i'm highly skeptical of this claim, given they show 60% of all americans are living paycheck to paycheck it doesn't make sense that >100k+ earners make up an equal proportion of that contingent. the cnbc article says "more than half of americans making over $100k..." and i'm suspecting they're looking at american households >100k, which is a very different story. the study they ultimately cite is paywalled and no way i'm wasting money on that, but pretty sure they're misrepresenting in some way. or they have a weird definition of paycheck to paycheck that doesn't include liquifiable assets.

also 100k is not what it used to be. 50k in 2010 feels like 100k today. official inflation figures would have you believe it's 70k, but they're clearly understated when you look at things that matter like food staples, home prices & rent, and cars. which reminds me of the brilliant atlantic headline "Inflation is Your Fault" which i'm pretty sure was meant to be rageclickbait but is also reflective of the general attitude toward inflation which seems to be "why is it happening? who knows! deal with it" when it's clearly a latent tax on every day folk in exchange for subsidies for connected financial & political folk. instead of getting outraged about this systemic unfairness, we all gawk in outrage at the individuals trying to get by in this weird, race-to-the-bottom system.

Or they would just knuckle down and scrape by for a few years with minimal money or get a 2nd job while they deal with whatever health or other bills they have to pay. But nowadays people don't want to go through any hard times and would rather put their hand out to the public. Their once private lives and the family struggles they are going through are now often made public via social media making that public outcry for money all the more easier.

The public education system where I come from has become for a large number of students basically a Monday to Friday detention centre to get a student up to the age of about 15 when they can legally leave school to get a job or start a trade. Until then it is every teacher for themselves in being able to control them and parents do not care because these children of theirs are out of their hair for about 6 hours of every day. Suspensions and exclusions are no longer a deterrent. Something seriously needs to change where both the parents and the child are ashamed of their performance/behaviour at school.

The sad part is that no matter how thoroughly urban myths like these get debunked, there is a substantial portion of the population who will continue to believe it and spread it because it reinforces every extreme belief they have of the other side of the political spectrum.

Do you have any evidence that people were more more likely to "knuckle down and scrape by" in the past?

You can't really have that argument without also acknowledging the reality that life nowadays gives FAR more opportunities to make poor financial decisions. Poverty isn't new, but easy credit and an endless array of shiny things to buy or worse, rent/license makes it easier than ever to dig yourself into a hole.

Plus, there's nobody left running a household who lived through the great depression. Most people are 3+ generations removed from that type of mentality, and the cracks are definitely starting to show.

At least your grandfather had something tangible left over when he made impulse purchases. All people have nowadays is another account for an app with too few vowels in its name, and maybe an electronic device that'll stop working the second their credit card gets rejected on next month's billing cycle.


Edit: I can't imagine trying to explain to my great grandmother that some people spend an entire month's wages on a juicer that requires proprietary consumables sold by one vendor, and won't make juice if it doesn't have line of sight to a specific satellite. She'd pull some manual metal device out of a cabinet and say, "Why not just use this?"

I'm just as guilty of being lazy as anyone else, though. I make money so I can pay people to do things I don't want to. Not everyone has that option, though, and they live their lives like they do anyway.

I love the logic of “I have health problems right now….so time to get a second job”.

When I was a kid several people told me Bon Jovi had to get a quart of semen pumped out of his stomach, and I refuse to believe otherwise. Not because it reinforces any political belief, but because I think it's funny.

You can keep one or two groupies silent, but definitely not 400 of them from the same backstage orgy. I'll call shenanigans on that one.