All right, so here is that chart looking at this chart, the greatest chart in the world what can we learn from it? Okay? So, the first thing and at this is actually, I will start with a shortcoming of the, of the chart. The, the hourly, the average hourly wage is that that should be in green or something like that because that is the relevant that is the relevant line from the perspective of time prices based.
Basically, whatever you see below the, the hourly, the average hourly wages is becoming cheaper, that doesn't mean that it is not increasing in price, but it is becoming cheaper because it is growing in price at a slower Pace than average hourly earnings. So you can see that housing food and beverages cars household Furnishings clothing, cell phones toys, computer software TVs Are becoming much much less
expensive, relative to wages. In fact, they are, they are actually becoming cheaper in real terms because the overall inflation was 56%. I think you are looking now at the chart between 19 between 1998 and 2018. Yes, that's what you're looking at. And basically, what Mark does here, he puts he puts the black line through it and that's the inflation and what you can see is, That every hourly earnings have grown at a faster Pace than inflation. You would expect that because we
are becoming more productive. But when you look at Child Care, Medical Care, College tuition College, textbook Hospital Services, what you realize that it become massively more expensive. What do they have all in common? What they have in common is that the the government is very heavily in involved in their production and also in subsidizing of them. So for example, college
textbooks, Sun College tuition. There is a reason why it's increasing and it is because the government is pumping ever more money into the tertiary education system through subsidies. So, if a kid doesn't have enough money, he can also borrow from he can always borrow from the government to pay back later and he's suddenly sitting quarter of a million dollars and the university knows it. So, they can jack up the prices because they know, they are going to get it Hospital Services.
Once again. This is something that the government has declared is basically Universal human rights. So a lot of money is being being pushed into the healthcare sector in government subsidies and government regulations. Currently roughly nine, out of every ten dollars. That, that is being spent. In, in, in the healthcare sector is being paid by the government or by by private providers. But not by by the people themselves. Selves.
So obviously when there's a lot of money sloshing around in a variety of subsidies and loans and, and so forth, the prices are going to go up childcare very similar to that that is partly driven by regulation, for example, in Washington, d.c. just last week. It was decided that anybody taking care of children, has to have a college degree. Now, obviously, that's completely idiotic.
There is no reason for that at all, plenty of Americans have survived with Latin. Nannies for decades, maybe even centuries but today in Washington d.c. you need a college degree. What does that mean? That means that the your child care is going to cost much more because you are getting a person who is going to be able to command more money and and and to a party to pay off their
their debt. Whereas with the market is permitted to function more or less perfectly cars household Furnishings clothing tea, Edie's is a perfect example because we also import a lot of electronics from abroad. Those have fallen by something like 90%. So this is a very important indicator of the heavier the, in the, the the government involvement in Industry, the, the faster, the prices rise, and the less they are involved.
The the cheaper things get, I don't know if you have this expression in the Czech Republic but are you familiar with hee-hoo? Pays the piper calls the tune. Yes, yes. So another words when producers have a customer basis, then the customer sort of get to call the tune, because they're the ones, paying them if they're not accountable to the customers. Well, then the customers can go somewhere else. So the producers act to try and
please the consumer. But when there's government subsidies, well, then they try to please the politicians. And now it's almost like the consumers are completely irrelevant. You get treated like total trash by these producers at that point because all of their focus is how do we get our funds again next year? So we have the case against subsidies and then the case you mentioned that case pisses me off so much about needing a college degree to babysit kids or watch them in exchange for
money. A belated violation of I mean, just the self-ownership principle, but look at that. They're explicitly, lowering the supply of childcare. Providers. Literally, making it illegal, unless you have some degree from some Marxist University. And then they tell you that, oh well, we have no clue, why the price is so high out of nowhere. They literally limit the supply, increase the price and say, gosh, I guess the people just have too much freedom. I mean, it is unbelievable.
That is a very important graph. Thank you for bringing that up, completely, unbelievable. And it's it has a lot of Consequences negative consequences throughout the economy, part of the reason why people are taking, you know, people are not having as many babies as they could, is because
they are. They're looking at the price of raising a child in a typical Advanced economy with regulations like that and saying, well, you know, we basically cannot afford this that the child is going to cost us three hundred thousand dollars before it walks out of the door at the age of 18 adjusted for you know, childcare and G college, education and things like that. Do we really have that kind of money, especially in the economy, where our real earnings are becoming smaller due to
inflation, but that's not. That's, that's a, that's a, that's that's, that's an example that could be multiplied millions of times. So here in Virginia, for example, let's say that you are a billionaire and your greatest desire in your life is to build a hospital that you are going to provide. And people with health care, I realized that not very many people think that billionaires have a heart but a lot of them do and a lot of them want to do
a lot of good. Look at the charity of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and things like that. So let's say that. You've got a billionaire, who wants to only want to do is to build a hospital. Can he do it in a state of Virginia? The answer is, yes, he can provided that this billionaire can prove to the government of Virginia that The need for this hospital and who decides whether there is a need for additional Hospital? Well it's all the other
hospitals in Virginia. so, It's called certificate of need laws for people that aren't, it's called certificate of need because I did not believe that this was a real thing. But it actually is and Most states have them. So, in America, this country, I believe in the Paragon of capitalism. Your competitors have to
essentially sign off. On the old on you having the privilege of taking the risk in the marketplace, whether your hospital is going to increase the make profit or not, you cannot make it up.