Posted on 11/06/2007 5:49:23 AM PST by shrinkermd
This article is a compilation of income and wealth statistics by percentile. It is fairly comprehensive.
Among the quotes are:
Or, as a Washington think tank recently pointed out: If you're a teacher married to a policeman, your combined household income puts you in the top 25 percent of all households in the nation.
"...Whenever I slip these tidbits into cocktail party chatter, people are surprised to realize how little money it takes to win a gold star from the Fed. If you and yours are bringing in $40,000 a year, you're doing better than half the households in America.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Same here.
But the challenge is going to stick in your craw until you research it and find it’s possible.
$2/day.
Hardly the American standard of living, but a lot more doable than you think.
Well let's see. The house is paid for, and taxes in this part of PA are pretty low. It's a very big house, too. Those taxes come to about $30 a month...
Car's paid for.
Car insurance: $25
Water: $30
Trash: $15
Electric: $40
Phone: $40
Gasoline: $30
Food for one who refuses to cook and likes delivered chow: $150-200.
I don't buy insurance, don't go to movies, don't smoke or drink alcohol, walk a lot, drive little, avoid doctors and debt. I also don't eat much, but if I wanted to economize I could certainly slash the food budget, since much of it is uneconomical BK, delivered pizza and sandwiches, and local restaurant food.
I sleep 10 hours a night, debt-free. :)
“And I’m sure cats who live in Manhattan, LA, and San Fran have it even worse.”
I live in the east bay of SF, make 55K a year, and I’m barely making it, as a renter with no debt, and less than a mile commute.
I’ve given myself two years to get out, and I’m looking seriously at Alaska right now.
Nah, no way is the government going to let the sheeple get ahead. What is popular today (IRA's, 401K's, etc) are only popular so long as they support some bail out or to make government statistics/economy look good for the politicians to continue to raise our taxes. In my opinion, all of these type of things will be somehow eliminated or taxed out of benefit via a stroke of the pen in the future.
“Our children may not have as hard a time as you envision providing we all die and they rollover our IRAs and Keoughs and let them continue to earn tax free. Plus they inherit the house at the stepped up value. They, many of them, are gonna get windfalls.
Nah, no way is the government going to let the sheeple get ahead. What is popular today (IRA’s, 401K’s, etc) are only popular so long as they support some bail out or to make government statistics/economy look good for the politicians to continue to raise our taxes. In my opinion, all of these type of things will be somehow eliminated or taxed out of benefit via a stroke of the pen in the future.”
As long as the Feds and state governments continue with their never cut spending mentality, 401ks and such WILL be taxed. It’s a given. If the economy falters from the housing bust, they will be looking for new ways to raise taxes, and 401ks are big, fat, juicy piles of money they are drooling to get their claws into.
Yep, I remember all those who were gonna get rich on CD's back when CD's were pushed to bail out the S & L's. In order to make money in this stuff you have to be able to get in first and out first. The pen is just too easy to turn the screws on the common worker. Granny's idea of storing her money in her mattress is looking better every day.
“Yep, I remember all those who were gonna get rich on CD’s back when CD’s were pushed to bail out the S & L’s. In order to make money in this stuff you have to be able to get in first and out first. The pen is just too easy to turn the screws on the common worker.”
Just like everyone was gonna get rich on .com startups, or day trading, or flipping houses - yes, people do make money in the beginning, which is why the mania starts. Dangle the riches in front of people, and they grab hold, hook, line, and sinker.
“Granny’s idea of storing her money in her mattress is looking better every day.”
Until you do the math and see how much inflation eats away at those fiat dollars every day.
Our country and government and financial institutions punish frugality and saving.
The dollar is plunging today, so those dollars are worth a lot less than they were yesterday.
Yay.
What’s that saying, a bird in the hand . . .
asset rich.......cash poor
Food for one who refuses to cook and likes delivered chow: $150-200.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Buying delivered food that budget would allow one person to eat about one meal every second day here in South Carolina.
How on Earth do you get by for $40. for electric? What do you heat with, corncobs?
When I was on an aircraft carrier and we made port in Spain I could have lived VERY well on a seaman’s pay over there. My complaint is that these reports make it sound as though people live on the EQUIVALENT of $2. a day, in other words no better than a person could live on $2. a day in America. Anyone knows that is impossible. And bear in mind that that is the MEDIAN quoted, meaning some people are supposed to be living on what? Ten cents a day?
Coal that came with the house...there’s about five years’ worth of coal in the basement. Buying it now would amount to around $400 a year. I’ve always lived in big houses, and in the winter you just use fewer rooms and make sure the doors are shut. Same with the lights. You can only be in one room at a time.
But everything in central PA is cheap. Utilities, real estate, taxes.
As for the food, I’m 100 lbs. and the McD is three blocks away. If I needed to save pennies I could walk there, buy 3 McChickens for $1/each and have trouble finishing them in 24 hours; for sure I wouldn’t have room for anything else. Imagine if I liked beans, which are maybe 30 cents a can. Three pizzas delivered comes to $17. Do you know how long it takes me to eat 3 large pizzas by myself? Long time! :)
I consider myself kind of profligate about food, paying for deliveries, leaving tips, and buying junk food. Smart, healthy food cooked by me would probably cost around $75 a month.
In short...stay out of debt, no mortgages, no car loans, no plastic; live near your job, walk there every day; don’t smoke, don’t lend money, and don’t buy a house where taxes are sky high...and you can live very well on less than $10k a year.
Equivalent? as in proportional? I didn’t say that.
When I say world median of $2/day, I mean $2/day and not some futzed-with scaled translation thereof. First I’ve heard of the “equivalent of what $2/day gets you in the USA” notion or whatever it is.
Well, everybody knows that two dollars American will buy more in a lot of countries than it will buy in America but the way these things are set forth in news reports make it sound as though these people’s total support is the equivalent of two dollars a day in America. That is why I say it is meaningless to say that the median income worldwide is two dollars a day. Even within the United States it means very little to give a median income nationwide, there is too much disparity in what the dollar will buy in different areas. Also it does not take into account imputed income, if someone grows his own food is this computed in the income figure? For several years I produced eighty percent or more of what my wife and I ate, I had chickens, rabbits, a huge vegetable garden from which we canned and froze items for use year round, we ate fish caught from the stream on the border of our property. We ate quite well indeed but this did not show up in my income figures.
Our perspecives on whether the $2 is absolute (insofar as world currency exchange can be at the moment) or relative ($2 in NYC is akin to $0.01 in Tibet) differ; your suggestion of the latter is the first I’ve heard of it, and I don’t think that’s what was meant when I’ve come across the “$2/day” reference. That the claim is that [absolute] $2/day is world _median_ income indicates it must be achievable for many/most people in much/most of the planet, and I contend it is indeed possible; the “relative” interpretation is just unworkable, especially when applied to so many people. I’m sticking with the “absolute” interpretation (the other is much too complicated).
Indeed some areas are more expensive to live in than others; if you’re trying to live on $2/day, best to not be there.
I don’t see imputed income being included. Survival takes work, and those who survive must be doing SOMETHING to achieve whatever it takes to survive. A high income indicates either lots of work or very clever work, which is useful enough to others that they’ll trade their efforts to receive yours. A very low income indicates others do not find one’s work beneficial, and thus one must achieve survival by efforts for one’s self alone.
I do understand; growing up, my family grew at least half of our own food and was predominantly self-sufficient in other ways.
...which leads to more insight about the $2/day vs. poverty issue: “poverty” is all too often defined by what others are willing to give in exchange for someone’s work, and socialists insist others should value that someone’s work more, without considering that someone is “poor” precisely because they are not contributing enough to society to warrant a higher income (i.e.: what they do is not worth much to others). That “poverty” is defined solely in terms of _current_ cash flow from one person to another misses the whole point that one can focus all laborious efforts on serving self instead of others, and live quite richly almost entirely by one’s own hand instead of relying on exchange with others.
Point to ponder: next time someone starts whining about “poverty”, ask for their views on “self-sufficiency”. Ah, but that means little to someone who thinks meat comes from plastic-wrapped packages...
You can never have enough money, because you don’t know how long you’re going to live, or how many ex-wives you’re going to have.
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