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Post by Peregrine on Jun 28, 2024 5:05:55 GMT -5
That’s a weird definition of wealthy. Maybe it’s just because I’m in California, but 100,000 is not wealthy; it’s barely enough to live on if one has any kind of medical issues at all. Yeah, $100k is not even remotely wealthy. It's an old number that hasn't kept up with inflation, it used to be a useful benchmark when $100k was a late-career professional salary for the top of the field but now $100k is "congratulations, you have a year of experience in your field". And if you're living in a high cost of living area good luck being able to afford kids, maybe at best you can live as a single adult in a low-end studio apartment and have enough left over for a cheap hobby. You aren't getting into actual "wealthy" territory until you're making $4-500k/year, or at least $2-300k/year with no mortgage or major expenses. But I suspect this article is yet another piece of propaganda by the ruling class trying to blur the lines about what "wealthy" means and make people support pro-billionaire policies because they think a mid-level engineer is "wealthy" making $150k/year and the billionaire class needs sympathy for being in that difficult position.
Yeah, there is a difference between "can't afford my current standard of living" and "can't afford to live". I'm circling the former but I'm under no illusions that I'm comfortably far from the latter. There is a difference, but let's not pretend that people aren't suffering from financial stress just because they aren't living in crippling poverty. It is a major problem if normal people making normal salaries are unable to have a comfortable life with the things we took for granted a generation or two ago: owning a house, having kids, etc. The fact that someone making $100k/year can still afford to live in a low-end studio apartment and not be in immediate danger of starvation does not mean that things are ok. |
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Post by Haighus on Jun 28, 2024 5:12:51 GMT -5
What does wealthy mean?
Roughly the top third of Americans earn $100,000 or more. Median wage is a bit under $60k. $100,000 is certainly well-off. Obviously this isn't filthy rich.
My partner and I earn slightly over median wage each in the UK, and we are comfortable (in large part due to lack of kids).
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 28, 2024 5:52:28 GMT -5
Membership in the investor class, not the working class. If you get a paycheck from your boss you are almost certainly not wealthy. Getting a decent salary as an engineer, lawyer, etc, gets you into middle class but being able to afford to buy a house and have a couple kids is just the expected bare minimum from a generation or two ago. You still depend on working a normal job, and you're still going to be rapidly approaching a crisis if you lose that job. You aren't wealthy until you have so much money that your money comes from passively watching the line go up and any actual work you do is purely out of boredom.
First of all, that number is extremely skewed by differences in cost of living. $100k/year buys you a decent standard of living in middle of nowhere Alabama or Wyoming, in Seattle or San Francisco that might get you a one-bedroom apartment an hour away from your job as long as you keep all your other expenses under control and don't have significant student loan payments. By California numbers a household income of $150k/year for a couple with two kids is considered "low income" in San Francisco, $105k for an adult living alone. So a lot of that upper third are still living at or near the poverty line for their particular area, and someone making the national median wage is starving on the streets.
Second, that division of thirds doesn't really tell you much because income distribution in the US is not even remotely equal. There's a long tail of poverty, a huge middle of not-quite-poverty, and a tiny group of people with obscene wealth. A third of the population may be making over $100k but most of them are making only a little more than $100k. Go up to $175k and now you're in the top 10% and you're still going to have problems affording life in those expensive cities. And the top 1%? That's a million a year, making in a year what Bezos/Elmu/etc make in the time it took me to write this post. Remember that the US does not have the same level of services as the UK. You're throwing away money on health insurance, you need a car to get anywhere, everything about having kids is incredibly expensive, rent increases 25% a year and there's nothing you can do about it, etc. And if you're making that much money you probably have student loans to pay off unless you were lucky enough to have your parents pay six figures worth of tuition and housing costs. In most of the country someone making $60k/year is NOT going to have a comfortable life. They may be able to keep all the bills paid but there's going to be very little left for anything else and their housing situation is going to suck. And they certainly aren't going to be able to afford to have kids. |
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Post by Haighus on Jun 28, 2024 8:19:39 GMT -5
Ok, this might be a difference in how the term wealthy is viewed. I think in a UK context, the middle class would typically be viewed as wealthy* and home ownership is expected, but not rich. Rich would be at the top end. For reference, the UK middle class is about the same size as the working class for the last hundrded years or so, both around 45% ish.
It seems wealthy is more synonymous with rich in the US.
*In the past, nowadays standard of living is slipping drastically for anyone outside the truly rich, at least the top 10% by income.
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Post by herzlos on Jun 28, 2024 10:34:14 GMT -5
I'm not entirely sure what middle class is in the UK anymore. It used to mean people who weren't fully reliant on labour income, but I think very few people have enough capital/assets to fund a decent lifestyle.
I'm not even sure it'd require home ownership outright rather than mortgaged. That on it's own would make a big difference in living standards, since my mortgage payment is about 1/3rd of my take-home pay (and still about half of the equivalent rent).
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Post by Haighus on Jun 28, 2024 12:22:49 GMT -5
I'm not entirely sure what middle class is in the UK anymore. It used to mean people who weren't fully reliant on labour income, but I think very few people have enough capital/assets to fund a decent lifestyle. I'm not even sure it'd require home ownership outright rather than mortgaged. That on it's own would make a big difference in living standards, since my mortgage payment is about 1/3rd of my take-home pay (and still about half of the equivalent rent). Frankly, it is increasingly a cultural thing rather than economic as living standards drop. |
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 28, 2024 16:10:31 GMT -5
I'm not even sure it'd require home ownership outright rather than mortgaged.
Does "home ownership" in the UK mean owned outright, not with a mortgage? Because in the US "own a house" almost always means having a mortgage to afford it, unless you're old and retired and already paid off the mortgage. When I talk about a salary being enough to own a house I mean that's the point where you can convince a bank to give you a mortgage instead of renting, not that you can buy a house with cash.
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Post by crispy78 on Jun 28, 2024 17:39:14 GMT -5
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Post by herzlos on Jun 28, 2024 19:06:05 GMT -5
I'm not even sure it'd require home ownership outright rather than mortgaged.
Does "home ownership" in the UK mean owned outright, not with a mortgage? Because in the US "own a house" almost always means having a mortgage to afford it, unless you're old and retired and already paid off the mortgage. When I talk about a salary being enough to own a house I mean that's the point where you can convince a bank to give you a mortgage instead of renting, not that you can buy a house with cash.
"Home ownership" in the UK doesn't generally distinguish between mortgage and not for practical purposes. It just means you have a tie to the house and responsibility over it. Occasionally on forms you'll see "owner (mortgage)" or "owner (outright)".
I was querying if the distinction mattered when it came to wealth/class, because someone with a paid-off house will have a much higher disposable income. Easily 50% more than someone with a mortgage. I suspected that "middle class" meant having enough money to not need a mortgage, whether that's family money and never needed a mortgage, or having paid it off already. It may be taken to be more a case of "middle class" meaning that you won't lose your house if you lose your job.
What I can't figure out is if there are more owners-with-mortgage now just because houses are more expensive and mortgages are longer, or if people are less likely to settle in a house they've paid off and instead take out another mortgage for a "better" house. |
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skyth
OT Cowboy
Posts: 487
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Post by skyth on Jun 28, 2024 19:09:19 GMT -5
My house is paid off. Definitely don't want to move to a newer one. Might have to due to my wife having health issues and likely won't be able to handle the stairs, but would go for a cheaper one if I can, not a 'better' one.
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Post by easye on Aug 5, 2024 10:30:30 GMT -5
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Post by tannhauser42 on Aug 5, 2024 14:35:25 GMT -5
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Post by Peregrine on Aug 5, 2024 23:11:53 GMT -5
Is this the actual economy of producing goods and services or the magic line at the casino? |
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Post by easye on Aug 6, 2024 9:19:38 GMT -5
The economy of the 1%.  |
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