I think, for most people, getting the shit beaten out of them is a preferable outcome to losing their job.
For most people, their job is the only thing standing between them and being homeless, losing their car, losing their kids, their partner, etc.
This is why having a culture that treats firing people as no big deal leads to wack ass incentives. You can make people do almost anything if you threaten their job enough.
One can only conclude that the VW engineers were uniquely immoral, since they have a safety net and nonetheless committed massive scale fraud. At least in America it's coercion. In Europe, it's willful evil.
Countrapoint is that these dilemas are NOT dilemas of poor people struggling to feed their kids.They are dilemmas of well doing middle class who in fact, can find another job.
Seriously, we hear the "but the job, but the potential pay raise" exactly as often in a good economy from people having large salaries.
They have choice. They are choosing the fraud over ... still high salary but just not that high.
It does in some places. Firstly banks will usually let you pause or significantly reduce mortgage payments while unemployed. You then make up for it with increased payments (for a period of time) when you regain employment. There is also government help in the form of a loan to pay the interest on your mortgage while unemployed if you've been unemployed for a certain period of time (longer than the bank grace period).
The cases in the article were software engineers in the US, and at FTX. Two were engineering directors and the third was a senior engineer. If any of them didn't have plenty of emergency funds set aside, they should have seriously rethought their spending.
I know plenty of people who saved for years to get a downpayment for a house and then used all of that for just that. After that, it will take a while to replenish their emergency fund with very little margin of error. A job loss would be devastating.
My claim is that that's a bad decision, for exactly that reason. Job loss can happen for any number of reasons, often without warning. Getting a mortgage without any cushion for job loss is a huge risk.
Note also that I'm talking about highly-paid software engineers, not about people in general. Lots of people in the US make way less money than senior software engineers, and they manage to get by. Live at that level and secure your emergency funds first, and you'll be a lot more comfortable dealing with any ethical quandaries at work.
> Lots of people in the US make way less money than senior software engineers, and they manage to get by.
No, I'm pretty sure this is getting less and less true actually. Credit card debt is at an all time high. Homelessness is rising. Medical debt is crushing.
No, you’re claiming they have a spending issue, with the typical judgemental holier-than-thou undertone. My example is not that.
And I’m talking about my SWE neighbors in SV who have a desire to buy their own house just like almost everybody else. It’s just wrong to claim they have a spending issue.
They may be highly paid, but the house prices are commensurately higher too.
It is nearly impossible in the US in general to buy a house without taking on some amount of financial risk. It has nothing to do with being wasteful with money.
I mean, it's been the standard personal finance advice for decades. Step one is to set aside six months of emergency expenses. If you have an above-average income, you're capable of doing that. It's not "judgmental" to point out that this is indeed an intelligent strategy, just as advisors have been suggesting for years and years.
You yourself said that for the people you know who bought a house without that, "a job loss would be devastating." So you seem to agree with me and the personal finance advisors.
I did not say they had "a spending issue" or that they were "wasteful with money." Those were your terms just now. I simply said they should have rethought. You're turning that into some moral judgement, when all I'm saying is that it's bad strategy.
Indeed, any sufficiently wise man would prefer to place himself in a position of precariousness so that all his acts of crime can be attributed to the man who employs him. Only the financially careful face dilemmas. The spendthrift fears no judgment from society having forced his choice function into an identity of his employer's.
For most people, their job is the only thing standing between them and being homeless, losing their car, losing their kids, their partner, etc.
This is why having a culture that treats firing people as no big deal leads to wack ass incentives. You can make people do almost anything if you threaten their job enough.