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>We are paying for our lack of social safety net now. While that might be part of the problem, how much of it is self inflicted? Even people who can afford to

>We are paying for our lack of social safety net now. While that might be part of the problem, how much of it is self inflicted? Even people who can afford to save, don't. They blow all their money on a lifestyle. ATM I am trying to gently advise a co-worker to really start thinking about saving for his retirement. 50 years old and it's paycheck to paycheck (6 figure salary)for him. Some people create their own rainy days....

danaris 6y ago
I forget what the percentage of Americans is that literally cannot afford to save money, but it's absurdly high. And then you have massive businesses with massive profits that take all that money and dump it into juicing the stock price, going into debt rather than save a penny for a rainy day...and then, when that rainy (or virus-y) day comes, they come crying to the government for a handout. Tell me, which of these is more of a "self-inflicted" problem?
jacobush 6y ago
Even if nobody in his position acted as unwise, it would barely offset, in society at large, the swaths of people who never had a chance. So to answer your question - in aggregate, fairly little.
number-sequence 6y ago
Many people don’t have any financial role models in their lives, especially at young ages. It’s not like the school systems teach children about saving, and especially not in the more underfunded districts. I’m much more inclined to blame maladaptive behaviors on systemic failures to educate people and to provide them opportunity than I am to blame individuals. Sure, in every system with live agents there will be bad actors and those with poor behavior, but when the system is overrun with examples of this, perhaps it’s the system we should be looking at, not individuals.
giantDinosaur 6y ago
Tax such incomes at higher rates and invest in the infrastructure that would necessarily support such people anyway were they to become destitute. As a surprising benefit, people who do require welfare of some kind for reasons beyond their control will also be helped. Avoid passing moral judgement on post-tax expenditure - if people live less than ideal lives at that point, that's indeed on them. Is that an unreasonable perspective?
- tome 6y ago
  It's considered a reasonable perspective in Europe, by and large. I guess one's opinion depends on whether one expects those in control of tax expenditure to provide welfare in an effective way.
bonoboTP 6y ago
Well partially because that's the culture and status game. That's what you see in movies, on TV, everywhere. Success and personal worth equals money, salary, expensive stuff. Advertisement, marketing, credit cards etc etc. Keeping up with the Joneses, denial about getting old, never sitting down to deeply reflect on their life, being caught in the hamster wheel, the FOMO, etc. Its the same question as why people eat crappy junk food and get obese. Answer 1 is everyone suddenly became stupid and morally corrupt, answer 2 is that their mind is being bombarded with hyperoptimized perfectly honed marketing strategies, carefully designed by very smart people to drive engagement and profits. One needs to adopt a hostile and skeptical attitude to every outside influence reaching you to be able to resist this. Or just shut off a lot of your media consumption, associate with people who value different things etc. But most people won't be able to do this, because once the average person gets ahead of the curve, the marketing machine is already in front of them.
cableshaft 6y ago
So what? The same argument could be applied to companies, and they all put out their hands for government money the instant this pandemic happened, and the government gave it to them (mostly, some small businesses did get screwed in that). The difference between a company and a person, is that when a company has lost everything, it shuts down. But when a person loses everything, they don't just shut down, they take action, and that action could be violent (especially if they're backed up by a mob of people in similar situations). It doesn't matter that these people didn't save properly, just telling them "Well you shouldn't have gone out to eat twice a week and saved that money, so you'd have three extra months to survive before you're screwed!" isn't going to make them sit and go "Oh yeah, guess I'm the screw up, I'm just going to sit on this street corner now and not bother anyone."
donw 6y ago
I'm in a weird place on this one. On the one hand, I agree with you. Some of this -- no idea how much without crunching numbers -- is totally self-inflicted. People living well beyond their means, not saving, and then ending up totally up the proverbial creek. On the other hand, I'm a pragmatist. You throw 5% of the population out on the streets simultaneously, and you will experience entirely new realms of mob violence. Historically speaking, this is soon followed by a regime which bizarrely invests heavily into researching the full depths of human misery. Not good. There has to be some sort of balance, a way to address the problem, without creating perverse incentives which harm those the system claims to aid (like our current welfare system). Maybe UBI or UBE. Not sure, but it's a problem we are going to have to solve.
peteradio 6y ago
6 figure paycheck is in top bucket of population you are by definition cherry-picking an anecdote and applying it to a population which doesn't fit your data.
archagon 6y ago
Even if true, "people are foolish" is never the source of a problem, and it's not something that can be directly addressed. (Except maybe with education, over the course of generations.) Unless we want social unrest, we need immediate systemic fixes.

danaris 6y ago

I forget what the percentage of Americans is that literally cannot afford to save money, but it's absurdly high. And then you have massive businesses with massive profits that take all that money and dump it into juicing the stock price, going into debt rather than save a penny for a rainy day...and then, when that rainy (or virus-y) day comes, they come crying to the government for a handout. Tell me, which of these is more of a "self-inflicted" problem?

jacobush 6y ago

Even if nobody in his position acted as unwise, it would barely offset, in society at large, the swaths of people who never had a chance. So to answer your question - in aggregate, fairly little.

number-sequence 6y ago

Many people don’t have any financial role models in their lives, especially at young ages. It’s not like the school systems teach children about saving, and especially not in the more underfunded districts. I’m much more inclined to blame maladaptive behaviors on systemic failures to educate people and to provide them opportunity than I am to blame individuals. Sure, in every system with live agents there will be bad actors and those with poor behavior, but when the system is overrun with examples of this, perhaps it’s the system we should be looking at, not individuals.

giantDinosaur 6y ago

Tax such incomes at higher rates and invest in the infrastructure that would necessarily support such people anyway were they to become destitute. As a surprising benefit, people who do require welfare of some kind for reasons beyond their control will also be helped. Avoid passing moral judgement on post-tax expenditure - if people live less than ideal lives at that point, that's indeed on them. Is that an unreasonable perspective?

tome 6y ago
It's considered a reasonable perspective in Europe, by and large. I guess one's opinion depends on whether one expects those in control of tax expenditure to provide welfare in an effective way.

bonoboTP 6y ago

Well partially because that's the culture and status game. That's what you see in movies, on TV, everywhere. Success and personal worth equals money, salary, expensive stuff. Advertisement, marketing, credit cards etc etc. Keeping up with the Joneses, denial about getting old, never sitting down to deeply reflect on their life, being caught in the hamster wheel, the FOMO, etc. Its the same question as why people eat crappy junk food and get obese. Answer 1 is everyone suddenly became stupid and morally corrupt, answer 2 is that their mind is being bombarded with hyperoptimized perfectly honed marketing strategies, carefully designed by very smart people to drive engagement and profits. One needs to adopt a hostile and skeptical attitude to every outside influence reaching you to be able to resist this. Or just shut off a lot of your media consumption, associate with people who value different things etc. But most people won't be able to do this, because once the average person gets ahead of the curve, the marketing machine is already in front of them.

cableshaft 6y ago

So what? The same argument could be applied to companies, and they all put out their hands for government money the instant this pandemic happened, and the government gave it to them (mostly, some small businesses did get screwed in that). The difference between a company and a person, is that when a company has lost everything, it shuts down. But when a person loses everything, they don't just shut down, they take action, and that action could be violent (especially if they're backed up by a mob of people in similar situations). It doesn't matter that these people didn't save properly, just telling them "Well you shouldn't have gone out to eat twice a week and saved that money, so you'd have three extra months to survive before you're screwed!" isn't going to make them sit and go "Oh yeah, guess I'm the screw up, I'm just going to sit on this street corner now and not bother anyone."

donw 6y ago

I'm in a weird place on this one. On the one hand, I agree with you. Some of this -- no idea how much without crunching numbers -- is totally self-inflicted. People living well beyond their means, not saving, and then ending up totally up the proverbial creek. On the other hand, I'm a pragmatist. You throw 5% of the population out on the streets simultaneously, and you will experience entirely new realms of mob violence. Historically speaking, this is soon followed by a regime which bizarrely invests heavily into researching the full depths of human misery. Not good. There has to be some sort of balance, a way to address the problem, without creating perverse incentives which harm those the system claims to aid (like our current welfare system). Maybe UBI or UBE. Not sure, but it's a problem we are going to have to solve.

peteradio 6y ago

6 figure paycheck is in top bucket of population you are by definition cherry-picking an anecdote and applying it to a population which doesn't fit your data.

archagon 6y ago

Even if true, "people are foolish" is never the source of a problem, and it's not something that can be directly addressed. (Except maybe with education, over the course of generations.) Unless we want social unrest, we need immediate systemic fixes.