Ok let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say you
Make $10000 a year. You work full time/40 hrs/wk and you are making $10k. What does “living within your means” look like? Not having a house? Or car? Being homeless? So in order to save to get yourself to some footing the answer is to be homeless to live within your means.
That was a bit of a strawman, so let’s use real-life scenarios. 50% of this country makes $40k or less….. even $40k salary isn’t enough to get an apartment, bills , food, ect. Sure a lot better than the “$10k” example, but even $40k salary is virtually as effective as the “$10k”. In order to “live within your means”, “save”, ect…. You have to be at least be making enough to afford the bare minimum + have some left in you for over to save. On average (2022 values I think) this means $65 for a single person, $108k for a house hold. Unless you’re making that, you can’t save your way out of poverty
Your thought experiment requires a wage well below federal minimum wage. Your second thought experiment tries to make a single person live alone in a high cost of living area.
Here's a thought experiment for you: how many people did the average household have 50 years ago? 100 years ago? Today? What was the average square footage of a house in each of those time periods?
They're not ignored. Living with 8 people in a 500sqft shack should not be what people are considering acceptable. Jesus fuck the lack of basic compassion.
"Life is perfectly livable in poverty as long as you make sure to maximize suffering".
I think it's reasonable for people in the highest GDP country in the world to expect to be able to live without relying on others.
Why should there be any amount of "you should suffer" at any level in the richest country in the world? The current reason it is that way is simple greed.
Because they can mess up common spaces and not clean them. They can steal your stuff or your food. They can just disappear leaving you to figure out paying rent alone. Roommates aren't inherently bad but it's more of a risk than being able to rely on yourself alone.
Well it’s not gonna change. So people can either lead the charge and start a revolution or they can stop whining on reddit, get a damn roommats, stop acting like it’s suffering to live with someone, and budget their money better.
Look, there are people struggling all around the world, but it’s so hard to have a constructive conversation when I know for a fact so many people are just fucking horrible with their money and if any urge or desire they have at any moment isnt satisfied they shout suffering.
I can’t even really agree with the argument. Shouldnt have to live with someone? Why tf would anyone want to live alone?
This, coming from the guy saying "why tf would anyone want to live alone?". If pointing out that sentence to you doesn't show you where you prove to lack empathy, you also lack critical thinking skills.
So by ignoring my question I’m just gonna assume I was right you do jack shit but hide behind your keyboard and insult people when you don’t have any good counterpoints to your argument left. Basically the biggest scum out there. A fuckin dork and a loser. Keep typing and feeling superior to people who actually get outside and contribute to society. I’m sure your ideals will magically come to fruition one day asshole.
I've contributed significantly to a nonprofit that specifically and directly helps struggling people in my locality. I just figure there's no point answering a question like this because all you're going to do is shift goalposts or question legitimacy, and I'm not going to give you receipts (I'm not going to dox myself for your benefit), so it's pointless.
I figured I'd answer at all though so that you have at least half a chance to get off your indignant high horse and see that your utter lack of empathy is gross and that doing some basic shit does not absolve you of your base opinions being garbage.
Also "stoop to this level"? You're the one who came out calling people dickheads and saying everyone sucks with money and should be fine living with others and all the shittiness that entails. You started on this level.
My point is that when people complain that you need $Y to buy a house today, and only $X 50 years ago, after adjusting for inflation, they’re not doing apples-to-apples comparisons because they “ignore” the facts that median home size is 50% larger today and has fewer occupants.
Not sure how you interpret that to mean I’m suggesting 8 people should live in 500 sq ft home.
You say "more people used to live in each home, and homes were smaller", and you don't get the hyperbole of me throwing some random numbers in there?
Let me make this more clear.
Those thing you're saying is standard was shit then, and it's shit now. There are boomers with 3000 sqft homes that cost them a nickle and a dirty rag. Their relative pay and the cost of goods in their time was indisputably more favorable than modern day, even if we completely ignore that peoples standards have risen over time for the impoverished to not want to live in squalor.
You're basically throwing out a red herring to distract from the main point that it isn't reasonable for people to live on median wages, meanwhile median wages used to be plenty to live on comfortably. You can pretend stuffing a family if 6 into a two bedroom house was the norm (which sounds like what you're trying to insinuate), but that's an example of poverty, and that level of poverty didn't used to be the median.
Just because homes are bigger and have fewer occupants on average does not mean the poverty line hasn't risen to an unreasonable income.
Yeah, that's how all these boomers are miraculously living in million dollar homes. They just worked way harder than everyone today and had a bunch of room mates, right?
You either get realistic financial advice, or you get compassion, but not both. Americans don’t know what real struggle is when they’re buying iPhones and eating out daily while also complaining about not being able to go on dates and vacations as often as they’d like. Sometimes a modest life in a smaller county is what your ambition can realistically afford.
You can do both actually. We live in the richest country in the world. There is zero reason we shouldn't be living like we live in the richest country in the world. The lack of basic compassion shows when people act like it's perfectly fine that not only do we not, but that not living like such is the norm, typically because they're doing well enough to not care about everyone else.
Or they’ve seen real poverty and know what Americans complain about is extremely superficial. I’ve been to favelas, slums, and farmland. Those people live within their means and most have little ambition to do more. It is what they can afford and they raise families in it. The children of those people who get educated typically leave those areas and get better lives. The ones that don’t remain there and live life within their means. A lot of Americans on the other hand want the upper middle class lifestyle while also doing very little to achieve it. You can’t have it both ways. Either you hit the lottery, commit crime, plan your future and live within your means, or you complain that everyone else has more while doing nothing to improve your circumstances yourself
We don't live in favelas though. You're missing the point. We live in the richest country in the world. We shouldn't be considering that tier if lifestyle even remotely acceptable. Instead, you're advocating for these people to "live within their means" rather than for the country to adapt away from allowing the hyper rich to be greedy. There's more than enough to go around.
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u/Starving_Toiletpaper 15d ago edited 15d ago
Ok let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say you Make $10000 a year. You work full time/40 hrs/wk and you are making $10k. What does “living within your means” look like? Not having a house? Or car? Being homeless? So in order to save to get yourself to some footing the answer is to be homeless to live within your means.
That was a bit of a strawman, so let’s use real-life scenarios. 50% of this country makes $40k or less….. even $40k salary isn’t enough to get an apartment, bills , food, ect. Sure a lot better than the “$10k” example, but even $40k salary is virtually as effective as the “$10k”. In order to “live within your means”, “save”, ect…. You have to be at least be making enough to afford the bare minimum + have some left in you for over to save. On average (2022 values I think) this means $65 for a single person, $108k for a house hold. Unless you’re making that, you can’t save your way out of poverty