Comment You can't live below your means (Score 3, Insightful) 25
When real inflation is devouring your income. You have to live where the work is. Often you have to gamble living in high cost of living areas in order to build up the experience needed to have a functioning career.
For years I've watched people I know confused and frightened because no matter how much they cut back no matter how rough they make their lives they never seem to be able to save any money. Some disaster is always pulling the rug out from under them and if they do start to accumulate savings all it takes is one inevitable engineered recession and they blow through their savings paying for healthcare and food in between jobs.
You need to understand that the entire system is designed to break you. To prevent you from accumulating savings.
This isn't me being some sort of a lefty dipshit. This is how the Federal reserve controls inflation.
When you start to accumulate wealth and savings you start to spend more because you are safe and secure. That in turn has the potential to increase inflation because you've got more disposable income.
So the way that the Federal reserve deals with that is every few years they crank interest rates. Most businesses are running very close to the margins and near collapse. The way they survive is cheap money lets them borrow to get them through lean times. The Federal reserve will crank interest rates to cut off that safety valve so those companies have to fire you and you blow through your savings.
Basically the way we keep inflation low is by keeping the country and everyone in it in a perpetual state of borderline homelessness and poverty.
We could of course just make more stuff but that's not in the cards because that reduces prices in a real and practical way and companies don't like that cuz it's not good for profits.
So you can't really just tell people to live below their means because the system is designed to keep driving those means down and making life worse as a way of containing and controlling inflation without you know, actually making people's lives better...
For years I've watched people I know confused and frightened because no matter how much they cut back no matter how rough they make their lives they never seem to be able to save any money. Some disaster is always pulling the rug out from under them and if they do start to accumulate savings all it takes is one inevitable engineered recession and they blow through their savings paying for healthcare and food in between jobs.
You need to understand that the entire system is designed to break you. To prevent you from accumulating savings.
This isn't me being some sort of a lefty dipshit. This is how the Federal reserve controls inflation.
When you start to accumulate wealth and savings you start to spend more because you are safe and secure. That in turn has the potential to increase inflation because you've got more disposable income.
So the way that the Federal reserve deals with that is every few years they crank interest rates. Most businesses are running very close to the margins and near collapse. The way they survive is cheap money lets them borrow to get them through lean times. The Federal reserve will crank interest rates to cut off that safety valve so those companies have to fire you and you blow through your savings.
Basically the way we keep inflation low is by keeping the country and everyone in it in a perpetual state of borderline homelessness and poverty.
We could of course just make more stuff but that's not in the cards because that reduces prices in a real and practical way and companies don't like that cuz it's not good for profits.
So you can't really just tell people to live below their means because the system is designed to keep driving those means down and making life worse as a way of containing and controlling inflation without you know, actually making people's lives better...