electric cars per year (and other car companies increasing their electric car production every year too). I'm not saying they'll go down next year, but I seriously doubt we'll see gas prices double over the next ten years, which is one of the things that would be required for inflation to stay high.
The housing market will surely slow this year. I believe it already has. I don't think it can crash again like 2007-2008 though. It just hasn't been hot enough (booming as much) over the past couple of years for that to happen.
So they're warning photographers to not mess with Amazon?
DavidMillier
Forum Pro
A question about what you call "Social security". Is this an official term and what does it mean? Is it related to another term I've often seen bandied about "401k"?
We use the same term over here informally, but it means any form of government benefits, rather than the state pension eg unemployment payments, disability payments, child benefits and so on.
Regarding government benefits, for decades the range and variety of different benefits has been a bureaucratic nightmare and the government has been trying to rationalise everything into a single system known as Universal Credit. Unfortunately, that has gone pear shaped, leading to much hardship to poorer people who have fallen on the wrong side of the reforms, much delay bringing in the new systems, grotesque errors and costs.
Benefit payments are a political obsession with many Conservative party voters who have a strange belief that 99% of the country is illegally claiming such payments and living the life of Riley. The stats clearly show that by far the biggest benefit is the state pension (old age pension) but the beneficiaries of the state pension have an unshakeable false belief that all the tax is funding under-age single mothers to live in luxury. It's ridiculous, the government's own stats show benefit fraud is at very low figures, but for years it has been a (false) rallying cry for Conservative-voting readers of the Daily Mail and The Sun: "Cut the benefits!", "Lock up benefit fraudsters!". Blame the newspapers for that piece of propaganda.The Conservative party has encouraged this, as it plays to their base.
Until I retired last year, I worked for the UK's primary independent public sector audit body and it has been an enduring source of fascination how wide a gap there is between actual public finances and the numbers and stories that appear in popular newspapers. From which I have concluded that Rupert Murdoch is actually King of the World.
Inflation here is currently 10.7% (officially) but supermarket prices are 17% up. Natural gas and electricity prices have gone mad, doubled or tripled since the war started. Allegedly this will start coming down in July, we'll see. Petrol is currently c. £1.50 per litre, slowly coming down from nearly £2 per litre. Of this, 53p is fuel tax, then 20% VAT is charged on top.
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We use the same term over here informally, but it means any form of government benefits, rather than the state pension eg unemployment payments, disability payments, child benefits and so on.
Regarding government benefits, for decades the range and variety of different benefits has been a bureaucratic nightmare and the government has been trying to rationalise everything into a single system known as Universal Credit. Unfortunately, that has gone pear shaped, leading to much hardship to poorer people who have fallen on the wrong side of the reforms, much delay bringing in the new systems, grotesque errors and costs.
Benefit payments are a political obsession with many Conservative party voters who have a strange belief that 99% of the country is illegally claiming such payments and living the life of Riley. The stats clearly show that by far the biggest benefit is the state pension (old age pension) but the beneficiaries of the state pension have an unshakeable false belief that all the tax is funding under-age single mothers to live in luxury. It's ridiculous, the government's own stats show benefit fraud is at very low figures, but for years it has been a (false) rallying cry for Conservative-voting readers of the Daily Mail and The Sun: "Cut the benefits!", "Lock up benefit fraudsters!". Blame the newspapers for that piece of propaganda.The Conservative party has encouraged this, as it plays to their base.
Until I retired last year, I worked for the UK's primary independent public sector audit body and it has been an enduring source of fascination how wide a gap there is between actual public finances and the numbers and stories that appear in popular newspapers. From which I have concluded that Rupert Murdoch is actually King of the World.
Inflation here is currently 10.7% (officially) but supermarket prices are 17% up. Natural gas and electricity prices have gone mad, doubled or tripled since the war started. Allegedly this will start coming down in July, we'll see. Petrol is currently c. £1.50 per litre, slowly coming down from nearly £2 per litre. Of this, 53p is fuel tax, then 20% VAT is charged on top.
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"social security" was supposed to be a safety net when you have no pension and go completely broke. In reality, it was just the means for the corrupt govenrment to fleece even more money from the taxpayer since all the proceeds are immediately distributed as additional financing to various unrelated US gov-t departments.
Board of supervisors of that program predicted in 2018 that by 2030-2034 the program will have no means of paying even the current rates to those who previously had paid into the system. This was before 2020 covid bs, so now it would be close to 2025-2028 when it goes be upside down.
This program was a "solution" in a typical Globalist/WEF style of thinking when they first create a problem and show it to the cattle, and then offer a "solution" which the cattle will beg for.
(The Federal reserve, that creates cycles of poverty which did not actually exist before the Fed was created, was one such "solution") and when the first major "bust" was created by them, the government offered another "solution" of social security, which was actually just another problem.
Then they offered one more "solution" of 401k private savings plan (unlike the Social Security, which is a tax-based and cant be opted out of) which then was locked down so you could NOT take your money out of 401k without incurring penalties and taxes, and in addition, The very same Federal Reserve artificially has been propping up the stock market (primary source of investment with 401k) to create an illusion of growing pension savings.
This "create a problem, create a "solution"" is a very typical way how they convince the cattle to accept any detrimental changes.
cant say it did not work...
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We have a lot of tax included in the price of fuel too. That's the only thing that gets no "sales tax" added. It's included in the price, for some reason, along with all the other taxes (I believe there's a state tax for highway maintenance, a federal government tax, for all sorts of things, but mostly for federally funded highway development, and funding of the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Bureau).
Social Security is a program that's supposed to help the elderly. Everyone with a job is supposed to pay into it, and employers have to pay a tax matching what the employees pay, if I'm not mistaken. I did some bookkeeping (mostly figuring and writing pay checks) for a few tiny companies once upon a time. The Social Security Administration is pretty huge in the U.S.A. Millions of people are paid thousands of dollars every year. It runs to a few hundred billion dollars every year, I believe. There is some fraud, of course, with "dead people" recieving Social Security checks each month. I think the Medicare fraud is probably worse though. That's a $700 billion program, if I have my numbers right. It might be up to a trillion dollars per year by now. Medicare is an "insurance program" I believe - really cheap health insurance, and everyone over 65 gets it (because it's so cheap - like $250 per month, I think). Some (or most) people get supplemental insurance, which covers things that Medicare doesn't. I'm sure there are all sorts of low income credits that various classes of people can get, so they don't have to pay as much for Medicare.
When my sister died, her son (who is a minor) was eligible to get a $20,000 pay-out from the Social Security Administration, if I'm not mistaken. Social Security pays for various other things too, as it should. My sister paid many thousands of dollars into Social Security over the years, but never grew old enough to collect any of the payments she would have otherwise recieved.
We have something called Welfare too. It's like unemployment, but it never ends. Unemployment is a government "insurance" program into which employers have to pay (a percentage of what they pay to their employees). If a company goes out if business, or if they have to "let go" of one or more of their employees, then the government pays that person for a few weeks (less than what they would normally get paid at work - presumably to incentivise them to find another job as quickly as possible). During the pandemic I believe the unemployment benefits were extended from six weeks to twelve weeks, or something like that. The federal government also sent some "relief" checks (three of them I think) to many people in an effort to reduce the affect that job losses and temporary shut downs would have on the economy. It seemed to work. I know several people who went on shopping sprees with at least some of that money.
It seems to me that the U.S. is almost as socialist as England, Canada, Australia, Sweden, etc. There are those who would have everyone cared for from the cradle to the grave. I don't believe that would be the right thing to do, but I do believe in totally free, public health care. I believe we could have thousands of "public hospitals" for a fraction of the budget our government spends on Medicare and Medicaid (a health care relief program for the poor). Just like we have private schools and public schools, we could have private hospitals AND public hospitals. I see no reason the public hospitals would need to cost more than $500 billion per year to maintain, supply, and run, and of course while the program phases in the bulk of that money could be used to build the new, state-of-the-art, public hospitals. It would improve health care in the U.S. It would fix the problem of rising health care costs, and it would reduce the cost of Medicare and Medicaid (because many of those patients would end up using the "free" public hospitals.
I think you would like the book titled "The Creature From Jekyl Island." Have you read it yet?
David,
American terminology is often the reverse of English.
By "public schools", Scott does not mean the likes of Oxford or Cambridge.
I went a grammar school over there but tyhst term here represents a lower rather than a higher class of school ...
DavidMillier
Forum Pro
All very confusing and the more detail you ask, the worse it gets!
I have heard of it and know what it is about, but I did not have a chance of reading it.
same entity/group controls policies in all those countries, so the result is the same.
DavidMillier
Forum Pro
I find all these differences fascinating. We're all people, yet out cultures develop in such different ways!
You might be interested to know that this year's budget for the NHS is £180 billion (Uk pop. 67m). The US pop is 332m, so a UK style NHS for the US using the UK budget as a baseline and scaling up would be c. $1100 billion rather than your $500b.
2021 figures seem to be the newest for US health spending per year, currently $4.3 trillion, about 4x the cost of my speculative tax funded US NHS.
That simplistic calculation suggests your health system is pretty expensive.Looking at various papers, there is no clear and simple reason for this, but it does appear that the US medical profession is very keen on subjecting patients to some very expensive tests and treatments. Maybe too keen?
There's also the question of remuneration. According to the NHS careers website: "From 1 April 2022, the pay range for salaried GPs is £65,070 to £98,194."
According to https://revisingrubies.com/us-vs-uk-doctors-salary/ : "Family care doctors earn an average of $234,000"
It looks to me like GP's earn half their US counterparts. The same site says across all specialisms, US doctors earn on average 3x the salary of UK doctors. That's not going to help your health budget, but I expect it makes your medics happy!
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DavidMillier
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Illuminati, I presume.
Karl Huber
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They destroyed South Africa and now have their claws in Europe via the EU
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