ERE: Should or can?

[jacob]

@secretwealth - Personal savings would also fix this problem as much as those on the left despise the required personal responsibility
If everybody had 5 years worth of expenses saved up, it would "unlock" the current "freeze".
Since some people don't have the discipline to do this themselves enter the government. A system that would function similarly to the SS system,
Savings would be taking out at the paycheck level just like taxes. This would be as much as 25% which is similar to what people save in other countries. This would be deposited in a named account until 2-5 years of expenses was saved. After this point, nothing would be taken out of the paycheck. However, there would be no more welfare. In result: This would be like an opt-out savings program compared to the current one which is opt-in.
Of course, now the problem is solved with credit and bankruptcies instead.
This reminds me of the different risk-tolerances people have. Many people consider as little as 2 years of savings to be FU money. I think most people here won't accept anything less than 25 years. Whereas most people in general (Americans anyway) don't even consider the concept of FU money.
So should the government mandate a minimum amount of FU money for everybody?
It's one of those impossible questions, because surely some would be better off for it (those who know their jobs are uncertain and especially those who don't know their jobs are uncertain), and some would be worse off (those who know their jobs are certain, and those who don't).

[jacob]

@secretwealth - Personal savings would also fix this problem as much as those on the left despise the required personal responsibility (*)
(*) I think by now we realize that these assignments are due to four groups of people---four parties, not two: 1) Those who deservedly get. 2) Those who undeservedly get. 3) Those who deservedly give. 4) Those who undeservedly give.
If everybody had 5 years worth of expenses saved up, it would "unlock" the current "freeze".
Since some people don't have the discipline to do this themselves enter the government. A system that would function similarly to the SS system,
Savings would be taking out at the paycheck level just like taxes. This would be as much as 25% which is similar to what people save in other countries. This would be deposited in a named account until 2-5 years of expenses was saved. After this point, nothing would be taken out of the paycheck. However, there would be no more welfare. In result: This would be like an opt-out savings program compared to the current one which is opt-in.
Of course, now the problem is solved with credit and bankruptcies instead.
This reminds me of the different risk-tolerances people have. Many people consider as little as 2 years of savings to be FU money. I think most people here won't accept anything less than 25 years. Whereas most people in general (Americans anyway) don't even consider the concept of FU money.
So should the government mandate a minimum amount of FU money for everybody?
It's one of those impossible questions, because surely some would be better off for it (those who know their jobs are uncertain and especially those who don't know their jobs are uncertain), and some would be worse off (those who know their jobs are certain, and those who don't).

[secretwealth]

I like that forced savings system--it'd be possible, even easy--in America if healthcare costs were at the OECD average. However, some people face calamities that make them unproductive for more than 5 years: illness, accident, a long stretch of undesired unemployment.

[Felix]

Thanks sw, but to give credit where credit is due, for those who are interested, I have the model for this from Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The title is horrible, but the book contains a lot of wisdom.
In short, it is a roadmap on how to go from dependent to independent to interdependent as different levels of personal maturity. If you like thinking in terms of basic principles and fundamentals, you'll like (love) this book.
As a short introduction, he basically says that you need to go from dependence to independence first and strongly refers to personal responsibility and agency here. He also says that you cannot be interdependent without some degree of independence first, which was jacob's point in his post and I agree. Basically, you need some degree of self-control and self-mastery. This requires accepting your own agency, planning and execution. He says that an independent person can be as effective as a thousand dependent people.
But that's merely the beginning. By staying at independence, you cut yourself short big time because interdependence seems to have the smell of dependence - that step forward requires quite a paradigm shift. It requires to think in terms of mutual benefit rather than zero-sum, putting understanding the other side before being understood and combining the strengths of different people to achieve things impossible to each individual alone. He says that this is highly a matter of attitude and that working on this attitude is critical to reaching a high level of effectiveness. There are simply too many things you can't do as a single isolated person but can easily do when you cooperate with others.
I can only recommend this book to everyone. It's thoroughly good.
I also had to think of the antifragility idea here. A village is much more antifragile than a lonely guy in a cabin in the woods. Or take a family where the kids are taken care of when they are young and the parents are taken care of when they are old. The dependency shifts from one to the other as abilities and roles change over the course of a lifetime. The basic human unit was the tribe. These are fundamentally interdependent structures that increase antifragility.

[jacob]

The N years can be dragged out to infinite times with an exponential function. Each month decrease the payout by a fixed percentage. This will create a visible count down. I think a lot of times, people hold out to the very end and don't make any plans to reduce their expenses whatsoever, because typical payouts look like this
..

..

100 (things are looking good)

100 (things are looking good)

100 (things are looking good)

100 (things are looking good)

0 (argh, I need to scramble)

0

0
and not like this (in reality I wouldn't use 20% per month)
100 (things are looking good)

80 (I need to make some changes)

64 (I need to make some more changes)

52 (I need to make even more changes)

41 ...

36 ...

..

..

This would be like the forced distributions of an IRA/401k as a percentage of the remaining value in the account.

[jacob]

@Felix - I really like that. Your post ties ERE into the greater whole. The "emergent renaissance ecology". I might have to start working on the "ethics book" project of mine again.

[Felix]

@jacob: Then you must read Covey's book.

I guess you'll like it a lot.
I think there's also an aspect of mass consumer culture criticism in this decay of interdependent structures like family and village (which has replaced the tribe). These were the common basic social units and they have been largely replaced by Hobbesian individuals who need to fight for themselves. The isolated consumer who solves his problems by buying instead of relying on community or family is a very recent phenomenon and I think it's part of the design of consumer culture. This isolation makes people more dependent on the consumer market. Don't ask your neighbor for sugar, go to the convenience store, etc. The book Bowling Alone is a well-known description of this development.

[jacob]

@Felix - I bought and read the 2"x2" mini-version of Seven Habits years ago. It didn't go into much detail
I'll get the full version.

[Felix]

Haha, I bought that one by mistake once. It's a rather quick read ... The full version is more substantial.

[Stahlmann]

*wanna*, but struggling with application/not seeing the depth apart financial savings approach and/or don't have any idea how to start some others capitals (due to cultural lock in).

yea, at the end there gonna be only Stahlamann's bumps and jacob's posts .

[jennypenny]

@Stahlmann -- I really hope you figure out how to make it work. You've earned it since you've probably read more of the forum than most people at this point.

[Lemur]

@Stahlmann

Not to sound like a self-help guru, but it is time to stop reading and to start doing

Though Lemur posts a lot too...but it is usually because I'm at work and I've already automated 90% of my tasks lol. The other time is spent looking busy...in a virtual world. Means every now and then you post on MSFT TEAMS or Slack...also your mouse has to keep moving to stay active and online.

What helped me is to not focus so much on the financial aspects but the other capitals....social capital is tough in these times but there is still plenty of skill-building to do.

[Hristo Botev]

Though Lemur posts a lot too...but it is usually because I'm at work and I've already automated 90% of my tasks lol. The other time is spent looking busy...in a virtual world.

I won't tell your colleagues if you don't tell mine!