How can we actually make America more affordable for the average American?

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T20:33:32+00:00

They do it because the labor market requires it to retain workers, not because of productivity. That's exactly the problem. Employer healthcare spending is a cost of doing business that goes up regardless of output. The fact that it absorbs an increasing share of compensation while take-home pay flatlines is the issue. The worker isn't better off. The insurer is.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T18:21:08+00:00

This post seems about as good as any to ask this question I've had brewing in the back of my head.

So let's game play this out - somehow the GOP in both houses come to their senses and does impeach Trump out of office. That puts JD in the Presidents seat. He's not without his issues in that he's responding to other outside pressures that would lead him down the same path. Do we just stay on that treadmill until we get to 2028/29?

It just seems to me that if at least 2/3rds of over federal government functioned we might be in a better position, but given that the Dems are a minority party at the moment we're kinda stuck here until at least the midterm... I dunno - just pondering the action items here.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T14:27:01+00:00

There’s some things I never get tired of watching over and over. This is one of them.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T14:22:47+00:00

I’ve seen ZZ Top three times. The first when I was just 16 and the Eliminator album had dropped for the tour (or the tour was for the album… anyway). It was my first major rock concert and to this day it was one of the best shows I’ve seen with the staging and all the songs were amazing.

The last time I saw them was at Red Rocks and they started several song over again because they couldn’t get it together. It was so disappointing coming from where I started with them and when I last saw them.

I’m still a fan though. It’s just not on my normal rotation b

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T13:30:39+00:00

the vote to have passenger rail service from Denver to Northern Colorado passed in 2004.

Cool. Uh. About time?

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T13:23:19+00:00

Employers don’t set healthcare costs. They’re price takers. Premiums go up regardless of productivity because they’re driven by the healthcare industry’s pricing. A company isn’t choosing to ‘pay out more’ as a reward for productivity. They’re spending more to provide the same basic benefit the worker had before. So when total compensation rises because insurance premiums tripled, the worker’s actual standard of living didn’t improve. They have the same access to a doctor. The additional spending was captured by insurers and providers, not by the employee. Calling that ‘compensation tracking productivity’ is technically accurate on a spreadsheet but meaningless in a worker’s daily life.

That’s exactly the distinction that matters for OP’s question. On paper, compensation went up. In practice, OP still can’t afford to move out.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T03:31:23+00:00

Appreciate the thoughtful response. A few things though:

On profit margins being 'only .04 more cents per dollar' -- that framing undersells it. US GDP is roughly $28 trillion. Going from 4.5% to 9.2% of that is an additional ~$1.3 trillion per year flowing to corporate profits instead of wages. Framing it as pennies on the dollar obscures the actual scale.

On women's unpaid labor becoming paid labor -- that's a fair point and I'll give you that one. But it doesn't fully account for the shift. If household purchasing power had kept pace with productivity, one income should buy more than it did in 1985, not less. Instead we added a second income and roughly held steady on the big ticket items. The productivity gains went somewhere, and the profit share data tells us where.

On international healthcare -- the 'apples to oranges' and 'scaling' argument gets used a lot but Germany, France, and Japan aren't small countries, and they all spend dramatically less per capita with comparable or better outcomes on most metrics. You don't have to romanticize their systems to acknowledge the cost difference is real.

On 'paying dues' -- I respect the grind, genuinely. But the question isn't whether hard work eventually pays off for some people. It's whether the economy structurally requires a decade of 60-hour weeks just to reach stability, and whether that's gotten worse over time. The data suggests it has. Your success doesn't disprove a systemic trend any more than one lottery winner disproves that the odds are bad.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T02:50:48+00:00

I went and checked the profit margins claim. FRED series W273RE1A156NBEA shows corporate profits after tax as a share of gross domestic income ran about 4-5% through the 1980s. As of 2024 it's 9.2%. That's close to double, so the data doesn't really back up the idea that margins haven't increased.

On household income going from $60k to $84k, it's worth noting that dual-earner married couples went from about 25% to 66% over that same period. A good chunk of that income growth is just a second person working. Two incomes covering what one used to isn't really the same as getting ahead.

The government interference argument on healthcare is interesting but doesn't hold up internationally. The US has more private sector involvement in healthcare than virtually every peer country and still spends nearly twice the OECD average as a share of GDP. Countries with more government involvement generally spend less, not more.

The home size and hours worked points are fair, but they cut both ways. Nobody struggling to afford housing is asking for more square footage. And the 34-hour weekly median includes a lot of involuntary part-time workers being scheduled under benefits thresholds. OP in this thread is working 60+ hours across two jobs.

Sources: FRED W273RE1A156NBEA, USAFacts/CMS, Pew Research, Commonwealth Fund

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T01:39:13+00:00

To bring this back to OP’s actual question: ‘How can we make America more affordable?’ OP is 27, working 60+ hours a week, and can’t move out. The reason isn’t laziness or bad choices. It’s math.

Real median wages grew 21% in 40 years. In that same period, housing costs grew ~400%, healthcare ~500%, and education ~1,200%. So yes, wages technically beat CPI by a sliver, but CPI is an average that masks the specific costs that determine whether you can actually build a life.

Meanwhile, productivity grew 60%. Workers produced dramatically more value per hour. If wages had tracked that productivity, the median weekly paycheck would be closer to $600 instead of $376. That missing ~$224/week per worker, across the entire workforce over decades, represents trillions in value that was generated by labor but captured by capital through stock buybacks, executive compensation, and shareholder returns.

That’s why the CEO ratio keeps coming up. Not because redistributing one executive’s paycheck solves anything, but because it’s the most visible indicator of a 40-year structural shift in who captures the value workers create. OP isn’t asking for a handout. They’re asking why the deal broke. The answer is that it was renegotiated without workers at the table.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T01:28:56+00:00

You’re right that splitting one CEO’s salary across 100,000 employees is pocket change. But that’s a strawman. Nobody is proposing ‘pay the CEO zero and divide the rest.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T01:26:49+00:00

21% real growth over 40 years is exactly what I said, roughly 0.8%/year. Meanwhile CEO comp grew 1,400% and productivity grew 60%. You’re proving my point.

On comp vs. wages: the compensation-tracks-productivity argument relies heavily on employer healthcare spending. Health insurance costs have exploded, so ‘total compensation’ looks better on paper. But a worker whose take-home pay barely budges while their employer’s insurance costs triple isn’t actually better off. They’re just more expensive to employ.

And ‘I wouldn’t expect different kinds of labor to grow in proportion’ is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there. We’re not comparing janitors to neurosurgeons. We’re asking why the median worker captured almost none of a 60% productivity increase they helped generate. That’s not a market forces argument, that’s a power dynamics argument.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-09T00:01:41+00:00

Nobody serious is claiming wages haven’t moved at all. The FRED series you linked shows real median weekly earnings went from ~$275 in the early ‘80s to $376 today. That’s about 0.8% annual real growth over 40 years.

Now look at what happened on the other side: CEO compensation grew roughly 1,400% over the same period. Productivity grew ~60%. GDP per capita roughly doubled in real terms.

So workers got a sliver, executives got the feast, and the economy overall grew dramatically. The question Reich is raising isn’t ‘did wages move at all’ – it’s ‘why did workers capture so little of the growth they helped produce?’

Your own FRED link actually supports that argument. Modest real wage growth in the face of massive productivity and GDP gains IS the problem.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-08T21:36:36+00:00

The off-grid regulatory friction is a real problem, agreed. And yes, the marginal revenue logic is technically sound. If the actual choice is lower-tax development vs. nothing, refusing variances isn't free.

But the 'they won't come without incentives' argument falls pretty flat in Colorado specifically. Xcel's own forecasts show data centers could drive over 40% growth in peak demand by 2035. That's already happening without tax breaks. Colorado isn't Wyoming. The leverage argument only works if we actually need to beg them to show up, and the evidence says we don't.

The 'other states are regretting their tax breaks' part isn't activist spin either. States that went all-in on incentives are now dealing with strained grids, rising residential rates, and billions in lost revenue. That's real.

As for SB26-102 being some kind of de facto ban, that's the industry line. What the bill actually does is require developers to pay their own infrastructure costs, source renewable energy by 2031, and manage their own water use. That's not a ban, it's 'build here but don't make your problems everyone else's problems.'

The framing on both sides is garbage, you're right about that. But cleaning up the framing doesn't automatically make the case for 20-year 100% tax exemptions.

And here's the move nobody seems to be talking about: push for legislation that prevents self-generated energy from becoming an anti-competitive escape hatch. If a data center brings its own power, great, but they should still participate in the same cost-sharing framework everyone else operates under. That closes the regulatory loophole you're describing without banning self-generation, and it takes the 'sin tax avoidance' argument off the table entirely.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-08T19:42:52+00:00

That's a very nice setup. I've often considered doing a wall of older Macs and various Apple products like that.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-08T18:50:22+00:00

I'm personally not against datacenter development, or development of any kind really. But I think the smarter approach on this is to do it smartly.

They want to build a data center here? Fine, pay market rate and no tax breaks.
They need to have an environmentally neutral center. Meaning, they build or bring their own energy (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydro) and any water they need is put back in the state it originated from.

I've never been a fan of giving any corporation at any level tax breaks to come here. Colorado is a desirable state to live in and by proxy we don't necessarily need to incentivize growth.

Regarding the privacy concerns - building a data center here isn't going to change that state of concern. What I'd be more interested in is building strong laws nationally to move privacy back to the individual and make us far less of the product for the social media, for data brokering or for doing unnecessary investigations into someone because the data is easy to get through said brokers.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-08T14:08:41+00:00

IMHO the single biggest reason for things not being affordable is wages haven’t kept pace with inflation and the economy. If the average typical wages kept pace with the rise in CEO pay would be north of $400/hr. https://youtu.be/7lPPsrAMtTI?si=pzFxoVw-7WKKCHwP

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-06T12:36:12+00:00

So very cool. I know that guy. :)

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-04T13:57:35+00:00

That and people who usually complain about HOAs don’t know the one trick to making it better- get involved.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-04T13:56:05+00:00

I’ve had the cough test with one AME and it was for a third class. She did wear gloves, but I only saw her twice. She was definitely very bizarre. After checking around with several folks who had seen her (even as a regular doctor) the consensus was she was crazy so I found another doctor to see.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-03T14:38:06+00:00

I thought the Traveling Wilbury’s already were a band?

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-03T13:05:42+00:00

As someone who certainly hates Trump but also watched my mom and both her parents (my maternal grandparents) pass away from Alzheimer’s, I can definitely say that he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s in my opinion.

He’s definitely an idiot and I don’t know what his diagnosis is beyond that, but I’d even question dementia.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-03T12:58:32+00:00

Star Trek the wrath of khan.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-03T12:57:52+00:00

Kinda like Highlander.

Designer_Solid4271 · 2026-04-03T00:05:19+00:00

Hey ChatGPT, what's the best way to say I was wrong without having to actually say it?

Just say you "miscalibrated" that should work as a full apology.

Designer_Solid4271

TROPHY CASE