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Comment by dogruck | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like this book has an unfortunate bias of victim hood.

Lost your mortgage? Not your fault.

Didn’t save for retirement? Not your fault.

Only job prospect, after working and training and networking for your entire adult life, is moving boxes in an AMZN warehouse? Not your fault.

I prefer a more objective view, like Studs Terkel’s classic book, Working.

Finally, don’t get me wrong — I have neighbors in the described situation. I care about them. I’m just saying I’d enjoy reading an objective narrative about their hard, and unfortunate situation — something not clouded with the tone of victimization.

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Perhaps you meant to write "bias of false victimhood". There is nothing biased about victimhood itself. Many people are really truly and objectively victims.

Yes, that’s a better phrase.

People who lost their retirement investments in the 2008 crash aren't suffering from an artificial feeling of victimhood. They're victims.

That is your unsubstantiated and overly general opinion.

How did people lose their retirement investments in 2008? Most of the stories I've heard where people lost all of their retirement around 2008 involved doing things were considered fairly risky before 2008 hit. Were there people who lost all their retirement who were following typical retirement investment strategies?

Edit: And to be clear, I know the value of almost everyone's investments went down, but unless your money was all in a single company it seems that most diversified portfolios bounced back.

Many people put all of their money into paying the mortgage on a house. A reasonably sound investment. And then they found their mortgages to be underwater. Literally every dollar they had put in, was now worthless on paper. Those who did not buy into the sunk cost fallacy allowed their houses be reclaimed. Then they truly had nothing.

Those who did not buy into the sunk cost fallacy allowed their houses be reclaimed.

Wait, are you saying it was actually financially rational to do so? Wouldn't they be better off by waiting it out until it the market rebounded?

I'm not blaming anyone, just asking what would have been the theoretically better decision.

I bought a house in 2007. Ten years later it still is not worth what I owe on it. Sometimes the market doesn’t recover.

I’ve wanted to move somewhere else for at least five of those years. I finally have, and my options with the old house are either to rent it out (rent would not cover mortgage payment) or try to deal with the bank to avoid foreclosure, via short sale or deed in lieu. In any of those cases, now I have two problems.

I truly don't know what the theoretically better decision is. That wording was intended to poke fun at arrogant HNers who think that everything in the markets follows some trivial buzzword based rule-set.

Right. In the meantime, while working folks could keep their investments intact and have them grow back to pre-crash levels or higher, retired folks needed money to live on and were forced to remove some of their nest egg at the bottom. It takes much longer to recover in that situation.

> retired folks needed money to live on and were forced to remove some of their nest egg at the bottom

While I understand that people who are already retired can't just choose to keep working while their investments recover, I'm not aware of any retirement investing strategy that has you fully invested in stocks at the point you retire. The whole point of moving your retirement to safer investments around retirement age is so you don't have to take money out of stocks when there is a financial downturn.

I may be missing something, but you seem to be describing retirees with a very risky asset allocation. I'm not trying to minimize how devastating that was for people, but I am trying to understand what they were victims of. Were they victims of financial advisors recommending that type of asset allocation?

Nobody will answer your question.

These commenters and down-voters know how to pattern match “he said a person is not a victim” with the knee-jerk response of “you’re bad.”

They don’t know how to articulate a sensible argument to back up their reaction though.

"How did people lose their retirement investments in 2008..following typical investment strategies?" Well, you can follow those strategies until fear takes over. I know of a graduate scholar that got scared, got her money out when you saw how her investment accounts went downwards. You keep the cash, fearing that if you invest again you will loose all. You see how the market goes up, but you do not believe on it again. Or the sunk cost fallacy...or risk aversion with an overestimation of risk.

The more financial AND emotional intelligence you have the less likely you are to fall into such life.

But let's have empathy because the majority of people have less financial intelligence and cold blod as the average hn reader. Let alone the chance of earning a very good salary for a few decades.

I'm not trying to downplay the plight of people who lost a lot of money in 2008 and I'm not trying to say "well it is their own fault" to trying to justify not feeling bad for them.

However, I think it is entirely reasonable to assume we will someday experience another similar event. If there was something about this event that caused some people who were following sound retirement investment strategies to lose all of their savings, I wanted to know about it. That is why I was asking.

I think you're underestimating how hard these people have worked their whole lives. The issue is not one of not working. It's one of lower class wages. If you work your while life and do all the things society expects of you but still end up screwed. That's a systemic problem not a lazy person problem.

I didn’t call anyone lazy — those are your words.

I know (lower middle class) people who went bankrupt in the Great Recession because they had 2 or more mortgages, obtained with a 5% down payment. To me, they took too big of a gamble, and lost.

I know others who stayed out of such gambles and survived the GR.

I know others who had to significantly downsize or live with family members because they lost their job and then spent their savings.

Studs Turkel's book Working is for an America that is gone.

When this current bubble bursts, we will see the truth for all those who belive it's just not enough--what's the word--planning, or solid work ethic?

I was going to say we need a new Working book for the Sharing Economey, but I feel it would be pretty thin, and just say see "Chinese economy", or done other "they do it cheaper" country for more information.

It would be interesting to see a Studs Turkel type writing about a startup that produces absolutely nothing new, or a product that will be decimated by one of the monopolies.

I would like to read how a 1 percenter rationalizes their greedy, and narcissism though; while the safe, predictable, somewhat ethical country they grew up slides into chaos.

You are pessimistic and cynical.

I know many people who have jobs equal to or similar to Studs Working.

And, more importantly, his book did not describe a paradise. He profiled whores, for example.

I read it years ago. He also profiled a lot of people with unglamorous jobs, like hotel doormen. As a teenager, I felt like reading that book taught me something I needed to understand about work and how even jobs that are considered desireable and financially rewarding can be complete drudgery to do over a period of years, let alone decades.

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