Depending on how the heads of Departments of Insurance (DOIs) are selected (elected or appointed), there can be varying levels of political pressure to keep insurance rates down even in the face of grim economic realities.

A popular maneuver is capping the rate increases that can be filed on a yearly basis; this looks like a win for the consumers in the short term (and great for political bonafides), but creates a massive loss in the medium to long term as insurers leave markets entirely and remaining insurers have little to no incentive to provide good service.

Sadly, both states have geographical drawbacks (CA, wildfires; FL, hurricanes) and aggressive DOIs that make it hard to charge the appropriate rates given the risks involved. Surprisingly, FL is a bit more reasonable than CA or even NY are; I have personal experience filing in FL and while they're tough and demanding they understand that insurers raise rates for a reason. Other states are much less flexible and forgiving.

It's not really insurance if it inevitably gets stopgapped by taxpayers against their will. It absolutely grinds my fucking gears and when I talk to health actuaries I'm blown away by how much less sophisticated their pricing techniques are relative to my industry's.

We actually rely pretty heavily on data and statistical techniques, significantly less on trying to get our way through political avenues.

One thing too to note about insurance markets, don't be surprised if places like CA or FL see private personal lines insurers (homeowners, auto, etc.) leave because of terrible economics and get replaced by fully public options.

People who trumpet the impending "soft landing" fail to understand that the market didn't absorb the rate hikes without issue; countervailing forces like the reverse repo usage as seen in the chart above basically stealthily dripped liquidity in the market to take the edge off the unprecedented hiking pace.

In reality we've been in a largely sideways picture liquidity-wise and like OP mentioned it will be very interesting to see what happens if/when that facility gets fully tapped out.

Public healthcare can never work at scale because of adverse selection. You see this already with the ACA exchanges here in the US; people who opt for ACA plans are on average less able to pay full-price (require public subsidies) and need more care. You will never be able to find enough healthy people willing to pay into the system while taking up minimal to none of the pooled resources.

Anyone can see this is true by looking at the plans that are available. Even the cheapest options have massive deductibles and still decently large monthly premiums.

It's one of the reasons I never even considered becoming a health actuary (I'm in property & casualty), the business is fundamentally economically imbalanced and the only way to make profit is to lobby government and find ways to get reimbursed from the feds/states. Just not a real business fundamentally if it's driven mainly by political jockeying and not superior positioning in the marketplace.

No surprise, we agree completely on that. I've found it particularly amusing to go through the exercise of asking statists why their favorite ABC XYZ federal department should be given expanded power or the benefit of the doubt when it's clear their policies have been ineffective. The contortions, mental gymnastics, and straw manning that ensues is hilarious.

Populism can be both left and right-wing, so on the face of it while I don't like most of what Reuters says about economics and finance (constant gaslighting and scapegoating), they are unwittingly onto something here.

The constant clamor for funding solutions against the climate crisis along with pushes worldwide for universal benefits, etc. can certainly fit that bill.

But in more general terms, I find articles from Axios, CNBC, and Reuters to be particularly egregious and moronic. Very hard to take anything they write seriously.

Sadly, while I hope that it would be different this time, it's likely not to be. Lots of fantastic comments about possible scenarios already so I'll try and focus on what an average consumer in the US might think about (or, more interestingly, not think about).

I think what astounds me the most is what I consider to be the greatest con perpetrated against the people, that is: government is always somehow the hero and the solution, not the perpetrator and the villain.

Like the highly publicized regional bank implosion this past summer. It's clear to us that these banks failed because of bad policy at the highest levels. But Congress' natural response is to say we need MOAR regulation. And the American public seems to buy that.

I've been reading Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions to try and better understand why there seems to be such a gulf between people's thought patterns, namely those who have opted out of the Matrix (see the government for what it is) and those who haven't (see the government as something being perfected as if perfect regulation/laws could be achieved).

I'm not too much of an armchair philosopher to ruminate about the very core of each position, but it seems obvious to me that if the same party turns up time and time again at the heart of core issues, maybe they should be looked at with more scrutiny?

Curious for anyone's thoughts on the above, thanks.

Yeah I've noticed for whatever reason interesting polyrhythms almost create a "white noise" effect that makes it easier for me to focus. Not sure if that's the case for everyone, but I'm happy I've found something that works for me, and sounds like for you too! Cheers.

Could not agree more, on all counts.

I spoke with a Libertarian presidential candidate recently who had a plan to cap government spending at a certain % of GDP. And I was immediately turned off because he didn't seem to take into account the fact that government spending is a portion of the GDP calculation...

Agree that it shouldn't be counted. It's not as if it's real capital earned by the government; it's just funds confiscated by a coercive tax regime.

Also agree completely that the best course of action is to flush the excess credit and unproductive zombie firms out of the system with haste and then let the economy naturally recover. I have no doubt in my mind that it would be extremely painful in the short run but the economy would bend, not break. That's way better than the economy slowly succumbing to asphyxiation by warped incentives and absolutely unproductive uses of capital supported by theft via inflation.

Bad businesses and ideas need to be allowed to fail, full stop.

Depends on what I'm doing. If I'm working, I prefer Ambient/New Age music, stuff without words that makes it easier to concentrate. Otherwise, I like listening to classical at night when I'm winding down for the night and rock/metal during the day.

Overall I prefer music with interesting rhythms and melodies, different time signatures, etc. stuff that's musically interesting rather than cookie-cutter stuff that gets plastered all over the radiowaves these days.

I think the healthcare component of CPI is absolute bogus. I want to see how they calculated the -34% change.

Otherwise, playing devil's advocate here, the way it could be different this time is the federal government's outsized deficits putting a bit of a floor on how much the economy can slow down.

In one sense, the rampant deficit spending prevents the economy from plunging into a recessionary abyss. Yet, at the same time, it also prevents inflation from really coming under control. So it's possible we end up with a grinding slog sideways to slightly down rather than a violent plunge and a grinding recovery.

Would be curious to get your thoughts on that.

Also, I wanted to get your take on a question I've been wrestling with lately. Beyond CBDC's, we also need to worry about the BTC market ultimately fracturing into potentially "white-listed" (by the government) and "black-listed" (again, by the government, not by users) markets.

What kind of arguments could you see being raised by gov't to persuade unsuspecting, relatively unsophisticated normies to trudge over to the white-listed (but fake, I would posit) asset vs. the real deal?

Certainly not entirely relevant at this very moment, but I surmise it may be soon enough when the US CBDC inevitably arrives in some form or another.

Stay and fight for your rights. Like others have said, the best option to take advantage of the "best of both worlds" is to move to a state that is more liberty-oriented and at the very minimum open to BTC as part of the local economy.

Agreed, on a BTC standard though (much like a "pure" gold standard might've been) trusted third parties will be incentivized to be good actors and make sound lending decisions since trust and reputation will actually count as things earned, not assumed.

"BTC is dangerous because it's not controlled by XYZ government officials"

Appeal to the average pleb's fear center in their brain which irrationally overrides any logic that may pierce the veil and expose the truth that BTC has tremendous value precisely because it's not under any government's control.

Don't put too much pressure on yourself. You can't control how people receive the message; you can only control how you convey it. I know not everyone will be receptive when I talk about it, but I view my role as shouting into the open air and maybe one or two people will catch my drift. I can't control who it reaches, I can only control how hard I shout and what I'm shouting. Hope that helps.

I quit using plain Firefox a long time ago (prefer LibreWolf on Linux and Orion on MacOS) but I'm still shocked about how the money is being spent. I'm not surprised that Mozilla doesn't need user donations, just like Wikipedia doesn't, but my goodness the amount spent very questionably is eye-opening. Thanks for sharing. I'll make it a point to never support Mozilla directly, ever.

You bring up a lot of good points. I think this attitude is especially widespread among goldbugs too, for example. Makes it hard to take any of them seriously when they've been preaching to hide gold bars under your bed for decades.

I think overall the Austrians would do better by just focusing on smaller aspects of day-to-day effects of bad policy rather than an umbrella doom-and-gloom prediction.

It would help alleviate some of the issues you mentioned and also hopefully make their commentary relevant for the average person.

Curious to hear what you think.

I think they'll make the transition - albeit very painfully and at substantial cost to the consumer. I am confident that ICE automakers will subsidize the EV losses by raising prices on all their vehicles. Tesla is much better positioned because it has already moved past the growing pains of scaling up EV manufacturing.

Thanks for the great set of questions! Happy to continue discussing if you'd like. What do you think?

Wanted to add a follow-up on this thread regarding offshore wind. Saw this article today. Confirms everything I/others have mentioned with regard to efficient allocation of (taxpayer funded) government funds.

The outcome should not be surprising even if the quoted reasons for failure are pretty hilarious. The CEO can't come right out and say it, but the projects were never viable. Blaming rising rates just means that ZIRP was necessary for these projects to succeed.