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I had leftover tacos for lunch...
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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$70,000 is a lot more than the median individual income. You can probably afford to spend a bit on lunch if you're single and making that amount.
Yeah if he thinks 70k is poor... Woah buddy
I'm not quite sure how to interpret this. Unless you're single in a low COL area, 70k in 2026 IS poor. Or, more accurately, it does not give someone everything that defined the post war "middle class" leaving you working poor or just old fashioned poor. The decision in the 90s to tell a technical-truth-lie about inflation to underreport it by 1-2% per year did wonders for juicing the economy, but now it's time to pay the piper so to speak. Median personal income in 2024 was $45k, but after 30 years (Rule of 70) of underreported inflation it should be almost twice that.
I’m curious: what do you mean by under reported inflation, and do you have any resources to read further?
TLDR version: In the 90s the owners realized that if you lie about inflation you could keep COLA down and pocket the difference. 1-2% a year seems like they're just skimming the top, but do that over decades and you've stolen HALF of incomes, which we are close to reaching. Poor numeracy skills, specifically not understanding exponential growth and the Rule of 69/70/72, has allowed this long con to be run on workers.
Further reading: The BLS uses a host of 'sounds reasonable' tools to adjust inflation that were introduced or reworked in the 90s. Hedonic adjustments, OER, substitutions, outlet substitutions, and chained CPI all seem reasonable from a certain angle (which of course is the one BLS presents you), but each one breaks down when confronted with the real world, how human being experience the economy, and time. They're tools that measure utility in a vacuum, not lifestyle or ripple effect or material reality. Hedonic adjustments is an extra special lie, because it's a microcosm of the current big economic lie- "yeah, everything is worse now than a few years ago, but look how big your TV/LLM is!"
Also read up on Labor Force Participation Rate, a seemingly reasonable measure which is used to keep unemployment numbers looking better.
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics" - Twain
Also the BLS just isn't even using actual data for something like 1/3 of the components of the CPI.
Budget cuts, DOGE, no staff to do the actual price surveys.
So, those hedonic adjustments?
At least 1/3 of the data points that go into those hedonic adjustments... well they are just generated by models that say 'what they should be'.
Look into 'imputation' in the actual reports if you want.
It just keeps getting worse, the more onion layers you peel back.
The other one that to me is just laughably stupid is how housing prices are estimated for the purposes of the CPI.
They basically just survey homeowners and ask them 'how much do you think your home fetch on the rental market?'
This is completely fucking insane imo.
Why not just actually ask people what the monthly total cost of owning their home is?
Oh its because well housing is an investment.
Except that if the monthly total cost of 'owning' the home exceeds the amount you think you could rent it out for, well, then you're basically underwater on a cost flow basis, because, you know, the cost of homeownership is... higher than its equivalent rent.
And if that condition persists... you will likely not be a homeowner for too much longer.
Yep, totally an 'investment'.
And if you counted actual ongoing homeownership costs, well, then you'd, you know, actually track ongoing homeownership costs, in the price index, that is ostensibly meant to measure ... ongoing costs.
It makes no fucking sense, other than as a way of depressing the housing component of the CPI when a housing market implosion is occuring, it assumes things we know are not historically true about the home and rental markets, when a bubble is popping.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/boskinrpt.html
I make if I am lucky 35k this year. Fucker if I made double that then I could afford this. But fuck that asshole. Billionaires should never tell us how to live.
First if you want to spend $28 on lunch do it just to spite big Kev.
I'm single and make about twice that figure and there is zero chance I would spend $28 on lunch let alone on any kind of recurring basis. People just need to do the little things that make them happy, if thats eating out do it.
$28 is like two sushi rolls or two of anything really.... hell soda costs $3+ and a burger $15ish
It's not that hard to spend a lot eating out even for lunch, it's crazy. Prices have at least doubled in the last few years since covid. Companies are making up for their lost months of profits from shutdown and terrible republican admins fucking up everything and killing regulations and any safeguards or anything consumer friendly. 80% beef costs twice what 95% used to years ago and it's not stocked anymore
For me the issue is for a five day work week it's $540 a month, and that's say a downpipe for my car, for me thats more important.
We're all grown ups so spend your money where you think it will improve your life. When I was Gen Z's age I spent more than I should on car stuff because cars are my thing.
Obviously, if you're poor, you don't deserve any scrap of comfort because it's a moral failing on your part and definitely not a top down systemic problem that caused it /s
How can you suggest 2. If you believe 1.? It's twice as unreasonable if somebody makes $70,000 and even more for the majority who makes less.
Eating out once in a while is a little thing. Spending $28 on lunch every day is not a little thing anymore.
Because eating out isn't my thing especially lunch. For me the money spent on eating out is money I'd rather spend on a performance part for my car.
It depends where you live. 70k in a big city area barely covers rent on a studio apartment.
Per day, that'd be 1/7th of the annual pretax income.