Winds Of Change For The Philatelic Market

Quick reply;
No offense Geoffha, My employee's son was offered a position at Oxford, whiich he declined. He is currently at Michigan, tenured. The reason why, is that he eventually will need a heart transplant, that would be difficult in Great Britain. Congenital.

Recession for the uninformed is technically defined at 2 quarters of declining GDP. There are a ton of other statistics that go into that. It's hard hard to see a current recession as the job market is creating 230,000 jobs +- per month.
The lower GDP is explained more clearly by a lack of productivity, which had Alan Greenspan scratching his head over back then. (How can an economy grow without infationary pressure Explode?) Its in his book. "Those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't read" S. Clemens
To the point. Why I logged on. How do you get by Don?
mark

JD True I agree.
Hoosierboy is exactly correct. Supply and demand determine the price of everything. In The Gilded Age Clemens wrote "they knew the price of everything, the value of nothing". Don't flame me. From memory alone.
mark

Thing is that it is a different World now and a lot of economic theories and principles don't apply. How many of the created jobs are actually producing anything?

Understood. My wife and her family are all from England, most still live there. Her uncle was feeling not well about the same time I was entering my medical ordeal (8 years ago). He saw his primary car doctor in fairly short order but was referred for a CT scan and consult with a specialist. He sat on a waiting list for those critical services for 8 weeks and 4 days. He got a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and lived for only another 2 months (but the NHS was good enough to rent him a car doing those last weeks of his life).

In the same time period, I got my Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and had 50 operations, 3 years of chemo, 7 years of dialysis and north of $3.8 million of total medical costs; but I am still here. (My wife agrees with me that I was not worth it! LOL) Obviously, every medical case is unique, but my point is that having a long wait times can mean the difference between life and death.

Interestingly, my wait times over the last 2-3 years are now approaching those in the GB. In many ways I think it comes down to choosing between staying alive at a higher cost or paying less but dying sooner. Here in the US it is estimated that almost 25% of a person's lifetime of medical costs is consumed in the last few years of life. It would indeed be cheaper to die faster and this is certainly true if you end up with chronic medical condition during those years. Frankly with the US government, I think if they controlled this they would end lives quicker to cut down those costs. (Or course the elites would not be impacted by this.)

I encourage US older folks to consider that you should approach your retirement expecting huge medical costs that will drain your wealth. Other than the great equity we have in our house, we have been drained of our other retirement wealth due to saving my life. While I feel blessed about being still alive I also feel very guilty about what I have done to my family.
Don

Luckily, the wealth we had accumulated over the years together with applying for some 'compassion grants' from organizations like the American Kidney Fund and some of the pharma companies (i.e. the $33,800 per dose immunotherapy was dropped to 'only' $7600 per dose), we have managed to get through this so far. The recent $440,000 kidney transplant was hopefully the last major expense.

I simply had to get over the associated bruised ego, guilt, and feeling like a bum. I swallowed my pride and sought as many corporate handouts as I could find.
Don

Not true really. It depends upon the item. So-called investment grade stamps (Yes, I used "investment" and "stamps" in the same sentence) have a fixed supply and do not respond to demand. That is a reason why we continue to see strong competition and prices for high grade stamps of which only a handful either exist or meet a certain numerical designation. This tracks well with historical data for stamps that fall within the category of special and in demand.

Richard Lehmann can be a good read:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richar...3385ab9e4f14

Just to be clear, in the UK there is private medical care too. All medical treatment is free at the point of use on the NHS, including heart transplants, cancer treatment, surgery, you name it. Free. But if NHS waiting lists are an issue, you can always go private if you can affford it.

"Hoosierboy is exactly correct. Supply and demand determine the price of everything."

Can you explain why my electricity bill literally doubled in the last month? What happened to the supply or the demand?

Let's assume that the amount of electricity demand stayed the same. (Probably didn't, but a place to start.) The supply of electricity may also have stayed the same. However, the costs of supplying that electricity probably increased mostly due to labor costs increasing. Why do labor costs increase - a variety of reasons.

Now, if the amount of electricity supplied went down, and the amount of electricity demanded went up, then the actual curve would move.

In your case, we don't know what happened in your general area. There could be a new plant moving in, which caused greater demand. There could have been an unplanned shutdown, which decreased supply. The company supplying electricity could have gotten permission from the governing bodies for a one-time surcharge, or a permanent increase due to a older plant going down and a new one coming on-line. Your consumption could have increased due to purchase of other electrical demand equipment, or your consumption changed from a less-expensive time of day to a more expensive time. Any sort of thing like that.

Not the best situation to be in. I insulated myself from some of these electricity price increases by purchasing a roof-solar panel system which cut my bills to much less than half. Payback is about 7 years, though, so I'm not celebrating much yet.

Electric bills have gone up because of the cost of fossil fuel to generate said electricity. My bill has rocketed upward and will again shortly. Eversource is my utility and the takeaway from the increase explanation is:


https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/11/1...-2023-winter

The cost of fossil fuel products is at the core of most of our inflationary issues. This is not rocket science.

Two comments with no intent of political spin:

With a growing population, jobs must be be created to just keep up with US population growth or the employment participation rate drops. That said, 230,000 is about the number of migrant board crossing of all types per month for the past many months. It does not show an economic expansion.

Created jobs are not given in any detail as to if full time, nor at what wage or salary, which is to say if at a rate of pay that a head of household could in fact support a family. Nor are the massive tech layoffs of folks who only make minimum wage or slightly above. Lose a tech job which pays over $100K per years and it will take a lot of new fast food jobs to balance it out.




California, which tends to lead the way on these things, just reduce by 75% the amount new solar owners get credited for their excess solar energy. The state freely admitted solar owners were being over compensated and that they were underpaying for the costs of maintenance of the power grid. The state also requires all new residential construction to include solar, even if the expense no longer pencils out for the property owner. Additionally after you own your solar 20 years (this is for existing solar residential owners) you lose the pay back. If you replace old solar your are also forced under the new rules.

This like many political issues are not fully considered from front to back to see how it really pencils out, but rather just pushed in part when the numbers look good. See the net power produced with corn produced ethanol for a prime example and when reviewing the ethanol, be sure to factor in the reduced mileage meaning need for more fuel, when calculation total energy costs for each MPG.

I agree with Rog's first post.

floortrader stated in part 'your going to see these strong increases like we seen last week at the Kelleher Stamp Auctions for collections'.

I agree with strong increases. This, in spite of loss of Kellehers 2% discount for prompt payment and now paying state sales tax on not only the item but also on shipping and commission. So my premium above sale price is now at 30%+. Unless there is something I really, really want, I am shutout of many lots I'm interested in.

This is a very good and correct market analysis. In the last two months, buyers of cheap old stamps have become more active.

Thanks Archiguy .

I believe there are more changes coming .Another area that we are seeing is the price difference between MNH and MLH in post 1940 material . I believe you can not get much more for MNH because the buyer are looking to mount the stamps so hinged and not hinge is not bring a premium ,we are seeing that with the auction firms not making a point between the two .