Rent is like 50% of my income currently and I'm trapped because nowhere charges less for the same space and I don't qualify for rentals without a guarantor that I no longer have. At this age, my parents were in their 3rd house on a single income with 3 kids.
The wealthy really fucked us over, hey. They're scum for what they did.
They're scum for what they are currently still doing, and must be stopped.
1000%. Preach it!
They are also scum for what they are doing.
I highly recommend that you read the actual substack article.
The claim is based around how the original poverty line was the cost of food multiplied by 3. This assumes that food is 33% of your spending and that your other expenses are approximately the other 67%.
The $140k value is based around the fact that the ratio has shifted immensely. Food is cheap in the US relative to the other goods/services required to live in society. If you take the new ratio and extrapolate it out, the multiplier is over 10x the cost of food to account for the other components of spending.
Even if you want to debate the actual number itself. The poverty line is laughable and anyone living at it is legitimately destitute, not just in "casual poverty"
The issue is... how do you accurately determine the poverty line without just taking some number and multiplying it. Because not only do costs vary by location, so does their ratio. So you really need a set of costs per location added together, then averaged based on the density of population in the area the costs were pulled from. And of course at that point the finaly number is probably true nowhere. So what is the use of it anyway. Each specific area needs it's own poverty line. The smaller the area the more useful and accurate the number will be. But you can't just say "fine, we will do it by zipcode". Because zipcodes have significant variation of sizes. It needs to be done intelligently and constantly as things shift. So in the end, there simply is no reasonably accurate poverty line unless a human calculates it for a specific address.
"a family of four needs $136,500 a year"
I could see that, more likely in more expensive areas. You aren't getting anywhere in New York or San Francisco on $140K.
I mean, we're poor but we make less than half that just outside San Francisco. Honestly we're doing okay. We don't get any of the luxuries my parents had at our age, but we have smartphones so we can never get away from anything!
No obviously not.
This is highly dependant on where you live, as has been said before.
I live alone in a moderately low cost of living area making about 52k take home. With no extenuating expenses related to health I can put away a hundred or two a month after rent, gas, utilities, food and car maintenance (I drive and fix old shit myself rather than make a car payment). But that is literally all I can do. If I had a second person to support or was in any other area I'd be underwater quick.
It's mentioned in the substack article that for a single individual his calculations place the poverty line around 50k, while 140k is for a family.
Well shit thats a little Less than 3x what I make lol. 💀💀💀💀
Like always, how far your money goes depends on multiple factors. 140k in the Midwest alone means you're living comfortably. Like all bills paid off, a lot of extra money for leisure, etc.
If you have a family and live in the bay area, then it's not that much. I personally wouldn't put it at poverty, but it'd be somewhat close to being paycheck to paycheck (assuming you still need to pay mortgage and whatnot)
That doesn't even buy a single politician.
I thought I heard Sam Bankman-Fried say he was surprised at how little it cost, it was like $50k or something.
State level politicians are like $5k-$10k. Shockingly cheap but you do need to buy most of the set.
Yes. The people saying no are no longer temporarily embarrassed millionaires but temporarily embarrassed middle class. Have or have not, and 140k is have not given inflation, healthcare, education, food, rent/mortgage, energy etc.
Maybe. Depends on where you live. If you live somewhere relatively inexpensive it's not bad. However, I'd have to caution that this sounds like gross income (I did a search and the article didn't say), and if it is, this isn't great. Taxes, medical, any union dues, and hopefully a significant chunk going into a retirement fund will eat this up quickly. This is in the 24% fed tax bracket - not including child credit or any pre-tax deductions for something like a 401k, and no State tax taken. 140k take-home would be pretty good.
Which method does the U.S. use to calculate its poverty line?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Poverty_income_thresholds
TL;DR: "The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation."
No.
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