Читать книгу Money Mammoth - Ted Klontz - Страница 14

Within the past two generations, there has been a dramatic shift away from this tribal social system. Part of the responsibility of the tribe was taking care of each other, including as older people. Over time, as we moved from small tribes to larger groups, this responsibility was passed on to institutions, corporations, and the government. Several decades ago, such entities were there to take care of the tribe. Your company would fund your retirement, and Social Security would step in to take care of the remainder. You saved a little for vacations and holidays, but when and how retirement would occur was not a concern.

What about all this debt? Our grandparents didn't have credit problems. They didn't struggle with credit card debt. Were they wiser? More disciplined? Perhaps, but that's not why they didn't carry massive amounts of debt. The fact is that they couldn't have gotten access to unsecured debt if they wanted it. There was no such money mechanisms as credit cards. The only unsecured credit they were likely to get was from the local grocer, who wasn't likely to extend it more than $100 or less. In the past few decades, we have been given access to easy and fast credit.

But recent cultural shifts have dramatically changed the landscape. Corporations have shifted from defined benefit plans, such as pensions, to defined contribution plans, like 401(k)s. These somewhat subtle shifts have changed the responsibility of saving for retirement from the institutions back to the individual. So we shifted the responsibility of taking care of our aging members from small tribes to the government. In the past few decades, institutions have been discharging this responsibility, but now there are no tribes left to fall back on.

So now it is all up to the individual. This has never happened in human societal evolutionary history, and it is significant to note. You heard this message if you remember the daily briefings after the corona virus outbreak, when self-reliance was called for and lack of government reliance became a reality. This dramatic shift alone helps explain, to a large degree, our society's current financial problems as well. Look at the total global economic impact of the corona virus–related disruptions for businesses, organizations, individuals, and government, and the unintended results from these shifts of societal personal responsibility. Who was most impacted? The poor and the elderly, those groups least able to take on the personal responsibility and who were more dependent on government systems.