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$600/week is roughly the median personal income, so we should expect it to be an improvement for half of all Americans.

Right. If you're living in NYC/SF/LA/Boston it's easy to have a skewed perspective on income and cost of living. Take a "typical" city like Columbus, Ohio: the average rent for a 2-bedroom apartment is around $1200 (https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-columbus-oh-rent-...), which is quite affordable if you and your partner or roommate are each making $30k/year.

NYC/SF may also give you a skewed perspective about 2-bedroom apartments being reasonable places to live. Where single family house ownership is readily available to the middle class, multifamily rental stock is decidedly not middle class.

With $60k in steady household income, you can get a mortgage for a nice house in Columbus.

There are also your state benefits. Which in texas aren't that great but combined it would come to ~1150 a week for me. And on average it was about ~800/wk here from what I've read which is ~40k a year. Normally it'd be 9,800/yr for that group.

State benefit in Hawaii is $5 per week.

$5 as in 20 quarters? wow when was that law written 1947?

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