Or maybe fix it from the other end: reduce inequality so fewer people are living paycheck to paycheck and can actually build savings to use for unpredicted expenses.
I like seeing electric bicycle shares, I like seeing community-based, high density housing with shared kitchens and bathrooms, I like predictive diagnostics and telemedicine (although the FDA is fighting it).
Much better than making people dependent on those who control the mechanisms for allegedly limiting unexpected expenses; that's just a plan for increasing social control available to elites. High density housing with shared kitchens and bathrooms sounds like a dystopian hellhole designed to strip people of their dignity, and that's something you think is a good thing? We already saw tenement buildings in the 19th century.
We didn't even have the minimum wage 100 years ago in the United States. How are you going to deride people for not offering solutions, then, when they offer viable solutions, attempt to magically will-away history?
These ideas aren’t new. The idea of taxing the wealth even more is ALSO not new, and we already have tried it and had it fail. (France has tried this, as well as other European countries, with usually disastrous results).
Even if you could magically trap all of them in the US and wealth tax them away, it’s a meaningless drop in the bucket. Seize all of the money from everyone with 50 million+ in the US and you don’t even have enough to pay for Medicare for all.
You can argue about taking down the rich (they have too much power, your jealous, etc), but don’t for a second pretend you’re doing it to uplift the poor.
And what mechanism do you propose? Just a 100% tax on any gain over X%? Do you realize how easy it would be to then just sell at that threshold and invest in something else?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reforms_by_country
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nationalizations_by_co...
Net worth is not the same as resource allocation. This isn't the 1500s where you could plunder a castle and pillage their stores of grain. Bezo's net worth has very little to do with the distribution of housing, food, and medical care to poor people.
Does he consume more housing, food, and medical care than average? Absolutely. Are his consumption levels even remotely similar to his absurd net worth? Absolutely not.
But I wouldn't scale this up. I would lose more money and wouldn't be benefiting any existing relationships by doing so. The social benefit of the few dollars lost does not scale, and thus the reasoning behind existing unsecured microloans to friends does not scale.
Look at how society works in countries that are better than your own at this. What is the fundamental differences in politics, media climate, labor market laws, health insurance education. Then vote for a politician or party that tries to improve things in that direction.
I don't think there are technological quick fixes. The solution to "people live paycheck to paycheck" I think is e.g. improving employment security by e.g. not having healthcare tied to employment which keeps people in low paying jobs. Ensuring everyone can organize so employers pay more, and so on.
* strengthen union membership (union jobs pay an average of 13% better for the same work, and that's with union membership at an all-time low in the US), * reduce the ability of money-holding industries like these people to extract so much (like what Elizabeth Warren's CFPB has been doing, even with current meddling from the administration), * contain costs for the most expensive things in American life (health care -- some sort of universal coverage plan, and education -- student debt forgiveness and cheaper education options), * raising the minimum wage (which, had it tracked productivity in the US and not left unchanged since the 90s, would now be something like $20 an hour)
that's off the top of my head.
Andrew Yang has his "freedom dividend" which, the more you get into the weeds, the less of a benefit it'll seem to have, but that's even another idea.
These are all ideas floated in opposition to the current administration, which wants to weaken unions, keeps fiddling with even the shitty Obamacare to take health care back to the bad old days, and so on.
So, people are talking about it, and have plans drawn on what other countries are doing more successfully -- no real reason they wouldn't work here, except for the historical baggage and pulling-up-the-ladder that dominates US political discourse.
In soviet russia, kommunalki host you (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment)
Your argument is that no one should have a conversation unless they have an action plan.
> I like seeing electric bicycle shares, I like seeing community-based, high density housing with shared kitchens and bathrooms, I like predictive diagnostics and telemedicine (although the FDA is fighting it).
These are all solutions for companies to make money from problems that could be solved by government-provided healthcare, better public transit, and subsidized housing (not just projects).
Additionally, there are many middle class folks making well above average that still live paycheck to paycheck by living beyond their means (huge house, multiple cars, etc).
Poor money management != poor and more money does not fix it.