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Comment by afterburner | Hacker News Reader

You must be thinking top 1% in the world. To be in the top 1% in the US, you need more like a $450,000 income.

http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/

He's trying to measure himself against the average single person his age. Of course, more realistically according to the Bay Area metric, he is below the household poverty line.

Yes. This is what I did from a calculator by fusion http://fusion.net/story/41833/wealth-gap-calculator-are-you-...

Mixed up my numbers, top 1% for age group ~106k. Bay Area metric I make more than median household, which is scary since that means the average single income family in the Bay Area would be barely scraping by (not hard to believe).

Just because you make more than median doesn't mean you aren't still below the household poverty line. Once you grasp that, you'll begin to understand the completely upside down economy of the Bay Area. Palo Alto considers below 250k/y household low enough to qualify for subsidized housing. The top 1% make $450k and the top 1% in San Francisco make nearly $1m. You are in a crazy context you aren't yet fully realizing.

Not sure what craziness you think I don't perceive. My initial comment is to demonstrate how a person in my generation that is doing relatively well financially, are not versed in the economic concepts the parent comment provided (debt cycle). That it is not normal for us to know such concepts.

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