Hacker News Reader

Comment by rbavocadotree | Hacker News Reader

15% of the average US take home salary is about 7.5k. Can you live on that for a year? How about support a family?

You have truly lost touch with average people if you think your situation is even close to normal.

Is there any evidence to that? There is no way anyone could possibly survive for a year (outside of a third world country) on that. Those statistics likely include students working part-time etc...

There are millions of families in the US living below the poverty line.

I think you misread the person you're responding to. The average isn't 7.9k, 15% of the average is 7.9k - they are implying that the parent commenter makes far more than the average US household. (and further down, the OP states that their yearly income is ~360k, which pretty clearly demonstrates the point)

On $50,000/yr? Lots and lots of households are doing exactly that, yes, especially if we're calling that after-tax income. But no, not by spending only 15% of their income per month. More like 100%. It'd take 15% of $50k just to rent a barely-livable old, rotting single-wide and a lot way outside the city to keep it on, before any other expenses like utilities or food or transportation, and this is a pretty low-cost area.

In my friend group at least three families (two with kids) are making under $50k pre-tax income, as households. A couple others are a little over it but not by much. There are three with household incomes way over that and... go figure, each has one tech-sector worker in it. Age ranges of something like 25-36, none in college.

I like to point people towards Malcolm In The Middle. It's actually a very optimistic take on the struggle for a vast swath of American families; certainly not an exaggeration of the difficulties.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com