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Comment by aurareturn | Hacker News Reader

Again, it’s not absurd. It’s hard to fathom but it’s true. The math doesn’t lie. Cost of living is outrageous here. $400k is not rich. Try 40 million instead.

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But I just outlined how to be more rich than almost anyone in the country, in both real estate and disposable income available to you, with 40 seconds of thought. Maybe you can't own a 2.9 million dollar home on 400k, but you could own multiple of the homes most of us are looking for without blinking. Able to be a landlord at any point and charge rent to pay off a mortgage on a 400k home for you. Do that 3 or 4 times and you have your 2.9 million. Maybe even spend many people's annual salary to have someone take care of those properties as rentals for a few years amd/or renovate them, because that barely puts in a dent in the pocketbook.

400k is far more freedom than most people could ever dream of.

Cool, and how do you think this person got a $400k salary job? It's because the cost of living here is so high that companies have to pay extremely high salaries.

How are you going to get a $400k salary job in Detroit Michigan?

Regardless, 400k is high income. You are just choosing to spend it all on housing.

You may not be rich, but 400k is definitely high income. Hell, 100k is high income.

Look around you. I'm sure someone making 400k/yr has been to a restuarant / bar in the last week, after all they're pretty well off. How do these people that are making less than 50k per year, many also probably going to school, renting houses owned by people with 400k/yr salary, get by if even the people with 400k/yr "can't"?

You must realize even the people I'm describing here are also actually in the top % of the world, and the extra taxes any government would ask of you would barely even help them. There's about 5-10 rungs below the poor people I'm describing that need desprate help. And the idea of someone losing 30k in taxes a year because they have to own a 2 million dollar home instead of a 3 million dollar home is so absurd to the person deciding between school books for their kid or an extra 1 lb of protein for a decent meal.

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