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Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

It's just money. It would set the victims back (if the bank doesn't cover) but if they live in the first world and their life is ruined just because they lost all their money, they need perspective. They would still have all that really matters: family, food, shelter, access to education and healthcare, job, no physical injuries. It's just money.

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In the US, all of those things require money. It cost $10-20k to have our baby, food certainly isn't free and food stamps aren't enough to more than subsist in poor nutrition, we pay $15k year for healthcare that covers just me and the baby, I can't get to work without gas money, etc.

If someone didn't have family to fall back in, an empty bank account would literally ruin the life of the average American.

Where I live in Europe (Bulgaria), the situation isn't that different from what it is in the US (I used to live in NYC with a baby and health care expenses similar to what you mention).

Here, the banks offer very limited credits, expecially to foreigners like me. Public health care and education is not great, to put it nicely. My family depends on my income but a bankruptcy would mean that I would lose my license to practise my profession, and so too my income would take a dip.

So, losing cash could mean that I would loose my profession, my home, car etc. There would be no more nice kindergartens, no nanny, no cleaning lady or private doctors for a long while. We would eat less, drink less, travel less etc. But that doesn't mean that my life would be ruined.

You would eat less, drink less, travel less. Americans that get cleaned out could easily end up without anything to eat, or drink, or (hah) travel. According to feedamerica.org, 16.1% of Americans (as of 2011) already live in food-insecure households. 15% live in poverty. If you're impoverished and being helped by the state - i.e., Social Security - your aid checks are going to be direct-deposited into that swindled / frozen-while-we're-fixing-things account. When you're living on a pittance, you know how rough it is to not have that pittance for a month or three?

You're talking about eating less. You're talking about still being able to travel. I'm talking about a country where roughly one-sixth of its population would literally starve if this happened to them.

> They would still have all that really matters: family, food, shelter, access to education and healthcare, job, no physical injuries

The first 4 you mention do not magically come for free in the U.S. You might retain the 5th, if you already had a job, and though you were nice enough to mention 'no physical injury' you somehow neglected 'no psychological injury'... though I can see why, since it would be untrue.

All of these things require money in the US. Supporting your family (feeding them, housing them, sheltering them, educating them, providing them medicine). Money in the US is not just for purchasing luxuries: it is a necessary resource for survival. Either you're not an American, or you're hopelessly priveleged.

"food, shelter, access to education and healthcare, job"

All of these things can hinge on having money.

All of these things WILL hinge on having money

Not at all. All these things "hinge on" being able to make money on an ongoing basis, not whether the money you had saved was stolen.

1) If you're in poverty (15% of Americans) your checks from the gov't are direct-deposit. Getting swindled not only catches whatever salary was currently in the account, and racks up penalties for whichever bills you currently just didn't pay, but it takes time to get your direct deposit redirected to another account (and open a new account). Those bounced checks during the time you got swindled? That can be enough to bar you from opening a new account, which is part of why "Check Cashing" stores thrive in low-income areas.

2) If you're not in poverty, and your employer direct-deposits, all of the above, only you can change your direct deposit destination faster.

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