This was a very well-written response to the parent commenter and to my own attitude to which the parent commenter was responding.
> The middle-class lifestyle as we have come to know it basically requires you be in the top 10% of income earners in your local economy.
Absolutely true. I've found that to not worry about any of (health, retirement, surprise bills, vehicles, housing) you need about $100k/year post-tax, and that's in a heartland state with "low" COL.
> The problem isn't people, and if your system requires magical rational-actors who will wageslave for 50 years without the occasional vacation or other nicety and die penniless in retirement after cutting social security, then your system is going to fail.
Amusingly, this is one of the reasons I'm not too worried about the inevitability of the system crashing. The current system is bound for failure. It's practically designed to fail. Once it fails, something will have to take its place. I think there's just enough civilizational inertia that the US isn't headed for total anarchy, as is always a risk for less-developed places when the currency and the food importation falls through.
I appreciate your habit of acknowledging the response and style, it's very disarming even if you were to then disagree ;) Just feels very much in the spirit of what HN is trying to encourage even though it's a hot-button topic (I saw yet another thread got folded into this one, lol).
I mean I just feel that on average you get what you incentivize. Yeah for any one person, advice can help them break the average but on the whole people respond how the system has encouraged them to respond. It's the same as the critique people make about communism... if your system requires people to go against human nature, it's not going to work. Individuals may, but on the whole, humans are gonna act like humans. Implying that people are doing it wrong personally because they're failing in a system in which the overwhelming majority of people are failing becomes personally offensive and that's why people react negatively.
The crushing underlying fact of american society is that the middle class isn't middle anymore, probably over half of people are working-poor at this point and there's really only a handful of middle-class left in america (in the "own a house, go on vacation once in a while, not worry about surprise bills" sense). And maybe that's part of why people react viscerally negatively to it too... nobody wants to think of themselves as lower-class and that's rubbed in your face when Ramsey tells them to live within their means. You can't afford that vacation and neither can your friends, you're all wage-slaves, just like 90% of america. Back onto your treadmill, hamster.
Building local communities and building for resiliency is really important, as another commenter was discussing. I have this early 80s tractor that I inherited from my grandparents, it's nothing special but it's had very little wear since my grandpa got alzheimers soon after and they started having it mowed by a service, and it's had some basic preventative maintenance (oil changes once a decade, new tires, etc) and I've found myself thinking that I probably should keep it around even if I upgrade to something newer. Because it's got a briggs+stratton 2-cyl boxer motor on a steel frame and it's going to be something I can find parts for forever and repair it if it comes down to it, and that's kind of a novelty in a world of cheap throwaway junk. Same for appliances, I have old 90s washer+dryer that came with the house and it's nothing particularly special, it's worn out and needs at least a couple hundred bucks of parts each, but I hear nothing but horror stories about the newer stuff. Or cars are another one... everything is digital now and not really intended for user service beyond changing the oil and brake pads and such. There is a small crossover between ESC (which is really important around here in winter) and the point everything became unserviceable and that "window of repairability" seems very desirable.
Societally we are just getting to this place where reliability and durability is something that's starting to nag at me, and it's interesting to hear I'm not the only one.
I have a veteran friend who is working to get his translator from afghanistan and his family a visa and get them moved over here... he's got a little farm so he'll have a place to put them. Same thing. I think people are starting to look over the cliff and worry about what comes after. And building local communities is going to be the ticket.
> The middle-class lifestyle as we have come to know it basically requires you be in the top 10% of income earners in your local economy.
Absolutely true. I've found that to not worry about any of (health, retirement, surprise bills, vehicles, housing) you need about $100k/year post-tax, and that's in a heartland state with "low" COL.
> The problem isn't people, and if your system requires magical rational-actors who will wageslave for 50 years without the occasional vacation or other nicety and die penniless in retirement after cutting social security, then your system is going to fail.
Amusingly, this is one of the reasons I'm not too worried about the inevitability of the system crashing. The current system is bound for failure. It's practically designed to fail. Once it fails, something will have to take its place. I think there's just enough civilizational inertia that the US isn't headed for total anarchy, as is always a risk for less-developed places when the currency and the food importation falls through.