America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
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Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#2Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#3A confounding factor here is that savings behavior is cultural rooted: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6135367/ . Studies show that people within a country can have substantially different savings behaviors, robustly correlated with their origin countries, even among people who are third generation immigrants. It’s a mistake to treat either the U.S. or Singapore as homogenous populations for purposes of this…
We are talking about material impacts, not culture
Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#4------ re: below due to throttling -------------
Vs say US, where immigrants and those funding public housing are generally better off than the people getting subsidized housing. Public housing is more a progressive than regressive tax in the US, so quite dissimilar. Immigrants in US are on average far better off than those on public housing. Asking "but how is this any different" (after I already answered it, lol) over and over doesn't negate this, nor the fact that immigrants are like half of workers in Singapore vs only 10% in the US so the funding dynamic and dependency is far different.
Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#5Yes the jobloss impact caused the people to be unable to save and in turn they wished they have saved more.. but ignored is whether they could to begin with.
Of course external impact had little to do with internal procrastination.
Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#6This article seem to be confounding external impact with internal motivation. Yes the jobloss impact caused the people to be unable to save and in turn they wished they have saved more.. but ignored is whether they could to begin with. Of course external impact had little to do with internal procrastination.
It’s basically just saying that the uninsured catastrophic event risk in America magnifies shock events.
E.g., if you have a major hospital visit in America you’re way more likely to regret not saving enough, but in Singapore there’s basically no effect since hospital stays don’t drain your savings account.
Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#7Singapore has a regressive shock absorber model where something like half the country are immigrants that are ineligible for, say, public housing which even the better off citizens take advantage of in Singapore (maybe even disproportionately so since there can be a long wait to get in, you are older and more settled at that point). Immigrants that get milked dry and go broke and jobless during a shock are booted fro…
Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#8Well, America is rough. It turned on hardcore capitalism mode for itself because a significant portion of its population wants to try and solo socioeconomic hardships and hates any one who doesn't want the same challenge.
But not to just blame the voter, lots of money is spent for setting up systems to be amenable to acquiring more money. The very richest have correctly made a bet that uprisings to displace the wealthy and politicians just don't occur here these days, and therefore there is no real threat or need to change the way things have been going for the last 25 years or so.
Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#9This article seem to be confounding external impact with internal motivation. Yes the jobloss impact caused the people to be unable to save and in turn they wished they have saved more.. but ignored is whether they could to begin with. Of course external impact had little to do with internal procrastination.
Maybe I read the article too fast but I didn’t get that takeaway at all? It’s basically just saying that the uninsured catastrophic event risk in America magnifies shock events. E.g., if you have a major hospital visit in America you’re way more likely to regret not saving enough, but in Singapore there’s basically no effect since hospital stays don’t drain your savings account.
Not just healthcare stuff, but also apparently Singaporeans tend to have a lower unemployment rate, so they be able to recover from stuff faster
Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks
#10This article seem to be confounding external impact with internal motivation. Yes the jobloss impact caused the people to be unable to save and in turn they wished they have saved more.. but ignored is whether they could to begin with. Of course external impact had little to do with internal procrastination.
It says that understanding risk (as operationalized by understanding probability) has a larger effect.
But it is also saying that the more external impact someone has, the more they regret saving more -- in the United States but not Singapore.
The study is explicitly saying that internal motivation does not seem to matter. And the article is arguing the reason why.