Comments by "michael" (@michaeld4861) on "The Truth About Recessions" video.

@lizziemallow Here in the US it's generally a rate set by each company for health insurance. Nothing to do with income. Might be $200/month or might be $600/month (or more) depending on how much you want to be covered. That's why tens of millions can't afford health insurance and tens of millions more that do have some coverage can't afford to go to the doctor either because the insurance doesn't cover enough to be able to afford to go. For example, the cheapest health insurance plan through my job is about $4,000/year. But that's just to say I have insurance. If I actually get sick the insurance company pays nothing until after I've paid the first $8,000 of health costs. So in reality they pay nothing for my health bills until after I've paid $12,000 for the year. And that's literally half my entire yearly income. And I work for one of the big health insurance companies too! Plus, setting aside the cost, I've literally seen cancer patients denied cancer treatment (radiation) because the insurance company deemed it "not medically necessary"! The whole system is a scam.
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@lizk96 I think it might be good to add that speculators (I'm assuming) also includes real estate companies/private equity/hedge funds etc. and not just the "property brothers" flipping 3-5 houses a year. I've think we've seen enough this past year or so with the whole Redfin and Zillow debacles and private equity firms buying entire neighborhoods at a time to count speculation as at least a co-defendant in the trial of Who Caused It. Also in reply to Donnelly. The government didn't create an incentive for banks to do any of that. That's what capitalism does. That's the whole point of investment banking. The banks do illegal and overly risky things all the time, they literally view it as their job and prerogative, especially those deemed "too big to fail". They also gamed the system with the credit rating agencies to rate those subprime mortgages higher than they were which helped lay out the house of cards you described.
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Companies seem to be laying off massive amounts of workers simply to lower labor costs as they make record profits. One company starts and they all follow like dominoes. Waiting with their trillions on the sidelines to buy up every aspect of your existence and rent it back to you for 10x the cost after your life has crumbled due to their callousness and greed.
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