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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
If you are free of debt and have just $10 in your possession, you are financially ahead of approximately 70% of Americans.
$150k household income is not enough to afford a house, middle class standard of living, children, and retirement savings since you don't have a pension. at least in my area.
it'll get you lower middle class, maybe.
I'm not saying these people should be having money issues, they need to budget appropriately. but what used to be possible 20 years ago just isn't now, you need to choose one big thing to drop, whether that's a detached house, children, expensive hobbies, trips, etc
there's too much shifting of the goal posts for what middle class is, I think it has slipped too far downwards
Imo the entire concept of the middle class should be abandoned as capitalist propaganda. There's the rich and there's the working class. Anything else is a distraction to keep us from focusing on the rich stealing from the workers. Bezos owns a $500,000,000 yacht while thousands of his employees rely on government assistance programs which are funded by taxes he doesn't even pay.
Owning class, working class and then you do have a mid point of worker/owner class. Their money comes partly from their labour but also partly from their wealth
Those at the midpoint still have to work to live, so they are working class. 🤷
At some point it's more that they want the extra money than they have to work, and they own so they are also the owning class
If they don't have to work to live, they're no longer working class (Musk still works at Tesla, but clearly doesn't need to). But I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that those who derive their wealth from the labor of workers but who can't afford a yacht should be treated differently than billionaires? I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have progressive tax rates, I'm only saying that an arbitrarily defined 'middle class' exists solely so that you and I are distracted by exactly these discussions, and provides no benefit to determining what is justifiable economic policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie ?
Although members of the petite bourgeoisie can buy the labour of others, they typically work alongside their employees, unlike the haute bourgeoisie. Examples can include shopkeepers, artisans and other smaller-scale entrepreneurs.
children? when we've hit the climate crisis tipping point? no thanks, i'd rather not bring people into this world who are going to die a painful death from a climate related catastrophe.
It feels like the whole world has been an externalized cost for the very rich.
What this article fails to mention is that all houses within 2hrs of the San Francisco Bay Area are close to a million dollars plus at least 1k a month in property taxes. With insufficient public transportation cars are a necessity
Yeah public transit in the bay area is famously trash. You just need one more lane.
Move to sacramento and spend six hours each morning on the commute so you dont have to use amtrak like some cucked little bitch who likes to sleep and read.
oh no. are those poor people ok? they cant budget 150k? i feel really bad for them. is there perhaps a venmo? I make less than 50k, but gosh, i didnt realize they had it so hard.
Amazing. Class war between poor and middleclass while billionaires laugh all the way to their private jet
if you make $150k but live in a HCOL area and have kids, and perhaps one or two expensive medical conditions in the family, maybe some student loan debt and a mortgage, congrats you're paycheck to paycheck
I literally know someone like this.
It's not about the numbers. Working class is working class.
Only 3 718$ payments left on my car and I paid off 4/5 credit cards. Turned them all off to. Just being slow with my Best Buy credit card.
ITT: the working class shitting on each other just like the billionaires intended
POV: You’re a USian on disability benefits who is just assumed to be able to survive on 12k a year whilst being literally disabled and unable to do most things healthy people can. And now people with 150k a year, 10 times my income, are complaining. 👁️👄👁️
There's room for all of us to be angry. I think it's reasonable to complain if you work 50 hours a week for that income, have to be away from your family, who also need to be housed and clothed and to eat and care for their health, and all you have is scraps left over and aren't saving much, if any.
When you make $150k, you usually have to live in a preposterously expensive area and have your entire life structured around your job. You eat better meals and have a better car so you can work better, and if you don't you're fired because someone else will. Student loans are how you got there to begin. It costs a lot money to work.
The system is designed to keep everyone living cheque to cheque
Disability benefits? That's not real. I think you're thinking of "bureaucratic dead ends".
Felt that when the UK started talking about the cost of living. I remember someone on TV crying about how they couldn't afford food on their £35k salary. This was several years ago too.
At the time I was having to live off £8k in apprenticeship wages.
About 38% of all new jobs created in the five years before the pandemic paid above-average wages, VantageScore's data shows. But this year that share has fallen to 7%, signaling that companies are creating fewer white-collar positions. That poses a challenge to higher-income Americans who suffer a job loss because it may be tougher to find new employment than in previous years.
I feels like this is very important as it actually the reason why they're struggling on repayment, because technically they aren't making 150k per year but 0 per year.
But the financial management criticism still sound.
We don't make this much but do make enough it seems like we ought to be easily comfortable (two good salaries, cars paid off) but -
How did we get here? Nobody comes out the gate making that much, we each started out making little to nothing, then went to school, had kids, got school debt and a credit card for the monthly deficit, paid off the school debt, the credit card still paying on so long after. It's still the deficit debt, for emergency situations that come up. I funded HSA so those are not usually medical now but dogs, car repairs, house repairs. We are making progress but it's dead expensive and slow to do so.
Basically those people making so much and credit card debt may be paying off their path to making so much.
And I know better than to complain, having been in much worse situations.
Not to detract from the statement being made but many people will sign away all their money regardless of their income.
Yeah, this seems like part "things are bad" and part "I'm bad with money."
I find car insurance more outrageous than car payments.