New Survey: 78% of US workers live paycheck to paycheck

Aureon said:
You... disagree with the general existance of inflation?
The main issue for nigh everyone is rent\mortgage, transportation, and food. "Luxuries" that are actually 1/20th of the budget aren't that relevant.
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What kind of argument are you even making? Where have I disregarded inflation?

In the case of food, we can make the everyday comparison between eggs, beef, bread, etc. Are they really that much more expensive? A loaf of bread can be $1, it can be $7. There's choice. Some things can even be cheaper now.

Even if luxuries were 1/20th of the budget, 5% is apparently life-changing to many people in many aspects. It's all subjective though. Some spend more on luxury, some spend less.
 
AdventureRacing said:
This is essentially the old bootstrap argument which has numerous flaws. You're making a similar mistake that many people make when talking about the obesity epidemic. Most people I know who are fat or obese have really bad eating habits and poor exercise habits. I on the other hand have been able to stay really fit despite having similar challenges to all of them. I don't then assume that everyone should be able to do that.

There is a reason why over the past few decades we've been getting increasingly fatter. When a problem is affecting as much as 70+% of the population you need to start questioning if it's a problem on a societal level rather than an individual one.

Sure if everyone on the planet suddenly developed extra will power and could change their diet overnight and start exercising there would be less overweight people. Problem is that not everyone has the same willpower and more importantly there are many larger forces at work that make it exceptionally difficult.

The same applies to saving. You're right that if everyone had exceptional will power and were incredibly frugal with their money than most people would be better off. If it were that easy do you think everyone wouldn't do that? There is a reason that such a huge percentage of people are struggling and it's not just because they're all just wasteful. There are many structural and social issues preventing that.

Firstly as above not everyone has the same level of willpower when it comes to being able to save. More importantly though we're facing many stressors that makes it difficult to do so. We already have enough things to worry about without having to plan our lives to a T just to get by. Not to mention that when you're stressed and struggling to get by you naturally want to spend your discretionary income on things that make your life somewhat better even if it's worse in the long run.

Then there are the systemic problems like the accumulation of wealth at the top end of town whilst everyone else stagnates or goes backwards.

As has been pointed out countless times in this thread you, like many others, are overlooking the huge structural issues that make it incredibly difficult to save enough to not live paycheck to paycheck. Instead our focus on the smaller issue which puts everything back on personal responsibility. This is what republicans and the wealthy have done so effectively. They've convinced the lower classes to point fingers and blame each other meanwhile the top 1 percent is hoarding all of the wealth.
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While I agree with some of this, a lot of that boiled down to "it's hard." And yeah, most people aren't sensitive to that. Especially those that think they had it hard but still made it out. Or those think that their parents had it hard, but created the awesome life that they inherited.

It's almost like developing a six pack. Shits hard, and some people may have an easier time doing it depending on genetics, location, life structure and life choices. But anyone can do it. People think it's possible to overcome any problem by working hard, and don't account for the luck people usually need to get their chances in life. It's hard to empathize since people use anectodotal evidence around them to solidify their beliefs. Everyone has that friend that makes clearly stupid choices causing them to be stuck in a rut, and they don't see the victims of a poor hand dealt in life and what is really required to overcome it
 
MidgarBlowedUp said:
What if we had universal free-ish healthcare and forced the federal minimum wage higher?

Like say $10 min wage and a tax forced on business and workers to help pay healthcare. Also force a small tax on employers to go towards increasing social security. Might want to cap drug costs too.

I'm so lucky right now that i have a pension, matched 401k, and healthcare through my employer. This stuff needs to be universal for everyone. There are plenty ways to do it inexpensively by government and businesses. But good luck with asking nicely.
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$10 minimum wage is a realistic goal but it's honestly not enough, not even close. I used to make $10 an hour, living on that much is not pretty, no matter how much you budget. Also healthcare costs are HUGE. I had an emergency situation 6 months ago, had to go to the ER. My bill was 10k before insurance, 2k after insurance. Even with 2 jobs, one paying 15 an hour and one paying 10, working 50 hours a week, it took me 4 months to save enough to pay for that hospital bill. And that's with decent insurance that I have through my mother. When you make 20kish a year, a 2k medical bill just obliterates your savings. I'm healthy, imagine if I had a chronic condition? Or This happened and I didn't have insurance? There goes half my earnings for the year. This is why UHC is so damn important.
 
Sometimes I just think of the way things are for me and just get incredibly depressed. Student loans, car repairs, rent, at home bills, insurance, gas because my job is almost 30 minutes from me and so i go through gas a lot the list just keeps going.
I cut down shit like cable and major phone providers so I see a little more money in checks now.
 
Super Mario said:
In the case of food, we can make the everyday comparison between eggs, beef, bread, etc. Are they really that much more expensive? A loaf of bread can be $1, it can be $7. There's choice. Some things can even be cheaper now.
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lol, what? Where the fuck is a loaf of bread $1?

Even in my country (not the US) I have never seen bread this cheap. Baguettes are all over $2 CAD unless there's a special sale going on, and bags of sliced bread typically range between $3 and $5.

Lord of Ostia said:
$10 minimum wage is a realistic goal but it's honestly not enough, not even close. I used to make $10 an hour, living on that much is not pretty, no matter how much you budget. Also healthcare costs are HUGE. I had an emergency situation 6 months ago, had to go to the ER. My bill was 10k before insurance, 2k after insurance. Even with 2 jobs, one paying 15 an hour and one paying 10, working 50 hours a week, it took me 4 months to save enough to pay for that hospital bill. And that's with decent insurance that I have through my mother. When you make 20kish a year, a 2k medical bill just obliterates your savings. I'm healthy, imagine if I had a chronic condition? Or This happened and I didn't have insurance? There goes half my earnings for the year. This is why UHC is so damn important.
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Indeed. Having UHC would go a loooong way in fixing the broken-ass systems and economical inequalities in the US.
 
Probably at least half or more of that 78% are in that position due to poor planning or carelessness.

Self reporting like this isn't very effective without actually seeing what their income goes toward.

When you look into these things and hundreds of dollars per month goes to chain restaurants and target shopping it makes a lot more sense. Mortgage underwriters see this stuff, financial planners too.
 
no shit, if the minimum wage goes up by a dollar in 17 years and the rent from $720 to $1500 no wonder everyone is fucked. I'm not even including food, bills, transportation, and insurances.
 
Clockwork5 said:
And I thought economic anxiety was a joke.
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Material conditions are the basis for all history and politics. Racism itself is economic, emerging out of hierarchies built to benefit rich white landowners in the colonial period.

What's dangerous is only focusing on Trump's jobs advocacy, thus ignoring his popularity among white voters who live comfortably and the ways in which he tied economic irredentism to race. The foundation of "Make America Great Again" was that problems in American society are not caused by those in power, but instead by the immigrants and foreign competitors his base is already predisposed to hate.
 
Let me tell ya, as a guy fresh into his 20s, this thread and yesterday's "people hate their jobs by 35" thread reeeeally make me excited for the rest of adulthood.
 
rapid32.5 said:
no shit, if the minimum wage goes up by a dollar in 17 years and the rent from $720 to $1500 no wonder everyone is fucked. I'm not even including food, bills, transportation, and insurances.
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There is a lot of clear data around this bad bad trend: if wages have inched up by around 2% each year since 2009, rents have gone up by around 4-5% per year during the same time. Some markets are worse than others, but eventually something will have to give (and I don't see wages going up any time soon):



Rent-vs-hourly-earnings.png
 
Unknown Soldier said:
A lot of the Hillary supporters did. Which is why Trump is now President.
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This is just disingenuous bullshit.

The argument about economic anxiety versus racism was whether Trump supporters were motivated by one or the other.

It had nothing to do with whether economic anxiety existed or not. Claiming otherwise is simply dishonest.
 
Double Donut said:
Let me tell ya, as a guy fresh into his 20s, this thread and yesterday's "people hate their jobs by 35" thread reeeeally make me excited for the rest of adulthood.
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As a fellow young'un I wholeheartedly agree. We've got global warming and the inevitable severe global consequences of it to contend with as well.

Should be fun :)
 
bumpkin said:
I blame student loans. If I didn't have them, I'd have $500 extra dollars every month.
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If your student loans are only $500 a month then you're actually doing pretty well in terms of your debt load. Some of the numbers I've seen thrown around are insane to me, like literally paying a mortgage off but no house to show for it crazy.

Piecake said:
This is just disingenuous bullshit.

The argument about economic anxiety versus racism was whether Trump supporters were motivated by one or the other.

It had nothing to do with whether economic anxiety existed or not. Claiming otherwise is simply dishonest.
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I'm not going to start an argument about this here and get the thread locked. If you actually want to discuss this with me, PM me.

I'm not expecting a PM lol.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
If your student loans are only $500 a month then you're actually doing pretty well in terms of your debt load. Some of the numbers I've seen thrown around are insane to me, like literally paying a mortgage off but no house to show for it crazy.



I'm not going to start an argument about this here and get the thread locked. If you actually want to discuss this with me, PM me.

I'm not expecting a PM lol.
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You know, I would respect you a lot more if you stopped trying to always argue from a moral high ground by using the snide remarks and insults of some pro-Hilary posters as proof that you and your group are marginalized and oppressed and are thus fully justified in belting out some self-righteous anger.

Now, if you didn't insult others, then I could at least see it being justified, even though it is a terrible debating tactic. The problem is, is that you continuously insult, demean, and misconstrue the people who disagree with you, but never admit that you are actually doing that. Just because you think what you are saying is true doesn't make it right. The people who are insulting and demeaning you certainly think what they are saying is true as well.

I wouldn't have written this out and I would have respected your attempt to not derail this topic and left it at that, but you included that spoiler line that is obviously an attempt to take the high ground. It just screams "Look at me, I am willing to discuss this further. I am the bigger man, but I just know that the other person is not willing to."

Its incredibly childish

And you're right. I wouldn't have talked to you through a PM. The reason for that though is that my experience with you indicates that you are not interested in a conversation that at least tries to respectfully understand the points of the other side. You want to preach. You also never admit when you are wrong (at least from what i've seen, and you are certainly wrong about your economic anxiety claim), so there really is no point to have that conversation because I am confident that I know exactly how it is going to go.

Feel free to have the last word if you want. I will drop this part of the discussion after this post. I just felt compelled to say this in the thread as a result of that spoiler.
 
Malvolio said:
All according to plan. Welcome to modern slavery.
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Forward said:
It never ended. It simply expanded.
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These are the correct answers. The quest of the world's Elite to control everything has never ended and is now at endgame.

I personally believe that the world is beyond the "point of no return" in regard to this. 21st century "slavery" (or whatever form it will solidify in) will be irrevocably here within a generation give or take a few years at current pacing.
 
Double Donut said:
Let me tell ya, as a guy fresh into his 20s, this thread and yesterday's "people hate their jobs by 35" thread reeeeally make me excited for the rest of adulthood.
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Yeah, and it's great when people tell us to just accept it because that's how life is like no. This hellworld we're inheriting is not a place most young people like and then people get pissed when young people aren't enthusiastic politically about status quo politicians who want to continue this slow descent into capitalist nightmare
 
When the currency is fiat, and can, essentially, have as much value as the overlords deign, this is by design.

No savings = can't miss work.
Can't miss work = can't get politically involved.

Just how they like it.
 
Catphish said:
When the currency is fiat, and can, essentially, have as much value as the overlords deign, this is by design.

No savings = can't miss work.
Can't miss work = can't get politically involved.

Just how they like it.
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Isn't it curious that Election Day isn't a holiday in the US? People complain all the time about the low turnout in elections and yet it's a normal Tuesday work day. The polls aren't open all night either for people who do have to work. Funny how that turned out.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Isn't it curious that Election Day isn't a holiday in the US? People complain all the time about the low turnout in elections and yet it's a normal Tuesday work day. The polls aren't open all night either for people who do have to work. Funny how that turned out.
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Even if election day was a holiday some people would still have to work. Police, firefighters, hospitals, etc. But yes, it would at least be an improvement.
 
Catphish said:
When the currency is fiat, and can, essentially, have as much value as the overlords deign, this is by design.

No savings = can't miss work.
Can't miss work = can't get politically involved.

Just how they like it.
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The gold standard would solve none of your problems and would create a billion more.

All value is arbitrary.
 
kirblar said:
The gold standard would solve none of your problems and would create a billion more.

All value is arbitrary.
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The thing with a truly limited resource as the standard, though, is at least there is something that can be universally agreed upon. The modern age has gone way past the point of printing hyper-inflated funny money, and straight into the realm of virtual monopoly, with zero code checks.
 
Forward said:
The thing with a truly limited resource as the standard, though, is at least there is something that can be universally agreed upon. The modern age has gone way past the point of printing hyper-inflated funny money, and straight into the realm of virtual monopoly, with zero code checks.
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The source of our problems has nothing to do with the amount of money the federal reserve chooses to print or not print every year.
 
You can easily get a store brand non-name brand loaf for 1$ here in Texas. Often you can get name bread loafs on sale for 2$
 
My paycheck doesn't even last me until the end of the month. I also need a part-time job and even with both it's often not enough. And that's with a degree.
I'm not in America though so kinda unrelated.
 
Forward said:
The thing with a truly limited resource as the standard, though, is at least there is something that can be universally agreed upon. The modern age has gone way past the point of printing hyper-inflated funny money, and straight into the realm of virtual monopoly, with zero code checks.
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You're banned but no. Even the value we give to limited resources is arbitrary. Even what we choose as the limited resource is arbitrary.
 
To be fair, living paycheck to paycheck isn't something unique, many people in the industrialized world do the same. When I did a study years ago for a region in Switzerland, around 60% of the households of said region have less than 50k in assets. I don't know how many actually live paycheck to paycheck, but it's still quite bad.

What makes US workers more fragile is the lack of safety net though. In Switzerland, living paycheck to paycheck is annoying and not good for the health, but not life threatening. The same can't be said for the US.
 
Catphish said:
No, it's got more to do with how much the banks create out of thin air.
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How so? If a government and banks within its jurisdiction don't continually create and leverage new instruments then their banking system and correspondingly their economy will collapse. New financial assets have to be repeatedly created out of thin air by design.
 
Attack You said:
I was in Dollar Tree yesterday. Peanut butter and jelly? Present. Bread? Nope. Here's a bag of flour, because "fuck you." I don't even recall seeing yeast.
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Wow. That Dollar tree must be rough. We got bread in ours. Usually a few days before it goes bad though.
 
Edit: miss read bump sorry my bad.

I bet the health care is the real money drainer 😞
 
Last edited:
Yup. I have like no savings. Every time I do, something happens like a car repair or doctor bill that wipes it out.

Looking forward to retirement into a cardboard box under an overpass when I'm no longer able to work.
 
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