3798

Certainly the stress level one carries is about options. Personally, being out of hand-to-mouth we’re-fucked-in-a-crisis mode is a MASSIVE improvement to general mental health.

3799

I would say this is closer to reality than the inverse.

Thing is that person making 45k? Especially if they have any dependants? They are having a very stressful time. And in many places are going to be completely unable to have any bubble for a crisis. I know when I was making in the 40k range, and how I had very limited savings, and only that much because I was cheap. Yet losing my job during the financial crisis meant that after a very short period of time my savings were gone, and I literally had to choose which bills not to pay so I had enough gas to go to job interviews. And this was in the lower cost of living midwest. Almost anywhere else and it is worse. 45k means barely enough to cover living expenses and not enough to have anything approaching what you need to cover an emergency or unexpected situation.

3800

You were in Chicago though (suburbs probably), which is Midwest, but on the higher end of costs for the Midwest, being that it’s also the 3rd largest city. Here in Kansas City, I make about that much (45k), and it seems to put me at a fairly comfortable place where I save a decent amount the last few years. But that’s also partially because we haven’t taken a vacation since 2015 or so, and especially no vacations since our son was born and my wife quit her job. Just staying in one place, and shopping at Aldi lets you save quite a bit each year. But I think once my son starts getting older, those bills will start digging into savings. And I don’t know if I should be creating a college savings account for him yet.

3801

I made $45k not all that long ago in Minneapolis and it was absolutely rough with a kid.

3802

That’s a little more what I made, but thankful, Southern PA is a bit cheaper but we relied on that Tax Return.

My salary is better with Uncle Sam, but the biggest savings have been the Health Insurance.

3803

Not saying you can’t make it. But being out of work for 4 months drained my savings completely. And I was very frugal with my money.

But that’s my point. You are not doing things like any vacation, or really any expenses besides bare necessity. How long would your savings hold out if you lost your income? You may be ok, but are one bad health scare, job loss, or other unexpected event from being in a very rough situation.

Which is exactly my point. That median household income of 45k is exactly why a majority of Americans have no savings, it is literally not possible for them to have enough cash saved to absorb one or more major hits.

3804

Yeah, it’s true. Obamacare helps a lot, of course. One of the major changes it made is that it created that upper limit of what you can be charged out of pocket per year. So even though I’m on the worst plan, which only covers 40% of costs, 50% of prescriptions, the fact that I have that $8000 limit means if something happens, I will have to cover $8000 at most for one person. Which would be really tough, but not as catastrophic as before the ACA made that change. And of course, the ACA subsidizes my insurance bill by $10,000 a year, which helps a TON. So the only reason my pay has me in a comfortable zone is because of the ACA.

3805

That’s not the median. Median is $71k. $45k is about the threshold between working class and (lower) middle class, which seems about right reading about the experiences here on those salaries.

Spain’s salary structure is vastly different, in individual terms the minimum full time salary is 73% of the median, so nationally the working/lower class threshold is drawn around single income households with kids, or not full time employed individuals (or both, sadly). Of course certain regions being more expensive but the minimum salary being national skews things, and certainly here in Madrid you can earn a (legal) salary leaves you really struggling while still working full time. But it also means that in poorer regions with lower median income it’s literally impossible to legally earn a “working class” salary if you are fully employed. The catch is obviously that unemployment, illegal employment conditions and partial employment run rampart. It’s hardly a paradise and our middle class is smallish.

3806

Ugh, another half-assed Vox article.

If you are going to publish an article with the provocative headline “is miserable” I don’t think it is too much to ask to include at least a shred of data to back up the claims. I don’t think we should get too hung up on the definitions. I don’t think it matters too much if some one making $150 (2x median income) or 221K (top 10%) is classified as upper middle class, semi-rich or rich. I think we all agree that you can live quite comfortably on that salary.

Warren Buffett when talking about how much he was going to leave his kids and grandkids, said I want them to have enough to be able to do anything and have anything, but not so much they can do nothing or have everything. Somebody in the top 10%, can have a nice houses,send their kids to top schools, enjoy fabulous vacations, and save enough to be able to retire early. However, they don’t necessarily have enough to do all of those things at the same time.

We are definitely not talking about nannies. Google says there are 217K full nannies in the US that is not even .2% of the US households,and even the broadest definition of nannies including baby-sitter who spend the night occasionally is a couple million. This is 1% problem, not a 10% problem

‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” David Copperfield.

While, I am sure you can find people at any income level who complain about not having enough money. I think that once you make it to middle class, which I’d define as more than 200-300% of the poverty level (FPL). money troubles are primarily a function of being able to live within your means.

Some people are able to others can’t.

My sympathy for those make over 150K, who can’t is very low. It is big reason that I think, all the tax credits and programs should be phased out for those over 150-200K.

3807

I think if you do that and you don’t control for the cost of post-secondary education or healthcare you will really hurt the people in the $150K-ish range. At that point, you have to pick either help the kids with college or retiring and hope no one gets sick.

3808

Good point. It really does depend on the cost-of-living for the state the person lives in and the size of the family. My brother in law’s family always seems to be struggling to make ends meet and I believe their joint income exceeds $150k. But they live in an expensive east coast city and have kids, one of whom is in college, so I can see how all that income just goes right back out the again to mortgage and car payments and tuition and so forth.

3809

If someone’s definition of income and/or wealth to be upper class requires rolling a 20 on their to-hit die, perhaps it’s worth examining why that is. I don’t pretend to know anyone else’s finances, but I have frequently seen such arguments come from those whose publicly know positions would seem to make them vastly out-earn myself. Is there a real anxiety or stigma associated with being labeled upper class that some people are avoiding? Seems to be something to aspire to from my perspective, but perhaps there’s more to it.

3810

In America, there is a stigma associated with being rich (as well as poor), so the definition of middle class gets stretched to a ridiculous degree.

Matt_W’s definition of class is what I use.

The weird thing is that the same salary can make one person middle class (me) and another lower-middle (an ex co-worker) , largely due to life choices.

I do think there has to be some sort of encouragement for thrift in the social model, if only to reduce potential burdens on the state. That said, I’m saying this as I’m putting mad money into something a lot of folks would call crazy right now.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone earning 6 figures though. That’s more than enough to live comfortably, except in high cost areas, and there you can live alone on that fine.

@Rock8man That limit you talked about, Biden put it in the COVID relief bill passed earlier this year- a cap of 8.5% on annual premiums- but I believe that expires this year.

That cap is something I wish they’d make permanent, it would really help some folks out and would be visible to a lot of swing voters.

3811

I think there’s a fundamental challenge in using a single measure (i.e. income) to discuss class when it doesn’t factor in other things like family wealth, cost of living for your local area, and debt (from student loans, etc). Many (if not most) high paying professional jobs are tied to HCOL areas, so it’s not possible permanently relocate even in a post pandemic world.

A Big Law lawyer making $250k yr living in NYC servicing $300k+ in student debt probably feels more stuck than rich, for example.

It’s only when you get to the extreme ends of the income scale that you can reasonably ignore all of those factors.

3812

I don’t think that’s true. They were a key provision in the A.C.A. that I didn’t know about until I started having heart issues this year. My brother sat me down and explained that it was the best part of the ACA because even health insurance plans outside the ACA have to have these maximum out-of-pocket limits that the federal government sets.

Check it out:

3813

And also, from a UK perspective, you would need to take into account factors such as which school you went to, your accent, which supermarket you shop at, the way you prepare a cup of tea, the names you use for mealtimes, and a thousand other hugely important things. “England is the most class-ridden country under the sun,” as Orwell wrote.

FWIW as a kid, whenever I asked my Dad what class we were, he would say we were working class on account of him having to go to work. Which in hindsight aligns well with a Marxist view of the class system, I guess.

3814

This reminds of me of a previous life when I worked in finance and visited the UK office in Canary Wharf - one of the guys I met was complaining to me about the accent of one of his co-workers (who had just left the room) and how he’s not fit to be in the same room.

I’d like to think it was all an elaborate joke but he sounded serious so it’s stuck with me all these years…

3815
3816

On September 1, he sent job applications to a pair of restaurants that had been particularly public about their staffing challenges.

Then, he widened the test and spent the remainder of the month applying to jobs — mostly at employers vocal about a lack of workers — and tracking his journey in a spreadsheet.

By the end of September, Holz had sent out 60 applications, received 16 email responses, four follow-up phone calls, and the solitary interview.

A response from a friend of a friend about it:

image

3817

There’s obviously a disconnect for me here. The article is about (presumably underpaying) employers not responding to an application yet the response is about applicants not responding to employers. Is the takeaway simply “shitty employers are shitty”?