https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper
If you've been the ant you'd have prepared for the winter. I guess in reality most of us fit somewhere in between the ant and the grasshopper. It'll teach us all a bit of prudence we'd do well to remember thereafter.
For sure, one should not overextend themselves, but conversely you can do everything right (live below your means, invest vs frivolous spending, robust emergency fund) and still fail.
The anxiety of those faced with this reality is understandable, and there is substantial data demonstrating the harm of such an environment (chronic stress) to the human.
Someone with this perspective, please, help me understand - Give me a base salary, a rent, and a monthly expense that doesn't let you save up 6months of runway after 2+ years of employment.
I wonder, why would an ubermensch feel the need to spend their day doing this?
I mean realistically we're not facing 3rd world famine here. Things are probably going to be less comfortable for the next few years, and some of the most overinflated salaries might not return for a long while, but there are still going to be plenty of reasonable opportunities out there. That might mean relocating to a place where real estate isn't so inflated, or working on something less sexy, maybe taking an unrelated job for a few years, but nothing worse than what the overwhelming majority of people already live comfortably doing. You don't need to put enough away to support yourself for the rest of your life, just enough to let you land on your feet.