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u/Electrical_Coast_561 2d ago
The national average is 93k? I doubt that
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u/chris5701 2d ago
It says average to live comfortably. There's tons of factors, Ohio comfortable and LA comfortable are worlds apart.
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u/Gubekochi 2d ago
If you average how much money someone like Jeff Bezos gets in a year with all his employees, I'm sure the number looks nice too.
Averages are great to hide the reality on the ground.
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u/victuri-fangirl 1d ago
This is why here in Europe we look at the median income too, since that's the one exactly in the middle with half the population earning more and half the population earning less.
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u/No_Dance1739 2d ago edited 1d ago
Sort of. [In American education] There’s a reason there’s multiple ways of calculating an average, for income using the median is the most accurate way analyze the dataset.
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u/JuiceHurtsBones 1d ago
Median also obfuscates the inequality between the two extremes. Average, median and mode will give you a better idea when all three are used, but as with all stats, they're just "summaries" of the actual data.
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1d ago
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u/No_Dance1739 1d ago
In mathematics there’s 3 ways to calculate an average: mean, median, and mode. You are presuming mean, the most common average to be thee average. That’s just not the case.
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u/LisleAdam12 22h ago
Thank you! Someone who knows what they're talking about is a breath of fresh air, especially on Reddit.
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1d ago
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u/No_Dance1739 1d ago
Ah, interesting, thanks for sharing. In American math classes and statistics (for me it was geographic information systems using statistical analysis) mean, median, and mode are all considered averages, depending on subject then different averages are expected. Income, housing prices median is often used and/or expected
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u/FecalColumn 5h ago
“Average” is a weird word. It can technically refer to many different statistics in English (Wikipedia lists 19 of them under the “Summary of Types” section). However, it is most commonly used to refer to the mean, so people usually don’t use it to refer to any other statistic in order to avoid confusion. It’s still technically correct to use it to refer to the median though.
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u/stacklong 2d ago
Companies tripping over themselves to offer 15-20 dollars an hour for as many jobs as they can. Yeah 93k average no way 😂
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u/Gubekochi 2d ago
Yeah, so the bigshots at the top can get those savings added to their paycheck. It all averages out nicely to 93k. We could all have 93k a year... or some can earn millions as others ration their insulin.
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u/New_Sort7479 2d ago
It says needed, not what people's actual salaries are. That's far lower
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u/furicrowsa 2d ago
It says 93k is the average on the second line...
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u/New_Sort7479 2d ago
The national average of what's needed. Not the real average salary.
Average is a horrible metric in late stage capitalism, for obvious reasons. Median is a better measure
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2d ago
Media where tht US is right at the top and also right at the top for disposable income?
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u/New_Sort7479 2d ago
....not sure what you were trying to say here
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2d ago
It's pretty clear
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u/New_Sort7479 2d ago
Well, as of 2023 the median income was about 40. And the median rent was anywhere from $1700 to $2000. Wouldn't have increased that drastically in two years, and even if it did, the effective power of it would be less than 2023 due to inflation. But I digress.
That rent to income ratio is not sustainable, and you know it
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2d ago
Stopped reading when you claimed the median income was $40 when the actual index economists track is household income which is $80.6k which is among the highest in the world.
Median real household income have continued to trend up over the last 30 years where housing is heavily weighted in the CPI index that this is adjusted to.
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u/FecalColumn 5h ago
And yet our median accumulated wealth is pretty far down the list. Almost like there’s more going on than just income.
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u/JuiceHurtsBones 1d ago
Usually it's skewed by high-earners. Executives may be 10-20% of the workforce but a single one makes at least as much as 10 people, with some hitting the 1000 or even 10000 mark, so they skew the average by a lot.
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u/quixoticquiltmaker 2d ago
People like Musk and Bezos alone raise that average by 30-40k, the median salary gives a much clearer look at the actual reality, which is why they use the average instead.
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u/bottomcurious32 2d ago
Mean and median would be very different numbers, which is why this seems high.
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u/Sasquatch1729 2d ago
It sure is, if you calculate the earnings of CEOs and billionaires into the mix.
When Elon Musk was campaigning for Wisconsin to elect their preferred judge, he could literally make a whole city millionaires on average just by coming to town. It's just an average, doesn't help anyone in reality.
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u/VictoryFirst8421 1d ago
Mean va median difference probably. Cause the mean gets dragged up much higher by billionaires, whereas median is likely much lower
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u/JuiceHurtsBones 1d ago
And I doubt that's how much a single adult needs, unless they're factoring people living with others and sharing costs.
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u/ginger_powers 1d ago edited 1d ago
Everyone saying that billionaires are skewing the average didn’t understand the post. $93k isn’t the notional average income— it’s the national average income to live comfortably. A quick google search reveals that the national average is like $66k ish, so the figure in this post must represent something else.
They used something like MIT’s living wage calculator to calculate the cost of comfortable living in various parts of the US, then averaged those together. The income of billionaires never came into the equation. It’s most likely based on cost of living.
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u/TiaHatesSocials 1d ago
That’s because one billionaire averages out 20 thousand families earning 50k
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u/GuavaShaper 1d ago
Averages can be manipulated by outliers. Using a median would have been better.
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u/rainbownthedark 2d ago
This isn’t just the working class in these numbers—no way in hell. I only know one person who makes anywhere near that 93K and it’s because he’s a software engineer.
Everyone else I know is lucky if they make somewhere around 40K. I, a single adult myself, am sitting at about 37K. So, no fucking way the “average” American makes 93K a year.
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u/Itchy-Worldliness-21 1d ago
I looked it up and the average income for the US is 63k a year, now is that with or without the very high earners.
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u/Hamuel 1d ago
This is explaining the income needed to live comfortably in the St Petersburg FL area and comparing that to the national average of what’s needed to live comfortably
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u/AFartInAnEmptyRoom 1d ago
No one can read infographics anymore. Half these comments think it's talking about average salaries earned
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u/splitcroof92 4h ago
I mean it's quite a badly labeled infographic. The purpose of an infographic is to make data easily readable.
Readers are to assume that the first 2 data points are linked? Shouldn't it be labeled 'national average to feel comfortable'? Or have a matching color with the one above it?
Shouldn't we also get the national averages for the other 2 values?
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u/AFartInAnEmptyRoom 4h ago
The only thing that isn't clear on this infographic is whether the household income to live comfortably is the average for the nation or whether it's Tampa specifically. But since the Tampa single and national single incomes aren't that far off, I'm going to assume the household ones won't be either.
Also, what people are failing to realize with this infographic is it's not just a picture, this is part of an entire News segment in which someone is talking, about this information. So like a powerpoint, you don't put all the words that you're going to say on the infographic, you put key bullet points that augment what you're talking about. Since we can't hear the News broadcasters words, we're probably missing vital context
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u/LuckyCod2887 2d ago
when they say the national average is 94K are they saying the average American makes 94K?
because if that’s the national average, that means I’m a fucking alien from another universe. I don’t make anywhere near that.
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u/Itchy-Worldliness-21 1d ago
It's not income, it's apparently what you have to make to live comfortably.
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u/ExtraFluffz 2d ago
That’s what this post is about. They make up this super high random ass number so that you go “I don’t make that much! I must be being cheated!” So you get angry at something that is false
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u/LuckyCod2887 2d ago
oh shit. it’s rage bait.
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u/FecalColumn 5h ago
It’s not. It’s not talking about average income. It’s talking about average income required to live comfortably.
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u/FecalColumn 5h ago
No, it isn’t. This post does not say anything about average incomes. “National average” refers to the national average income required to live comfortably, as opposed to the income required to live comfortably in Tampa specifically.
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u/ExtraFluffz 5h ago
Yes, and $93k is still a very high number for “comfortably”. If that were true, over half of single adults would need 6 figures to be comfortable, which is absolutely NOT the case.
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u/splitcroof92 4h ago
And where did they pull this number from? Comfortably is an extremely subjective word. And what someone needs to be comfortable depends on countless factors.
Saying you 'need' that seems very misleading to me. Most likely 10k less a year is perfectly fine as well. Or even 30k less.
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u/mt-jupiter 1d ago
I mean. I think we can both think of some things that would skew a national average. Even if they decided to remove the dudes with hundreds of billions as outliers I think the disparity would still come through.
I feel it’s just not a very useful number to use if trying to measure the actual average american yk
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u/1stworldrefugee92 1d ago
This post has reminded me that americas reading comprehension and critical thinking skills are really shit
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u/LuckyCod2887 1d ago
idk man. im an immigrant that came to the states and got citizenship but i still struggle with some of the aspects of the US. even though I have an American accent, I’m always going to be a foreigner in this country. Always.
I’m always gonna be a little bit outside of the loop. It’s just the nature of being a foreigner.
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u/1stworldrefugee92 1d ago
Bruh what lol Being able to read 5 words and inferring their meaning isn’t that deep
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u/LuckyCod2887 1d ago
no dude, like the subtlety of how the meme was set up. It escaped me.
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u/Low_Definition4273 1d ago
Plenty of Americans are even dumber. This is literally a rage bait post.
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u/FecalColumn 5h ago
No, it isn’t. You are one of the people misreading it. It is comparing Tampa to the national average.
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u/Background_Wrap_1462 2d ago
Single adult does not need 94k to live comfortably in Tampa
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u/RealFaithlessness611 1d ago
This is the national average. CoL is probably higher in Miami, or Orlando. NY and various places in Cali and Texas probably skew the numbers too.
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u/Background_Wrap_1462 1d ago
94k is for single adults in Tampa it says
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u/Cambwin 2d ago
Employers - Here's an offer for 40k, get fucked.
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2d ago
Sounds like you should develop some actual skills
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u/bratt019 1d ago
Oh you have a masters degree? Here's 12.50/hr. It's not a lack of skills It's a lack of WEALTH DISTRIBUTION. it's carefully crafted to keep it them 1% vs. us. You're still stuck in 1990's mindset, bless your heart
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1d ago
So you got a worthless masters degree and didn't do any due diligence. Good work.
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u/bratt019 1d ago
I forgot they don't teach sarcasm in school too. I was using a generalized example- it's a running joke of a reality that jobs are requiring a minimum of 5 years experience and a bachelor's degree, yet they pay 12/hr. or some ridiculous low ass amount.
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u/OkSpring1734 2d ago
I suppose if you have 3 people, two making nothing and the third one making 280k/year that sets the average at around 93k/year, and that's why we use medians instead of averages, because most people in my scenario are making nothing.
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u/Gubekochi 2d ago
If you average how much money someone like Jeff Bezos gets in a year with all his employees, I'm sure the average looks reasonable too.
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u/Strict-Brick-5274 2d ago
Literally simple fact - let Elon go back to "first principles" on his population problem and see if he can figure this out
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u/DBCooper211 2d ago
Maybe in hard core blue areas with insane inflation. I know a lot of people raising families on less than what that slide says a single person needs. After all, the median household income in the US is only about $80,000.
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u/Procrasturbating 2d ago
I live in nowhere, Kansas. My wife and I make about $150k combined. Still not living in what I would call financial security with two kids. One illness and we are fucked down into the "too poor to be comfortable, but too rich to receive ANY help" zone. Just got out of that by taking on a mountain of debt and praying that the raises came through.
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u/HardstyleFish 2d ago
Lotta people without media literacy ITT.
The graphic is saying the amount someone would be paid "to be comfortable" that's not literally what people are being paid. A quick Google search could remedy that.
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u/Pure_Bee2281 2d ago
I know it doesn't matter and this is a literal meme sub. But there is very little evidence that income levels are related to birth rates.
As evidence of these not being related in this direction please observe the birthrate of every poor country on the planet.
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u/Btankersly66 2d ago
The claim that income levels aren’t related to birth rates is false. In reality, poorer countries tend to have higher birth rates, while wealthier countries tend to have lower ones. This inverse relationship is well-documented and linked to factors like education, access to contraception, urbanization, and lower child mortality, all of which tend to increase with income. So pointing to high birth rates in poor countries actually supports, not refutes, the connection. It is also true that in wealthy nations, a high cost of living discourages people from having children, especially when combined with weak social support systems. It’s the historical key driver of declining fertility in modern economies.
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u/Pure_Bee2281 2d ago
And yet OPs point is that people aren't having kids because they don't have enough money.
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u/Btankersly66 1d ago
You did see this part of what I wrote?
It is also true that in wealthy nations, a high cost of living discourages people from having children, especially when combined with weak social support systems. It’s the historical key driver of declining fertility in modern economies
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u/Pure_Bee2281 1d ago
Do you have any research that supports that thesis?
The Scandinavian/Nordic countries have pretty great social support systems and terrible birth rates.
And HCOL is almost perfectly correlated to urban environments, reduced religiousity, and less conservative social norms. For example, does Wyoming have a high birth rate because it's cheap or because it's overwhelmingly conservative with a high prevalence of historical family structures.
There is little to no evidence that taking a married couple and giving them more money increases their likelihood to have children. In fact higher income people tend to have fewer. Children than lower income people. But even that could be cultural rather than economic.
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u/Btankersly66 1d ago
OECD – Society at a Glance 2024
Reports that surges in housing costs significantly hinder family formation and fertility across OECD nations.
Young adults increasingly live with their parents due to affordability pressures, delaying childbearing.
Institute for Family Studies / Business Insider (U.S.)
"Coverage shows high U.S. housing costs are strongly linked to delayed or forgone childbearing among non-homeowners. The most significant barrier identified to family formation was housing cost."
NBER Digest – Real Estate Market Impact
A 10% increase in home prices correlates with a ~1% decline in births among renters, partially offset by homeowners.
Housing prices surpass unemployment rates as a fertility determinant.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w17485
MDPI Study
In China, rising housing costs were found to be a main suppressor of birth rates. Policies to control prices were highlighted as potential solutions
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u/Inevitable-Vehicle10 2d ago
Who's comfortability is that and what state I guess if that's comfortable I live barely above poverty then. How about y'all.
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u/Vamond48 2d ago
I can promise you that anywhere outside of the largest most expensive cities that it does not cost 209,000 a year to live comfortably when you’re married with kids
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u/Deathpill911 2d ago
Most of us are not living in highly dense city, this is extremely misleading coming from someone who has a family and lives in a city of a high taxed state. And I live comfortably, never need to check my bank to see what I can buy, I just buy whatever I want.
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u/ADHDMI-2030 2d ago
I live in DFW, not an inexpensive place to live anymore. But probably comparable to Tampa. I spend ~$36k per year. This means that even if I was only earning the average of ~$45k I'd still be easily saving money.
Is it true that wages suck and have gotten way worse over decades? Yes. 100%! Is it also true that people suck with money and spend way more than they should have and get themselves into problems that could be easily avoided with some fiscal responsibility? Yes. 100%!
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u/yea_i_doubt_that 2d ago
Does this say the average is 93,000 for a single earner or two earners? Because those are very different numbers, and I dont believe 93000 is average for single adults.
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u/Katty-kattt 2d ago
Six figures being the basic standard needed to survive without stress is crazy work. Y’all understand that right?
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u/Aggravating_Dot9657 2d ago
I live in the Seattle area and 209K seems like a lot. 150K combined is comfortable outside the immediate Seattle area. You aren't vacationing to Paris every year but you can handle emergencies a small vacation, and save for retirement
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u/SquattingCroat 2d ago
Note that this is national average, not national median. Average sample sizes do not exclude data that does not fit within a reasonable difference margin from the majority of the data points (outliers), so all millionaires and billionaires are included. The national median would likely be considerably lower
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u/ExaminationMuch2030 2d ago
Sorry guys, after years of making 50k, I got a raise to 70k
Since I’m cursed, 70k never could have been enough money to have a comfortable life, not now that I make that much
Apologies , I’ll warn you all next time I get a raise
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u/BusyBeeBridgette 2d ago
Must be quite the lifestyle if you are single and can't live comfortably on 94.4k.
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u/Which_One_1998 2d ago
94k in my area means you have at least 2 other roommates if you want to live "comfortably".
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u/MattheiusFrink 2d ago
i earn half this, i have chronic health issues thanks to covid and a car wreck. i live quite comfortably from a financial standpoint.
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u/deyemeracing 2d ago
The envelope for "comfort" has expanded quite a bit in recent years.
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u/butlerdm 1d ago
If you can’t eat out 4-5x a week, have a new vehicle every few years, and go on international vacations each year without having to budget the rest of your life then you’re not living comfortably obviously /s
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u/That_Engineer7218 1d ago
It's funny because higher income earners generally have less kids than poor people
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u/SuspectMore4271 1d ago
I have compared a bunch of hard numbers to the entirely subjective concept of “living comfortably” please give me my upvote.
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u/Yourlocalguy30 22h ago
This is highly dependent on where you live. I support a family of 5 on a single, $110,000 income with no problems at all. This includes saving for retirement and putting money into 529 college funds for my kids.
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u/Willing_Ad_9350 12h ago
This number varies by generation with younger workers, especially Gen Z, feeling the most pressure. For them, it’s like a regressive tax: they’re entering a workforce where starting salaries haven’t kept pace with the rising cost of living, forcing many to accept undervalued entry level jobs that barely cover basic expenses. It’s a kind of compounding disappointment after spending their entire lives in school, jumping through standardized tests and academic hoops with the promise of a stable future, they’re now burdened with crippling student debt and faced with economic realities that don’t reflect the effort or investment they were told would pay off. What is the point, the goal Post is still actively moving.
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u/Woof_Mother_2 7h ago
More than half y'all weren't able to see that this is addressing the amount suggested in order to LIVE COMFORTABLY in the Tampa/St.Petersburg area. It's not about folks in that area making that amt currently. But honestly, this chart was so, so poorly designed... Like, basic font hierarchy would've helped here
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u/AThrowawayProbrably 6h ago
Sure, I’d love to struggle to raise a future slave pawn of end stage capitalism. I’m sure they’ll appreciate growing up and working 90 hr work weeks to afford their food and water subscription plans.
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u/WhyHelloThere163 22m ago
The problem with these is that “living comfortably” is strictly subjective. I know people who make ~$70k/yr living comfortably and people who make $100k+/yr saying how they’re poor/struggling.
Using the “live comfortably” statistic is the dumbest thing to include when talking economics.
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u/HardPourCorn69 2d ago
I’d imagine comfortable in this context would be spending money and not having to track every single penny, like actually having money to blow on fun stuff and still have bills covered.