Thread

This is incredibly sad to think how the quality of life has been stolen from hardworking, moral people who know no better.

That was a suspiciously high number to me, 130k a year is comfortable for 4 people. The reasoning is flawed. First, I don't know anyone who spends 5% of their household budget on food, even people who cook at home every meal. But more importantly, the rough measure distorts the picture the less someone spends on food. Think about it, if food, the only actual thing you need to stay alive, is only 5% of your income, what the fuck are you spending 95% of it on? Clothes? Seems to me, a significant chunk of it would have to be discretionary spending. If food is 100% of your income, you don't say that the poverty line is 1x your food budget, you say "I'm homeless." Similarly, if food is 0.1% of your income, you don't say you need 100x your food budget just to make ends meet, you say "I'm sp fucking rich that what I need to stay alive is so post scarcity I can spend a negligible amount of my income getting nutrition and sustenance". The measure itself skews badly and tells you nothing *unless you keep the measure the same, regardless of changes in trends.* And then, it only tells you something about relative changes. It doesnt actually tell you how someone is doing, no matter how you calculate it.

Read the article. It answers your question “what else are they spending it on?” in extreme detail.

From the article: “Using conservative, national-average data: Childcare: $32,773 Housing: $23,267 Food: $14,717 Transportation: $14,828 Healthcare: $10,567 Other essentials: $21,857 Required net income: $118,009 Add federal, state, and FICA taxes of roughly $18,500, and you arrive at a required gross income of $136,500. This is Orshansky’s “too little” threshold, updated honestly. This is the floor. The single largest line item isn’t housing. It’s childcare: $32,773. This is the trap. To reach the median household income of $80,000, most families require two earners. But the moment you add the second earner to chase that income, you trigger the childcare expense. If one parent stays home, the income drops to $40,000 or $50,000—well below what’s needed to survive. If both parents work to hit $100,000, they hand over $32,000 to a daycare center.” The bigger picture point he’s making is that through this lie of the “poverty line” we’ve created a disincentive to work for anything less than ~$100k. Life actually gets worse from ~$40k to ~$100k. Sure people won’t starve but this system is fist-fucking our society regardless of what political POV you come from.

I did.

> This is the floor. Yeah, that's what I addressed. I don't think the metric is useful and I explained why. I do agree our society is getting fist fucked by whatever parasitic systems have been constructed by people. The cost of child care is particularly egregious. But personally, I don't know why you'd want to pay someone to raise your kids for you, the money isn't worth it. Once you've determined that, the path forward becomes more clear.

Yeah the food metric is useless I guess that’s what he’s getting at too. 5% is pure subsistence, 10%+ is more realistic per the deeper analysis. Agree with the child care sentiment but then we’re saying one income needs to get a family out of the mess which makes it even less likely for the average American.