The title question is such an american thing to ask.. Again and again, specially in HN, I see people who are completely incapable of seeing any other value in life other than monetary.
You basically have to be more focused on money. I am not suggesting any policy changes (at least not here), but you adjust to the environment as it is.
For instance, this person had insurance and it still cost $877K to deliver triplets. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/16/why-does-it-...)
The average cost of college for a state school over four years is $80K (https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...) and consider that the average household has 2 kids.
How much would you have to save to be able to afford to take a 3-6 months in paternal/maternal leave?
How much would you need to save if you were out of work for six months?
What if you were out of work because you were sick or had a sick child? Now you have a double whammy of no job and no insurance - with medical bills.
> How much would you have to save to be able to afford to take a 3-6 months in paternal/maternal leave?
Only have kids if you can afford it.
Guess what happens to the economy and especially the pay as you go social security/Medicare programs when the retired/worker ratio increases?
Are people not suppose to have children just in case their children get sick or they have a difficult pregnancy and they may have a $50K medical bill?
The median household income in the US is about $63K a year (https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/)
For example, if a rich person does activity X and a poor person does the same, equivalent activity X, it can happen (and it does happen) that they say that the poor person is an idiot while the rich person is a genius. For the same exact thing.
Rich people know this. They know they are buying everything around them, including people. None of the rich people I know are naive in the sense that they think are that funny, interesting, intelligent or attractive, especially to females. The things that I've seen rich people get away with, I guarantee, 99% of HN will not believe. Probably me too, if I didn't witness it. Not talking about crimes here (although that happens, too). Just social things.
It's all a game and everyone involved knows exactly how everything is setup, but for some reason, we look the other way and if we say anything like this in real life, we would be thought of as "bitter" or jealous or something.
Money is indisputably important, but the best marker of intelligence that I have consistently seen is the right attitude and appreciation of money.
And I am saying this as someone well off, who will most probably never have any financial issues in life. So this is not "bitterness" or envy of the rich or something.
Felix Dennis, an actual billionaire, called it the "point at the sky" theory of wealth creation. It's really a form of cargo culting.
On the other aspect, there are a number of what Thomas J. Stanley call "gold collar" workers: young, singles who often live at home but make relatively good money and so tend to buy things they cannot afford like used Lexuses, BMWs, Mercedes, etc. He even wrote a book about it "Stop Acting Rich."
Could you give some examples please?
It's not surprising that a lot of people here buy into the mythology that having a high IQ ranks them among an elite class in a technical meritocracy, and that they're just one app and a bit of hustle away from a million dollar buyout.