How is this surprising in a world with increasing global labor supply and levels of automation?
Actually I think innumeracy is a big problem for a lot of people with low incomes. I have a relative who I suspect is innumerate and it’s both fascinating and sad when you get insight into their budgeting/estimation abilities.
In any case, your first statement is objectively wrong (they can't afford decent food), and it's incredibly insulting on both a personal and intellectual level to compare people who are unable to keep themselves from dumping hundreds of dollars on luxuries to people who are splurging on, say, a full lunch instead of the PB+J they'd have time to pack otherwise.
the wavefront of the system of global capital since agriculture has been the liquidation of peoples for whom mass codified exchanges of increasing complexity didn't compute
Even 30 minutes of prep and cooking time can be too much to expect from someone after commuting home from their two jobs.
It isn’t just the lower class, either. I know far too many people that make six figures and still complain that they live paycheck to paycheck, but meanwhile blow $500 at the bar every week, or buy a new $300 pair of shoes every month, or a new $1500 iPhone every year. There is a weird phenomenon where even people with means will prioritize luxuries and then complain that they don’t have enough money to save for a house or save for retirement. You see this on HN too, with several recent examples of posters saying that their $300k/year FAANG salary is too low and they can’t afford to live on it.
The issue I see with a lot of people in particular is spending too much on cars, food, (especially eating out) and clothes. If you make $150k+ in the Bay Area, whatever. But a lot of people with lower incomes get caught up in this. Where I’m from you can live by yourself decently on just $25k-40k a year, but you don’t have a lot of room for error.
For example, here [1] is UK by quintile: In 2017/18, the average UK household income before housing costs was:
top quintile: £52,000 second highest quintile: £34,700 middle quintile: £26,400 second lowest quintile: £20,000 bottom quintile: £13,100 The average UK household income after housing costs was:
top quintile: £47,700 second highest quintile: £30,900 middle quintile: £22,800 second lowest quintile: £16,100 bottom quintile: £9,200
Here [2] is the US, 2018 quntiles: 13,775; 37,293; 63,572 ; 101,570; 233,895
PPP Adjusted means adjusted to cost of living [3]. Adjusting the incomes above gives for the bottom 20% of US $13.7K income, for UK $13.1K.
From all the data I can see over many countries, the US poor and lower middle class are doing much better than almost any place in the world.
[1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-...
[2] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
[3] https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...
You see this alot in school data. The top 90% of schools would, if averaged, put the US in top standing. However, those bottom 10% pull us down (alot). The big fight in America right now is whether we cut those bottom 10% and say EOBAD's (GOP), or work to help them catch up (Democrats).
Direct money comparaisons doesn't explain everything unfortunately, and if you just look at that the US is clearly ahead..
Do you mean pre-college? In which case the US spends more per pupil than OECD average by quite a bit.
If you mean college, then most OECD countries have nowhere the number of people in college as the US. And there are ample cheap local colleges in the US - people choose more costly ones because they can.
>healthcare
Yep, I stated that one. We're about twice the per capita cost as OECD countries. That cost is spread through the system, including doctor and nurse salaries being quite a bit higher. This is likely due to Baumol's Cost Disease, since almost all higher skilled jobs in the US pay about twice OECD countries. So to drive our cost to OECD levels, you'd need to mandate locally low salaries for doctors and nurses, which would result in lower quality care.
I'm not sure what a solution is here, but it's highly nontrivial.
>transportation
Gas far cheaper in the US than OECD average, and likely cheaper than most if not all OECD countries. Or did you mean in city busses? In which case ours are similar. Or did you mean metro tickets? Again, same cost. Or are you talking about intra-city routes, in which case again we're similar costs.
Please clarify with data.
>not to mention bad public services...
All depends on where you live. To compare the US (by area and population) to somewhere else, you'd need to include the entire EU, or all of OECD, in which case you're adding places with terrible services.
If you want to pick small, nice countries, then pick small, nice states, and again, very similar.
The bureaucracy of billing in the US is something magical that somehow manages to be worse in outcome and number of people involved than French bureaucracy (and the bar is high in terms of badness)
A 1 bedroom in my immediate are rents for @1800/month. Go 5 miles down the road and the same space rents for $1000-1200/month. Differences? "Desirability" "newness" "better schools (which makes no sense if you don't have kids" "atmosphere (I read everyone looks like me)"
You can go into some older areas of the city and find rents below $800/month.
Let's consider why older housing is so much cheaper for a second.. Property tax isn't recalculated until you update the building or rebuild on the property. So it's a huge disincentive to ever change any buildings, split lots, etc.
Perhaps because “you” value morals other than “make the most money I possibly can”? Or you want to provide housing that’s affordable by those who do the blue collar, nearly-minimum-wage work that powers our modern cities?
Profit isn’t everything. I’ll even go so far as to say that the current expectation to get “maximum profits at any cost” is a (“The”?) driving factor in the problems we lament in our society.
$800/m is still precarious for roughly twice minimum wage. Food is also more expensive and harder to get to in less upscale areas of most cities.
Suffice it to say, these situations are far more common in cities than the ones you've described.