Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

governance.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 488 posts

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#401

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

telotortium wrote: post #388
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simple. One of the original tenants of the ACA was to provide subsidies for most people earning up to what would be the upper middle class between this and the insurance mandates, it would prevent the death spiral where only the sick would sign up for it, making the cost go up until it was almost unaffordable to anyone and unprofitable for the insurance companies making them leave the exchange. The first blow wa…

If you could have FIRE'd before the COVID era subsidies you can do it now

Not if the ACA continues its current “death spiral” where only the sick sign up making the premiums go up to the point where insurance companies just leave the plan.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/14/aca-obamacar...

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#402

Post by robocat »

philwelch wrote: post #223
robocat wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't be able to in the future unless you are very wealthy. Countries cannot afford the benefits and healthcare promised to retirees. So governments are getting more grabby. That pattern seems to be occurring in many countries. New Zealand example: when you are in nursing or elderly care you must spend all your savings and sell your home. The retirement age also needs to increase - one fund suggested to 70+ https…

I have no intention of spending my childrens' inheritance selfishly extending my own life, and I'm grateful to live somewhere I still have that choice. The people of New Zealand and the Netherlands have my sympathy and I hope they one day have the same freedom of choice.

Plenty of people say that - but in my experience people often change their minds when faced with hard choices.

Fortunately in New Zealand we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Life_Choice_Act_2019 if you've got a terminal illness. We also have Advance Directives for making your own choices about your health should your health go South.

I know nothing about the Netherlands.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#403

Post by yoyohello13 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #346
yoyohello13 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who are against saving are also the people who want you to spend all your money on their product. It’s just the capitalist wanting more meat for the grinder.

Money is just an abstract, and the less it circulates, the less stuff gets done. For no purpose but insecurity. The ideal would be that everybody operates without savings and without debt. Either of those tools only being used exceptionally, when the benefits are enormous.

Seems to indicate that the ideal capitalist society would have strong social safety nets to make people less risk averse and more willing to spend.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#404

Post by lelanthran »

bluGill wrote: post #211
lelanthran wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't take it with you (at least in most religions) so spend it. I don't understand this PoV at all. I can't take it with me, sure, but I'm happy anyway if I leave it behind to my kids. This PoV that you need to spend, spend, spend to get the most value for your money is very primitive - my kids will do better if I die before touching my nest egg, and if I don't at least I'll have a longer runway to live withou…

Why are you working to earn that money - take unpaid time off to spend with the kids. i get what you are saying, but leaving money to the kids isn't the answer. (Other than collage money)

> i get what you are saying, but leaving money to the kids isn't the answer.

Why not?

If I never found a good use for it, why is it better to spend it on something I don't value than leaving it to my kids?

I'm not being facetious - I'd really rather like to know why it is preferable for my to purchase stuff I don't want rather than leave it to my kids?

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#405

Post by brutalc »

InkCanon wrote: post #12

Singapore's economic policies are complicated and often misdirecting. I'll break down the misconceptions. The primary purpose of CPF is not a pension scheme. It is structured as a massive forced bond purchase scheme by citizens. Financially what happens is the 37% of citizen income buys a long term bond (till retirement age, on average decades) at rock bottom interest rates (it's pegged to the overnight rate or a min…

[dead]

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#406

Post by shevy-java »

Singapore, despite some of its laws being rather harsh, also had very intelligent leaders. Lee Kuan Yew was one of them; he correctly analysed the US behaviour. That can be seen on youtube too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNQXLhIcPrc

What I find interesting about Singapore is that it is a fairly small country: a bit over 6 million people. That's small compared to the USA (341 million). When you are such a small country or city-country, being prosperous requires intelligence and efficiency. And diplomatic skills too. Taiwan also showed this, though it is a bit larger than Singapore (23.4 million). It seems that this is a good success story - to have competent and intelligent workers and people. Education is one key factor of success here.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#407

Post by rudolftheone »

dexwiz wrote: post #320
rayiner wrote: post #2

A 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…

I once heard a linguistic explanation for this. European languages have a future tense, which means people have different ideas of themselves in the present and future. You can even hear this in phrases like "that's a problem for future me." While Chinese lacks the European styled future tense, ignoring time phrases, auxiliary verbs, etc. So people more clearly conceptualize their present and future selves as the sam…

This sounds like the 'Future Time Reference' hypothesis by Keith Chen (2013). It’s indeed a fascinating idea, but it’s essentially an example of Galton’s problem (treating related cultures/languages as independent data points).

What makes this story (scientifically) great is that Chen himself co-authored a follow-up study just two years later [1] to rigorously test his own theory. When they re-analyzed the data using mixed-effects models to control for cultural phylogeny and relatedness, the correlation between grammar and savings pretty much disappeared.

They concluded the original finding was likely a spurious correlation.

It turns out that cultural history drives both the language we speak and our saving habits, rather than the grammar causing the behavior.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#408

Post by solatic »

aprdm wrote: post #128
glimshe wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FIRE community and my own personal situation prove you very, very wrong. It's absolutely possible for a upper middle class family to retire in their 50s, even in their 40s, if they live frugally.

"Live frugally" , "FIRE" , "work in tech" All incompatible with 99% of the upper class, neither do they want to eat ramen to retire early. You're also one medical disaster away from being "very very wrong"

A lot of people are often surprised at how non-frugal their lifestyles are. I'm not suggesting that people living on $50k/year aren't already frugal, but yeah, there's definitely people who take out car loans, take out mortgages for the full amount they were approved for, and all sorts of random things like buying chicken parts instead of whole chickens, buying small grocery store containers instead of bulk pricing for shelf-stable items, keeping your speed down to save gas, etc.

You really just need to build an innate understanding that the hedonic treadmill doesn't make you happier long-term and develop a resolution to get your expenses down and stay disciplined about it.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#409

Post by itemize123 »

eru wrote: post #381
itemize123 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not everyone has the same ethics or even subscribes to that

Exactly, some people think 'out of sight, out of mind' is great ethics! See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxioWSQcNuNnNTy/...

no, more precisely, they can actively think about it and still believe it's not an issue. For example they can justify that the migrant workers are given a choice etc or it's better than some of their alternative.

Re: America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

#410

Post by AdamN »

shevy-java wrote: post #406

Singapore, despite some of its laws being rather harsh, also had very intelligent leaders. Lee Kuan Yew was one of them; he correctly analysed the US behaviour. That can be seen on youtube too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNQXLhIcPrc What I find interesting about Singapore is that it is a fairly small country: a bit over 6 million people. That's small compared to the USA (341 million). When you are such a small c…

It's sort of a small country but bigger than Finland, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Qatar. It's actually right about in the middle in terms of population.
Post reply on HN