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Comment by jpeter | Hacker News Reader

How is that even possible if the median income is $59.000?

That’s 4900 dollars per month before taxes. Substract taxes, health insurance, rent, bills etc and I think it becomes obvious why you’d live paycheck to paycheck. 59k is not much given how expensive some of the essential necessities (place to live, healthcare etc) have become. Throw in car and student loans just to get rid of any left over money you might struggle to save per month.

What's strange is Europeans are constantly told that everything is so much cheaper in the US. I used to earn that median salary according to current exchange rates, and I had an incredibly comfortable life. Owned my own car. Never worried about finances at all.

A lot of things, like consumer goods, are cheaper, but Europeans aren't paying thousands a month for private health insurance or whatever.

Commodities might be cheaper overall, but that's like taking a $10,000 paycut for a $1,000 annual perk when you look at all the other crap going on in the US.

Well some things are way cheaper in US, like gas which makes owning a car cheaper. Most consumer goods are also cheaper due to no VAT and stuff like that. But Europe has things going for it too. Free healthcare and free education being the top 2 areas were you save a ton of money compared to US (literally tens of thousands dollars per year you don’t have to spend).

If you have 59K and can't live comfortably, then you are clearly doing something wrong. Or perhaps you have a pretty skewed view on what are “essential necessities”.

Depends on your circumstances. 59k per year on NYC or San Francisco does not give you comfortable life. In some rural area I agree.

That's median household income.

Edit: Average number of people per household in us is 2.54 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...).

The article uses a quote of a quote.

The Guardian attributes

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...

Who attribute a "CareerBuilder Study"

>The job-hunting site polled over 2,000 hiring and human resource managers and more than 3,000 full-time employees between May and June.

Which you can find a synopsis of here

http://press.careerbuilder.com/2017-08-24-Living-Paycheck-to...

Which states

>Having a higher salary doesn't necessarily mean money woes are behind you, with nearly one in 10 workers making $100,000 or more (9 percent) saying they usually or always live paycheck-to-paycheck and 59 percent in that income bracket in debt. Twenty-eight percent of workers making $50,000-$99,999 usually or always live paycheck to paycheck, 70 percent are in debt; and 51 percent of those making less than $50,000 usually or always live paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet, 73 percent are in debt.

At least the Guardian attributing it now.

A large portion of the population live in the urban centers, where 59k is barely more than what you need to live paycheck to paycheck.

Also factor in the credit card culture and you get this mess.

According to the source given in the article [1], median worker wage is 44,564 (for a 40-hour workweek).

edit: It could get to 59,000 if these people actually worked 53 hours a week.

>>>According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median wage for workers in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2017 was $857 per week or $44,564 per year for a 40-hour workweek.

[1] https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-information...

But that's for a 40 hour work week, there's many workers that want to work 40 hours but have jobs where they can't work that much.

yep. That was my point, $59,000 seems too high.

$59,000 is median household income.

Don't get sick, have kids, want an education, want a house, or get old. That's how.

This is the correct answer. The modern salary given to someone who is extremely responsible and frugal is enough to cover rent, food, transportation, and the various insurances needed to cope with all of the above.

What is to be understood from your comment ? That we should not aspire or be encouraged to be responsible or frugal ?

Oh, what I mean is, the original comment said "how does someone live on $59,000?". Then someone commented, "don't get sick, don't have kids, etc".

Then I responded by setting some parameters. "As long as you are frugal and responsible, $59,000 a year is enough to make sure you are fed and sheltered and that's about it".

If someone chooses to spend their $59,000 on a new BMW and 5 vacations to Paris and granite countertops, then $59,000 will not even be enough to feed them and pay their rent/mortgage bill! :)

I suspect the parent had asked because there are quite a few countries where median is less than $10000/year.

The cost of living in those countries is also much lower than in the US.

True for many places but not for all. I'm sure there are places in the world where cost of living is not that much cheaper, while income levels are significantly worse than in the US.

I'm thinking of Moscow in particular (where rent prices are also quite high). 2017 median income was, reportedly, about 63k RUB/month (~$1k/mo) after the taxes: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... That makes (very roughly) 2.5x cheaper cost of living difference to the US, while income difference is, very roughly, about 4x less ($12k vs $50k after taxes)

"How is that even possible if the median income is $59.000?"

That's median household (or family) income.

If your household consists of 2 people, that $59k is slashed to $29k per person.

So the real per-capita median income is significantly lower than $59k.

The shape of the income distribution is more important than the median number. The inequality is huge and growing, only a small fraction have the median income.

The very definition of a median income is that approximately 50% earn more than that. It’s not a small fraction.

If you want to know more about the distribution, then perhaps it's time to calculate σ...

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