# Sam Stone believes Trump's tweets **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 10, 2020, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633 "2020-10-10T13:47:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 53
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1044 "2021-08-23T19:59:19Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > After people have entered the health care system”? What does that mean? It means that ‘life expectancy’ is a crude proxy for ‘quality of the health care system’, because it encompasses all sorts of social and liifestyle issues. Someone who never goes to a doctor then dies of a heart attack is counted in life expectancy, but has nothing at all to do with the health care system. There are also issues with differences in how things like infant mortality are counted, but primarily there are huge diffferences in the population. So if you wanted to get a measure of the quality of the health care system with respect to other countries, it’s better to look at stats such as cancer survival rates, deaths from secondary heart attacks, infant mortality, etc. Areas that the health care system directly controls. Failing that, at least choose representative cohorts. Alberta vs Montana might make for an interesting comparison. Edmonton vs Baltimore, almost certainly not. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1045 "2021-08-23T20:09:31Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Someone who never goes to a doctor then dies of a heart attack is counted in life expectancy, but has nothing at all to do with the health care system. Wait, that’s not necessarily true at all. For example, someone who never goes to a doctor because they can’t afford to, and then dies of a heart attack that could have been prevented by early detection and treatment, is not officially “in” the healthcare system but is nonetheless greatly impacted by it. The mere fact of avoiding healthcare consumption doesn’t mean that the healthcare system isn’t significantly influencing your health outcomes. (ETA: whew, just barely ninja’d Steve\_MB 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1046 "2021-08-23T20:09:31Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Someone who never goes to a doctor then dies of a heart attack is counted in life expectancy, but has nothing at all to do with the health care system. An assertion not in evidence. Obviously, for example “I don’t go to a doctor because I hate being poked and prodded”, “I don’t go to a doctor because (based on results I’ve seen) they’re all quacks”, and “I don’t go to a doctor because I can’t afford it” have rather different degrees of relevance to evaluation of the health care system. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1047 "2021-08-23T20:17:59Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > No, Sam is right. Economically speaking, being able to add a slice of tomato to a sandwich while keeping customer pricing _and_ profit margins equal is a textbook example of “innovation”, and far, far, far, far far far more common than “we’re going to use our excess junk bond capital to invent the iPhone” or some such foolishness one usually thinks about when reading the word “innovation”. Walmart lowered costs so much that it actually lowered national inflation rates for years all by itself. There was plenty of innovation there - it wssn’t just strong-arming suppliers to lower prices But if it was, how would that be different than a tax on ‘the rich’ with the money trickling down to the poor in the form of lower prices? The same is true for Amazon. Maybe even more so. Amazon revolutionized warehouse management, supply chain management, shipping… getting where it is has required decades of unrelenting process improvement and ridding operations of every tiny bit of slack and waste. It cost a lot of money. We just had some landscaping done, which is why I had landscaper on the brain. Due to COVID, these guys are really busy. Well, my landscaper used his capital to go out and buy a very cool front-end loader that someone designed to be able to drive through a garden gate. It folds up very cleverly to do that, and each time it is used it saves some workers the need to take down a fence. He says it also does the work of four guys. He was forced to buy it because of the labor shortage, but has now increased his productivity by a third. That will allow him to expand and hire more people. And if he can hire someone to drive the loader, he can pay them a lot more than someone who works with a shovel. When I worked in factory automation, I saw stories like this every day. At one point I was a product manager for Statistical Process Control software. That software is used in process control projects of all kinds, and I helped set some of them up and train the people how to do SPC. Primarily what that software does is allow you to spend capital on engineers who can instrument your processes and figure out how to eake out small percentage improvements in waste and efficiency. As a result, factories may be able to reduce material consumption by X%, or improve the repeatability of their processes making products better, or reduce downtime in the factory, raising the productivity of the workers. So retaining capital is just as important for a backyard landscaper as for a giant fasctory, and re-invested capital is what improves productivity and increases quality. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1048 "2021-08-23T20:21:02Z")
Sounds like what really helped your landscaper was Covid, so clearly we need more ~~tax cuts~~ pandemics. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1049 "2021-08-23T20:22:29Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > An assertion not in evidence. Obviously, for example “I don’t go to a doctor because I hate being poked and prodded”, “I don’t go to a doctor because (based on results I’ve seen) they’re all quacks”, and “I don’t go to a doctor because I can’t afford it” have rather different degrees of relevance to evaluation of the health care system. Yes, that’s certainly true but a side point to the fact that life expectancy is a very crude proxy for how good your health care system is. Lots of people in Canada refuse to go to the doctor when they should as well. It’s human nature. But sure, one measure could certainly be to look at how early cancers are detected in the cohort with health insurance, and a cohort without it. But you have to be careful, because the non-insurance group could be correlated with other risky behaviours. For example, it may be that people making low incomes may drink more or be more obese. So disentangling all this is not easy. That’s why I prefer to just look at performance measures in the system itself, while recognizing that access to the system is a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1050 "2021-08-23T20:22:52Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In the meantime, the working class gains lots of benefits from globalization - primarily better, cheaper products. But that’s not captured in the data. […] Having a 40" TV drop in price from $2000 to $200 is a huge boon to the poor and lower middle classes, but all we see in the data is income loss. That’s setting the bar for “lots of benefits” and “huge boon” pretty low by the side of the concurrent income loss, ISTM. As JohnT pointed out in post #1016, > [@JohnT](#): > > _In 1975, the median individual (he/him) earned the equivalent of $42,000 in 2018 dollars. In 1979, the same. […] in 2018, this person made $50,000…. $8,000 more than they were making in 1975._ > > _Had his income increased the same as it did ala 1945-1974 (“Counterfactual”), his income would be $92,000._ So yeah, it does seem pretty reasonable to suggest that an annual income loss of $42,000 (compared to pre-1975 income trends) is far more salient than the so-called “huge boon” of saving $1800, or a few hundred bucks per year over the course of the appliance’s useful life, on a 40" TV. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1051 "2021-08-23T20:24:14Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > Sounds like what really helped your landscaper was Covid, so clearly we need more ~~tax cuts~~ pandemics. That’s the kind of completely useless response I’ve come to expect from you. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1052 "2021-08-23T20:27:23Z")
Yes, I know, you really need folks to drink your ‘KoolAid’ and not point out the holes in your ‘’‘arguments’’’ don’t you? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1053 "2021-08-23T20:31:57Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > So yeah, it does seem pretty reasonable to suggest that an annual income loss of $42,000 (compared to pre-1975 income trends) is far more salient than the so-called “huge boon” of saving $1800, or a few hundred bucks per year over the course of the appliance’s useful life, on a 40" TV. This is what’s frustrating talking with you. If you were at all reading this to understand my point of view rather than looking for a ‘gotcha’, you might understad that the TV thing was just one of many, many examples. Better clothes, cheaper food, cheaper cars (MUCH cheaper when you consider quality and safety), available air conditioning, better entertainment options, better medical care (more drugs, which although they may be expensive still exist). For example, for all the ragging the left has done on ‘big pharma’, over the decades, it was big pharma that saved our asses, most expecially for the working class who are more exposed than white collar workers. And if you think there is some policy regime that would allow the sverage worker to be making $42,000 per year more, I don’t know what to say. Extrapolating a curve out 50 more years is foolish. Especially when the world looks very different today than it did then, when the U.S. was supplier to the world and had little competition, accumulated debt was low, and we were still reaping the tech boom that came out of WWII. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1054 "2021-08-23T20:34:55Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > Yes, I know, you really need folks to drink your ‘KoolAid’ and not point out the holes in your ‘’‘arguments’’’ don’t you? You aren’t pointing out a damned thing. You’re more like an annoying bird squawking in the background while the adults attempt to have a conversation. I’ve noticed almost all your posts are like that. Just little shots and digs at your enemies, devoid of any actual content. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1055 "2021-08-23T20:39:11Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Walmart lowered costs so much that it actually lowered national inflation rates for years all by itself. There was plenty of innovation there - it wssn’t just strong-arming suppliers to lower prices But if it was, how would that be different than a tax on ‘the rich’ with the money trickling down to the poor in the form of lower prices? Income redistribution from the rich to the poor (interesting choice of yours there about which of those phrases to use scare quotes on, btw) via taxation is not just about enabling the poor to pay lower prices when shopping at Walmart. Walmart “strong-arming suppliers to lower prices” (as well as genuinely innovating in business practices) reduces the prices of Walmart goods, and also produces significant additional profit for Walmart: of course Walmart wouldn’t go to the trouble of reducing their costs if all the savings went to the consumer. A tax-funded social safety net does more than just hand poor consumers a sum of money equivalent to a steep discount on Walmart merchandise. It enables access to benefits that Walmart doesn’t provide and that would be very hard for poor consumers to organize on their own, such as transportation and medical care. Of course, in a mixed economy there’s no need to make a choice between Walmart cutting costs and tax-funded benefits for the poor. The government can look after the latter and Walmart is still free to do the former. (In fact, as we’ve all heard from the GAO, Walmart is already [quite dependent on tax-funded benefits for the poor such as Medicaid and food stamps in order to maintain its low-wage worker base](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html) and thereby its low prices.) ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1056 "2021-08-23T20:40:46Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > {…} Just little shots and digs at your enemies, devoid of any actual content. Like what you just posted? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1057 "2021-08-23T20:54:52Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Your (John T’s) graph shows that Canada has a much higher life expectancy, but we had until recently less progressive taxes than the US and a lower corporate tax… > Your next gr(a)ph showing the Fed balance sheet makes my point. We are headed for either a financial crisis, or a major policy correction that will be very painful. For purposes of better understanding, does “we” mean Canadians, or USers? Or are you, as a Canadian, suggesting that Canada’s economy is headed down the tubes because it’s closely tied to “the Fed balance sheet”? I is confused. 🤔 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1058 "2021-08-23T20:58:16Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > For purposes of better understanding, does “we” mean Canadians, or USers? Or are you, as a Canadian, suggesting that Canada’s economy is headed down the tubes because it’s closely tied to “the Fed balance sheet”? > > I is confused. 🤔 Sorry, I was being a little sloppy. Canada is doing the ssme thing as the US. The Bank of Canada engages in the same stuff. Our debt to GDP ratio is also completely out of whack. And besides, Canada is economicaly tied to the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1059 "2021-08-23T21:02:30Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > …cheaper cars (MUCH cheaper when you consider quality and safety)… Cheaper cars? I remember watching _The Price is Right_ in the early '70s. The price of a new car back then was always four digits, and it usually started with a ‘3’. I’d like you to provide a cite that cars are cheaper now, even adjusted for inflation. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1060 "2021-08-23T21:05:17Z")
C’mon, are you telling me heated seats and a remotely controlled driver side mirror aren’t worth at least an extra 10k? ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1061 "2021-08-23T21:14:55Z")
If Sam’s assertion is correct, we should be able to get those heated seats and remotely controlled mirror and save money, compared to what we used to pay for a car. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1062 "2021-08-23T21:20:17Z")
It seems to depend very much on the car. Here’s an article from 2017: > **[Have cars actually gotten more expensive over time?](https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1109174_have-cars-actually-gotten-more-expensive-over-time)** > > It's a common complaint we hear from shoppers: new cars have gotten too expensive. The math, at least on the surface, seems to agree with this statement. The average transaction price of a new car rose to over $34,000 last year, compared to about... There are probably more recent articles but this basically answers the question. Seems to me that on average the price of cars have kept up with inflation and while the prices are well tuned to what the market/consumer will bear, you do get more features and higher quality bog standard vehicle for a somewhat better price than 10 and 20 years ago. I think once you start adding features and higher trim levels, the price advantages quickly disappear. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2021, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633/1063 "2021-08-23T21:27:39Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If you were at all reading this to understand my point of view rather than looking for a ‘gotcha’, you might understad that the TV thing was just one of many, many examples. But do these “many, many examples” actually add up to “huge boons” that are really equivalent to the loss of income? That’s not a “gotcha” attempt, that’s a serious and important question. And it’s one that you seem pretty determined to avoid considering seriously. Which may be where your frustration is really coming from. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Better clothes, Well, cheaper clothes, and more clothes, at any rate. But [not that much cheaper](https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/7939/madeinamerica): > [@](#): > > In 1960, an average American household spent over 10 percent of its income on clothing and shoes - equivalent to roughly $4,000 today. […] > > Today [in 2013], the average American household spends less than 3.5 percent of its budget on clothing and shoes - under $1,800 So the average American worker has lost some $40K in annual income, compared to pre-1975 income growth trends, but that’s okay because it’s so significantly offset by the “huge boon” of saving $2200 annually on a household’s clothes? Hmmm. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > cheaper food Again, how’s that compare to tens of thousands of dollars in annual income? The average poor-to-middling household [spends about $3-5K on food annually](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/your-grandparents-spent-more-of-their-money-on-food-than-you-do) (2015), which is about 10% of disposable income. If you double that number, you put food spending as a share of disposable income back up around where it was in 1975. But saving $3-5K on food annually is, again, not that much of a “huge boon” compared to the lost-income numbers. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > cheaper cars ? Says who? Looks like [a 1975 new car would cost about $17K in 2015 dollars, compared to $31K for a 2015 car](http://www.mybudget360.com/cost-of-living-compare-1975-2015-inflation-price-changes-history/). > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > (MUCH cheaper when you consider quality and safety), available air conditioning, better entertainment options, better medical care (more drugs, which although they may be expensive still exist). See, here’s all the tapdancing about “Oh but the options today are so much better! That’s why the average worker today has such a huge boon offsetting their lower income!” This is highly unconvincing, largely because it’s so disparaging and insulting to the power of capitalist innovation. What, are you telling us that businesses over the last fifty years really wouldn’t have been able to invent airbags or antilock brakes or Marvel movies or a COVID vaccine without massively suppressing wage growth for the ordinary worker? I find that hard to believe. And finally, of course, when we turn to big-ticket items like housing and healthcare and college, those are most definitely NOT cheaper today in real dollars than they were in 1975. So no, Sam, I’m not trying for any kind of “gotcha” here, other than the inevitable “gotcha” effect of making a valid point based on factual evidence. When you claim that the “lots of benefits” obtained by the working class in the form of “better, cheaper products” count as a “huge boon” offsetting lost income and increased major expenses, you just don’t have the numbers to back it up. It’s mere wishful thinking, because you would like the market-fueled developments of the last few decades to have been an outstanding success for ordinary workers. But your wishing it to be so doesn’t make it so. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633.md?page=52) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-believes-trumps-tweets/922633.md?page=54)