I have spoken to a friend who has rich parents, and the psychological effect is that they always know if something goes wrong they can just be supported by their rich parents when they get back on their feet.

Furthermore they know they can bum around until their parents die and get their retirement money in the form of inheritance. You might be surprised how ever-present that thought is to people like that.

But for people without that option, because their parents can't, they make the right decision and don't take a risk because there is nothing to fall back on.

I wish people wouldn't speak this confidently with such little life experience.

Or provide details about those experiences you think are needed.

Well, that's mostly an US issue, I guess. When you live in a country with even modest public healthcare, such as Germany, things are not that terrible.

Here, if you get ill, no matter how bad, you get the base treatment that you need. Of course you can (and should) pay on top of that for better treatment. But event without money, you don't have to fear to be denied important treatments. (With some unfortunate, but luckily very rare exceptions.)

Thinking of that, I wonder why we Germans are so conservative, despite living relatively secure. A large portion of our people could take a lot of risk without falling too deep. Probably this is because "falling deep" here means to have to rely on social welfare provision, of which people are afraid of. But this is not really falling deep, compared to living on the street in utter poverty.

(hat tip to Algolia's HN search ;) )