In that case the issue was that he had to stop working to take care of his mother. In most civilized countries, his mother would have sufficient help from government healthcare.
> In most civilized countries, his mother would have sufficient help from government healthcare.
I am in New Zealand, which is fairly civilised, and I think your statement is mostly wrong.
Firstly, I have seen people get some government help, but it is rarely enough. Even with government help and sharing the load with siblings you may still need to help your parents full time.
Secondly, many people choose to look after their parents because they want to, or sometimes they don’t trust that others will give them the same quality of care. Even with high quality private care, I have seen plenty of children dedicate a lot of time to their parents (similarly friends looking after sick friends).
For some children it is acceptable for them to hand parents over to aged care, provided by the state. Many other children choose instead to do as much as they can to help their parents, often because they have experience of the systems and see the reality of overburdened elderly care.
When infirm people have nobody else to help them except government services, their care is sometimes of low quality, although still expensive for the economy to provide. A mature economy with many elderly perhaps doesn’t have enough people to provide the number of dedicated hours needed to support all of their infirm? I did a quick search and it looks like New Zealand spends about 1% of GDP on long term aged health care. That seems surprisingly low to me - although I didn’t look at how much other countries spend. https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=crown+expenditure+%22aged%...
Depending on how sick she was there are such programs in every state. If she needed round the clock care like it sounds, she was sick enough most likely.
He also could probably have declared bankruptcy early and been able to focus more on learning useful skills instead of killing himself trying to pay bills he never could. That is what bankruptcy is for.
Guess again my friend. Ate old canned food for a very long time while my parents declared bankruptcy as a kid - twice - so we at least had a roof over our head, and wore the same two shirts for years too. My Mom finished a 4 year degree several years afterwards that helped us pull out of the economic collapse of the aerospace industry in the area that had trapped us - and was studying late in the night to do it. While working a very demanding full time job too.
There are methods to avoid being destroyed by situations like this, but some never try or don’t bother to even figure it out. Doesn’t mean it still isn’t hard work, and stressful as hell, but it is there to stop the destruction. Folks have to look and try though.
Would you prefer the sob story of the time I had a partner go literally nuts (though she managed to dodged the psych eval for nearly 5 months until THAT got proven) due to COVID related stress and her own negligent actions and their consequences, and then file a series of crazy (and later proved perjury) accusations that locked me out of most of my finances, my home, and all but the property I was able to put on my back with roughly an hours notice - while I ended up single parenting two kids - all for no apparent reason?
Shit sucks sometimes. It's often hard or nearly impossible to cope. Sometimes the terribleness comes from those you loved the most, or least expected it from. Sometimes it comes from a literal random stranger. Life isn't fair, and there is no guarantee - and fundamentally cannot be - that things work out for anyone, no matter how right or wrong their actions.
Sometimes this kills someone directly. Sometimes it just wears them down, sometimes someone can take a direct hit to the face that would kill most others and just smile.
Often the bigger part of the damage or ongoing problems stem from our own inability to face reality, what is going on, and make use of the tools we do have and what we have around us to actually make things better - but that is a problem no one can fix but us. Ultimately, we end up with the consequences of this, deserved or not. There is no magic bullet to solve this either, just hard and uncomfortable work.
There are tools however, and our current society provides a LOT of them. I fully recognize how hard it is to use them during hard times. Probably more than 99% of the posters here. But pretending they don't exist or aren't available is BS as well. Pretending that they don't exist and that is why society is unfair and fucked up because of this is also just wrong and corrosive to society - and people even actually using these tools.
How many people read these posts and actually think there IS no other option and they're permanently fucked, and so never actually take the actions they can to make it better - or even take drastically worse actions that just compound the problem?
A lot more than anyone wants to think about, I can assure you.
Bankruptcy exists. I've seen many people use it (including one close friend) and everyone came out fine at the end. Was it embarrassing for them? Yes. Was it fun? No.
I've always worked my ass off and saved money to avoid the risk, and still barely survived, as I saw how unfun it was as a child and felt many of the effects first hand. But it worked for them to do it, and I knew I had the option if it went even further south.
The whole point of bankruptcy is to get the creditors off your back so you can actually get your life back on track again - like learn a useful skill, or get a new job despite the market being screwed, or not go homeless, or build back a functional life after crippling medical issues and/or debt.
Is it guaranteed that said person will do so? No - there is no way to even attempt to give such a guarantee.
Is it a useful tool someone can use to do so? Yes, you bet.
