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40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

money.cnn.com

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Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#241

Post by [deleted] »

grgwsngton2 wrote: post #182
bcohen5055 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any links to good articles about this? I for one have not heard of this before.

I just googled this https://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/nasa-is-a-jobs-program?u... Again, I have to say I really hate how my previous comment sounded. There's just a lot to this and I didn't want to try and defend the very idea while arguing about government reform because it would have been an uphill battle. Sorry for how rude that sounded. The basic idea, though, is that NASA (while awesome) has been building a he…

[deleted]

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#242

Post by jvanderbot »

grgwsngton2 wrote: post #182
bcohen5055 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any links to good articles about this? I for one have not heard of this before.

I just googled this https://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/nasa-is-a-jobs-program?u... Again, I have to say I really hate how my previous comment sounded. There's just a lot to this and I didn't want to try and defend the very idea while arguing about government reform because it would have been an uphill battle. Sorry for how rude that sounded. The basic idea, though, is that NASA (while awesome) has been building a he…

The article is about congress using NASA to send money to their districts by building out the lift program.

Thats Congress being dumb. NASA may have become a jobs program, but it isnt supposed to be, and Musk is a response to that, in my mind.

"A surprise billion dollars may sound good. But while adding money to “Space Operations,” the Appropriations Committee also cut $660 million from NASA’s science, aeronautics, and space technology programs that build the telescopes, observatories, planes, and landers that make the agency so beloved. In justifying this decision, the committee wrote that the rocket “is the nation’s launch vehicle that will enable humans to explore space beyond current capabilities.”"

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#243

Post by ralusek »

devonkim wrote: post #214
headmelted wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken as someone well north of the poverty line. The reason for some people not having the money around is undoubtedly poor decision making, but for a great many others they simply have no gainful employment, no prospects of obtaining gainful employment and are often trapped in debt spirals due to past financial desperation. I'm real happy for you that you're so far removed from their situation that none of this occ…

The problem with being poor is that it is extremely taxing on both your time, your ability to make rational decisions, and even IQ. Being poor is, in effect, a disability that keeps one from being able to make it out of that situation itself. Depression and many other mental conditions are treated similarly in American society where we oftentimes point to people that are successful with depression and ignore the shee…

It wasn't my point to suggest that poverty is not a difficult position to be in, my point was to suggest that there is a serious problem with shrugging off the role of personal responsibility. I am very aware of what it means to be broke, you often don't even know where to begin. I'm not saying that they're poor because their situation at birth was necessarily fair, I'm not saying that nobody should change anything to help remedy their situation. What I am saying that in this country, at this time, the reality is that if 40% of the country does not have $400 saved for an emergency, given all of the available social services, there is a serious problem of priority and character.

There are obvious exceptions for individuals suffering from unavoidable medical circumstances and the like, and I am fully willing to criticize our existing healthcare system's failings in providing suitable mitigation against such circumstances. But we're talking about 40% of the country.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#244

Post by bzbarsky »

maxsilver wrote: post #187
scarface74 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and when they demand change and start "taxing the rich". You're going to find that a lot of doctors, lawyers, and people in IT who are making low six figures are going to be classified as "the rich".

> "According to statistical data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the top 1% had an adjusted gross income of $465,626 or higher for the 2014 tax year." "Doctors, lawyers, and IT people making low six figures" have absolutely nothing to fear. And for the extremely few fortunate people who actually make more than half a million dollars each year, they will easily be able to afford the new taxes.

You should really read https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0... -- whether you agree with the author's politics or not her numbers are in fact right. There's no way to pay for the sort of expansive welfare state some people want solely by additional taxes on "the top 1%". There just isn't enough money there, it turns out.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#245

Post by [deleted] »

headmelted wrote: post #56
ralusek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But personal responsibility is actually an important concept. It is completely unacceptable to not have $400 on reserve for an emergency as a functioning adult. That is a situation that can only be achieved by poor decision making and a lack of personal responsibility. Any strategy that is employed to remedy this has to contend with the fact that the individuals who need to have this situation remedied for themselves…

Spoken as someone well north of the poverty line. The reason for some people not having the money around is undoubtedly poor decision making, but for a great many others they simply have no gainful employment, no prospects of obtaining gainful employment and are often trapped in debt spirals due to past financial desperation. I'm real happy for you that you're so far removed from their situation that none of this occ…

[deleted]

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#246

Post by dpark »

sigstoat wrote: post #223
dpark wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that’s true. The Supreme Court just struck down an anti-gambling federal law. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/us/politics/supreme-co... It’s not clear at all that the federal government could ban the lottery without a constitutional change.

that stricken law just banned states from permitting certain forms of gambling. the states operate the lotteries themselves. they could just stop doing so.

Of course the states themselves could ban the lottery. Many of them already do. But states can also ban alcohol and indeed several continued to after the 21st amendment was ratified.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#247

Post by dpark »

gizmo686 wrote: post #221
dpark wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that’s true. The Supreme Court just struck down an anti-gambling federal law. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/us/politics/supreme-co... It’s not clear at all that the federal government could ban the lottery without a constitutional change.

Here is the opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf The court found the law unconstitutional on procedural grounds. In particular, the federal government did not ban gambling. It required states to ban gambling. The court ruled that the federal government cannot force states to pass laws.

Interesting. I wasn't aware that was the basis of the ruling.

I'm not entirely clear about the legal implications, though. It's unclear if the majority would also overturn a direct ban, but obviously this case would not form precedent.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#248

Post by mayniac »

nightski wrote: post #236
maxsilver wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "According to statistical data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the top 1% had an adjusted gross income of $465,626 or higher for the 2014 tax year." "Doctors, lawyers, and IT people making low six figures" have absolutely nothing to fear. And for the extremely few fortunate people who actually make more than half a million dollars each year, they will easily be able to afford the new taxes.

I'm currently below that threshold. But I could choose to expand my business, maybe hire a few people and create some jobs and productive economic output. But if you are going to tax me heavily for that then no, I'll probably just stick to what I am doing and not bother.

I'm not entirely convinced by your line of thinking.

Firstly is your sole motivation for your business financial? Because if so you may as well sell it, buy property and let it out, you'll earn a comfortable living and if you use a letting agent you can get them to deal with the renters and do almost zero work, bar having to file taxes once a year (and hey you can get an accountant to do that for you). Even ignoring that, is your business something that actually generates a lot of profit or are the margins small? Whatever you're doing you could invest the time into an ICO and make millions. Point I'm getting at is that very few people start a business solely for financial reasons, there's usually some level of passion involved.

Secondly, why exactly would a high tax rate stop you expanding completely? You'll still be earning money, just less than before. And as the other commenter pointed out, someone else will step in if you don't, which could threaten your business.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#249

Post by mayniac »

sjg007 wrote: post #19
johnm1019 wrote: post #2

I think we as a nation should consider this an issue of national security. This type of financial instability in such a large percentage of the population could lead to making short-sighted or bad decisions in tough times, increased violence, increased rates of incarceration (both of those increasing the cost of government for all), among many other things. The reasons for it are multi-faceted I'm sure. I hope voters…

We should but you know personal responsibility and all that jazz. The wealthy only care when the pitchforks come out. The biggest achievement of the wealthy has been to convince the middle class to eat itself.

>The wealthy only care when the pitchforks come out.

I can't find the link right now, but there was a TedX talk by a multi-millionaire arguing that he wants to be taxed more. And it's a growing trend, a lot of very wealthy people are starting to plead for higher taxes. The reasoning being if wealth inequality continues to widen, eventually it won't be a case of shaking the rich to empty their pockets a bit, it will be a case of hanging the rich from lampposts.

I've met a lot of anti-capitalists who are mildly Posadist/accelerationist for this reason. For all of the ideas in this thread regarding increasing taxes on the rich and social welfare problems, I cannot help but believe that ultimately, we are overdue large scale social unrest in 1st world countries. Placating the proletariat with incentives like tax breaks and welfare programs is great in the short term, but in the end it might just be delaying the inevitable, and making it far worse. I'm firmly of the belief that a new economic system needs to be part of mainstream discussion as soon as possible, because otherwise we will eventually have riots which cause a power vacuum, and history has shown nothing good comes from that.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#250

Post by mayniac »

prewett wrote: post #156

Wow, everything in this thread is "those evil rich people, fleecing the poor." Quite aside from the fact that the target audience of this site can expect to make around 2X the median income of the US--meaning that we are those evil rich people--surely the problem isn't this one-sided. The poverty rate in the US is about 13% [1]; we would expect those people to not have any savings. That leaves about 33% unaccounted f…

>Quite aside from the fact that the target audience of this site can expect to make around 2X the median income of the US--meaning that we are those evil rich people--surely the problem isn't this one-sided.

Not debating this fact, however cost of living makes a huge difference. 2x the median income doesn't mean much if everyone lives in big cities where the cost of living is 2x the median also. I feel like this is a point that has been ignored in this thread by a lot of people.

Also one note on one of your sources: the guardian article mentions she's living in an ex-council house with a flatmate. I've lived in an ex-council flat before in London, and honestly it is not for everyone. There was zero insulation so even with the heating on full, winter was unbearable. Constant electrical problems. Decent chance of getting mugged while taking out the trash. Mould in various places that never got dealt with. I know all ex-council flats aren't like this, but are we entirely comfortable with saying that above-average earning professionals in metropolitan cities should have to live with flatmates, often strangers, for up to ten years, often in increasingly poor conditions, while significantly cutting back on their quality of life, to be able to possibly afford a small flat likely an hour away from where they will work? It's easy to tell people to cut back on going to the pub or eating out, it's much harder to do when you're living in a mouldy shoebox and need an occasional break from misery, especially when you have friends that will still go out without you and adverts telling you to buy avocado on toast everywhere you go.

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