This article looks at WHY there’s a culture of safetyism in the middle & upper middle class.
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The chief problem is not safetyism, but scarcity coupled with precarity.
Today’s typical age college freshmen were eight-years-old when the global economy cratered in such a way that even rich people got scared for a little while. The resulting “recovery” has only exacerbated our sense of scarcity and precarity, as the fruits of that recovery have accrued to smaller and smaller groups.
The relatively well-to-do, but not quite rich folks that populate the bulk of the “paranoid parenting” demographic understand the needle their children will be required to thread has grown smaller by the year, and any slip in achievement may result in falling out of the ranks of the economically secure.[5] Is their parenting paranoid or simply calculated to maximize their child’s economic potential?
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So basically societal structures & economic dynamics are creating an environment where this is gonna happen. So if we’re serious about getting rid of safetyism (especially in the context of growing inequality & technology making jobs even more scarce) then let’s make it easier for people to survive and flourish in society – maybe something like a Universal Basic Income or Negative Income Tax.