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You are talking about a much smaller minority of people than the ones would literally cannot afford to save. The people you are talking about exist, but too often people use their existence to justify not helping or severely limiting benefits for the much larger group who truly can't afford it.
^^This is the eternal, never ending argument. How big is that group that could save but won't? I'd argue it's pretty big. You'll argue it's relatively small. Then we both start cherry picking examples to support our point of view and an and on it goes.
People have so many built in expectations about what "having a life" means that the arguing never stops. Right here on this thread someone mentioned that being able to eat out only once every 3 months = not having a life. In the history of humanity, people did not eat out at restaurants as a normal or even semi-normal thing. Go back to the 1950s or 1960s. How often did people eat at restaurants back then compared to now? Yet people look at that period of time as some sort of ideal for prosperity and economic stability. Maybe people 50-60 years ago were more financially stable because their expectations were more in line with reality.
LOL i vlounteer with the urban poor in Camden. Some body forgot to tell them they lived in a mansion..
The problem the urban poor have is they have kids too young and they have them out of wedlock. It's a disaster on more levels than just the financial one, and even liberal researchers are admitting as much.
40% out children today are born outside of marriage. This is almost always a bad decision. Yet people on CD insist people aren't making bad decisions. I don't know how they can say that with a straight face. If this is the new normal, no wonder the middle class is shrinking. The single parent family model is an economic failure.
The problem we have in America is the disease of consumerism has affected our thinking to such a large degree that we actually don't know how to relate to each other anymore without spending money at a restaurant or some other entertainment venue.
Most people are one serious illness, accident, divorce, or natural disaster away from financial ruin.
I actually agree with this statement. The problem is, people live as if they are not. It's like Suze Orman used to say...people live their financial lives as though over the course of 40 years of working they will never get sick, never lose a job, the car will never break down, etc. And she's hardly a right wing scold.
There are many jobs that pay good money. I have sympathy but many people don't have long term plans for income & wage growth.
I think planning is the key word.
Most people are not natural planners. And our culture (deliberately, IMO) doesn't promote planning. It's easier for a small elite to control people when most people at every income level are in crisis mode and are not in control of their lives.
--Despite advances in birth control, lots of people don't plan when they have kids. That's one of the biggest thing that messes people up.
--People don't plan careers / wage growth (as said above).
--People don't know where their money is going (no financial planning). Most people literally don't know where 20% of their money is going (even though they think they do). That's the 20% that needs to go to savings/investments/debt payoff. Suze Orman used to say all the time that people didn't know where their money was going...and even though I don't agree with a lot of what she says, I think she is absolutely right about this.
But the pay these people bring in is low, because they are not able to create much value in an hour's worth of work.
As kids, they learn little to nothing in high school, (that is not entirely their fault and could be it's own thread elsewhere) they "graduate", take some sort of dead end job like being a nail-beater (not a carpenter) on construction sites, knock up their girlfriend, move into a trailer park to raise Junior to do the same. I saw this crap all the time as a kid growing up near Atlanta.
See the movie Idiocracy.
How are such people my problem?
As the authors of The Triple Package have pointed out, America over the last 50 years has adopted the "all cultural value systems are equal" in an attempt to not offend anyone. Problem with that is some value systems lead to economic success and others don't.
The problem we have in America is the disease of consumerism has affected our thinking to such a large degree that we actually don't know how to relate to each other anymore without spending money at a restaurant or some other entertainment venue.
Can you imagine a nation where people only eat out once every three months? How many jobs would be lost in the food industry? Or if people actually spent within their means how many retail outlets would close? The auto industry closing even more factories? Airlines firing staff because people are too concerned with saving money? Loss of tourism jobs?
It's a blessing not everyone is money conscientious like me and you otherwise industries would collapse.
And that problem is greater today as more jobs and higher wages require brain and not brawn. It is a very real developed and developing world problem. Automation has replaced much of the need for brawn and now brain is in its path.
This part is true and is a real problem that no one seems to know how to solve.
Two steps that would make it easier:
1. Open up the 401k system to all workers, regardless of company size.
2. Automatic enrollment 3% of pay.
There is less cause to say you cant afford it.
^^Yes, absolutely. There's no reason on earth why we shouldn't have done the above a long time ago.
I'll add, the funds should be low cost Target Date type funds similar to the ones the federal government TSP plan has for its employees (the Lifecycle funds).
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