Hacker News Reader

Comment by gozur88 | Hacker News Reader

>vast majority of the people barely getting by

"Vast majority"? I doubt that. I think the vast majority is doing okay, with a relatively small minority barely getting by, and exactly how small that minority is really depends on how you define it.

View on HN

60% of Americans have less than $500 saved [1]. IMO that qualifies as the vast majority barely getting by.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/can-you-guess-how-m...

I would view that more as people living outside their means than "barely getting by".

I know I was in this situation post-university: earning a good salary but with low savings because it took time for me to learn how to budget/control spending.

That's largely a self-imposed problem. People don't save even when they have the ability, they just buy more shit

Totally depends on their lifestyle.

That is almost entirely related to lifestyle decisions rather than whether or not one is "barely getting bye"

Holding money is generally not a good idea except to cover emergencies (and for that there's always debt)

Even if it's value wasn't decreasing you're still taking a loss due to opertunity cost.

Do you have less than $500 saved? What would you do if you suddenly needed a car or home repair that cost $1000 and wasn't covered by insurance?

There are a lot of people follow the "holding money is generally not a good idea" life plan and then become unable or unwilling to work. Sure would be nice to have some savings at that point.

Thanks, that's one of the things that shocked me when I first read it.

A lot of the replies to you are basically saying the same: it's their own fault. So I'll just reply to them here: but the problem is: it doesn't matter how they got there, but they are there now! What are we going to do about it? Do you want to just ignore them and let them die on the streets? Of course not. (Well, I'll assume most people will not like that). So it does end up being "our" problem, even if it's because of bad decisions someone else made in their lives.

This equation changes entirely if you have kids. Or a medical problem.

This mentality of blaming societal problems on the individual ("I didn't have this problem, therefore anyone who does got there because of a character flaw") has to stop.

As does the mentality of blaming individual problems on society.

It matters to me how they got there. There's a limit to what I'm prepared to do to rescue someone from his own bad decisions.

Besides, this was a point on language. If you make a lot of money but blow it all on expensive cars and travel, you're not "barely getting by".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com