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Comment by connorgutman | Hacker News Reader

I am absolutely genuine, and I think you do not understand the average American. The rest of the world may dream about our wages but it's still putting lipstick on a pig. Most the people I know can't even feed their families right now, let alone buy a book for pleasure. I'm not sure where you are getting your information from but the lives of college-educated middle-class Americans and above are not representative of the majority. I will clarify, I obviously DO NOT think that my situation compares to someone in another country, specifically under-developed ones. In the context of books and recreational activities, however, I think you are vastly overestimating the US.

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I agree with you, even if it is unethical to pirate books I'd make the case that pirating books you can't afford to buy is what helped a non-trivial amount of people escape the generational cycle of poverty. In this particular case, stealing knowledge for a chance at a better career, the end might justify the means.

Programmers from poor countries and poor backgrounds are were they are today making a good living from this career probably because of torrents with collections of programming books back from 10 years ago or more when free video learning on YouTube wasn't as developed as it is today.

I made some sweeping generalizations but I hope I got my point across at least. This criminal avenue of pirating books and stealing potential revenue from authors is what allows some people to enjoy a better living.

Just a minor clarification, nobody is stealing. Rather they are infringing on the author’s copyright.

The distinction is important. Stealing is taking something from someone else. Infringing copyright is a legal construct.

Median household income in the US in 2022 is $78,000. The average American has adequate income and can't justify pirating movies, books, music, porn, etc. on the basis of poverty.

That is a wildly skewed outlook. The per-capita income in America is $35,000 (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/SEX255221). Household income, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, includes the gross cash income of all people ages 15 years or older occupying the same housing unit, regardless of how they are related, if at all. Meaning my household income is somewhere above $100K because I have 3 roommates. Typically, the lower your income the more roommates you have. Median household income is a useless figure for determining how well the average American is doing.

This context free numbers isn't illustrative or even useful. The world isn't populated by median Americans earning median salaries in a median cost of living area. Imagine 5 households in areas where the poverty line for their household size are 30k 50k and 70k 70k 70k

We have could have learned from the sample that the majority live in areas where wages are higher but so are costs of living and the median value is 70k which seems like a lot of money until we figure out that rent alone costs most of this money and all parties are on food stamps. This also ignores just how far below that median value many of the bottom half actually are. The bottom half lest we forget is 169 million Americans many just getting by as their entire segment of the population shares about 10% of the total income and virtually none of its wealth. None of these facts about the actual distribution of wealth and income is captured by looking at a median income and making up a fiction about what an imaginary American can afford.

>None of these facts about the actual distribution of wealth and income is captured by looking at a median income and making up a fiction about what an imaginary American can afford.

Funny you would end by writing of making up a fiction about what an imaginary American can afford when both this comment and your other one are imaginary realities. You say rent takes up most of some $70k, it doesn't. You say "all parties" at that income level are on food stamps, they're not, the percentage of Americans using food stamps varies by year but is 13-15%. You say 169 million Americans are below the median income, no, because we're talking about household income. And, you know, why would you put the 72 million children into this as they generally have $0 income and their expenses are paid by their parents. As well, I'm quite aware of what the distribution of income as I've looked it up in the past. The Congressional Budget Office does a regular report on the distribution of household income and taxes. In the last such report, 2018, the average pretax household income for the bottom quintile before taxes is $22k, after taxes and means tested transfers their income is $38k (yes, they do have a negative net tax rate.) Which is sufficient to live in most big cities in the US.

These [0] people did an analysis of the cost of living in the largest 74 cities in the US. The most expensive among these cities was Irvine, CA with a monthly cost of living of $3062 and a median individual income of $55k. Americans don't have to fight rats for scraps of food from the trash.

0. https://www.move.org/lowest-cost-of-living-by-us-city/

Seems I didn't make myself clear the point is that looking at the median income tells you nothing about the actual distribution of disposable income because someone barely making it in a high income zone could trivially have what seems like a high income and have little disposable income. This is especially true with rent and cost of living both rising faster than most people's incomes. The bottom half has little disposable income everywhere except for your projections.

Before I get to some numbers nobody will read the fact is I doubt very much that most readers here have anything but a passing understanding of what its like to actually be at the bottom.

Lets zoom on down to irving and imagine we are dealing with a parent or 2 and 1 kid and need a 2 bedroom apartment. Going on a brief peruse of apartments.com I'm seeing a 2 br apartment starts at about 2600 USDA thrifty food plan would suggest about 780 per month for 3 people depending on age and sex.

If we can't actually deal with both people working while using just public transit we will have to probably burn 800 a month for car payment, insurance, upkeep and gas.

Electricity/water another 300-350

Phones another 60 minimum, internet 80

Now lets talk about health insurance we are probably going to pay about $500 and easily more like 750 for something that isn't a complete joke.

Now lets talk about savings because if we don't have any the first time the car needs to be repaired we're all going to lose our jobs and end up homeless plus at some point we will have to retire so allocate $500 for that.

We are at about 6000 a month while still only sketching out the outline of a life. I'm assuming our fictional family would also like to wear cloths, by toilet paper, wash their clothes, have some form of entertainment and enlightenment, maybe even engage in the normal family activity of having a pet animal of some sort bigger than a hamster.

We would probably be able to live a reasonable life for more like 7000 a month or 84,000. This means Joe median+ is probably OK but again ONE HALF OF PEOPLE ARE BELOW THE MEDIAN BY DEFINITION AND THEY ARE NOT EVENLY DISTRIBUTED IN TOTAL OR DISPOSABLE INCOME. Most of the poor folks are seeing their already insufficient wages and the cost of health insurance and rent going up and wondering if they can afford to pay rent and health care in 5 years while you insist they have plenty of money to spare. You don't live in the same universe. Going to move.org gives you an incredibly shitty approximation of what it actually costs to live your life. You know less by far than you think you do.

> The US has the largest gap between its top earners and everyone else. The Netherlands actually surpasses the US for GDP per-capita of the bottom 99%, and the difference between Germany and the US narrows considerably.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/psd/removing-oligarchs-from-per-...

I wonder what would happen if you removed the top 10%, other than that 99% of the people posting on HN wouldn't be counted.

A. The economy is not zero sum. Lebron James making lots of money doesn't take anything away from you.

B. Median: the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. It's not an average, there are no outliers dragging the median up. It's just an ordered listing and then looking at the one in the middle and seeing how much they make per year. If you removed all the billionaires and their income from the chart it wouldn't change the median income at all because the position of the median would only move 350 places. If you took away the top ten percent the median position would shift to the left 5% and the median annual income decreases a few thousand dollars per year. But in no way is the typical American living in poverty and desperation. (Turns out that only 11% of the US live in poverty.)

How do you define poverty? The federal poverty line is a figure that where most people live would afford you a fine living commuting between your 2 jobs and your tent living as a hobo and the public library where you give yourself a sponge bath.

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