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Originally Posted by opendoor
I'd be curious to see the data on that. Everything I've seen points to stagnant real income across most income levels. Median real income, median household income, and disposable income have all been flat or have declined in the last 4-5 years. GDP per capita has gone up, but given that income hasn't, that would suggest that any wealth that's getting generated is finding its way into asset prices rather than wages.
And of course, it's not just a question of money. US life expectancy is downright awful at this point. The US's 2023 Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy is now 69th in the world, and is closer to Iraq, Syria, Guatemala, and Cambodia than it is to Canada's. And they are 180th of 183 countries in terms of improvement in that metric since the year 2000, ahead of only Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and Sudan, gaining only 0.3 years in that period.
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None of this is wrong, but what does that have to do with the economy? Most of that is because of the incredible fractured and dysfunctional health care system, which seems to be problematic regardless of the money spent on it, either public or private.
Outside of a complete revamping of the system, which seems impossible under the current makeup of the congress, what could any president really do to fix this?
BTW, a couple of great pieces of legislature under Biden's term helped to control essential drug prices and required fair estimates from health care providers for medical care. Both of these should do a lot to drive healthcare prices down in the coming decade, but he won't be around long enough to take credit for it.