this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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The reason there isn't a revolution in the USA is mostly down to atomization. Suburban growth directly leads to insular communities with no sense of responsibility to the rest of their brothers and sisters. Working class families in the burbs have functionally 0 ability to organize.
To add that on, I like to underscore the gravity of the situation here with details:
The interest on his earnings alone is equivalent to 130,000 workers at the start of the top 10%. That's the entire workforce of American Airlines for comparison.
If the average person was paid like the 0.1% for 1 year they could retire and live off 65k/yr forever.
This chart is broken down by quintiles but it illustrates the disparity well imo.
Half of the wealth of the top 20% here (excluding top 1%) is in businesses or real estate they own. Most of that will be their own house and a small business, though ~~leeches~~ "landlords" mostly fall in this category too.
For the top 1% that's more like 20% of their net worth.
What’s interesting is that this doesn’t even tell the whole picture.
Because those people earning $170k/year? More than likely their net worth is negative. They owe more than they’re making, and even at that income rate and excluding long term debt, they have just enough in savings to last three months max.
Most people that are making that kind of money are pretty smart. They have multiple investment strategies, multiple places that they store their money, and typically have some sort of easily accessible nest egg (like a mutual fund or crypto). I guarantee about 3/4 of them have enough to last AT LEAST 6-8 months without a job before things started getting a little tight.
If your living within your means and making that kind of money, you don't really have to worry about losing a job or things breaking down, or other big issues (short of medical emergencies).
That must really depend on where you live, because I know a LOT of people making that kind of money who aren’t living extravagantly, but are definitely not living within their means.
They could be, with proper money management and a decent budget, but they generally aren’t. The type of income in that zone often tends to come with jobs that require physical presence in an area that’s really expensive to live, with expensive childcare and a need to have it; often people also own a mortgage and a car lease and eat their lunches at restaurants as part of the social networking needed to maintain employment relationships.