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Comment by Sodman | Hacker News Reader

Outside of the obvious "don't buy a gas guzzler" tropes, most of the best ways to save money will end up costing you time. Whether it's living with a longer commute or working more hours, there is a point at which people are just happier living their lives than wasting years in their prime scrounging and being miserable to afford a downpayment on a house in worse condition than what they could afford to rent. Big budget decisions like vacations and cars will obviously factor into this in a big way, but nobody's financial situation is changing massively over a Netflix subscription.

Following your own logic, it's almost like saying how dare you say you had _any_ budget for eating out? Why not just save even more money?

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I think part of the disconnect is that many people today assume that life will be, or should be, pain free. Life is hard. It's always been hard. It's hard today.

I think the reason we want to believe otherwise is because of the tremendous wealth we have experienced recently, so we expect that trend to continue indefinitely.

To me, it is the lack of gratitude for what we do have and can afford that galls me.

The generation immediately after WWII gave a glimpse of what was possible, before crafty people figured out how to siphon off the majority of that wealth to those already at the top. And over time, that siphon has grown stronger.

Life should not be as hard as it is. It is hard, and it is not painless, but it's harder and more painful than it must be. We have billionaires siphoning money from the masses (either directly, or indirectly via government action) that are already struggling. Redistributing even half of their net worth would be a life-changing amount for the average person, and could put wind in the sails of many charitable/educational/scientific/medical causes.

There is no reason why the current situation should be allowed to continue, and many reasons why it should not. Obviously it's a hard practical problem to crack (given that a naive approach to redistribution of this kind would be met with a great pushback and implode various systems that we depend on), but unless we do something effective, we'll keep ruining the planet while trampling the poor at the same time.

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