link to original reddit post by /u/deweydecibels
I recently watched a few episodes of the recent netflix docuseries “Money, Explained”, and it was very eye opening for me. I gained a lot of perspective on how people with radically different opinions are thinking.
Before I go further, i wanna mention that i don’t agree with the narrative pushed here. I also think theres great benefit to understanding more about why people do what they do.
The main episode I wanna talk about was called “retirement”. This episode goes over the history of retirement planning over the last 100 years or so in the US.
The majority of the episode talks of failures. They talk about how the pension system has failed people, how social security and 401ks are generally failing horribly. the whole episode is stressing these problems without once touching on personal responsibility. They talk about the poor old people who never had time to save, who don’t get enough from social security, and they barely touch on personal savings.
It was a bit astonishing to me that these collective ideals have gone so far. We’ve had all these enormous, mediocre programs to save for retirement, but never a real push to tell people to save their fuckin money. These people really believe that its everyone else’s responsibility to pay for their lives once they can’t work.
This post isnt meant to be an attack on any of those people. i truly think its such a shame that so many people are going about their lives not thinking of themselves. they talk about how the government should forcibly withhold more of our money from paychecks so that were forced to save for retirement. I’m struggling to find common ground no matter how far we dig.
i feel really sorry for those who go about their lives like this. its easier now to explore new ideals and learn to be more independent, but i do feel bad for everyone who thought their social security would last them through retirement. we don’t need the government to “save” more of our money for us, we need to start thinking about our financial decisions.
Theres also some similar foolishness in the gambling episode, blaming casinos and lawmakers and everyone but the gambler for their problems. people need to start taking control of their lives.
if you’re still here, thanks for listening to my rant. feel free to ask and discuss anything, i would love to get even more perspective