> Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
Not for any meaningful definition of "living paycheck to paycheck". Per Federal Reserve studies, the percentage of the population with no excess income after paying for necessary expenses is 10-15%. That's still a lot of people but it isn't 76%.
For everyone else, it is a lifestyle choice.
Per the BLS, the median household has ~$1,000 leftover every month after all ordinary (not necessary) expenses. That includes rent, car payments, healthcare, etc.
Americans have a crazy amount of discretionary income compared to the rest of the world.
71% of adults say that their monthly debt payments prevent them from saving.
So why don't they take it out of that thousand they have at the end of each month? America is suffering economically and I don't think we help anything when we pretend it's not.
This phrase is used so often, but I don't know how meaningful it is supposed to be
A family might make $300,000 a year and be living "paycheck-to-paycheck" while also maxing out 401k contributions, paying a mortgage on a $2 million home, and paying $80,000 a year in private school tuition.
Are we supposed to think that such a family is in worse financial shape than a family making $40,000 a year but with minimal expenses and a few months of living costs in a savings account?
It's somewhat of a mindset question and somewhat of a wealth question.
Mr $300k may have zero months in an emergency account, but be stable in his job as a doctor and not worry about finding work - and may actually "feel poor" because he barely has any "fun money" to waste and feels he can't buy coffee in the morning.
Mr $40k a year may have 6 months of expenses in the bank, saving half his income to FIRE, and know that anytime he wants to he can buy that coffee - and sometimes he does.
Net worth likely says Mr $300k is worth more than Mr $40k - but that may not be true forever, and Mr $40k may be "retired" at 50 while Mr $300k is perpetually working until death.
Who is rich, who has wealth, and who is happy? There are no clear answers.
You're missing the third question which is of definitions. There's an other person Mr $65k who after all their necessary expenses has $1k left over each paycheck that they spend on dinners out, concert tickets, vacations, etc so that at the end of the month they are left with no additional savings. Are they living paycheck to paycheck?
I mean, should we live in a world where the only way to create savings is by denying yourself any fun? You've picked a number, $1k, because it sounds good to support your argument, but maybe after paying for the essentials, a family has $200 left per month. Should we expect that family to never go to the movie theater, never go out to a restaurant, never splurge on a nice piece of clothing or jewelry, never do anything fun at all? Do we think it's ok for people to have to live like that?
So sure, maybe if they spend that $200 on fun stuff, it's not "living paycheck to paycheck". But maybe that's just a bad metric, or just too poorly-defined to be a reasonable way to measure anything.
Happiness for him was somewhere between having zero dollars and being $33 million in debt. His influencer wife seems to have no humility, has moved to Miami where she can continue her partying lifestyle and going to yoga classes.
Its' both maddening and saddening. To what point does the ostentatious display of wealth serve if it leads to suicide? A few years of looking rich at the cost of the rest of life? We have no choice but to assume he was willing to make that trade-off. So it's angering to think a person would believe that.
On the other hand, suicide is the ultimatum when a man thinks his pleas are unanswered. Being surrounded by old-money socialites, I can imagine the feeling of having to leave the club being a fate worse than death. But how can an average guy have any sympathy for that, much less this guy's own feelings of himself.
One bullet point down: "But there is no clear definition for the phrase "paycheck to paycheck," so people should be skeptical of statistics based on the concept, one economist said."
Most people in America don't live paycheck to paycheck or rack up massive debt because they're poor. They do it because they're financially illiterate, over-consume, or both. A few watch-through's of Caleb Hammer's financial audit show will disabuse you of this belief.
America is very very rich, the average person is much wealthier than the average European. 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable. It's a media sensationalist headline grabber which virtually every economist ignores.
People don't like saying America is rich because it defies their beliefs, but the actual stats don't lie. Every American I know that has moved to Europe (and I have lived there as well, in Munich) moved there with, shock...American money and savings. So they don't actually get the initial start many Europeans do and it clouds their view to think that's just how all Europeans live.
That doesn't guarantee that this will always be true, but given Europe's current trajectory, even with the US's many shortcomings...it's hard to say Europe will catch up anytime soon.
> 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable.
Do you have any sources for this? The reason why I personally don't believe your claim is because every single US citizen I know lives paycheck-to-paycheck, quite literally
Per the Federal Reserve, the average 35 to 44 year old has over $141,000 in retirement savings. That’s just incompatible with the idea that everyone is living paycheck to paycheck in the full sense of the phrase. Every dollar is not being spent: plenty is being saved for retirement, spent on unnecessary things, etc.
Are most of these people allocating every dollar that comes in each month to bills, living expenses, and savings? Sure, but that doesn’t mean they have no money left in the paycheck.
All of this stuff tries to be factual and scientific about something that is a feeling, really - if you're $80k in debt (not that I know ANYONE like that no, sirreeeeee!) and have no plan and don't even know how much you owe each month, you're going to be stressed and pissed and always surprised.
If you're in the exact same situation but have it all documented and budgeted and planned for (what I call "knowing exactly how fucked you are") you'll be much better off mentally even if not financially (at first, that will follow).
While it's a key indicator, even PPP adjusted income metrics are insufficient to compare happiness. e.g even if PPP may adjust for some aspects of outsized US health care costs, the risk and unreliability of access and affordability of US healthcare is not reflected in median income values.
Every single court case is two sides bringing forward only "objective facts" by definition. It's not that one side brings lies and the other facts. They both bring objective facts.
So why does it always end with the judgement falling on one side? Because facts do not a complete case make.
If we outlawed that, every single politician and journalist would be in prison for the rest of their natural lives along with most of the people who follow politics too much. Perhaps that's a good idea, perhaps not.
I have no quibble with the objective facts, but we are talking about happiness, and answers are being returned about wealth, and the discussion was talking about how wealth does not equate to happiness in some measures - particularly in terms of factors of life stability, like reasonable access to healthcare...
This is not terribly informative until expenses and safety nets are taken into account. Someone living in the Netherlands may have that 20% lower median income but being able to rely on public healthcare and get around without a personal vehicle does wonders for one's sense of peace and agency. That likely counts a lot more towards personal wellbeing than the addtional dollars in your account especially when health concerns can turn into financial concerns quite quickly.
The comment I am responding to is "because America's not rich; like 100 people here just have more money than most countries" not whatever you think I am responding to.
The wealth of the top 100 individuals is not the claim, the claim is that the rest of the nation is actually poor if you don't include them, which is total nonsense.
What is so sad is how much better it could be in the U.S.… but for some odd notion that Billionaires and Corporations are thought to owe so little and the people of this country thought to deserve so little.
I can only speak for myself, but punitive damages of 1-2 million per complainant (22 I think) seems entirely reasonable and in line with previous rulings? But let me also flip the on it's head, if 1.4 billion dollars is an appropriate punishment to you then is there any amount of money that would be too much?
I don't think your values are sufficient deterrent for the kind of behavior Alex Jones and InfoWars exhibited and substantially profited from. They made more than the 22-44 million you're suggesting. They would still have profited from their actions.
I think it needs to be large enough to be a real deterrent. So it needs to be large enough that there is a real risk of turning substantial profit into substantial loss. "What if we get sued for $existentiallyLargeAmount?" needs to be part of the business math when deciding whether to tell lies for profit.
"More money than exists in the world" would clearly be too much. But I'm absolutely fine with a company and its chief officers being left penniless for such behavior. So I'm definitely fine with taking everything the company has, taking everything the chief officers have, and possibly adding a bit of debt on top of that.
So that kinda sums it up then, people who disagree with you (including me) think that the punitive damages should be rooted in punishing Alex Jones et al, not in destroying him forever.
>think that the punitive damages should be rooted in punishing Alex Jones
Correct. This is what happens when you go to court and play by the rules and stop doing things when you get an injunction against said behaviors.
When you tell the court to fuck off and you can do whatever you want, repeatedly, this is when you get the deserved massive punitive smack down for being an anti-social dick.
The problem you have is the complete and total lack of ability to put yourself in the shoes of any of the victims here that had got injunctions from the court many times only to have them be ignored and for have the abuse to then scale up even further. Millions in fines does not solve the behavior, he was making more than that in scamming people. A fine that is lower than profits is just a cost of doing business.
The punishment was made to be a deterrent for all who might consider doing the same as Alex Jones. You have made a straw man about destroying him forever.
It was considerably less on appeal and the mcdonalds lawyers didn't anatagonize the court every chance they got and it was literally 30 years ago and there was only one victim.
Just with inflation (6.4m) and number of victims (22?) you get a much larger number real quick.
Not having a phone in the first place is the best for the environment. Failing that, having someone else reuse that phone is best. Only if all else fails is recycling the preferred option.
So of course people are going to concentrate on the problem of people just throwing these things away. And that's for anything. Not just phones.
I really want to highlight this comment to everyone who's on the fence on gun rights or still believes that compromise is possible. This is the position of hardline anti-gun people, their billionaire funded NGOs, and the politicians they finance.
It's not about reducing excess death, it's not about gun violence, it's about abolishing all civilian firearms ownership and removing any positive association of firearms or self defense from the culture. There is no compromise possible because they will never be happy with anything less.
I firmly believe it’s a disinformation campaign run by Russia to make a potential invasion easier, and anybody peddling “gun control” is really just a useful idiot.
It comes back the same thing, there is zero evidence that gun manufacturers are lobbying for this while Everytown is very publicly and proudly announcing that they are pushing this exact legislation.
That was true, but largely is not true anymore. When Trump was pushing a blanket ban on trans people owning guns, gun rights organizations come out in force against (while anti-gun organizations like Everytown didn't).
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
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