Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_economist | Hacker News Reader

They aren't completely wrong.

76% of Americans spend a year of their life in the top 20%, 56% in the top 10%.

https://www.aei.org/publication/evidence-shows-significant-i...

The top 10% for individuals is 114k[0] and for a household is 178k[1]. They may eventually get to millionaire status, but there's still a long way to go. Basically, getting to 100+k at the end of a long career and plenty of saving & investing (which Americans are not great at [2]) may get you there, but I don't think those stats you provided really bear out the case.

[0] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

[1] https://dqydj.com/united-states-household-income-brackets-pe...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/14/heres-how-many-americans-are...

Millionaire status has been retconned to mean $1M/yr in income, to keep it out of the realm of something you can just work for and achieve with a middle class lifetime.

I find it strange you're pulling out stats to refute the person you're responding to and prove an oddly specific quote that I believe misses the point entirely.

Why? A bit of context to clear up a misconception or a misleading stats isn't a bad thing.

That study, and the corresponding NYTimes article, present serious issues with their presentation - no effort was made to identify or refute potential non-standard sources of that income. This came up just recently on HN and it was mentioned that inheritance could offer this momentary bump - I am much more suspicious this "golden year" is the one where retirees realize the accumulated value of their real-estate in a working city - turning it into cash and a much more affordable property in a retirement area (florida, arizona etc...)

So I disagree, they're pretty completely wrong.

> 76% of Americans spend a year of their life in the top 20%,

That's not that surprising; median income for 45-54 age range is about 70th percentile overall, so do a little better than median in this age range and it's easy to hit top 20%; of courses this is still an income that is (especially on a non-sustained basis) not a sign of significant difference in economic relationships from the median—its working or lower middle class, in traditional terms, and not—contrary to AEIs spin, evidence for class mobility.

Your claim is misleadingly stated. When you say "top 20%" in this context, people would naturally think you mean top 20% by wealth, because that had been the context previously. Somebody would have to follow your link to see it's actually about income. That's a very different thing. I've seen this particular sleight of hand entirely too much lately on HN, to the extent that I'm seriously beginning to wonder if it's merely coincidence.

>> My intuition about this as someone who grew up in America and has traveled internationally quite a bit is that nowhere else on earth are the middle classes so convinced that one day they will be "millionaires" than here.

>They aren't completely wrong. 76% of Americans spend a year of their life in the top 20%, 56% in the top 10%.

Top 20% is > $79,000

Top 10% is > $114,000

That's not even in the ballpark. They are completely wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com