there are doctors making $500k/year living paycheck to paycheck. There are people working fast food who manage to save money. It is a spending problem.
The things you list do not help either group, but the fact is most people spend every penny.
The things you list do not help either group, but the fact is most people spend every penny.
This isn't true, at least in any sense of the word we would agree with. (Wife works in medicine, is a doctor at this level, we run in these circles). They are "living paycheck to paycheck" in the sense that they've set their stock brokerage to automagically deduct 10k usd/month from their bank account, and they pay 10k/month on a mortgage (which accumulate equity) and their checking account doesn't grow in size and their monthly float is the same. Some of them pay for private school which means they only save 3k/month instead of 10k/month, how oppressive. Their checking account "funny money they allow themselves to spend on anything" isn't growing and is the same, but their net worth is growing 15k/month.
The existence of a statistically insignifcant number of counter-examples on either end does not negate the broader societal trend toward greater wealth/income disparity.
Can you provide a source for that please ? Also, it would be interesting to find how much of their expenses are paying back their insanely high tuition-fees.