The housing calculation becomes even more significant when weighing renting vs owning. If you can rent the one bedroom apartment despite being able to afford buying the 2-3 bedroom house the savings represent a massive opportunity to get ahead financially.

The issue at hand is cost. It is entirely a question of cost. If MfA cost less (For the individual; no one should a damn about per capita spending. They should care how much they spend.) it would sail through. The problem is that it doesn’t actually cost less. It’s less for some (maybe even a lot) people and a lot of…

What makes you think MfA would simply claim the premium you already pay and leave it at that?

So premiums still exist but you’re disguising them as taxes and hoping that people are too stupid to catch it? Free means at no cost. MfA is not free because taxes are a cost.

The team you want to watch gets primary sponsor funding to compete in a sport you want to watch. They comply with the rules, to the letter, while testing the spirit of those rules which is utterly consistent with team behavior in the sport you want to watch.

No premium, no deductible, no co-insurance health coverage would be the best thing since sliced bread. That’s literally and genuinely free. No one is offering that. I think that’s the definition of a fanciful position.

You left out the fact that premiums will still exist and whether your option is better or not depends entirely on what those premiums end up being. You asked a question that no one can answer intelligently because it’s missing critical information.

The average deductible for a HDHP for 2018 was $2,245 for an individual or $4,329 for a family. Average firm contribution to employee HRAs/HSAs was $1,149 and $2,288 respectively.

You do realize that there are tens of millions of people that don’t have shitty insurance right?

I suspect that she does.

“I think the key to making reparations not divisive is to make them as broad based as possible.”

You left out the part where shareholders only exist because the company needed capital and decided that selling, far more often than not, ultimately worthless ownership stake was the cheapest way to get it.

Someone mentioned elsewhere that the data may be missing the fact that many people have multiple retirement accounts following them around. You get a situation where the median or even average might be small even if the person’s total balance is not.

People need to seriously and honestly rethink post-secondary education. The fact that most people that start don’t finish should, all by itself, trigger massive skepticism. I’d wager that the financial statistics on post-secondary education don’t look so hot if you remove outliers like graduates from STEM and…

“Your opportunity cost mention, while misguided, actually does figure into it - if you can earn 12%+ return on your money - that’s good;”

That doesn’t address it either. What does the middle of the set tell you about what’s happening on either end where most people are clustered?

Accessibility is the issue. Easy financing has become available to the general population and the general population has the financial IQ and discipline of a potato. Remove the sub-prime portion of the population from the financing pool and watch prices plummet out of necessity. Just hope that they don’t scream bloody…

Unless you’re in some hot area and the place is appreciating like mad the break even on that calculation is likely a lot longer than five years... Assuming you meant total cost of ownership and not just monthly payment.

If you want federal employee health insurance benefits go work for the federal government? The idea that we all should have federal employee benefits minus the shitshow that is working for the federal government is straight up ridiculousness.

Mentioning that test is a perfect example of how people will jump through all sorts of seemingly logical hoops to justify doing what they ultimately wanted to do in the first place.