You cannot trust self-survey data, I don’t know how many times this has to be hammered in.
“One-Third of Americans Making $250,000 Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck, Survey Finds” [0]
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/a-third-o...
You cannot trust self-survey data, I don’t know how many times this has to be hammered in.
“One-Third of Americans Making $250,000 Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck, Survey Finds” [0]
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/a-third-o...
One-Third of Americans they surveyed, or did they survey all Americans?
of Americans surveyed
Living paycheck to paycheck is not the same thing as being in poverty
Agreed, this was an example of a similar phenomenon as to why you can’t trust self-id economic situation surveys. FWIW, we see similar effects in food security surveys with six-figure households being classified as food insecure.
I can definitely see a situation where a renting single-earner six-figure household in a place like SF may require assistance. It's all about the relative cost of living and financial situation, you can't really make ground pronouncements like this without ignoring the data.
> may require assistance
Yes, depending on their family size.
But that is very different from ‘food insecure’ after receiving federal/state benefits and I do not believe that is a thing that really happens.
> a situation where a renting single-earner six-figure household in a place like SF may require assistance.
You think someone in SF earning six figures should be considered poor?
It made the news a few years back:
> Single-person households making under $105,000 a year are classified as “low income” in three Bay Area counties by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/under-100k-low-income-s...
Ok I’ll answer. They are not poor.
Are you saying that based on the semantics of "poor" vs "may require assistance" vs "low income", or...? My comment has a link that's backed up by a government website.
If we look at $105k in San Francisco, minus federal, state, and local taxes, you're looking at roughly $6,400/month take home pay. If you make a budget out of that, you get $3,000 for rent, $800 for groceries, $250 for transit, $250 for medical, $150 for Internet, $600 for entertainment, $900 to retirement, and then finally $400 towards an emergency fund. If you do not have all those things in your monthly, you are poor. Now, there are certainly people who have less than that, and we could argue the semantics of being destitute, vs simply poor as colloquially defined terms, but the brackets that California’s Department of Housing and Community Development has are: acutely low, extremely low, very low, low, and moderate income.
We can use https://saul.pw/mag/wealth/ and say that even with a $105k/yr salary in SF, you're sitting at ↑3 or ↑4 or so, instead of using the emotionally loaded term poor if it would contribute to having a more thoughtful and substantive discussion.
Do you think someone earning 100,000 and who chooses to live in SF should be considered poor?
don't they choose to live in SF because that's where they got the job? if they would move they would lose the job, because you generally can't take your job with you. (remote work being the exception)
if life in a place is expensive, and jobs in the same area do not pay enough to cover those expenses, then a person with that job in that area is poor.
I don't know whether you've been to San Francisco, but most (about all?) people who can get a 100k job in SF has quite a bit of mobility w.r.t. where they could live or who they work for.
I would love to see a sample of a handful of cases of these 100k earners who we should consider poor and in need of assistance to make ends meet.
how long would the commute be though. if you have to spend more than two hours commuting each day in order to afford living with the money you earn in SF then i'd see that as a problem.
Within 1 hour commute that you could live comfortably on 100k:
- East Bay (El Cerrito, Richmond, Concord, Walnut Creek, Martinez)
- North Bay (Petaluma, Novato, Vallejo, Santa Rosa)
Within 90mins:
- South Bay (Milpitas, South San Jose, Morgan Hill, Gilroy)
What word do you want to use? The word poor has a lot of emotional baggage. What does it mean to you for someone to be considered poor?
They’re uncomfortable, but not poor.
Thank you for that. That was a lot of back and forth to get there though.