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Americans need an extra $11,400 today just to afford the basics
(www.cbsnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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That seems absurdly high and does not match my personal experience at all.
Oh. So people like JD Vance, Tom Cotton and Mike Lee are responsible for this ~~lie, damn lie, and~~ statistical analysis.
I can only assume they included many people the rest of us would consider rather rich in their "typical American household"; If I'm paying an extra few percent in inflation it's not nearly that much, but for someone making mid-six figures with a lifestyle matching that income a couple of percent can add up to a lot of money.
Edit: I can't find their methodology on this number specifically but from other methodology they've used it looks like they took spending data provided by businesses, did some "adjustments" of it against another set data from consumers that it doesn't really match up with, made some shit up (favorite line was in the footnote at the bottom: "Our definition of energy is unique"), came up with a number they like for spending per consumer unit (that term was used 39 times in 9 pages), then they adjust that number because consumer units aren't households even though they're "defined as one or more persons living together who make joint spending decisions", and then they adjust that to invent state-level data based on their estimate of consumer units in each state... I think you're getting the idea on how purposely convoluted this is. They're smashing two disparate sets of data together in such a way to come up with the numbers they want. But here's something cool: You could have seen two of the three people behind this speaking at the American Enterprise Institute if you had gotten a fellowship in 2022! Oh well, too late now.
Diving deeper into this then any rational person should have might have driven me a bit batty but it is comforting to know what the GOP sees when they look at us: consumer units. Who's a good consumer unit? Are you a good consumer unit? Yes you are. You are such a good consumer unit.
Yeah, 2021, when Biden took office. Sketchy report for sure.
I mean that's 950 a month. My husband and I weren't rich, but we used to order in weekly, we didn't have to compare prices when grocery shopping, and we used to go on a trip (not out of the country but possibly out of the state) once or twice a year. We used to have streaming services (almost all of them). We used to buy our friends' birthday gifts and each other Christmas presents. We used to have two cars. We used to buy candles and name brand cleaners. Now we do none of that, plus our rent went way up. We are scraping by. We have no streaming services, one car, eat a lot of rice, and are not exchanging Christmas gifts. We don't go to events of any kind, and we don't consider vacations. I'm not surprised that it easily adds up to 950 a month, especially when you consider the two rent increases between Jan of 2021 and now (the latest was a 30% increase)
Always check your sources!