- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia
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Look up 'Hell’s Angels" by Hunter Thompson.
There’s a chapter in the book where he talks about the economics of being a biker/drop out/artist circa 1970.
A biker could work six months as a union stevedore and earn enough to stay on the road for two years. A part time waitress could make enough to support herself and her musician boyfriend.
Or, to put it another way, in 1960 minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average home was $11,000.00. A burger flipper could get hired on high school graduation day and be a home owner in 20 years without ever getting a raise.
That’s the power of the New Deal coalition that ruled for 30 years.
You can still be a nomad at today’s wages. I have a friend who works for a school year as a teacher, and then travels extensively for a couple of years. He lives like a nomad though, no fancy hotels or accommodations. That’s what the Hell’s Angels did back then too, in addition to plenty of additional illegal activities which provided them extra funding.
And crime is sort of the only way.
And the only thing that makes sense? If there’s a regime of ownership and social order that tells you “you get nothing. Work or die.”, what do you even call someone who doesn’t fight back?
What do you call a war where one side cant fight back? A genocide.
The class war rages on, even if you try to ignore it.
No, if you turn your headphones up really high it how’s away. Quantum physics thing, discovered at Livermore labs… Just this year I think.
no fancy hotels or accommodations
Isn’t boondocking a felony in lots of areas?
If it is, it needs to be challenged in the courts. In the US you have a constitutional right to be homeless.
Do you have a constitutional right to occupy space that you down own?
My understanding is that you basically are at the whims of whoever owns the land, be that an individual, city state, or federal government. Even the fed doesn’t allow you to live at their parks over a certain amount of time, even if you’re paying for camping permits.
There’s a very large percentage of land that isn’t owned by anyone, around 10% of the country (which amounts to millions of acres still affected by The Homestead Act,) and while you’re kinda correct that you can’t camp indefinitely in one spot on state or federal land, the requirements are that you keep your camp site clean, and move to a new site once a week.
That’s absolutely incorrect. You can be incarcerated for homelessness in Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, San Diego, and Portland, where it is considered a criminal act. It has been challenged and deemed a state’s right to criminalize homelessness.
Johnson v. Grants Pass disagrees. 2018 SCOTUS upheld your right to be homeless.
They didn’t mandate that the state or county cannot charge and prosecute homelessness. You can appeal if you can afford to, but you can’t, because you’re homeless.
They outlawed charges or even tickets. The only reason these unconstitutional laws are on the books is that they haven’t been challenged.
I can’t challenge them because I own a home in California, so I’m not harmed by these laws. The ACLU would be perfectly happy to take these cases without a fee, that’s what they’re there for.
The new constitution is spelled T-R-U-M-P
You can stay at national forests or BLM for up to two weeks at a time, and no more than 2 weeks in a month at the same park.
Well, one other thing in the 70s was everyone kind of lived a simpler life anyway. Not many had really luxurious things, and most places weren’t trying to be anything fancy. It’s just a place to live and the basics for most. I love what we have today, but I also miss those times as well since nobody cared if your place of living wasn’t up to date with all the luxeries we come to take for granted as necessities or judged for possibly not having them.
That’s complete and utter nonsense. Where did you get the idea that people weren’t interested in luxury in the 1970s? The Disco Era? The Me Generation?
Ah yes, the frivolous luxuries such as housing and health care.
Oh I bet you want mental health care to… you baller.
You can’t live that life even if you tried, and it’s percisily the basica that are unaffordable these days. The luxury stuff is cheap but housing education childcare food and transportation ruin people
in the '70s*
Wow thanks for clearing that up lol
Home ownership was lower in the 1960s than it is now:
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2024/01/30/home-ownership-rate-q4-2023
…And?
Some folks try to play off that people are richer today because you have more two car families. The counter argument is that if both parents work the family needs two cars. One fact alone doesn’t paint the picture.
I’m saying the 1960s were worse. By any measure
So, you believe that all the technological and medical improvements of the past six decades were the result of massive inflation and the collapse of the middle class?
Could you elucidate?
What are you talking about? We are richer now than then.
Just look up, I don’t know, the percentage of homes with hot water or electricity. Look up percentage of homes with an indoor toilet. It’s nearly 100% now… But in 1960s these were not a given
Or, to put it another way, in 1960 minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average home was $11,000.00. A burger flipper could get hired on high school graduation day and be a homeowner in 20 years without ever getting a raise.
Are you saying that all the technological and medical progress of the last 60 years was a direct result of the decrease of real wages?
Real wages are up since the 1960s
My idea of becoming rich isn’t a fancy mansion… It’s having enough for all of my essentials and having plenty left over…
Ya know, what used to be normal?
I hate that we consider that rich. Being able to have a normal home, food on table and a bit left over for rainy days shouldn’t be considered rich, it should be the baseline for everyone.
None of this is for you. This order, these laws.
So what kind of fucking idiot would stick to them?
I wish I could both afford to have health insurance and afford to go to the doctor. I can’t even afford to get insurance on my car and the health insurance cost 20% of my income but has a $2,000 deductible? What the fuck?!
Deductibles should be illegal it’s like “I have insurance, but not really”
I have that but it’s pretty much cost me my entire self and identity. All I do anymore is work and sleep. I don’t socialize ever and it feels sinful if I’m awake and not making a dollar of profit for the overseer.
Somewhere there’s a middle ground, but I’ve never found it.
The purchasing of the median person power has NEVER been higher than now
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-purchasing-power-of-american-households
what time period are you referring to?
Ya know, what used to be normal?
Normal for white men in their 30s.
Edit: there is a huge caveat in my post which is I missed that these are household numbers, not individual numbers.
That would be amazing if it were true, but it’s not. In 2022 the median income in USA was over $74k
Source: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html / https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/279/tableA1.xlsx
Reminder that median means "half of the samples are above this point and half of the samples are below, which means exactly what was stated in the OP “half of America”
I fully support the ideas from OP that corporations need to pay people better and wages need to at least attempt to track economic gains, but we can send that message while telling the truth and citing our sources to prove that the message is legit.
That’s “Household income”. Household income is the most useless and skewed statistic I can think of when it comes to equality and actual income per person.
In my mind rich people can afford to live in different homes. Poor people can not afford to do so. That means if 8 poor people who each make eg 10k a year share a household then their household earns 80k. Now if 8 less-poor people who each make eg 40k a year are split over four households then their households also make 80k each.
So now there’s 4 households of 2 people each that make as much as 1 household of 8 people. Here statistically 100% of households make exactly 40k. Regardless 50% of those 16 people still make less than 35k a year.
In reality people inside one household have different incomes, which means even among the 4 slightly richer households in the example above some inhabitants would probably make less than 35k.
One question I have is how do household-statistics count people who have multiple houses? If a rich person owns 10 houses, then does it count as 10 households who earn >35k?
People with multiple homes typically have one home that counts as their residency and those living in that house count as a household.
Other homes are secondary or recreational homes and are not counted to have residents.
Sometimes, rich people will claim to live in one home in a low income tax jurisdiction, while actually spending more time in a high income tax jurisdiction. This is tax fraud and the most recent famous case I can think of is Shakira.
Alright that makes sense. Is there any benefit to living together vs living alone as far as taxes are concerned? I suppose a couple owning two houses and each person claiming to live in a different house (ie two households) would still skew statistics - especially a median.
It depends on jurisdiction.
In most countries, living together has a slight tax advantage. In some countries it has a disadvantage.
Fantastic points! I totally missed that household part of it and I agree that judging based off household is a really distorted view of individual financial position.
Do you have data on individual incomes?
I don’t have any data. My goal was not to provide data but to call out the absurdness of creating statistics for abstract things like household incomes.
To think of household income, think of how you file taxes. You don’t claim roommates in your taxes, theyre not your household. If you and a significant other file jointly, that’s your household.
The stat isn’t as ridiculous as the other person claims
[email protected] posted the definitions used in the census survey above
A household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit. A person living alone in a housing unit, or a group of unrelated people sharing a housing unit such as partners or roomers, is also counted as a household.
Household income doesn’t mean you and all your roommates. If you’re single and you have 3 roommates, your household is still just you for the purpose of calculating household income. If two families share a house, then each respective family has their own household income.
So what about young adults who can’t afford their own house and live with their parents or some other relatives? Are they excluded from these statistics? Do they count as a household consisting of only one person? Are they completely ignored in this statistics?
The PDF itself doesn’t specify these things. Nor does it confirm your claim. Maybe some of the data referred to in the many footnotes does. Wikipedia and Google results didn’t really answer those questions either, they only confirmed that there are many different ways to model a household.
If you’re single and you have 3 roommates, your household is still just you for the purpose of calculating household income.
Where did you hear this brother?
A household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit. A person living alone in a housing unit, or a group of unrelated people sharing a housing unit such as partners or roomers, is also counted as a household.
For the census, perhaps. Not for tax purposes.
That’s adding to the confusion and seems like a weird gotcha, we’re talking about the census as the person posted above as a source. The people who are confused and wrong seem to be stuck on tax filing status for some reason, I’m hoping obfuscation isn’t the goal.
Where did anyone get the idea that the statistic cited in the OP comes from the census?
deleted by creator
…I’m going to lean on the side of this being trolling unless you’re just lost or not following the full conversation. We are in a comment chain discussing what [email protected] replied to OP with. No one is implying the OP image is census data, people are using the census data to dispute the OP image’s claims. I feel breaking it down further is redundant since you can just scroll back up and read all the replies.
Thanks for that, it really helps clearing things up!
It does! And one billionaire with a
wifelive-in sex worker (remember; they cannot love) erases thousands of dual-income partners living in povertyIt does!
Are you sure that it does? Some other people are claiming that it does not and I honestly have no idea who is correct. Do you have a source for this?
Okay so here’s what I remember from 4th grade (salt it heavily; that was decades ago and I had to flake on statistics class):
There are 3 kinds of ‘average’: The mean: values of all the things added together, divided by number of things
Median: take the… I think the mean, but maybe highest and lowest, then find the actual number in the data set closest to it
Mode: number that occurs most often in the data set.
Pretty sure this uses mean. That’s the common one. Look what happens to that data when you remove extreme outliers, or just the top 1%.
The median net compensation for American workers in 2019 was $34,248.45, which is less than $35,000. So, the claim in the screenshot is apparently accurate for individuals. Granted, household income is a better indication of socioeconomic standing for people with spouses.
Source?
OP is off by $5k according to this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N Median personal income hit $40k in 2022.
EDIT: I wasn’t suggesting that $5k difference is enough to invalidate OPs point. $40k is obviously ridiculously low.
That’s from when Trump was president, it’s $CURRENT_YEAR, for God’s sake
/* Ignore my other comment if it’s not deleted for you yet *
This is specifically for combined household rate, which is different from individual earnings in that, well, it’s for two people and not a measure of how much the “average” American makes
deleted by creator
My guess is they included children, who earn nothing, to get the average down that low
Maybe, but that would also be dishonest, because nobody is asking children why they are not having kids and not buying homes.
Oh I agree. They started with a premise and went about getting the numbers to match it, which is at best lousy journalism. I’m just theorizing about their methodology.
It appears that the claim that half of Americans make under $35,000 is not accurate. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median personal income in the United States for 2022 was $40,480 (FRED - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N). Additionally, data from DQYDJ shows that at the 40th percentile, income was approximately $58,001, suggesting that less than half of the population earns under $35,000 (DQYDJ – Don’t Quit Your Day Job - https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percentiles/).
Furthermore, the median household income was reported to be $74,580 in 2022, a figure that significantly exceeds the $35,000 threshold (Census.gov - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html). This indicates that the median individual and household incomes in the U.S. are both higher than $35,000, disproving the initial claim.
Only 46% of the population are working. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/whos-not-working-in-the-us-learn-the-basics So technically, technically the quote is correct. The stat you are quoting is the median salary of someone working full-time is $58,001. So it leaves out all those people un and underemployed or who just gave up on joining the workforce. Idk where you got the 40,480 because your link just goes to a broken link. Millennials are also making less money are less likely to be married and have higher unemployment numbers than gen x so our numbers would be more screwed than the overall median which is what the original tweet was referencing when saying stop asking us about buying houses or having kids.
Only 46% of the population are working.
Shouldn’t you be taking out children, students, retired people, and those who are unable to work?
The number is 76% if you only look at people aged 25-54.
If you are saying half of america then the population usually includes everyone who is alive not just people 25-54, everyone needs money to live. But if you took that subset of the population (not sure why you would have an upper bound of 54 when most people retire at 65+) that still makes the point of half make less than 35k. The median is from full time employed people. Also someone driving for Uber who makes 60k gets counted as making 60k when a lot of that goes towards work expenses like gas and car maintenance.
If the median household income is 75k, assuming dual-income, then that’s probably where the 35k comes from: 75k/2 = 37.5k.
But there are significant amount of households who just have one person making 75K instead
so per worker, it’s actually 59K according to the data
You’re mixing measurements. Household != Individual.
For you and [email protected], isn’t the Census bureau a national survey with self reporting that only covers like 1% of the population? Both “Fred” and dqydj.com use the Census bureau to calculate their viewpoints from what I understand? If I’m reading the government site wrong or looking at the wrong surveys please correct me. I understand the “Census” to be more of a judge or indicator of patterns but not to be used as concrete data in which to come to solid conclusions from.
I had ran into the census pdf as well before seeing this link, the beginning has an interesting passage which none of the authors seem to mention in the articles,
Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, 2.3 percent lower than the 2021 estimate of $76,330. It was 4.7 percent lower than the 2019 median, the year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding recession (Figure 1 and Table A-1).6 The estimate of median household income in 2019 was the highest since 1967 source
Also an important caveat,
The income estimates in the main sections of this report are based on the concept of money income, which is pretax and does not account for the value of in-kind transfers. Estimates of post-tax income and inequality are included in Appendix B. Real median post-tax household income exhibited a substantial decline in 2022 from 2021. This was due in part to the expiration of policies introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as Economic Impact Payments and the expanded Child Tax Credit.
I’ve been reading over a few of the articles from www.dqydj.com and it feels very sketchy. I can pinpoint a few questionable passages that seem to pass on an intent, but in general how they dissect the data always has a “but we left out this part” footnote. It’s especially hilarious with the article you linked,
What was the median household income? In 2023, $74,202 was the median household income in the United States. This is up from $70,181 in 2022 (unadjusted for inflation – see below).
They then proceed below to show a graph that completely contradicts their statement.
The paragraph above it makes a great copy-pasta though. If I’m reading any of this wrong, let me know.
are you trying to make me feel worse?
Median weekly earnings of full time workers is over $1100/week now, so the median full time worker is probably making well over $50k/year, if they can hold down a job for the full year and work full time hours.
Lots of people don’t work because they don’t want to work, and don’t need to work: retirees, students, married to rich spouses, etc. Including them in the denominator can be helpful for measuring some things, but would be misleading to assume that the median individual income across all individuals would mean what most commenters in this thread seem to think it means.
If you look at what they count as full-time jobs, And then you compare that to how many people are actually willing to offer full-time jobs rather than just a job that takes all of your time you might better understand this.
The numbers are manipulated by what they choose to exclude. And $50,000 in today’s dollars is less than an elevator operator made during the Great depression.
what they count as full-time jobs
Isn’t that just anyone who works more than 35 hours per week?
full-time jobs rather than just a job that takes all of your time
What do you mean by this?
Either way, they track several different alternative measures. One is the number of people who want to work full time but are stuck working part time for economic reasons, which has been lower the last few years than the previous decade.
Or if you’d want to look at those who hold multiple jobs, that’s been climbing but still historically low.
How the fuck is anyone alive?
Dual income, no kids, live in a basement.
Lots of roommates and/or a low cost of living location. Food and utilities are not much. Skip medical care, or just didn’t pay for it.
Multi generational housing is back.
Also somehow that’s true and a housing shortage is true at the same time.
Parents filling in a lot of gaps
A lot of distractions are cheaper now. Movies. Books. Steam sales. Social media is free.
Because the number is from before the pandemic when Trump was president
Surprise! People with no money dont spend money on stuff :O
"Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Sounds like commie talk to me, this guy should read Ad- Wait a minute
I’m currently making $24K as a grad student. Ain’t nobody asking me shit!
The social contract:
“You get nothing. Work or die. Sleep in the barracks/pod. Eat the bugs.”
Which sounds… I dunno, why? If that’s the deal I’m offered I have a few questions: why do I care about your laws, your social mores, even you saying you own shit, right?
And whenever I ask them, I get the shit beaten out of me.
That’s what I made as a grad student ten years ago, damn.
And yet, that was still the most I’d ever made in my life at that point.
Stupid poor people. Simply be born wealthy, its not that hard.
“But if I pay my workers more, then I won’t get to have my third house and second yacht, and I’ll have to get rid of my secret second family. And think of the poor shareholders.”
Oh it’s gotten way more overt than that. You’re talking about plain old greed. Low wages are about power.
“If I pay my workers more they will have savings and that means they can quit if I treat them badly and they might open up a competing business.”
If they paid a living wage to all their employees, how could they afford all the lobbying and advertising?
Shower thought: What if the journalists drawing attention to these problems are using twisted headlines to get the message past the same corporate masters? That the very voice of media is under the same yoke, struggling to get the word out?
Edit: So you change “Wage theft at all time high” to “Millennials claim fast food too expensive” to at least get people talking.
Afaik the headlines are normally not chosen by the journalists.
The figure referenced in this tweet is likely referring to the 2021 net compensation chart we saw making the rounds a few weeks back. Indeed, it’s correct, ~50% of all Americans made less than 35k per year in net total compensation in 2021.
In 2022, that figure rose to ~40k. So the trend is going in the right direction, at least. And IIRC, the chart does include teenagers, college students, people working part time or underemployed, etc.
The difference between top 10% and top 1% is shocking. And if they included 0.1% it would probably make all the other bars too small to see the difference at all.
My favorite calculator/article from that website is the debt one. For the longest time the bottom 10% held negative wealth. Only recently did we move that number down to bottom 7% under biden
35->40 is roughly what inflation would give you from 2021 to now.
35->38 is roughly what inflation would give you from 2021 to 2022. And that’s when the 40k figure came from. So, the implication is still fairly positive.
Also, that first “stop” sentence is a bit ‘ironic’, considering that statistically, in the US at least, the poorer you are, the more children you have.
That’s half of United States rather than half of America.
Would be much more than half then.
Bro our healthcare is eons better than yours mate… “Much more than half?” LMAO
Sure you “make” more, but the cost living in CA/MX are far far far cheaper than you dorks can even fathom.
Rise up or shut up.
What on earth are you on about? BTW I’m European. I simply stated a fact about the metric being discussed, not sure how that elicits your reaction.
You forgot about Central South America ☠️
If you want to be pedantic about how different countries abbreviate names and include Central and South America I bet the given figure is still accurate.
Do you correct people who say “Germany” instead of “Deutschland”? No, just typical USA hatred?
The media isn’t asking these questions because they don’t know the answers, they’re asking because people are a lot more likely to think there isn’t a clear answer when they see people asking the question over and over. If there’s a clear answer, then people who want to believe that the younger generation is just lazy will have to come to terms with the fact that they’re wrong, or worse yet, leave for another news channel that lets them keep denying it! No, they’re going to keep on asking questions and letting the viewer answer them on their own, filling in the blanks to validate whatever biases they have.
