Tag: Passing the Buck

  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 15: How We Get There

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    Part 15 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This is the final installment. The last fourteen installments have been an attempt to describe a structural problem. This one is supposed to be the part where the writer describes how to fix it. I want to start…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 14: What We Could Have Instead

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    Part 14 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The previous thirteen installments have been an attempt to describe the structure of cost-shifting in American economic life and to trace how that structure was built. This one looks at what other developed countries do, partly because the…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 13: How We Got Here

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    Part 13 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The structural picture this series has been building was assembled over roughly fifty years, through a sequence of policy changes that, taken individually, were always defensible on some narrow technical or ideological ground, and that taken together added…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 12: The Bipartisan Consensus

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    Part 12 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The previous installment looked at where the money goes. This one looks at why the political system has not redirected it, which is a question I find harder to answer in a tidy way than the structural-economics questions…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 11: Who Profits?

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    Part 11 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The ten installments before this one traced where the money goes — the categories where household spending has grown, the mechanisms by which it has grown, and the structural reasons for the growth. This one is about who…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make LessPart 10: The Compound Effect

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    Part 10 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This series has spent nine installments going category by category through the structural changes that have shifted costs from corporate balance sheets onto American households over the last fifty years. Each installment looked at one slice of the…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 9: Death, Taxes, and Everything In Between

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    Part 9 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This installment is about all the other fees: the ones below the line on the bills I have already written about, the surcharges and convenience charges and service fees and resort fees and processing fees that have become…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 8: Insurance

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    Part 8 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. On the morning of December 4, 2024, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot and killed on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan on his way to his company’s annual investor day. The bullet casings recovered at the…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 7: Phone and Internet

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    Part 7 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This installment is about phone and internet service, which has become the cleanest example in modern American life of what happens when a utility-style market is allowed to deregulate into an oligopoly. It is the most unavoidable monthly…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 6: Food Monopolies

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    Part 6 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This series has been working its way through the categories of household spending where the cost has been quietly shifted away from corporate balance sheets and onto households. Food is one of the larger ones, and one of…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make LessPart 5: The Auto Trap

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    Part 5 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The first four installments traced cost shifts inside relatively well-defined transactions — wages versus productivity, employer-to-worker benefit transfers, overdraft fees, credit card interest. This one is harder, because the cost being passed to households is built into the…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less. Part 4: Credit Cards

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    Part 4 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. Part 3 looked at the overdraft side of consumer banking. This one looks at the other side of the same relationship — the credit card. Most of the largest credit card issuers in the United States are also…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 3: Banking Fees

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    Part 3 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. In Parts 1 and 2 I walked through the picture: the math on a typical American household has tightened over fifty years even as productivity has climbed, and several specific costs — housing, healthcare, higher education, transportation, retirement…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 2: The Baseline Shift

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    Part 2 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. In Part 1 I walked through the math on one specific case — a nurse making $77,000 a year, doing everything right, with $625 a month left after mandatory expenses. The argument was that the math has gotten…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More. Part 1: The Impossible Math

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    Part 1 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. A few years ago I started keeping a list. It began with a conversation at the field after one of Henry’s games. A guy I have known for a decade — coaches another team, runs a small landscaping…

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