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whimsicalism | on: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers
Free movement of capital and the ability to identify promising projects and allocate our resources there are why our society is prosperous and why we are able to devote more resources towards healthcare than any society that has ever come before us.

This money is managed by small amounts of people but it is aggregated from millions of investors, most of these are public companies. The US spends over 10x that amount on healthcare each year.

lenerdenator | parent | next
Is that why I, and a lot of other people my age, have a lower standard of living than my parents did at the same point in their lives?

The "free movement of capital" only ever seems to move the capital one direction: up to the people who needed the labor of others to reach such wealth.

whimsicalism | root | parent | next
The large majority of people do not have a lower standard of living than their parents at the same age. My dad’s family could not even afford shoes for him and he lived in Europe.

I am sorry that you feel you are downwardly mobile, but you should not assume your experience generalizes.

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nfw2 | root | parent
The reason young people often have a lower standard of living is because:

- there is a shortage of housing

- predatory loans for higher education

- chronic health crisis due to terrible government health policy and guidelines

- globalization has led to an international labor market

The last point may be bad for many Americans but an unequivocal good for the world. Global poverty has seen an incredible drop in the past 70 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#/media/File:Wo...

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bbqfog | parent
Having to spend thousands for insurance every year (even if you’re totally healthy) and not having it even be remotely effective, is not my definition of “prosperous”.
whimsicalism | root | parent
Individual insurers pay out tens of billions of dollars in claims every year, frequently have non-profitable years, and are the counterparty on pretty risky contracts.

There are lots of problems with our current approach to healthcare, but insurers aren’t charging you way more than the cost to counterparty on that contract should be.

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