However, what even that misses is coupons and sales.
It's fairly miserable to endlessly hear how a problem is 1x big when it's actually 4x big for most folks in your region.
People reporting their experience will have significant distortion due to how our minds work.
Median family income is 80K in 2021. The median HH income for 2021 will come out soon, but it will be north of 70K.
Over the last generation, indications are far over half experienced regular struggles.
2019 - nearly 70 percent of Americans have less than $1,000 stashed away https://www.statista.com/chart/20323/americans-lack-savings/
2021 - Firehosing cash directly to the public helped some: 25% had no emergency savings, 26% say they have some emergency savings https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/28/51percent-of-americans-have-...
Most people experience "regular struggles", by definition. Life is a struggle. But we have a way of defining who is poor and who isn't in terms of income, and it's good to use the same language as everyone else. The "large majority" of the U.S. is not poor. That's just obviously true from the income data I cited.
If that data is not enough, look at SCF wealth data here:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/table...
Median Household networth of 50-75 percentile - what you call "large majority" - is $240K. That's not poor.
Median Household networth of 25-49.9 percentile is $58K. Also not not poor.
Median (50th percentile) networth is $121K.
I really encourage more of a reality-based approach to throwing around phrases like "the large majority of Americans are poor".
This seems obtuse. The entire thread is focused on finances. It should be self-evident my post is referring to financial struggles.
> But we have a way of defining who is poor and who isn't in terms of income, and it's good to use the same language as everyone else.
Different metrics aren't a different language.
> The "large majority" of the U.S. is not poor.
A narrowly crafted a declaration makes it easier to find metrics that fit. With that comes a weird assumption that those metrics are the same ones that matter to poor Americans.
For actual people - the meaningful measures of financial health are the long term security of food, housing, medicine and the resources needed to maintain them (eg:savings,transportation).
For actual people - when those things become unobtainable, a state of poverty is in play.
If preferred metrics aren't reflecting long-term or recurring conditions of poverty, maybe we should pivot to metrics that do.
You aren't citing a "different metric". You are citing an unscientific internet poll by Bankrate.com, whose results were released as a PR announcement meant to encourage people to open savings accounts. The "no savings" means "no money in a savings account" by those who answer the poll. You know nothing about whether these people were even in the labor force, how old they were, what money they had in checking accounts or 401Ks or money market mutual funds, and whether they were a representative sample (N=hundreds). Because an internet poll is not a study, and a marketing campaign is not scientific data.
This is clickbait. If you have a quality study not published by bankrate.com, then please cite it. And also explain why you are ignoring the US Census and the SCF, which is what everyone who studies household wealth uses.
I am citing the gold-standard academic study of household finances -- the survey of consumer finances, and the gold standard study of income as determined by the Census. This is not a situation of "different metrics", this is a situation of bad data versus good data leading to bad conclusions versus accurate conclusions.
Please look to the Census and academic studies to form your worldview of the state of US household finances rather than Bankrate.com's marketing department.
Again, this seems obtuse. It is interesting that your inference of a single poll ignores the many (well publicized) savings studies, that are regularly conducted by a wide number of organizations.
> I am citing the gold-standard study of household finances conducted by the Federal Reserve regularly since the 1970s
That's nice. Metrics adopted in the 1970s based on data from even earlier decades doesn't universally inspire the confidence that you seem to feel. I'd offer that metrics that well reflect the ~entirety of America who faces a meaningful risk of losing housing/medicine/food would likely be the metrics that most matter to people facing those risks.
Otherwise it feels similar to hearing the unemployment rate is 4.9% while >24% of 16-64 aren't working.
Hell, as a yearly income, that's poor much less a networth. Not destitute, but definitely poor. You can't afford to live anywhere near a city and probably live in a trailer or worse (shack with limited services). The metric is by household, so no splitting with roommates.
Not really, because this is primarily young people who are building savings. By retirement age, the savings are much higher even for the median household. Even in the 45-54 cohort, the median networth is 168K. By the time you reach 55-64, median HH income is $213K. Post-retirement, 65-74, median network is $266K. Then it starts to decline as people spend down their savings, so 75 and over it's $254K.
I mean, I guess you can call whatever you want "poor", but we have standard definitions for these things.
And an income of $58K is not "poor" for any age, but FYI median household income for all ages is north of $70K.
It is today and going forward, as far as anyone can tell.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/45ae3dae-en.pdf?expi...
Yes, the definitions. Is it a definition or a lived experience? Politicians love to define away poverty.
These definitions are how millionaires were able to claim they are poor to get assistance during COVID.
Life is a struggle. But why? Why is it a struggle in this country, the "richest" country? Why do I have to be homeless, living in a minivan, fighting a mental illness? That is by design. This squid game we are living in is a design, it has rules, and we can change them in a second. But most people just want to be the next million/billionaire so they are afraid that changing the rules will mean they do not get the piggy bank of money they dangle over your head.
As a society we are poor. Compared to people in countries like France and Finland, we are poor, because we are always faced with these life and death decisions about jobs and healthcare. That is what it feel like to be poor; always guarding yourself, always frightened.
Anyone who has access to a kitchen can with practice use minimal time and effort produce meals that are competitive with processed options from frozen foods, grocery store chickens, and of course fast food joints. Though cuts of meat have gone way up in price, whole chickens are still reasonably priced for those who can process a bird which is not really that hard.