The thing is that the economy in the West hasn't actually "crashed" in any meaningful way in my lifetime. Maybe during Covid, kind of, when we had supply chain issues for a bit? A lot of that was self inflicted too.
A crash to me is like, I wake up, £1 is worth 50p and in one fell swoop I'm significantly net negative every month. Or like, the supermarkets start closing down, there's no fuel left in the petrol stations, etc.
A crash is not - things cost 5%, 10% more over a period of months, and it's a bit harder to find a job.
I grew up without even getting pocket money, I have a "reverse inheritance" e.g. I pay my parents on occasion, the memetic idea that everyone who isn't underwater comes from Big Money(tm) just seems like self destructive behaviour to me.
I just don't identify with the mindset. My feeling is that most people prioritise other things over their financial wellbeing because they think that's "normal" or whatever.
All you need to do to almost completely immunise yourself against this stuff is to spend, say, 70-80% of what you earn, less if that's viable. There is someone out there already, in your town, who earns about 70-80% of what you do, so just live like them.
Have you considered using the YouTube API to track these videos/channels while they are up (download the json, thumbs, transcript, maybe even whole video), check yt IDs daily/weekly to track video/channel deletions? The data dump might make an interesting info graphic, or be used to expose a grifter, or a ring of shill accounts.
One of the millions of ways you grow wiser as you grow older is from collecting more data. You get a first hand view of decades and decades of fear mongering and people saying some catastrophe is right around the corner. You see that over all those years, 999 times out of 1000 nothing ever happened.
Yes, sometimes catastrophe does indeed happen, and yes, you should be responsibly prepared for it when it eventually occurs, and I am. But I wonder how strong of a correlation there is between age and people with severe beliefs along these lines.
It's infinitely worse now, of course, as with the internet and mass media these ideas are effectively viral memes that can reach and swarm the population quickly and easily.
Even worse, a lot of it is intentional and adversarial - if you wanted to destroy a country's economy, it would be an extremely cost effective strategy to simply flood the country's internet with doomer posts about their economy, about their country, get the citizens fear riddled and have them lose faith in their country. Never have to fire a single bullet.
> Even worse, a lot of it is intentional and adversarial - if you wanted to destroy a country's economy, it would be an extremely cost effective strategy to simply flood the country's internet with doomer posts about their economy, about their country, get the citizens fear riddled and have them lose faith in their country. Never have to fire a single bullet.
That's exactly what happened in Brazil 10 years ago and we are just now starting to recover
The "problem" with doomers is that they offer no nuance. Almost all of the issues people talk about are real issues we should be taking action on. But when assertions like "climate change is going to kill us all" are thrown around, it leaves very little room for actual change, and effectively demoralizes other people.
It’s because it’s an easier and more comfortable place to be. You don’t have to do anything if you don’t have a horse in the race. Changing habits, educating yourself, demonstrating, joining a party etc. all take time and effort. It’s a lot simpler to just throw your hands up and say nothing works, we’re all doomed.
The sea surface temperature of the Earth set records every day for an entire year and we just learned that the CO2 increase for 2023 was 4.7ppm, a new record as well. If people haven't gotten the message by now, I'm pretty sure we are in fact doomed. I agree that it is psychologically easier to throw your hands up and say that nothing works (and my life sure made a lot more sense when I realized that nothing works), but I think you could just as easily call that acceptance as much as doomism.
Go read the actual science, read the IPCC's conclusions across several different scenarios and read their (and other) evidence-based assessments of probable consequences. In no way do they claim that humanity is doomed and in fact in many cases specifically assert that that isn't the case and that furthermore, there are still things that can be done to mitigate harm.
The amount of shrill hysterical fetishism of doom over climate change by many, many comments on this site almost takes on hive-minded, fervent proportions that fall well outside of even any evidence-based or rational discourse.
The ironic thing about that is that it's done by people who frequently deride so-called climate change deniers for their unwillingness to accept science. How could you expect those people to do so if even your own emotional conclusions in the opposite direction ignore the exact same science and reports you want deniers to take seriously? It's laughable.
There is some (I think valid) belief that the IPCC is an overly conservative (not in the right-wing sense) political committee who are as concerned with optics as they are science and do not want to sound doomerish themselves (and that makes sense to me). But their best path scenarios assume that we'd be drawing down carbon emissions steeply by now and beginning carbon sequestration programs (which don't seem to be developing fast enough) in the near future. As I said, given that we just experienced the largest ever increase in year-over-year CO2 levels, it seems we are still going in the opposite direction. Even the IPCC has said that the consequences of exceeding 1.5C temperature anomaly are dire, and we are clearly going to do that. And so they move the goalpost to 2C (again, I can't fault them for that).
I've followed the science rather closely and what becomes clear is that we just can't understand the climate system in its vast complexity; it's quite possible that there are dragons lurking that could cause a cascade of feedback loops that end very badly for humanity.
I suppose I'm just wired differently than most; it seems that others believe that because there is ambiguity in projections, they can just assume that all will work out. Many seem to believe that god or some force will watch out and protect them. I wish I had this belief as well.
"Your partner leaves hairs in the sink? Leave the relationship now!"
Maybe a better way to address things is to have an objective list of trouble signs, and let people make up their mind from that. Maybe being able to apply this to old problems will help.
They can't do (1) because they don't have extra to save.
Maybe (2) is doable, but it's hard when you're worrying about next week.
(3) is basically the same as (1).
I'm not sure about (4). Your choice is between throwing money away on rent, and being house-poor, overleveraged on a house.
Again, you can't do (5) when the only asset you have (and can just barely hang on to) is a house. And most people sure as hell don't get equity from their employer.
So, sure, if you're a typical tech worker making $200k+ with some stock options -- which probably does characterize a substantial fraction of people here -- then the advice is very reasonable. Yes, "seven figures" is an overstatement. But a ton of people make nowhere near this.
I think the advice for lower incomes needs to be about (a) increasing skills/qualifications/income (but choosing education wisely), and (b) pooling resources with roommates/family to reduce expenses.
more than fifty percent of American children do not have a two parent home; more than one million American men are in prison right now; the majority of the population lives in urban areas, etc
> 4) Do not over leverage yourself such that a job loss or housing crash will immediately crush you.
I can reasonably assert that an economically significant number people would be in big trouble if they lost their jobs.
As for a housing crash, it depends on your specific meaning. If enough of the value of property were lost, banks would be forced to take action to survive their lending risks. The ramifications of that would be extensive, let us say.
Yes, but _you_ can protect yourself against this by simply not over leveraging.
Instead of buying the 250k house, buy the 200k house and put 1/4 of the mortgage payments away. After a year you have three months buffer, after four years you have a year.
The key is simply to live slightly below your means.
Re housing crash: the banks are not going to foreclose en masse on people who are paying their mortgage payments regularly simply because they are in negative equity. They are not incentivised to do so.
But doing that is very expensive, the moment your interest starts rising you are paying hundreds of dollars/euros/etc. each month just so that you have the money available in your account, constantly depreciating. That is obviously something you need to be able to afford.
Not spending money to pay off debt means you continue to pay interest on the remaining debt you decided not to pay off.
If you spent money to reduce your debt, you aren't just reducing the money you own, you reduce all future interest. Saving money instead of paying off your mortgage is expensive, it costs a lot of money each month.
Total nonsense. None of that is of any help if you are facing a real economic crisis. The economic disasters in the last decades all have been mild, some people lost their jobs, some companies went under, some lost everything in the stock market.
During some historical economical disasters, people lost all their saving, their jobs and all safety they thought they possessed. None of your suggestions would have helped, many, many people who were well off, saved diligently, spent cautiously and never borrowed too much were suddenly destitute and had to make serious efforts to find calories.
The reality of economic disasters is that no one is safe, regardless of what you do or don't do.
I honestly don't remember how much I "lost" October 6–10, 2008 or February 24–28, 2020. I certainly won't remember how much I "lose" in the next crash.
What I do know is how many shares I still hold of a broad range of companies with a track record for growth today and how much they've collectively risen in value between October 5, 2008 and May 11, 2024.
In a historically unprecedented bull market juiced by low interest rates and quantitative easing.. What’s your point, that crashes are weak sauce? Look at historic charts and find examples of crashes that precede decade plus periods without being back in black. Unless you’re old it’s almost inevitable that at some point you’ll have your cash to remember.
You’re incorrectly conflating the economy with the stock market. Ignoring that, OP was very clearly talking about their portfolio returns. There are many historic examples of 10 year periods in equities markets where you would have broke even or lost money.
A crash to me is like, I wake up, £1 is worth 50p and in one fell swoop I'm significantly net negative every month. Or like, the supermarkets start closing down, there's no fuel left in the petrol stations, etc.
A crash is not - things cost 5%, 10% more over a period of months, and it's a bit harder to find a job.
I grew up without even getting pocket money, I have a "reverse inheritance" e.g. I pay my parents on occasion, the memetic idea that everyone who isn't underwater comes from Big Money(tm) just seems like self destructive behaviour to me.
I just don't identify with the mindset. My feeling is that most people prioritise other things over their financial wellbeing because they think that's "normal" or whatever.
All you need to do to almost completely immunise yourself against this stuff is to spend, say, 70-80% of what you earn, less if that's viable. There is someone out there already, in your town, who earns about 70-80% of what you do, so just live like them.