I don't think it's surprising that as individuals we've allowed the depth of our safety nets to shrink. After all, we've been telling ourselves for some time ho

I don't think it's surprising that as individuals we've allowed the depth of our safety nets to shrink. After all, we've been telling ourselves for some time how important it is to strengthen the safety nets provided by the government (and generally, have actually done so). Given that we're telling everybody that there's a fallback available for many kind of problems, we should expect that people will de-emphasize the amount they sacrifice for their own such purpose. So the stats quoted in the article, about how much margin people have for rainy days should be supplemented by information about the net value of the benefits they will, or could, derive from the government. What's the NPV of their expected Social Security and Medicare benefits? What can they expect to get in aid from Medicare or CHIP-type programs? What would their unemployment benefits be, should it come to that, or food stamp and related programs?