We Don't Want To Help Ourselves

The Dallas Morning News Threaded out a link to their story about a possible (likely?) repeat of last winter's power outages in the coming winter. ERCOT, the Texas authority is warning there could be a repeat. I'm not going to get into the right or wrong or the politics of this, just the behavioral aspect as an example for other things. ERCOT is warning of a potential problem before it might happen. It hasn't happened yet but it might. 

So people who live in Texas are being given a chance to see around a corner on this issue and they have time to act now to do what they can to prevent or solve this potential problem. Not everyone can afford a Generac or Goal Zero-type of battery but there is time to learn what, if anything, can be done and then do it. And of course some portion of the population can afford Generacs and/or Goal Zero batteries. People who can afford these things but don't take advantage of them, at a minimum are making it more difficult for themselves. People who cannot afford large discretionary items, are there battery operated solutions to help get them through? By battery I mean like D and AA and so on. I don't know but there is probably an easy way for them to research it to try to avoid bad outcomes from very cold temperatures and no power. 

No one will care more about the fact that you're sitting in the cold with no power than you.

Of course there is also a parallel to health matters. Someone on Threads with a huge following posted "Health is not a personal choice," he repeated it 15 times on the one post like you might when you try to get something to trend on Twitter. I replied.

Maybe I don't understand this but in many instances, health is habits we choose to take up. Eating well, lifting weights, prudent sun exposure and so on. No absolutes or guarantees but we can choose to do a lot to put the odds in our favor.

Then someone else with even more followers proceeded to list out many reasons why people cannot help themselves to solve this problem, most related to lack of money and lack of access. I gave a reply that anyone can afford to skip sugary breakfasts and do pushups and other bodyweight exercises. The person then gave a longer reply of reasons why people can't do those things.

I let it go at that point but it is a common type of response that I have gotten before. It is easy to come up with reasons why can't help yourself but of course that solves nothing. Is there anyone who thinks we have a great healthcare system in the US? Both political parties talk about needing to make big improvements so I think it is reasonable to think our healthcare system is an absolute shitshow. We cannot ensure any desirable outcome for our health but we can put in some effort to try, to try to prevent future, personal health problems to minimize the odds of of needing to rely on the healthcare system. Even if you think my descriptor of shitshow is way too harsh, you gotta admit there are some problems. We have gotten collectively sicker and costs are crazy out of control having gone up at a rate that is orders of magnitude greater than headline price inflation. Anyone paying attention knows this and it is another corner that can be seen around. "Am I going to have trouble accessing the right treatment if something bad happens" is a reasonable question for all of us to ask. And it can be very simple, even if not easy. Cut carbohydrate consumption and lift weights.

No one will care more about you're health than you.

Both of those are examples that make the same point about Social Security. We are told that it has to be cut starting in 2034 or 2035 although the actual date is a bit of a moving target. We've been talking about this for a while and we still have more than a decade to look around the corner to a reduction in SS payouts. Like the power in Texas or the situation with healthcare, I don't want to be beholden to the reality that if the politicians don't figure it out, I'm in trouble. 

We talk about this all the time, the Social Security Admin wants people to know how much they're getting. It makes for easy planning. How much are you going to get? Like the other two examples, it takes a little effort to understand how things work but who's going to care more about your retirement than you? So what is your number? What is your spouse's number? What is the optimal combo of individual benefits and/or spousal benefits? What's that add up to? Now what happens if it gets cut by 23% like they are saying? What if it's worse and they cut by 30% or 40%?

Those kind of cuts would be bad, yes. The argument that we paid into it and are entitled to what was promised is morally correct but what if they cut it anyway? The moral highground wouldn't mean anything. With more than 10 years to prepare for a bad outcome with Social Security, what are you going to do about it? What are the dollars and cents of what you'd have to do and then how can you fill that gap? We've looked at different ideas on this front hundreds of times so I won't do that again other that to say don't wait to start working on this. 

If they somehow actually figure it out, then we're all better off but it makes far more sense to prepare for the adverse outcome as opposed to preparing for everything going right. The former can hurt you far more than the latter. 

No one will care more about your retirement than you.

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