RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
2d ago
Possibly. I come from germany, which already has a different savings culture, and in particular even from one of the poorer parts, but it's very rural and almost nobody I know was actually struggling with anything. All my school friends, and I'm still in contact with many of them, are doing very well independent of earning a lot - they just make do with whatever they get.
If anything, I sometimes get the impression that some of the better earning (urban) friends struggle more, because they then spend it away so fast on holidays, vacations, insanely expensive hobbies, and other stuff. If I were cheeky, I might say that the richer you are, the more you can afford to live paycheck to paycheck.
On the BEA report, it not only also has some insane stats, like expenditure being double of the income (!,wtf) for the whole bottom 10%, they explicitly say they suspect some unreported income to finance that much consumption, which would be my guess as well. So again, press X to doubt.
To be clear about my position, I think that not only the rate of paycheck-to-paycheck is probably seriously overstated, I also think that the kind of person living like that is very likely to have a lot of unnecessary expenses they can cut if need be. But the US is a different world, so maybe I'm typical minding too much.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
2d ago
The last one has been a while so it might have finally switched, but in all surveys on the topic that I'm aware of, themotte has been dominated by heterodox lefties/"grey tribe" above and beyond anything else. See Apple Pie's survey for example, he described it as politically realist & left.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
2d ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but the report is entirely survey-based, correct? Not only that, they then need to extrapolate their fee estimates from this survey claims, adding another potential level of error, though that's irrelevant for this particular discussion, I guess.
So it entirely hinges on how well-selected the set was (usually the answer is no), how trustworthy you think the people filling it out are, and however they interpreted the question.
My wife always had similar issues, mulling obsessively over everything that happened during the day, or that has happened some time ago, or what could happen in the future. For her, it got substantially better after having kids. Getting so exhausted that you're simply too tired to stay awake is definitely one way. Maybe it was also partially hormonal, and the pregnancy improved that.
In that spirit, have you tried physical exertion? That has often helped her. In general, trying to fix her thinking hasn't helped much on this, but more "pragmatic" approaches did. Melatonin also helped.
More options
Context Copy link