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I've forever been a proponent of personal responsibility. Saving a few bucks here and there and building up an emergency fund that can carry you through 6-8 mon

I've forever been a proponent of personal responsibility. Saving a few bucks here and there and building up an emergency fund that can carry you through 6-8 months. With that said, the current situation seems untenable. I'm curious to read other opinions and suggestions here because to me the only solution appears to be a re-opening and relaxing of current restrictions in order to restore economic activity. Surprising enough, all this chatter about evictions and missed payments hasn't rocked the US housing market one bit. In fact, prices are up.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
curious to read other opinions and suggestions here because to me the only solution appears to be a re-opening and relaxing of current restrictions in order to restore economic activity. We do need to resume working. But we need to do it without relaxing pertinent restrictions. Little Caesars has a pizza portal. We should have every eatery have something similar for contactless walk up take out. We need more remote and work from home opportunities for people who aren't highly skilled white collar professionals. We need more solutions that meet both standards: an earned income and germ control. We can't get there if we don't even bother to try because we insist it has to be one or the other.
blablablerg 6y ago
With the rising costs of living and low wages we have seen in the last couple decennia, making ends meet is troublesome for a lot of people, let alone the having the capacity to save for an emergency fund. Personal responsibility is easy to say, but when you are born rich or advantaged you need minimal personal responsibility to get by and when born poor you can have all the personal responsibility you want and still get f*cked over. The problem is bigger than personal responsibility. Social security is very poor in the US compared to modern European countries.
scarface74 6y ago
How do you save six to eight months of livelihood if you can barely afford to make ends meet month to month? How long do you suppose it takes to save 6 to eight months of income even if you could save 10% of your income every month? This is also not taking into account that most people who do have insurance have deductibles. Let’s not even consider a minimum wage worker, let’s talk about FC workers at Amazon (the nations second largest employer) making $15/hour. It hasn’t effected the housing market because few people are selling.
viraptor 6y ago
We can also literally pay most people not to work. There's already a ton of proposals for essentially scrapping the bureaucracy and overhead of evaluating issues and just paying everyone. (With a similar total spend) A lot of conversation is stuck now with false dichotomy of: people need to work or they won't have money. Raise taxes on top percent, freeze a lot of army spending, freeze or cancel student debt, and give people money for rent and food. It's that simple, yet not popular.
dencodev 6y ago
How can someone be personally responsible for an economy with tens of millions of Americans out of work? How can they personally create a job to work at? How can they be personally responsible for generational poverty that meant they couldn't afford to eat - have you tried making good grades when you're hungry and you're forced to work after school to help support your family? Have you tried making good money when you've never had the opportunity to do anything other than barely scrape by to feed your younger siblings and disabled mother? Society has failed these people, and there are a lot of them. A lot of them are products of severe systemic racism. They don't deserve to die from their illnesses because they can't afford healthcare. They don't deserve a lifetime of poverty because they struggle to feed their family and can't afford an education.
Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
> Saving a few bucks here and there and building up an emergency fund that can carry you through 6-8 months. That's easy when your income is significantly higher than your living expenses. But with constantly rising rents, that's very difficult for people working low-wage jobs. Even when I was a store manager in fast food, after paying the rent, utilities, car insurance, and budgeting about $5-10/day for food, I was left with ~$200/month to either throw into savings or spend on pleasure, and when you work a shit job, you're more likely to want to spend that money on something fun. But then the alternator dies in your car and it's a $600 repair because your apartment complex doesn't let you do car maintenance in their parking lots, and it wipes out 3 months of your disposable income.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

curious to read other opinions and suggestions here because to me the only solution appears to be a re-opening and relaxing of current restrictions in order to restore economic activity. We do need to resume working. But we need to do it without relaxing pertinent restrictions. Little Caesars has a pizza portal. We should have every eatery have something similar for contactless walk up take out. We need more remote and work from home opportunities for people who aren't highly skilled white collar professionals. We need more solutions that meet both standards: an earned income and germ control. We can't get there if we don't even bother to try because we insist it has to be one or the other.

blablablerg 6y ago

With the rising costs of living and low wages we have seen in the last couple decennia, making ends meet is troublesome for a lot of people, let alone the having the capacity to save for an emergency fund. Personal responsibility is easy to say, but when you are born rich or advantaged you need minimal personal responsibility to get by and when born poor you can have all the personal responsibility you want and still get f*cked over. The problem is bigger than personal responsibility. Social security is very poor in the US compared to modern European countries.

scarface74 6y ago

How do you save six to eight months of livelihood if you can barely afford to make ends meet month to month? How long do you suppose it takes to save 6 to eight months of income even if you could save 10% of your income every month? This is also not taking into account that most people who do have insurance have deductibles. Let’s not even consider a minimum wage worker, let’s talk about FC workers at Amazon (the nations second largest employer) making $15/hour. It hasn’t effected the housing market because few people are selling.

viraptor 6y ago

We can also literally pay most people not to work. There's already a ton of proposals for essentially scrapping the bureaucracy and overhead of evaluating issues and just paying everyone. (With a similar total spend) A lot of conversation is stuck now with false dichotomy of: people need to work or they won't have money. Raise taxes on top percent, freeze a lot of army spending, freeze or cancel student debt, and give people money for rent and food. It's that simple, yet not popular.

dencodev 6y ago

How can someone be personally responsible for an economy with tens of millions of Americans out of work? How can they personally create a job to work at? How can they be personally responsible for generational poverty that meant they couldn't afford to eat - have you tried making good grades when you're hungry and you're forced to work after school to help support your family? Have you tried making good money when you've never had the opportunity to do anything other than barely scrape by to feed your younger siblings and disabled mother? Society has failed these people, and there are a lot of them. A lot of them are products of severe systemic racism. They don't deserve to die from their illnesses because they can't afford healthcare. They don't deserve a lifetime of poverty because they struggle to feed their family and can't afford an education.

Sohcahtoa82 6y ago

> Saving a few bucks here and there and building up an emergency fund that can carry you through 6-8 months. That's easy when your income is significantly higher than your living expenses. But with constantly rising rents, that's very difficult for people working low-wage jobs. Even when I was a store manager in fast food, after paying the rent, utilities, car insurance, and budgeting about $5-10/day for food, I was left with ~$200/month to either throw into savings or spend on pleasure, and when you work a shit job, you're more likely to want to spend that money on something fun. But then the alternator dies in your car and it's a $600 repair because your apartment complex doesn't let you do car maintenance in their parking lots, and it wipes out 3 months of your disposable income.