This is still a terribly underappreciated point. How helpful is it to have $199 TVs rather than $399 ones if most of your money is going to servicing student loans, credit cards, insurance, and apartment rent / housing. The gains in the form of lower prices are vastly outstripped by FIRE-related expenses.
> How helpful is it to have $199 TVs rather than $399 ones if most of your money is going to servicing student loans, credit cards, insurance, and apartment rent / housing
Credit cards are a distraction; if things are cheaper you'd spend less on them anyway. Aside from that...
Universities are a huge scam. Real estate - at least usable real estate - may be the same (existing interests never want you to build more of it) especially in places like the Bay Area. I agree.
But that's really a different matter, and I don't see how everyone collaborating to pay more for goods like TV would actually meaningfully impact the affordability of universities and real estate. Is there some notion that The Rich spend enough of their income on random consumer-goods like TVs so that this will act like a wealth transfer? Because if not, all you're doing is moving money around, and moving it awkwardly (filtering it through entrenched BigCorp processes along the way).
The other one, Insurance: I assume you mean Health Insurance. 96% of health insurance spending leaves the insurance company to the healthcare industry proper. And one of the too-profitable sectors our article identifies is, in fact, healthcare. Good thing we fixed expensive healthcare forever a few years back with all that really smart and super-effective legislation!!! cough
> Those who profit the most are the rich – for them their expenses just went down by 50%. But the poor don’t profit.
Nonsense. The Rich spend a smaller portion of their income on manufactured goods, household necessities and household entertainment than the poor. Instead they send their money to things like real estate, fine dining, and travel.
