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How much Americans make in wages

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Re: How much Americans make in wages

#131

Post by oldboyFX »

notyourwork wrote: post #42
kough wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you subsidize your siblings? I'm going to be in the same situation and I'm not sure what I'm going to end up doing but I think I'm going to end up doing it.

Keep your family and money separate. It usually always ends poorly otherwise.

Depends on how balanced your family is and who you're giving the money to. Funding a peter pan brother is not the same as funding your retired parents so that they can afford some extra luxuries like travel and enjoy the rest of their lives.

And then there's the difference between loaning and gifting money.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#132

Post by oldboyFX »

dzonga wrote: post #39

but hey capitalism, is the greatest invention since we discovered we could wipe our behinds. Problem, with America is there's a lot of embarrassed 'to-be' millionaires. Once everyone accept it's okay to be average and life a average lifestyle safe-guarded by the a social net, a lot of people will be lifted from poverty.

What's your point? Can you please elaborate?

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#133

Post by badpun »

peterwwillis wrote: post #113

Well let's pile some more random data onto this tire fire and jump to some conclusions. (edit: comparing 2015 to 2017) How much do Americans earn? 2015 data [1]: median household income was $52K. If you're white. If you're black, the median is $34K. So, only like, 1/3 less. Or if you're asian, the median is $72K. 2017 data [2]: median household income apparently jumps to $62k. If you're white it's $65k, black it's $4…

> If you're white. If you're black, the median is $34K. So, only like, 1/3 less. Or if you're asian, the median is $72K.

Lol, that single fact makes the "white people oppress everybody else" nonsense fall on its face. I wonder why it's not often used as a rebuttal.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#135

Post by rhexs »

fzeroracer wrote: post #122
notyourwork wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep your family and money separate. It usually always ends poorly otherwise.

Sounds like you haven't had to deal with family members in abject poverty before? My parents can't work, for example. They're both disabled and rely on food stamps plus medicare just to survive. This puts a rather large financial burden on me at times to say the least, because I would rather not see my parents starve to death. If only we had a government that took better care of people in poverty. Imagine that.

How, exactly, are they going to starve to death on food stamps? Some sort of fancy medical diet Medicaid isn’t covering?

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#136

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

jurassic wrote: post #32

I feel this a lot in my own family. I’m in tech at a fairly privileged BigCo. Siblings work retail gigs for a small fraction of what I bring home. I’ve had raises and bonuses equal to what one of my siblings makes in a year.

How did your family end up in such a situation?

As an anecdote, I saw a somewhat opposite situation: all siblings but one got their degrees and are now school teachers. The remaining one joined a railroad maintenance team and makes twice as much.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#137

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

seibelj wrote: post #95
JDiculous wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government debt denominated in one's own currency is not really a serious issue because governments can print their own currency to pay it off. Yes this can result in inflation, but the inflationary effects are vastly overstated. Most of the inflation happens at the point of spending. I recommend reading up on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/diagrams-dollars-...

MMT says that printing money has no effect if you give it to certain people. I’ve yet to hear of a real-world example where a major economy doubles or triples their monetary supply with no negative effect, which is what MMT will have you believe (“don’t give it to the banks - give it to poor people in Idaho!”). If it sounds too good to be true then it is.

The problem is that once the debt is repaid you have to provide something in exchange for that money. If it's good and services, fine, we can produce a lot of these. But if that's land and factories, the country will be owned by foreign investors pretty soon.

Not sure if it's a good thing.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#138

Post by scarface74 »

jurassic wrote: post #52
kough wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you subsidize your siblings? I'm going to be in the same situation and I'm not sure what I'm going to end up doing but I think I'm going to end up doing it.

Yeah, moderately. This year I gave about $7k to each sibling which is life-changing for them and not really a hardship for me other than slightly delaying my home-ownership goal. For one sibling, I'm the safety net when crises happen that they can't afford. E.g. can't come up with their car insurance deductible, water heater broke, etc. They don't ask but I always offer when it's clear that a small outlay would spare…

Edit to add: I see lots of people saying things along the lines of "keep money and family separate". That is a very privileged attitude. It's very hard to enjoy money when people you love are going through hardships that would be solved by an infusion of cash. Obviously it's important not to give more than you can afford but you would be surprised by the number of people in tech who are sending money home in one way or another.

(This is the generic “you”, not you in particular).

I would say don’t let family or anyone else borrow money. If anyone is going through hardships, just give it to them. It makes things a lot easier on them and you both. If you can’t afford to give it to them, don’t put yourself in a position that you are depending on getting the money back.

I’ve found that often, if they can, they will pay you back anyway.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#139

Post by extra88 »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #110
extra88 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxation by the states is not people’s problems in the Northeast and “Northeast” contains a lot of variance in cost of living and economic outlook.

How can you possibly assert this when property taxes in the Tri-State (23 million people) are often $10,000 a year per house, and income is taxed at 5-9% compared to Texas which is 0. The price of rent/mortgage is directly affected by property tax.

Homeownership is not necessary for well-being. The absolute cost of property taxes in some parts of the Northeast are high because the properties are highly valued. Taxes are not robbery, people in higher taxed areas get more services than low-tax places like Texas. Higher property taxes correlate with higher rent but the inverse can be true when home buying (i.e. a seller can ask more for a home in a low property tax city than an otherwise identically situated high property tax city). The Northeast is a lot more than just the Tri-State area, there are plenty of communities that do no have high property taxes either in absolute terms (because the homes aren't worth much) or as a percentage (either because the areas offer less services or they have so much commercial income that home property taxes can be kept low).

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#140

Post by scarface74 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #112
rayiner wrote: post #108

If $30,000 per year is "substandard" then the rest of the developed world must be positively impoverished: https://mises.org/wire/when-it-comes-household-income-sweden... . There's a very legitimate criticism to be made about the plight of the poor in the U.S. But the U.S. middle class has it better than almost everyone else in the world. They make a lot more money than in Europe, and pay far less taxes. (Indeed, the…

This is remarkably ignorant of the actual circumstances that lower-class Americans have to deal with, especially when you share almost improbable statistics that are completely out of touch with reality. 30,000 is far from a decent income considering people get gouged on health insurance, which effectively functions as another tax on their post-tax income. When you start adding in the costs of food, internet, phone,…

According to paycheckcity.com, 30K a year is a net income of $2000 a month in GA.

Rent - 800

Food - 400

Power/Water/Gas - 300

Internet - $50

Cell - $50

These are all reasonable numbers for Atlanta.

It would be a stretch and you should probably have a room mate to give you some breathing room but it can be done. Also if you have roommates, you could afford a car and insurance.

My son is living on his own in Atlanta so I know the expenses are accurate.

We keep him on our family insurance and we can until he is 26.

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