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Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

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Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#151

Post by amrocha »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #149
amrocha wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah my bad, looks like I had the wrong numbers

Thanks for the acknowledgement. I think tax burden is a valid part of the discussion when we are talking about the affordability crisis. I take it kinda personally because I'm already at 35% and looking at another 10% of my pretax income going to property taxes if I want to buy a home for my family.

It is odd that middle class income taxes are so high, and yet government services are awful, infrastructure is crumbling and you don't even get healthcare.

I still don't think there's an affordability crisis in general though. From what I've seen in this thread it's more of an inability to downsize. Everyone needs a car (sometimes 2), a big house, to live in the most expensive cities, to have kids, and they'd rather go into debt than compromise.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#152

Post by s1artibartfast »

amrocha wrote: post #151
s1artibartfast wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the acknowledgement. I think tax burden is a valid part of the discussion when we are talking about the affordability crisis. I take it kinda personally because I'm already at 35% and looking at another 10% of my pretax income going to property taxes if I want to buy a home for my family.

It is odd that middle class income taxes are so high, and yet government services are awful, infrastructure is crumbling and you don't even get healthcare. I still don't think there's an affordability crisis in general though. From what I've seen in this thread it's more of an inability to downsize. Everyone needs a car (sometimes 2), a big house, to live in the most expensive cities, to have kids, and they'd rather…

Yeah, you can look at it that way. It depends on your starting position economically. There bottom steps on the economic ladder are missing. Cheap entry level homes near economic centers or good paying jobs in low cost of living areas are both missing. The working poor have tax breaks and see some public benefits, high earners have good tax breaks and no benefits.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#153

Post by Hermitian909 »

dogman144 wrote: post #148
Hermitian909 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't quite jive with my experience living in SF. I have an older but comfortable apartment close to BART and an active social life (had lol). Pre-pandemic my CoL was ~40k. I'm fortunate to be on the higher end of dev salaries so I don't need to spend this little but living a life I enjoy this is just how much I end up spending. I have friends and colleagues whose experience matches yours, some have come to me…

Do you have kids, do you have a dual income couple, and so on.

No kids, no dual income. I recognize these costs are not representative if they have a child but OP didn't seem to imply those were the considerations.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#154

Post by zamfi »

curiousllama wrote: post #61
zamfi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cost of housing combined with manufacturing outsourcing I think these are two separate issues. > business school grads saving into their 40s to buy homes For example, on this -- surely, if anything, manufacturing outsourcing has only made business school grads get paid more? If you're not already familiar, take a look at Baumol's cost disease [0] for more on the phenomena at play here. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org…

> business school grads saving into their 40s to buy homes Median pay out of top b schools is ~$125-$150k. If you have a stay at home partner and a few kids, you prob need to make partner/Director before you can buy a townhouse in a Brooklyn. That said, if you're single and work for an I Bank in Chicago, you'll be able to buy when you hit VP in your early 30s.

> buy a townhouse in a Brooklyn

This is not equivalent to “buy homes” — this is like saying they wait until 40 to buy a car because the Honda Civic they drove in their 20s doesn’t count, they need a BMW.

Re: Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

#155

Post by amrocha »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #152
amrocha wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd that middle class income taxes are so high, and yet government services are awful, infrastructure is crumbling and you don't even get healthcare. I still don't think there's an affordability crisis in general though. From what I've seen in this thread it's more of an inability to downsize. Everyone needs a car (sometimes 2), a big house, to live in the most expensive cities, to have kids, and they'd rather…

Yeah, you can look at it that way. It depends on your starting position economically. There bottom steps on the economic ladder are missing. Cheap entry level homes near economic centers or good paying jobs in low cost of living areas are both missing. The working poor have tax breaks and see some public benefits, high earners have good tax breaks and no benefits.

I don't know if I agree that the bottom steps are missing. There's a lower step if you rent. There's a lower step if you don't have a car. Some times this is impossible, but in most cases, especially the ones people have been posting about here, it's doable. But people don't want to do this, so they spend more and feel poor.

There might be a big step between poor and middle class though, as you come off benefits and have to pay higher taxes and health insurance. Child care also seems prohibitively expensive.

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