Millennial men with different incomes

Whether you want to keep feeling guilty is up to you, but you should definitely go thank your parents again!

> When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car

In countries where public transportation is the norm, there isn't anything strange about the first part of the sentence. It's just that USA really punishes non drivers through some really poor infrastructure choices made 60-70 years ago.

Personally, I don't.

In life, luck is always involved. Some people are born with rare diseases. Some people are born with physical attributes that make them more desirable by their preferred sex. Some people are born as an ethnicity that gives them more social power than others. Some people are born smarter than others. Some people are born more susceptible to mental illness. Some people are born into very rough families. Etc.

I suppose I don't feel bad for having what I have because quite frankly, other people who may have less wealth than I certainly have life advantages over me to which I would certainly not expect them to feel guilty about.

Nothing wrong with the top end of things. Would be good to have some kind of basic income in place to help patch things on the bottom end.

There's a way out if you bust your ass and do nothing but obsess about finding something better. Takes a while. Sometimes it takes 18 months just to stumble into an opportunity worth pursuing. Though if you don't put in the effort (and get a bit lucky), nothing changes.

One thing I definitely took away from that article? Holy crap am I frugal. I save a large multiple of #2 for retirement (Solo 401K and IRA maxed every year, with a bit extra on top in a taxable account), and spend about on par with #3. Granted, I've earned what I got so I don't squander it.

As for #4's commute, I've done similarly bad recently, albeit voluntarily. Walk to bus station, take bus one. Transfer to second bus, then walk two-thirds of a mile. About 100 minutes each way, and an average of 3 1/2 hours a day. I could save a wee bit of time with other options (not including car), but at 50-200% increased cost, so I maintained the frugal option even if it cost me another 30-40 minutes a day. Though it does mean that you tend to wake up at 5:45AM to make breakfast and then get to a client for 9AM, to then get home by around 7PM and hopefully have eaten and finished any chores by 8PM. You are beat. It's not easy to then put in extra effort to get other things -- like looking for a better opportunity -- done.

Not really. I feel like I've put in the time and effort (along with a little luck) to get to where I am in life.

Unfortunately, life is unfair. While it was nice having parents who supported me, I feel like it's just an advantage in life I was fortunate to have. On the contrary, I'm a short, unattractive, non-white male living in a city that's 90% white; there isn't much I can do in that regards. That's just life.

It's ok to observe differences and then keep that in mind when relating to other people. Use this knowledge to be more empathetic. Be kinder. Be grounded. Be connected. You can lead your best life earning tons of money while also understanding your relationship to the world and the diversity it contains. You can let this understanding inform your responses and intentions.

Processing the world isn't simple. But you can continue to evolve how you relate to differences and different people, and that can guide your overall goals as well as your decisions in specific interactions.

My answer has become: Attempt to set some business idea of your own in motion. That doesn't mean that you are going to be good or motivated at business or have any worthwhile plans, of course. That is the curse of being in that position, and a lot of people do run away from such a responsibility. But it's a concrete way in which you can make things less broken - build people's careers, sell useful products or services, market new ideas, etc. It makes me feel OK with myself.

And most crucially, it really doesn't have to be a brave "save the world with VC backing" plan - it can be a totally selfish idea like "a cool gadget for me and my friends", accomplished by employing a handful of contractors for a few months part-time. The saving comes in via the attention to social responsibility you take in implementing it - whom you employ, how you employ them, adapting the product to a marketing strategy, what manufacturing processes you use, etc. All of that creates an atmosphere around the business, and the atmosphere itself changes the way in which the world works. The final product is just one tiny part of it.

https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

> So no, I'm not required to be able to lift objects weighing up to fifty pounds. I traded that for the opportunity to trim Satan's pubic hair while he dines out of my open skull so a few bits of the internet will continue to work for a few more days.

Oh sure I'm not typically over-the-top like the article. I do enjoy the act of programming much of the time, and camel-y jokes. But I don't feel bad that I'm getting paid a lot of money for what I much-of-the-time consider work that a bright high schooler could also do. Having worked with some not-so-bright college interns recently I feel even less guilty, if that's possible. To some extent we all make our own choices, mine led me here, why should I agonize over where other people's led them? I'm not interested in controlling their lives.

We have a much higher wealth gap than those countries. So tax burden as a percentage isn't a useful metric.

If we had a healthier lower and middle class, they would be paying more in taxes, which would ease the burden on the wealthiest considerably. But our middle class is shrinking, and the rich are becoming extraordinarily rich. So of course their tax burden as a percentage of the whole is going to be more.

The concern people have is about the taxes that individuals in the top brackets pay in relation to the middle and lower brackets, but also this acts as a proxy for concern about infrastructure, safety nets and an ever shrinking middle class.

When you pay over 50% of your income in taxes this includes VAT, property tax, national insurance and other taxes rather than just income tax you never actually accumulate wealth under almost any circumstances.

You end up being dependant on the social services that you mostly fund because you simply can't get a head regardless of how well you are paid. This is why there is almost no new money in Europe especially the continental countries.

Taxation in Europe is an industry many EU countries have tax revenue at 50% of their GDP that's not a healthy system.

And as far as wealth redistribution goes that's also a myth, EU countries have lower corporate tax rates than the US they also have lower capital gains taxes with some countries having them at 5% or lower.

At the end it's the middle classes who gets screwed the most with the lower classes not far behind.

VAT and high import tariffs make the EU a pretty bad place to live on average and below income.

Food is expensive because importing cheap food is hard and by the time you save enough money on a "luxury" item you get stuck with 20% VAT premium on everything.

The US tax system is by far better, the problem in the US is lack of focus on public spending and programs, you spend more public funds on education and health care than Europe but the result is questionable at best. This not only shows that the taxation in Europe is too high but also that the US can have a single payer system without additional taxes if it restructures Medicare and Medicaid and its state and public schools.

"The wealthy" that everyone refers to are the 1% -- hedge fund managers, CEOs, not doctors and engineers. Certainly not 100k/year households.

And the article and your argument both miss a fundamental point, which is not simply about income, but about wealth. The top 1% in the US owns 40% of the wealth. And for the ultra wealthy, much of their gains are not through income but rather through capital gains which are by comparison almost entirely untaxed.

The 'perception' comes from reality: you shouldn't frame it as if there is this false perception that exists and ask us to help you find out why, assuming your position is true and moving on without argument -- it is a true perception, it just isn't only based on income and on that arbitrary cutoff.

Also, "mid-2000s" (the graph that you linked) was a long, long time ago in terms of wealth inequality. It was before the great recession which devastatingly altered the inequality landscape.

The minimum income to be in the top 1% is US$493,000

I'd love to see these figures broken down to 1% or .1% level to see if what you point out holds true

He also says "I wish I could pay off the mortgage". From what he described, he should be able to pay it off in a year or two.

Doesn't add up.

Retiring in 15 years requires quite a bit of investment every year if he wants to roughly maintain income at retirement, and many people would hope to be better off over time. Depending on how much risk he is willing to take, he might need to invest as much as $400,000 per year!

For such an early retirement he might be seeking an eventual portfolio of as much as $30,000,000 before he retires. Right now you can't count on much more than a couple of percent above inflation return on investments without taking risks that he might not be comfortable with.