Hacker News Reader

Comment by alabastervlog | Hacker News Reader

1) Any number of ways, they don’t pay that much. Or,

2) They’re rich. Not even that rich. I mean hell we paid $1,500/month for two kids to go to preschool, for years, and that sucked but we could still save. And we had a household income of like $130k or so at the time. Doing fine, not saying we didn’t have alright income, but not that uncommon. Now imagine a two-FAANG income like many folks on here. $1,000/month, even times two, is entirely within reach for them. Also,

3) You can go off it for periods and just go back on if the weight starts to creep up. Anyone who’s successfully maintained weight for periods in the past may be able to manage long stretches without it and not gain much. And further,

4) It’s not going to cost that much for long, in the scheme of things. The price will likely settle in the tens of dollars per month when the patents expire.

View on HN

> And we had a household income of like $130k or so at the time. Doing fine, not saying we didn’t have alright income, but not that uncommon.

Americans with six-figure incomes seriously don't understand the rest of the country lives.

he said household, that could easily be two incomes, both way below six figures

Median household income is ~$80,000.

> but not that uncommon

Taking in nearly double over the average household income is, by definition, uncommon.

I think that’s a pretty average income for a couple with two children

Median household income is like $80k

In San Francisco, maybe.

Yeah but the OP lives there, and many people around them make similar or more, so it seems normal.

This is incredibly common in many parts of life, humans gonna human I guess.

JFC HN, I hedge and demure about as much as I reasonably can without distractingly and pointlessly (anyone can Google) turning the post into a dissertation on median household income percentiles and still someone complains. This is poor reading, and poor posting.

The first year of that, about 20% of households were around our level of income or higher. We could have covered $1,500 in daycare without much trouble at a somewhat lower level of income, so say 25% could cover $1,000/m without driving themselves into a really, really bad place financially, provided they’ve not already committed that to other things (expensive car payments, they have very young kids in daycare, whatever)

Neither 20% nor 25% are uncommon.

If you’re thinking “well that’s just coastal cities dragging the stats up” then check stats on 3rd-tier but not-notoriously-poor cities and see what they look like. In the flyover state city fitting that description we lived in at the time, the local household income percentile distribution roughly matched the national one.

That’s a TAM of people who can afford $1,000/month for something they really want of, what, 50 million or more adults in the US? And that’s at full sticker price, which few are paying.

How much more than one-in-five before a category of person is not uncommon?

> and still someone complains.

That you perceive it as a complaint is hilariously ironic. I'm just telling you that your notions of "common" are wrong. You are attempting to use your economic situation to justify the outcomes for others. That, my friend, is poor posting.

> about 20% of households

This is super easy. 1 out of 5 is "not common." You can be as parsimonious as you like it doesn't change the ground reality that there are fewer people like you than there are people like you.

> How much more than one-in-five before a category of person is not uncommon?

Weird hill to die on. There's nothing wrong with or your economic situation except your expectation that other people share it. Which they generally don't.

1 in 5 is certainly not uncommon by any reasonable interpretation of the term. 20% of the US is an absolutely massive market many could only dream to begin to address as a customer base.

That said, even that is not really all that useful. Anyone who is motivated can get these drugs for around $500-600/mo via programs that exist for the vast majority of the population. That roughly halves the cost comparisons here. Very few folks who want these drugs have zero options other than to pay full retail.

He didn't say 1 in 5 is common. He said 1 in 5 is not that uncommon. He's right. If 1 in 5 people in 1991 have a computer in the house, having a computer is not that uncommon.

This is a circular argument. In order for it not to be, you need to show how “having a computer in the house in 1991” is already a not uncommon thing for that to then apply to 1 in 5 not being uncommon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com