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Reader question: Please explain “social safety net” in the following: How can China get consumers to spend? A better social safety net would be a good place to start. My comments: A good question to ask, socially speaking. The message is: It’s a good idea if China spends more on building a better safety net, i.e. health care and other forms of welfare, which benefits all, especially the poor. And this, in turn, may help consumers in general to spend more, knowing that they have a stronger safety net to fall back upon – if and when, that is, something goes wrong. To understand the term social safety net, one has to first understand what a safety net is. A safety net is, for example, what I see here a little distance up the street, a huge nylon net, this one dark green in color, wrapping up the scaffoldings surrounding the first few floors of an office building. The office building’s outer walls are being redecorated and the safety net helps to prevent tiles and bricks from falling onto the sidewalk, perhaps hurting passersby. Hence, the safety net, as name suggests, is a net that makes things safe. The rope walker, for example, may find it very useful to have a safety net installed underneath him, at least when he practices walking on the rope five meters above the stage for the first few times, before he’s very good at it. Social safety net, then? That means a safety net that prevents one from total failure and doom in society at large. Put another way, it helps one survive socially when the going gets tough. | 
