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Half of America Makes Less Than 35k
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this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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While you're completely correct, the cost of living in America is also much higher than than the world median.
What we really should be looking at is the ratio of pay : cost of living but raw salary is just easier for the masses to see and be mad about.
As an example, 3.5k USD is about my monthly bills.
3.5k USD monthly is a lot. If I might ask where does this amount come from? I looked at rent prices a bit and they are not really much higher from where I live right now while the average salary is more than 4 times lower here.
I mean everyone added together, mortgage, car payment, various insurance premiums, utilities, groceries, etc
My mortgage is $1200 of that, though.
So the bills are probably not that lower for the people with much lower income, and they also likely can't even afford mortgage, a car, insurance and first-world quality groceries.
Where I live in the US you're lucky to get away with 2-3k in rent for a decent place and then you still have to pay utilities, car insurance, gas, groceries, etc. A minimum monthly budget can easily reach 3500.
Well there's a solution from the poor world: don't rent, live with your parents until they die, don't own a car, don't pay for gas, buy only the cheapest groceries, the ones you people won't consider safe to eat. That is how most of the world lives. A lot of them live in even worse conditions than that.
Btw, if I may ask, where do you live? I looked at the rent prices for some USA cities, and the offers were better than where I live, while the average salary here is 4 times lower. It's also not really a poor country compared to like a lot of countries. It may just be the case of what people with different income consider "decent".
The southwest.
And owning a car is not optional here. Mass transit is a joke and many people travel 60 miles (96km) or more to work. Multi-Generation housing arrangements are on the rise. Not everyone has that option though and it shouldn't be a requirement in the world's richest economy. Fresh food of any kind in the US is more expensive than unhealthy processed foods in many areas, especially when you might have as little as 3-4 hours a day to clean, cook, eat, socialize, bathe, do errands, and decompress. I'm not unaware of how other people live, I've traveled and lived in those conditions myself, I just had the privilege to be able to come back to the US afterwards. What I think you're missing though is something called Purchasing Power Parity. Things are vastly more expensive in the US, so a lot of that money is getting vacuumed up by those prices. And some of the things you mentioned like hot water are comparatively cheap because it's been built into our infrastructure.
So would someone in a cardboard lean-to love to come live a working class life in the US? I'm sure they would but that doesn't invalidate things like our workers dying due from preventable and treatable health conditions because they can't afford medical care here.
What if your parents are dead, or abused you, or rent and aren't allowed to add you to the lease?
Don't own a car? For millions that means no way to get to work, no way to get supplies, isolation.
Not everyone has a lot of choice in where they buy food, especially with no car.
It sounds like you don't understand how big the US is and how absolutely shit public transportation is. Where I live, I can get to town in 5 minutes by car. By Bus it would take 40 minutes. There is a 5:30pm bus that would get me home but if I missed it the next bus wouldn't come until 8pm.