But can you be an expert in the matter? We all knot that somewhat you can.
I also have many people I have discussed such things with that were around then and they agree with me on many points.
Its much harder to live now a days if you dont make a certain amount of money and that amount is getting higher and higher.
Parts and assembles are engineered to a life, miles or years. Passenger cars are considered to be light duty. I worked in engineering for several OEM part and assembly manufacturers back when the target was 30,000 miles and 3 years for passenger cars. When the imports appeared, we had to redesign to meet the competition. Now the target is more like 150,000 miles for light duty and 500,000 mile for heavy duty.
The population is increasing. Older smaller homes are being demolished. I have lived in 3 to which that has happened.
Not all goods are luxury goods. One can buy cheap clothes and food. We all compete for the same medical care and land and the houses built on them.
I disagree, but even then it makes the employers relatively wealthier, enough to drive up prices of products they both use.
The taxpayer subsidizes flood insurance because we have representative government.
I donât know about your town, but donât think this is common. It used to be that fire insurance was private. Insurees had medallions on their homes. Firefighters wouldnât serve the uninsured. But fires spread, so government got in the business, forced everyone to pay for firefighting, at least. A county in Florida used to pay for fire protection provided by the 1 department in the county, the county seat, then stopped. Individuals could sign up. Some didnât. I heard one who didnât unhappy.
I didnât raise it to lament it. Of course itâs great. They have to try out hundreds of candidates to find effective therapies. Drugs are a perfect example: by the time theyâre generic theyâre cheap; before that theyâre expensive - as it should be. There are lots of great things that you can get now that you couldnât in the past. They cost money, not necessarily going into the pockets of scientists, engineers, and physicians.
I was listening to âScience Fridayâ around 2000. They were talking about medical care. A caller lamented that he had to pay so much more for medical insurance than he did 30 years ago. One of the guest experts said, âIâll sell you medical insurance at 1970 prices: itâll be 1970 medical care.â
Thatâs not what I said. Theyâre inventing stuff thatâs worth all the cost. But it still costs.
We used to treat people so badly that this wasnât a great expense.
Leeches are used in modern medicine: they inject an anticoagulant. Surgeons put them on re-attached limbs, at the seam, for a few days. The spiffiest pharmacies have them. I read an article in the âWashington Postâ about the one in DC. Maggots are used too: they eat only dead flesh, not living flesh, are used to debride wounds. Pharmacies have sterilized maggots.
Yes, but you miss that death is cheap, and not accounted for financially.
I was born in 70, so I too grew up in the 80âs and of course it was great timesâ for us as kids, we had no responsibilityâs to speak ofâŠ
Dad however was a real estate broker trying to sell houses in a not so booming market when interest rates were through the roof⊠Now if he was doing it in the last 10 years market, he would be making some killer $$$$⊠In my area anyway⊠Back then a house could sit on the market for a year or more, not to mention normally didnât get asking price, now they donât last a week sometimes, next door house to me sold a few years ago for $29,500 over asking on the very 1st open house, so it sold in 6 days⊠Times are better for brokers now a days⊠Heck some brokers now a days, if they canât sell it in a month, they drop it and move on cause it is just a waste of time to them, somebody else will pick up the listing, make a few chances and sell it fastâŠ
Th` population is increasing but the average household size is decreasing. The reason older smaller homes are being demolished is because our ideas of what in a necessity have changed.
I raised 4 children with my wife and we lived in an 1170 square foot, 3 bedroom I bath house. No family room or dining room and a home office was something I had never heard of. When I did my taxes with pen and paper, the home office was the kitchen table. These days a family of 4 feels like they need a 2500 square foot home.
I grew up in a house with no insulation, storm windows, or central heating in the hills of western NY. I had close relatives with no indoor plumbing and cooked and heated with the same wood stove. None of us felt deprived.
People had more active social live before most people had TV. My grandparents had at least 4 nights a week out, card playing, dancing , going to the Elks club ans going to peoples homes for musical entertainment plus church on Sunday. We got mail twice a day, 3 times on Saturday, no dials on our telephones until the 60s. The operator came on and said number please and if she knew the person was not home would tell you when you could reach them.
If you went to someones house and they did not answer, you opened the door and Yelled Yoo Hoo, anyone home. If you got no reply you went in and found a pencil and paper and left them a note that you had called.
Many people did not have cars and some, like my grandmother put their cars up for the winter. You could walk to anything in our small town and the grocer and butcher would deliver for free on their way home after closing at 4:30 or 5 pm We had a milk man and a butter and egg man that delivered. If we wanted to go to buffalo in the winter we took the bus and for NY city it was a 8 hour trip by overnight train from midnight to 8 am. and the same coming hone. We put our pillows and suitcases in a locker at Penn Station.
Many things are better today, but many things were better back then.
I would like to add that children had a great deal more fun and spent most of their day unsupervised; and knocked the rough edges off each other and learned to get along with other people and make decisions on their own.After supper or all day when when school was in session we were sent out of the house with instructions to come back for meals or when the streetlights came on.
High wages in the US are not the only reason we are not manufacturing things in this country. Our corparate taxes are higher than any country I know of but I donât know what Canadaâs is. We also load the cost of health insurance onto large employers which other countries donât do.
Japan and Germany have high wages also but their economies are strong.
But youâre making comments on the 70âs which you clearly know NOTHING about.
You get at a more subtle reason that higher incomes for some means higher prices for everyone: if enough people expect better or more, everything is built better or larger, no one builds for the low end. You canât buy a house or car as flimsily made as it was in 1960, no matter how needy you are: they donât exist (except for old houses still standing). I renovated my kitchen and bathroom a few years ago. I had to upgrade the fixtures to meet modern code (not legally: I was grandfathered in; I thought it was the right thing to do.) As valuable as these upgrades are they still cost money, money that has to be spent on new construction. I canât get discount medical insurance because I promise to forgo expensive care - thatâs not an enforceable contract.
I lived without them for 3 years. I canât do that in town.
Taxes are on profits only. Paying them is discretionary for the most sophisticated.
Thatâs a choice. Mallwart doesnât insure most of its employees
There are quite a few nations that tax corporations at a higher rate than The USA does. In fact, most do.
How can you be a redneck if you have a mullet? 
Youâre right of course. To be clear(er), when I speak of labor costs, I am considering them fully burdened. In other words, all of the business costs are rolled up in the labor cost (i.e. OH included). From a top level view, thatâs all that makes sense when comparing production costs.
In the example below âyouâ refers to the reader, not oldtimer-11.
Where I work, we have factories in regions all over the world. If I want to assemble a printed circuit board for example, the domestic labor cost to my business is ~$144/hr. If I have that same board assembled in the Philippines, the cost to my business is ~$9.50/hr. If I add in freight costs, Iâm still under $12/hr. You own the business, which choice do you make? Hint- your competition has already made that choice for youâŠ
Very, very common. From the county government to the city government and now to HOAs that control not just safe construction, wiring and plumbing, but the color and style of your home, the plantings around your home, the number of pets what you can DO within your home - businesses, car repair, ect. - and where you park your cars and your guestâs cars.
This is not just an HOA rant but look to cities that define âhistoricâ districts that define every aspect of your home that drastically increases the cost of renovations. This is from Boston to Dayton, Ohio and beyond. Long time low income residents get shuffled out by gentrification.
No, national flood insurance was created because rich people could not get flood insurance for their beach houses because private insurers would no longer write policies. So those representatives with beach houses and their friends with beach houses could get insured.
Interesting comments that maybe Iâll read later on when I have time. One thing that is interesting though as we argue about the 70s and it wasnât really the good old days, some seem to dredge up economic theories of 1870 in Europe no less, and think they apply today to the US. Then we take our limited childhood experience and apply that to th3 whole country or world even.
We are in a representative government and things develop and change as the public dictates. That old pendulum swings back and forth when extremes are reached, so enjoy the ride. I always think of Churchill being thrown out after the war. Then when the English starved and froze, brought him back again. They will starve again before itâs all done. Yeah mullets are out here but our German friend says Europeans can always tell an American because the hair on the back of their heads are clipped short. For what itâs worth.
Th article I read listed the US tax rate as 21% and the average industrialized country at 16%. It did not give a country by country list and if the chart you posted is right, was obviously incorrect. My appologies
There is just so much bogus information floating around, with the obvious intent of fooling people into thinking things that are just not true. This is just one example, but there are others. For instance, in 2023 foreign aid accounted for 1.17% of the federal budget, but most people seem to think that itâs something on the order of 25%⊠or maybe even more.
You have to ask yourself the following question:
Who is spreading these falsehoods, and what do they expect to gain as a result of their blatant lies?
Maybe I should move to Macedonia where the corporate rate is only 10%. But wait, I donât own a corporation.
You ask who is putting out all this fake news? Well the big three or four I& you hadnât noticed. Interesting how they all come out with the same exact wording on th3 same day. Coincidence? Donât think so.
Why? Power and advertising revenues.
No, the truly fake news is coming from online âinfluencersâ who are mostly anonymous and unaccountable.
A few years ago, whenever a celebrity died, these folks immediately informed the world that the celebrity in question had died because they had received a certain vaccine a day or two previously. That type of dangerous anti-science propaganda did not emanate from any legitimate news sources.
One of my former supervisors had a good tactic, imo
when one of his workers would come up to him saying âsuch and such said this and thatâ . . . . and it was ALWAYS something totally outrageous . . . he would look them straight in the eyes and say âconsider the sourceâ
that would invariably put a pause on that conversation
later on, sometimes days or weeks later, the worker would go back to the supervisor and say they did indeed look into it and determined âthe sourceâ was absolutely worthless
That is a good tactic, butâsadlyâall too many people nowadays will automatically accept statements from online âinfluencersâ as facts.
âConsider the sourceâ might work when referring to the local blowhard in the workplace, but for some reason, anonymous online sources seem to be granted credibility by lots of peopleâdespite a complete lack of factual info being spewed.
Then, you have the folks who never seem to watch or read news from any source. In NJ, reports of an impending RR engineer strike were on the air and in print for more than 7 days preceding the actual strike. Additionally, electronic billboards on every major state highway had warned of the impending strike for several days.
Naturally, the news media descended on train stations to get reactions from the commuters who were being directed to buses, instead of the non-existent trains. One young woman, when asked for her reaction, stated that she wasnât aware of any labor problems at NJ Transit, and she said that she was âshockedâ to find out that the trains werenât running.
I know a lot of people with mental and other developmental challenges, so to speak
Due to their conditions, many of them are very naive and their sources of ânewsâ are questionable, at best
For example, one guy has only two sources
social media
and whatever news station has the most attractive young ladies âclothedâ in the most revealing outfits
He often runs stuff by me to get my opinion
Every single time, without fail, I have to break it to him everything heâs heard is not only wrong, but itâs dead wrong and believing it and acting on it would be diametrically opposed to his best interests