there ya go, that's the spirit

Mods suck, LDO.


Welcome to online political discussions.

Maybe you should try to relax instead of getting so worked up any time a thread doesn't go in the direction you want? Your overly emotive posting style doesn't seem likely to lead to the discussions you seem to want.

I now agree.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.forb...-shutdown/amp/

« 78% Of Workers Live Paycheck To Paycheck »

« Nearly one in 10 workers making $100,000+ live paycheck to paycheck »

« More than half of minimum wage workers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet
28% of workers making $50,000-$99,999 usually or always live paycheck to paycheck, and 70% are in debt ».

https://www.investopedia.com/article...topaycheck.asp

« In the the Federal Reserve’s 2018 Survey of Household Economics and Decision Making, 40% of Americans said they would struggle to come up with $400 to pay for an unexpected expense. And 17% of households with an income of $100,000 or more said they would have trouble coming up with $400 ».

« A surprising number of upper middle-income earners—those making six figures—are also scrambling to make ends meet, other research shows. A recent study by global advisory firm Willis Towers Watson found that 18% of employees making more than $100,000 annually live paycheck to paycheck ».


You might think I speak BS but I am not ,if it’s BS than it’s investopedia , Forbes and the like that does ,shrug .

I saw plenty of charts, articles etc and it comes down ( since pre-covid btw , must be worst now ) around 70% live pay check by pay check , and around 40% don’t even have a an emergency funds .

Income means nothing without taking Into account the spending.
Yes US got huge income per citizen but they have the worst social benefit from government as well and the biggest debts .
What benefit is there to win 100k if you have loan of tens of thousand $ just to get an education , etc.

Someone living in New York making 100k might actually live pay by check with inflated real estate prices funded by debts ?

fwiw, no wonder the cost of life is humongous in some portion of the US with the amount of debts existing .

There must be a reason why they say the wealth gap is as bad as in the 1930 .
Because it isn’t BS numbers .

Well from what I am reading and watching anyway .

Yep, this is definitely BS. That 78% number is actually 38% who sometimes live paycheck-to-paycheck, 17% who say they usually do, and 23% who say they always do.
Yes, of that 40%, 69% say they would pay for such an expense with a credit card or by borrowing money from family or friends. I know people like this. Some are low-income, some are students, some just don't save their money.

Basically, you have discovered that many Americans, including many rich Americans, don't save any of their money. This is true, but this is usually a sign of their own foolishness, not their poverty, nor of a problem in the American economy.

Absolutely, there is lots of BS in personal advice columns in Forbes and Investopedia articles. If you want to understand the American economy you should use better sources.
Yeah, the problem is that you are reading articles who use living paycheck to paycheck to refer to anyone who spends their entire income, regardless of how high that income is, and are interpreting that in a colloquial sense of being poor or struggling financially. If you are making 100K a year and struggling to pay your bills, then except for exceptional cases you should bring your spending in line with that of most other Americans and your struggles will go away.

Social benefits in the US are fine, not as generous as most of Western Europe, ahead of most of the rest of the world. Most people get health-care and retirement benefits through their job and/or the state. In-state public universities are about 10K a year before financial aid.

And if you want to compare by how much US incomes can buy, as of 2016 the US was third highest in the OECD in median personal disposable income p/capita by purchasing power parity.

Indeed, if you live in one of the most expensive cities in the world you'll need to make more money to pay for it. So move if you can't afford to live there.

Yeah, but you are relying on slanted statistics from popular advice articles about how Americans should save more instead of just looking up the actual numbers. Americans are rich compared to the rest of the world.

I would be interested to see which stats and sources on which you based yourself for rejecting the numbers I showed .

I rely on a lot of diversity of sources which seem to confirm it .

When you say social services are fine In US , are you incorporate health care ?

They are about the worst you can find and by a big margin .

« https://www.investopedia.com/ask/ans...healthcare.asp »

A known investors once spoke about insurance healthcare while he was working in the states and he moved out .
His insurance for health care , just by not covering for the states anymore , compared to Europe was about 65% lower .

It’s like you say social benefits in the states are fine compared to other nations yet I don’t know much nation making close to 1-2 trillions of budget deficit every year .
1-2 trillions more debts coming in every year means your social benefits aren’t actually real right ?


Imho , I don’t think 70% of Americans ( even 50%) are all guilty of being ignorant , stupid and not knowing how to manage money .
That is a lot of people ....
If they were , where did that come from because this amount of % never really happened after the 1930 .


Like I said earlier , I wouldn’t even speak about it if it was in the 25% margin .

I relied on clicking through to the actual studies cited in the Forbes and Investopedia articles you are quoting from. I also cited a Pew Research study comparing middle incomes across countries and OECD numbers on median income.

Yes, I am including health care, and no America's health care is not the worst. It is the most expensive, but mostly paid as an employee benefit or by the government and so not included as part of disposable income calculations. For reference, 61% of Americans under 65 get insurance from their employer and 23% get it from the government (94% of people 65+ get it from the government).

No, it doesn't mean that. The US is the richest country in the world, and so can afford to borrow very cheaply. If it chooses to borrow money and give it to citizens that money doesn't just disappear. The federal debt to GDP ratio is high right now, but the American economy is robust and can easily recover. Also, the US deficit has been over $1.5T exactly once, last year.

My point is not about whether people are generally stupid or ignorant. We can see how much money Americans are generally making. We can also see how much it generally costs to pay for things. Given that, why are you are relying on sketchy numbers that include extraneous aspects of money management that have nothing to do with the actual economy?

John21 is right here. I have a good friend who makes 70K annually and six years ago inherited 500K. It is now all gone on traveling, jewelry, clothes, and other luxury items and she has 35K in credit card debt and struggles to pay her bills every month. I have another friend who makes 250K, but says he can't afford to put any money in his Roth IRA. These are not people who will be helped by a UBI. Trying to understand their financial situation by asking them whether they are living paycheck-to-paycheck or how they would respond to a minor financial emergency doesn't tell you anything about the American economy and how well the middle class is doing.

What is it that you are actually claiming? Is it your contention that 70% of Americans are poor?

It is my contention that the economy is profitable for less than the majority , which in my view isn’t a reflection of being a good economy when just a few gets reward from it .
But saying you can have a robust economy with the amount of debt the US have is kinda wishful thinking.

Try to raise a child or two on 100k a year in anyplace where you can make that salary. The US worker really is squeezed. Many don't notice until something like a health care crisis or other emergency hits. LOL@ retirement benefits through their job too. If they're lucky they get a 401k with a match. But you have to be making enough to save ten percent to have any decent retirement waiting for you.

I mean, it is what it is. If you live in a system you have to do your best in it but pretending people are just wasting their money is a gross overstatement.
And it's a moot point because setting up old people living in poverty is okay if you're Obama or Clinton but not really a selling point for the president who has to deal with it.

Same with health care. Paying for medicare twice is genius. Most people don't pay attention until it's their turn in the barrel and then they realize they've been duped.

We can do much better and for much cheaper imo.

The US economy is what happens when you vote the bankers and health insurance state holders into office.

It's funny now everyone blames the victims too. If everyone just saved every nickle they ever earned and managed to stay healthy they might have some money in the bank in 20 or 30 years. And if they want to raise a family then they're indentured and it's their fault. Great social strategy, lol.

thread has peaked

The kids not going to prep school in Boston if that's what you mean.

'Debt' per se is not a negative for an economy or a nation.

You will see China using debt, likely very effectively to grow their economy and pull all sorts of people out of poverty.

If you can borrow today, and invest it properly in the economy such that it spurs growth and then pay back that debt at a latter time with the revenue and profits of that growth with some left over you have done well.

That said, few countries manage it well anymore. Too much 'debt' flows out to special interests that provides little or no return.

What kind of logic is this? It sounds like you're claiming that employers only ever pay salaries up to the poverty level of the local economy.

Lifestyle creep is what has people making 100k feeling squeezed. A problem of their own doing.

I don't know what you mean by "profitability." Can you define this more precisely. I've already shown that the majority of Americans have a higher income in PPP terms than almost any country in the world.

Nah. You don't seem to understand the role of debt in modern economies. The main downside of debt is future financing costs being a drag on future economic growth. Since US debt has such a low interest rate, the US already has a below-average tax rate, and we are trying to keep people out rather than in, we can afford to borrow a lot of money and still expect good economic growth in the future.

it really takes the cake that you go into that level of detail as to even think of specific locales for the events in your imagined world

Are you incels like 45 and single ?

The discussion is if you can raise a family on 100k and not live paycheck to paycheck. It also assumes you're providing at least a lower middle class lifestyle for your family. (obviously you can drink and smoke your money away and let your dumb kinds run around in potato sacks)

So you have healthcare costs, 1000 a month. Car costs, a decent house (between 4 and 600 k in a decent area) daycare maybe. You have to save for college. You have to cart your kids around to some activities etc, etc.

You can't do it in large swaths of the US where you're likely to land a 100k job. Having two 50k jobs only increases expenses.

If you call lifestyle creep anything that isn't food, shelter and clothing that's fine but why pretend you're living in a great country then ? We can all live in the DR and be poor but have nice weather. No lifestyle creep there.

it's a sure sign you don't have any argument to stand upon when you resort to personal attacks

please for the love of sweet baby jesus go soundboard this idea of your that 100k household is hardship living out to the rest of the world, i'm sure you'll find a receptive audience, especially since most people have children or are children thus not incels who'll love your ideas ldo

My imagined world ?

You said you went to prep school. I said you wouldn't be sending your kids to prep school in Boston if you only made 100k.

I mean maybe you would. Maybe mommy and daddy are still taking care of you.

But that's not really the point of the discussion. It's that 100k isn't much money to raise a family on in many areas of the US. Despite what internet thousandaires may believe.

No, it's really not.
The fact that you're so easily triggered is more of a sign that you have nothing to say. But I digress.

I didn't say it was a hardship (example of strawman there btw) I said you would be hard pressed not to live paycheck to paycheck on 100k family income if you were trying to raise a family in most areas of the country where you could make that much. That was what the adults were talking about.

People live fine on half that but they're debt ridden and waiting to go bankrupt at the first bump in the road.

Among full-time workers 30% have access to a defined-benefit pension plan (24% participate) and overall 80% have access to either a defined-benefit or contribution plan.

As for raising kids: I come from a large family and have five siblings raising kids with incomes both above and below 100k. You don't need to live in NYC to make that much. And they are all doing fine financially. Obviously everyone would like more money. But that desire isn't a sign that the US economy doesn't provide middle class people with an adequate income.

Sure, we can do better and cheaper and we should. I'm not arguing that we should keep the status quo. I'm saying that the status quo is being falsely described by Montrealcorp. I know that you are ideologically committed to claiming that America sucks, but I'm not. I think the US economy has been doing well and provides a good life for middle-class Americans, and has even responded well to the pandemic economic emergency. I know this runs counter to progressive attempts to build a political coalition of middle-class and low-income Americans around the idea that they are being screwed, but oh well, I'm not going to lie.

At least that fancy prep school education wasn't wasted.

You can do memes.

It doesn't suck for me.

It will for my kids though. At least compared to the chances I had.

It's not uncommon for people who have theirs to not care about anyone else so I get it. But you're really confusing my motivations here.

But hey, almost a quarter of people are setting something aside for when they can't work anymore. That has to end well, right ?