| Says every smart person before they end up in a situation they cannot respect their financial commitments... Of course, it's easy for you just to take anyone that does out of the smart pool and put them in the dumb pool. The problem is this is in no way a predictive measure. With the rules you have henceforth set you will be unable to classify that a person is smart before any trouble occurs. This is how the rules you setup look like You: This person is smart because they put X money in savings and have a backup fund. [nothing interesting happens to this person] You: See they were smart... ---- You: This person is smart because they put X money in savings and have a backup fund. [person gets crashed into and injured, then a poorly timed market crash eliminates 70% of their savings driving them into bankruptcy] You: This person was obviously dumb... --- See, the thing is you, and the vast majority of US on HN are far closer to that second person then we'd like to admin (well short of some of the multi-millionaires that post here). We can just make ourselves feel better by saying we're smart instead of lucky. |
I think you need to collide your imagination with reality by asking whether majority of the recipients of this subsidy ended up there due to these terrible situations outside their control similar to what you suggest.
The crash, injury, market crash are all events that have happened to everyone and sure, it does affect a few people worse than others, but, for the problem at hand, are those the root cause, or something else entirely?
and should society as a whole ensure people have the training and skills to be more resilient to impacts from crashes, injuries, market crashes?
Extrapolating exceptional situations and weaving them into a story that feels good and fits an evil narrative that will have a terrible impact on future generations to come isn't a step in the right direction.
This is a political trick that exploits people in bad situations and does nothing to ensure that future generations don't end up in similar bad situations.