My first job out of college paid $28k/year. Of course that was in the mid 80s. Almost 40 years later, half the country is making less than $7k more than that.
Technically, our standard of living is much much lower. A lot of us don’t have water heating, so we just shower (or dunk, if you use a pail, because some of us can’t afford showers) with cold water, unless you want to spend precious time and fuel to boil it. I see Americans who glorify cold showers, saying that it develops you as a person. Heating and cooling is a no-brainer for Americans, but many of us are still hesitant to use air conditioning even at 30°C. In my country, we still have regular service (water and electricity) interruptions, even in the cities. Yes, rent can be lower outside of major cities, but development is centralised there, so you’d rather move to those cities anyway. I would hear of families having to seek treatment in a more developed city, because their city doesn’t have resources.
Why would you bet that? I just think that what you see as a dystopia is what most of the world can’t even dream about. Does not mean that what you are experiencing is great, but from the outside of the “rich bubble” it does look as a funny complaint. Now that is the dystopia for you.
3.5k USD monthly is a lot. If I might ask where does this amount come from? I looked at rent prices a bit and they are not really much higher from where I live right now while the average salary is more than 4 times lower here.
Where I live in the US you’re lucky to get away with 2-3k in rent for a decent place and then you still have to pay utilities, car insurance, gas, groceries, etc. A minimum monthly budget can easily reach 3500.
Well there’s a solution from the poor world: don’t rent, live with your parents until they die, don’t own a car, don’t pay for gas, buy only the cheapest groceries, the ones you people won’t consider safe to eat. That is how most of the world lives. A lot of them live in even worse conditions than that.
Btw, if I may ask, where do you live? I looked at the rent prices for some USA cities, and the offers were better than where I live, while the average salary here is 4 times lower. It’s also not really a poor country compared to like a lot of countries. It may just be the case of what people with different income consider “decent”.
What if your parents are dead, or abused you, or rent and aren’t allowed to add you to the lease?
Don’t own a car? For millions that means no way to get to work, no way to get supplies, isolation.
Not everyone has a lot of choice in where they buy food, especially with no car.
It sounds like you don’t understand how big the US is and how absolutely shit public transportation is. Where I live, I can get to town in 5 minutes by car. By Bus it would take 40 minutes. There is a 5:30pm bus that would get me home but if I missed it the next bus wouldn’t come until 8pm.
And owning a car is not optional here. Mass transit is a joke and many people travel 60 miles (96km) or more to work. Multi-Generation housing arrangements are on the rise. Not everyone has that option though and it shouldn’t be a requirement in the world’s richest economy. Fresh food of any kind in the US is more expensive than unhealthy processed foods in many areas, especially when you might have as little as 3-4 hours a day to clean, cook, eat, socialize, bathe, do errands, and decompress. I’m not unaware of how other people live, I’ve traveled and lived in those conditions myself, I just had the privilege to be able to come back to the US afterwards. What I think you’re missing though is something called Purchasing Power Parity. Things are vastly more expensive in the US, so a lot of that money is getting vacuumed up by those prices. And some of the things you mentioned like hot water are comparatively cheap because it’s been built into our infrastructure.
So would someone in a cardboard lean-to love to come live a working class life in the US? I’m sure they would but that doesn’t invalidate things like our workers dying due from preventable and treatable health conditions because they can’t afford medical care here.
So the bills are probably not that lower for the people with much lower income, and they also likely can’t even afford mortgage, a car, insurance and first-world quality groceries.
I know a few people in the 100k range. Only a couple have kids. I think that is more than that. It’s never stopped people in the past. I think a combination of education and poverty may be part of this.
I mean, even if you’re financially well off, your income isn’t going to make you blind to things like climate collapse or the prevalence of right wing neonazis.
There are a lot more factors than just money that make this planet not a suitable place to raise children.
Sure, but we know about that because we tend to be more educated. My point was that money alone isn’t the only reason we aren’t having more kids. Thank you for agreeing with me. The way I put it could have used more examples.
Maybe my demeanor. I’m prickly sometimes and I apologize for that. Maybe I wasn’t being clear. It could have come across that I was suggesting that education needed to be reduced. I didn’t mean to suggest that, or anything else that assigned fault to the poor or the educated. Maybe my anecdotes didn’t back it up or sounded pompous. I apologize if I sounded combative.
He may have been a jerk but the town officials were raging assholes who were doing blatantly unethical if not outright illegal things aimed at screwing him over.
If you ever heard about that hilariously ugly Nashville statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest it’s actually kind of a similar situation. He put it up because the city eminent domained part of his land for a road, but refused to buy the whole lot, leaving him with an unsellable sliver.
Then he decided to build a metaphorical Killdozer of racism and poorly executed statuary in that sliver out of spite.
It’s tough because the snopes article moves between individual and household income amounts–which are two very different things. Kinda wish articles were written more clearly, and provided contextual data regarding how many households have multiple earners.
And yet you still complain. God damn millennials. Back in my day I worked hard and made 600 bajillion dollars just by moxie. You just need a nice suit and a firm handshake and you’ll easily find a better job
This has been driving me crazy. I try to compare the median income in the twin cities and it always provides the median household income. Why is it so difficult to find indivual median income for regions.
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