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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

>> Seventy-eight percent of Americans are already living paycheck to paycheck; almost half can’t afford an unexpected $400 bill

On big part of this is Americans a whole need to get better with their money.

I know many people can't save because of low income (or lack thereof), but 78%? Don't forget about all those people making six figures who can't get it together.

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The median household discretionary income -- i.e. money you can waste on whatever -- in the US is more than $1,000/month. Per the official government statistics. That is after all ordinary household expenses. People in higher percentiles have considerably more.

I am skeptical that 78% of Americans are "living paycheck to paycheck" unless that has been defined so loosely as to lose all useful meaning.

I assume that it means they’re spending rather than saving that discretionary income, and don’t have a buffer available of more than a single pay period (usually 2 weeks). That money may also be committed to long-term contracts with service providers and not readily available for redirection. It’s sometimes a reflection of financial priorities rather than raw income.

While a significant portion of that 78% might be people who think a monthly income of X means they can service debts with monthly costs of X, there are also people for whom basic cost of living (mostly rent) is most of their income. An example would be someone working in the valley area who doesn’t earn enough to afford to move to cheaper accommodation (along with associated increase in commuting costs). It’s not their inability to control spending, it’s the requirement to be geographically close to their place of work.

If there were more jobs available in the backwoods, there would be the real possibility of moving there to reduce the cost of living to a smaller portion of income.

I'm kind of skeptical of the number. It also doesn't really gel that well with his 50% can't afford a $400 bill. It seems to be based on survey data from CareerBuilder which could be misleading for whole hosts of reasons.

The best source I know of for statistics like this is the Federal Reserve's most recent "Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households" [1]. It's a survey of about 10,000 people and, as far as I can tell, is the source for many claims like "40% of American adults cannot meet an unexpected $400 expense", which has been consistently true for several years, although it used to be more like 50% in 2013. Note that “cannot meet” here means anything other than “would pay the expense in full before next month”.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-repor...

Again, blame the poor for their poverty.

Gives a nice tummy feel but does nothing good for society.

I say you set up a system where a large number of people are poor by design, you can't blame those that end up poor. You blame the system and the people implementing it.

I agree. Yang says it pretty well. The US is a near winner-take-all capitalism. It only awards and invests in people at or near the top.

Can you make it from bottom to top? Sure! But it is very unlikely, and not really something the US system is designed for. If you go from rags to riches in the US it is in spite of the system and not because of it.

Disclosure:

I live in a capitalistic society with government paid education, health care and child care. My parents are low-wage workers and in the US, they would definitely not have afforded an education for me. Here, I got a high quality masters degree paid by society _because it is a great investment_!

I will gladly pay every penny and more back into society, so that many others, like me, can have the same opportunities as me in spite of their parents income.

Again, absolve the poor of all personal responsibility.

Gives a nice tummy feel but does nothing good for society.

It wasn't a particularly deep comment, but your reply breaks the site guidelines. That's heading in the wrong direction. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. Note this one:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Yeah. Fair enough

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