the graph for Bangladesh or Chad probably has the guy making $300 a month in the top 2% percentile. obviously he's rich!

My wife and I live on about $50k a year in a very expensive city and things are pretty great. I eat out a few times a week, go to movies when I want, live in a one bedroom apartment that is just great as far as I'm concerned, and generally have minimal hardship. NYC is a notable exception because taxes and cost of living there are just absurd, but in general $50k should be more than enough for 2 people to live very comfortably.

may have already been posted, Doesn't the definition of rich follow the same premise as that of a slut==> whore. She's a slut if she sleeps with everyone, and a whore if she won't sleep with me.

If someone has more money than I do they are rich. Its just the scale keeps moving up,
$100K==>$250K
$500K==>$1.250M
$2M ==>$10M

50k each or 50k gross

In Bangladesh, he might be rich. So, you're suggesting we use Bangladesh as the example for all our cultural norms?

"This hotel sucks, there's piss and crap all over the floor."

"Shut up, you ingrate, it would be a 4-star hotel in Bangladesh."

50k before taxes (which are basically zero other than sales tax) combined.

Can we just move past the part where we argue about how much is "rich" and get to the part where Riverman should be paying a ****load more taxes because he's a fatcat robber barron?

you missed the point of my post

You could very very easily light $1200 on fire every month, too, if you really wanted to.

Your post might have had a point if New York didn't have one of the highest concentrations of wealth on the planet.

Saw this article and immediately thought of this thread.

I will say this: if you're making 6-figures and still consider yourself poor or living paycheck to paycheck, then I don't care who you are or where you live, that's just a pathetically epic fail.

that makes no sense

I actually scrolled through a few comments on his original blog post. One struck me as particularly insightful:

The law professor's (and comments) whining about government programs being bad, etc., and hard-working people earning their own way, meow chow, completely ignored his own admission that somebody somewhere gave him and his wife those $250k in loans each to set up those sweet jobs they think they earned on their own. Gee, I wonder who backed those loans of theirs...

wtf

Income and wealth are different things yo

A 3% increase on marginal income over $250k is, of course, the proposed tax "increase"(really just a failure to actively cut them, but ldo the discourse in this country is set by the LIBERAL MEDIA so we call it an increase).

Good catch by ctyri on the student loan thing. Also, Henderson's salary, even at a private school, is also mostly composed of tuition money that wouldn't exist if the government wasn't loaning his students hundreds of thousands of dollars at well below market interest rates. Basically I can't believe someone that ****ing stupid gets paid that much.

Not to mention that tuiton would be wayyyyyyyyyy lower if the default risk were borne by lenders, further decreasing his bloated pay. What a tard.

Head asplodes - do you not understand why college/post-grad is so expensive?

So G pumps money into a sector and inflates prices but its cool because they keep pumping more money into the sector to "help" the people who otherwise can't afford the inflated prices?

Great, the federal government made it more expensive to go to colleges/post-grad but its cool because the G is promising to keep on with that policy of making college/post-grad more expensive.

This is like arguing FANNIE and FREDDIE helped poor people, because despite causing a massive housing bubble/inflated home prices, they securitized mortgages to provide below market interest rates on home loans! Yay, thanks to FANNIE/FREDDIE poor people could become more poor (aka more debt) in order to buy inflated housing they can't afford.

J.R.-
Go back to the econ forum where student loans increasing tuition is like "ZOMG SCANDAL NOBODY SAW THIS COMING EXCEPT AUSTRIAN ECONOWIZARDS" instead of like, blindingly obvious. Of course student loans, Fannie, etc. help poor people.

Yes, even though they increase the prices. I know, head asplode. Instead of not being able to afford lower college tuition they now CAN afford higher tuition, allowing them to go to college and eventually escape poverty altogether. Ask your father to explain it to you the next time you go home for the weekend.

In before John Stossel video.

Greed with John Stossel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0VHiONkot8

They didn't earn those jobs on their own? No brain or talent needed to earn those degrees? No risk either , right? Obviously government shouldn't back those loans, considering that 250K earner even before he paid off his loans will continue paying taxes and will pay about 110k in taxes each year!!! Sure it is a horrible investment for the government!!!!

Wrong. Most student loan programs go to help the middle class. Most of the truly poor don't go to college at all. In general government programs go to help the middle class rather than the poor.

...and obviously majority of defaulted loans also belong to poor people. I wandering who paid for those? ohh those rich bastards who actually graduated and now living the LIFE!!! Lets tax them more!!!!

That doesn't mean that they don't help the poorl

Oh oh. I think we need a separate thread to discuss the income threshold for the "truly poor". I will start the bidding at $249,000 per year.