- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- news@lemmy.world
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I wish I was making even $50k. I don’t really think leaders in this country care about the majority of Americans. They see what we make, they KNOW the majority of us are struggling, but they refuse to help anyone but themselves.
Oh no, they discovered right wing politics
No, they’re not.
That’s correct. Everyone here making six figures will have some form of asset they could cash in if the chips came down. I sometimes feel underwater, but if I made painful cuts, I could survive. Real Americans are living day to day knowing if things get bad, they might have to sell more blood.
Six figures is a huge range. Could be $100k/yr or $900k lol. I doubt the latter are in survival mode unless they just can’t stop leasing jet skis or something.
Yeah, I read this title, I thought this means $100,000 households are no longer above the liviable wage line. Less catchy headline, but more believable.
My sister, who earns several times the average income of the city she lives in:
- constantly complains about taxes. She says she wants to pay, believe it or not, zero taxes, because “what is she getting in return for that money anyway? Nothing”
- complains about how she “has to” work “four jobs” (she means 4 clients) then she casually drops something like “I saved up enough to buy two apartments. I want to buy and rent and quit my job”. She sees herself as someone who HAS TO work multiple jobs for rent and food
- she constantly complains about how poor people “pay less taxes” than her and absolutely hates anyone who works a low-income job as if they’re “dirty” or something. I assume if “no taxes” is her wet dream, then “everyone pays the exact same amount regardless of their income” is something she’d be ok with
- this is happening in the EU, with free healthcare and all that, so she’s getting plenty out of the taxes she pays (or would, if she didn’t insist on using overpriced private clinics instead and hell knows what other “rich people” alternatives)
She’s not poor. She’s practically a one percenter. She’s just upset it’s a lot of effort saving up to buy property to turn her favorite hobby of “fucking the poor” into a job by becoming a “professional landlord”. I don’t need Trump. I have Trump at home.
Most rich people I’ve met are disconnected assholes… I’m sure some are cool, and where I’m at they tend to vote liberal (but not progressive), but goddamn I have not a thing to share or discuss with them. Bless’em and may I never wait on them or paint their house or be their nurse or anything like that, cause I’m not putting up with their attitude.
Sorry if I sound like a dick. Just blowing off steam.
4 clients
who are these clients? what’s her job?
She works in IT. Her main tool is Salesforce. Some of the clients she’s mentioned are universally known. Volkswagen and IKEA are two I remember.
I don’t know what she does exactly. But, to be fair, she doesn’t know what I do either, cause I have a Film & TV degree and our latest argument was about her insisting that I use that degree to “become an influencer, because influencers make money”. That conversation would have been hilarious if I wasn’t part of it. Like listening to a tween tell you what she wants to be when she grows up…
She works in IT. Her main tool is Salesforce
Why am I not surprised that she’s a Salesforce admin?
Oh, wow! Can you tell me more about that? I didn’t know that was a thing and I can’t ask her
So the thing with Salesforce Admins, is its a sub-career within IT that requires minimal technical knowledge to be good at, plus by the nature of the job you end up working with vendor support, so if you’re really not good at your job you can simply pass everything to the vendor to do and just get paid to manage the projects and pass them between the business and the vendor.
I worked with a Salesforce admin who did exactly this and he collected a crazy salary for about a year while his boss tried to convince his boss’s boss to fire him for not being able to demonstrate the skills that his resume implied. I also later learned that he was also working at his brother’s Salesforce consulting firm at the same time, so extremely unprofessional and a clear conflict of interest.
Anyways, my point is, I’m not at all surprised that your sister who sounds like they’re kinda disconnected from reality works as a Salesforce admin. That’s just the aura that some Salesforce admins give off!
My sister’s husband is a software developer and frequently helps her with the technical aspects of her job. She has a degree in sociology. All she did to get her first job was a 6-month course or something like that. I guess now I understand how she was able to even make the switch in the first place.
Oh, and, coincidentally, a while ago she was also juggling a conflict of interest situation between a full-time employer and her own company. Amazing what people can accomplish if they’re greedy enough haha
Thanks!
according to a google search first page intermediate level salesforce admin earns €50-60k per year which is roughly the average salary for Amsterdam for example.
I meant it not in terms of pay but in terms of personality. There’s a few too many Salesforce admins with personalities like what SethTaylor@lemmy.world described
Your sister is a piece of shit.
Thank you
And a dicknosed douche-canoe.
I appreciate this
I appreciate your appreciation
I appreciate how appreciative you both are
I appreciate your appreciation of our appreciation
That makes me feel so appreciated. I’m glad that my appreciation of your appreciation was appreciated.
She says she wants to pay, believe it or not, zero taxes, because “what is she getting in return for that money anyway? Nothing”
I like to tell libertarians that express such to move to a developing country for two years.
You will never sound like a dick mouthing off about rich people, because we know they all deserve it.
What have I ever gotten from paying my taxes?
Except the roads of course, that goes without saying
And okay, okay, police keeps order and makes it we have a lawful nation
And sure, sure, firemen will always be there to protect my house from burning down but that’s nothing!
And I had free education, but come on, isn’t that what you’d expect at the very least?
Nothing!
And okay, they did get me free healthcare too, fine, but that’s nothing
Investments to promote local businesses? Fine…
So aside from the roads, police, firemen, education, healthcare, investments, what have taxes ever done for me?
Nothing!
People like that feel like a Monty Python sketch
Yes, What have the Romans ever done for us?
…the aqueduct!
Well, if you’re living in the USA, you have the largest military budget on the planet and now your paying for the Orange Fuck Nut to play golf.
I live on benefits, about $1,200 a month, and have the good fortune to only be obligated to pay for internet, fuel, some services like VPN+Email+Anti-virus, and food. For most of the past decade I was able to squirrel away about $200 to $300 a month into an ABLE account, but the last few years that has become increasingly difficult. In fact, I don’t think that I saved any money at all for this year.
My game ‘plan’ was to just let my ABLE collect interest and use that for my annual computer after a new AMD socket has been released, buying the best endgame gear for the prior standard. I spend most of my time on my PC, so I figure a expensive computer would be my ‘big ticket’ item every decade. Never once I have had a vacation to see new things or do stuff beyond the house, because it felt incredibly wasteful for my situation. I would have to cut more of my food budget if I want to save up for the next PC in 2030. This assumes that things like buying new tires doesn’t come up, or medical issues.
I don’t feel good about the future. My circle of possibilities shrinks every year.
For what it’s worth, you don’t need to pay for antivirus. Everyone hates on Windows here (for good reason) but with Windows Defender and common sense you should be fine.
Survival mode?!?! What happened? They had to cancel Netflix or you just had to have the $90,000 Chevrolet Tahoe and a $90,000 Ford F-150.
Six figure income? I don’t get that, maybe they have kids or something. They’re lucky, I’d dream to have a job that even paid 60k.
Here’s the thing about making more money, you tend to spend more money. If someone making $120k lived like they were only making $60k they wouldn’t be in “survival mode”.
I spent years living with off making about 400€ monthly as a student with a part time job (most of it going to food and housing with family), and now that I have 800€ monthly I find myself immediately overextending with plans. New furniture, console, TV, actual PC instead of a budget laptop. If I didn’t live in a big city I’d consider saving up for a car.
It’s easy to forget almost anything besides a roof, homemade food and healthcare is a luxury. (Or, sadly, even the last one, if you want good healthcare, or live in America)
Making $120k but living like they made $60k would mean they are living in survival mode.
Don’t forget that while middle class people have some tiny wiggle room before financial collapse, they are still very vulnerable compared to the millionaire, billionaire, and now trillionaire classes.
This is more or less it.
When I made 45k and rented a room I had a lot of expendable income. I could put 6% in a 401k, pay insurance, and still go out and party on weekends.
Making 125 with a mortgage and 2 kids feels kinda rough some months. I wouldn’t call it a struggle. I have a lot of comforts and security. I just don’t have any expendable income.
I think what’s different for me now is, in the past, I could get by crashing on someone’s couch if things got bad. I’m low maintenance. Today, I HAVE to have that mortgage payment. If I don’t cover that Pre-K payment I’ve failed my family. It’s not a struggle per se, but it’s a different kind of stress.
We should build more trailer parks to house these clowns once they can’t afford their mcmansions anymore.
Try living on 600$ a month!
If the “six figures” people are in survival mode then what about the other 90% of the population with 5 figures or less?
The point is that even six-figure earners are struggling.
And there’s something to that. People with 6-figure incomes tend to work in more metropolitan areas where housing is very expensive. I make about 80 grand, and the only reason I’m getting by at all is because my drive to work is about 2 hours with traffic. A modest 1br apartment in the city where I work is about $3,000/month.
Who cares, only people who make six figures are important, the others are useless eaters. Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you can do for your local billionaire. /s
Cost-of-Living matters, but I think what you said is part of the point of the article.
I’ll bet a ways back there was an article about how 5 figure incomes weren’t what they used to be.
True. As money in the system constantly leaks to the wealthiest and they consolidate control over prices and power, a quantity of income will go perpetually down in value; nothing that is measured by buying power or has fiscal value is what it used to be, and will continue on this trend until the ENTIRE system is FUNDAMENTALLY changed.
You ever watch that movie Office Space from like 1999? In the scene in the beginning where he’s explaining to the shrink how “every day is the worst day of his life”, the economy is basically like this for the cast majority of people, and will continue to be for a higher and higher percentage of the population. This is because we live in a system that is built and everybody accepts the functions and goals of consolidation of wealth and power as fundamental to life as we know it.
There are small “woke” movements that are trying to change that in various ways, but not until we have real, open, intelligent and educated discussions that involve EVERYBODY - left, right, liberal, and conservative, will anything change.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: nobody wins until we ALL win.
I disagree about that last part. There clearly are people winning today. They are a small %, but they also have an outsized influence. So they actively work against the change. And it is easier for them to be semi organized because there are many less of them to organize.
If they’re on survival mode, I’m on Hardcore Ironman mode.
This was some years ago - even before the first Trump presidency - I read a perfectly reasonable sounding piece from someone about how he’s struggling as a dual-income family making $400,000 a year. There’s the mortgage for the house and the summer home and the vacation condo and the kids’ tuitions at prestigious schools and family vacations and the 401ks and the kids’ college tuition funds and how there was NOTHING LEFT after the bare necessities!
Yeah, I live more in the realm of having emptied my 401k twice after leaving different jobs because the only other option was homelessness. Have I made bad decisions in life, never intentionally… but owning a home is being taken off the possibilities for me. At 36 it’ll be years before I ever have 1000s in the bank, let alone the 20% of 400,000 or whatever a small house will cost in future. Shit they turned me down to get a car loan and buy a used Kia which left me with a broken down vehicle and losing my job because I couldn’t transit 104 miles a day to the decent paying job I landed. So now I’m getting paid 1/3 to half of it on a job I found I can work from home. I’ll make rent and food, but retirement is likely out of the picture.
Yeah I’m 42 and my work is well-paid (for me) but not regular. It’s been particularly bad lately. I do not even have health insurance since I got divorced this year. I long ago realized I will have to work until I die, and I think most Americans are in the same situation. This is in a low cost of living area, I travel for work as an independent contractor.
I thought making >100,000 would be awesome but I’m just living paycheck to paycheck.
So sick of this mythical number. Most of the places you can earn it, life is correspondingly more expensive. There is no universal magic number.
No, you’re overspending.
Damn you’re right I should think about cutting out avocado toast and lattes
GTFO boomer
This. Probably lives in some fancy apartment
Depends on the area, and it can be hard to move out of big cities sometimes.
it’s also hard to stop buying ubereats evernight.
Uhhh… no, it’s not. Learn to cook. Hell, just learn to heat up frozen foods.
It’s crazy, I feel so irresponsible but it’s just the economic situation we’re in.
I cannot find a single place to rent that’s only 1/3rd of my income and not half.
People who have not looked for apartments or houses right now have no idea what the true cost is. We just moved and to rent a house in our old neighborhood (1700sqft, 2 car garage, nice suburb but build in the 80s, near the freeway) is $2100/month. The first apartment I rented out of college is now $1500/month and it was a 1 bedroom 650sqft. Not luxury or anything, a normal inner city apartment.
how? are you living in a mansion?
Where I live - wages have always been shitty but it was a low cost of living city (we literally had the lowest grocery prices in the nation and housing market was “depressed”. You could and can always get a job of some sort here, and because costs were low a roommate or two got you through with money to go to shows on the weekend or have a car. And a cat!
Housing and food now are average for the nation but wages are still lower here than average.
My NET pay after taxes and benefits and 401k is not twice the average rent for a one bedroom apartment here now. And you used to be able to rent houses so cheap, there were slumlords and people who owned a couple of houses and rented one out. No more. A house costs more than my whole monthly net to rent, before electricity or water, just the rent.
We bought a house for 5x what my old shithole of a house did (and there are none of those left, they get flipped or torn down for luxury housing) and even that amount would be cheap for it now, and we love it, but yeah we struggle with the cost to pay for it and maintain it. That’s a choice, yes, and we know it, but in a very limited set of choices.
All that is being built is high end expensive housing but there are not many people here earning enough for that.
Before my dad retired, he ran his own business. Nothing big, just him and a couple of others, but enough to afford a decent sized house, two cars, and a comfortable lifestyle.
A few years ago, he and I were talking about how the CoL has gone crazy since the early 2000s and he looked up the apartment he rented while he was in college in the 80s. It’s still there, a small studio apartment in the city near the college. In his own words, he said that the cost to rent that apartment a couple of years ago was more than he made running his own business.
I was just telling a co-worker the other day; growing up in a family of 4 with a stay at home Mom. We didn’t struggle, 4 bedroom home, 2nd 2 car garage in the back my dad built, pool in the backyard (above ground, but a pool nonetheless) and my brother and I basically got what we wanted. The most money my dad ever made in a single year was about $80k as a union pipefitter. My wife and I both work full time, I make 6 figures alone plus her salary, with a single child who’s now 16. We are barely making it in our 2 bedroom duplex. Which we were only able to purchase thanks to a USDA loan with zero down.
Edit: corrected grammar
80K 30 years ago is is 175K today, probaby more if you think about purchasing power.
you were upper middle class dude.
but also where you live matters. 6 figures is nothing in a major city. it’s a lot in a rural area or minor city.
But wages haven’t mixed to match. I’d be very surprised if pipe fitters are making anything close to 175k.
100k and up is still frequently thought of as being a well paying job.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=80000&year1=199511&year2=202509
You were pretty close.
Big keyword there is Union it helped even people not in the union. Graph union membership to avg income from 1970 onwards and its crystal clear.
Probably because when you first formed that idea, 100k was quite a bit. But 100k today is worth what 72k was just 10 years ago
How fucking expensive is stuff over there!?
There is some truth in the common refrain of “Americans overspend on cars, junk, etc”, but the answer to your question is very fucking expensive. I moved to the french Riviera and my cost of living went way down compared to Florida. And that includes going from employer funded healthcare to paying out of pocket for all health care in France. Everything is cheaper, food, car, insurance, I even spend less on fuel because I only need to drive once per week so I only fill my car up with 7€/gallon gas every few weeks.
A lot of dumb people here make a lot of money and spend more than they make.
the COL also varies wildly. I could move 1.5 hours away from where I live now and pay like 1/3 of what I do now for rent/mortgage. But I’d have to run 3+ hours a day to get to my job. and the salaries 1.5 hours outside my city are literally half what they are in the city. i’d have to take 50% paycut to work in a rural area.
things cost a lot in places where salaries are high. it’s that simple. high income areas have huge demand for jobs housing, and other necessiteis, so costs are high.
but nobody wants to live where it’s cheap to live because there are limited job opportunities. I could afford a mansion in louisiana… but my job doesn’t exist there and if it did, it would pay like 40K a year vs the 150K i make currently.
hence lots of people are moving more and more to the major cities trying to get the bigger salaries.
the COL also varies wildly. I could move 1.5 hours away from where I live now and pay like 1/3 of what I do now for rent/mortgage.
Part of that high city housing cost is zoning and other planning constraints on building upwards. Have to increase supply if you want to bring the cost down.
I post this occasionally:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/how-skyscrapers-can-save-the-city/308387/
If it were possible to reduce the cost-of-living bar to letting more people move to cities, it’d be possible to increase productivity for a lot of people.
I remember the “The Rent is Too Damn High” guy running for mayor of New York City a few years back. The guy had a point.
Like, policymakers have not done a great job on that.
would love to see some numbers on where tf that salary is going
most of the time these articles come out… the folks in question are massively overspending on cars, travel, and other luxury goods they really can’t afford but insist that they ‘need’.
my locally subreddit was full of people like this would would argue with you that spending $500-1000 every weekend on eating out was ‘normal’. if you are making 7K a month and spending 4K of it on partying… yeah you will feel like life is a struggle. and if you pointed out maybe they could cut back their spending they would just start insulting you calling you a loser with no life who stays at home…
1k every weekend?
I would say that you surely exaggerate, but I have learned that there is no upper limit to stupidity.
Almost certainly its mostly going to rent.
See my post above.
