As has been stated repeatedly in this topic, the median US household has more disposable income than the median in any other country. That doesn't sound like there is a national crisis to me.
That’s ~$7000 more than the median earnings of the overall population (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm).
There will be college grads struggling and non grads thriving, but on average a person just out of college is doing at least as well as the general population income wise and can expect their incomes to rise with time.
> That’s ~$7000 more than the median earnings...
You shouldn't be comparing an average to a median. You should be using either the average earnings, or the median new grad salary.
She has a car to worry about though. That’s more than I ever had.
It’s not a pissing match. Not trying to take away from their experience. I just feels it’s weird that US people always say gas and cars are so expensive when relatively, gas is incredibly cheap in the USA (not sure about cars, but given how many there are, they should be cheaper too).
It's an old beat up car with 150k miles that was given to them.
She goes to Western North Carolina University. There are no buses, there are no sidewalks, every road is essentially a divided highway. It's not a lifestyle choice where they are living 50 miles away from where they work. Even then, the car was used to go to Hurricane Helene Relief volunteering, otherwise it's for groceries, and to take them to trail heads to hike.
Even then, I'm speaking to the point that they have NO extra money. The lifestyle of burning $30/month in gas is not the point nor the issue.
Second reaction - jeez - what a garbage assumption to make. Paraphrasing you: "oh, they must just spend too much to have any money. Bad life choices." Garbage assumption dude, you so missed the mark - you would be ashamed if you knew the person in question here.
Further, they are not the only person I know in that situation - and if it were just due to excess of spending money; I would have not raised it as an example of "my sampling bias".
It's very bad practice to assume and then contradict someone else's lived experience based on that assumption. It's a great way to be wrong, way wrong (and sometimes not even know it). Your bet is bad. I'm sure there are plenty of examples out of the millions of people that we are talking about, where it would be right. In this case, nope - just ignorant and wrong.
I've traveled the world a lot, including the US South. They are VERY rich out there, but think they are poor, that's it.
But there is also that famous stat that income in Mississippi is on par with Britain or France.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/03/07/still-tr...
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/its-great-to-live-in-t...
I agree with deepsun that the comparison factor is huge here:
https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-aim-of-maximising-...
Is it because all the fear mongering about $5 eggs (They are $3 at my grocery, btw) was overblown?
Because the median voter is largely uninformed and irrational.
> Is it because all the fear mongering about $5 eggs (They are $3 at my grocery, btw) was overblown?
It is overblown in that most Americans can comfortably afford essentials and more compared to their peers and most of history. That doesn't mean they aren't any less annoyed about the current economy, which is what drives votes.
Is this only true when they make decisions you don't agree with or also when they elect politicians you like?
can you clarify where "real america" is? are places like Spartanburg, SC or Tuscaloosa, AL "real america" because you can commonly find BMWs and Mercedes in these areas.
That said, they're also not uncommon - a quick look at registration data suggests ~8% of cars "on the road" are BMWs, though of course just because a car legally could be on the road doesn't mean it's being driven with any regularity (I had a co-worker years back whose pastime was buying old BMWs and fixing them up; apparently they could be had relatively inexpensively at the time, as servicing was pricey).
Which is why all this pedantry misses the point: there's nothing terribly special about BMW; total cost of ownership is probably higher than domestic brands, but you could just as well pad out your ordinary expenses with a Ford or GM payment; a new Suburban or nicer pickup can soak up just as much excess cash as that X3.
Then again, Real Americans drive increasingly old used cars.
Relatedly, MB didn’t import the EQC into the US. Yet the GLC is the best-selling Mercedes in America. I just learned that they cancelled the EQC due to disappointing sales and will be introducing an electric GLC to the US.
Similarly, how many households do you know with combined income of less than $62k? Because that is also the majority.
You're not going to find these people in BMWs or big houses, well not without life destroying debt at least. People being completely aloof of these data (or headlines like this one) are how you get November 5th.
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States
Sure, and for all of us driving around and near Atherton or any other wealth enclave even in a normal city, all these cars will seem common. And especially common to engineers with multi-million dollar RSU portfolios who hang around the homes of other engineers with multi-million dollar RSU portfolios. It might even make us think everything is OK.
Half the country earns below the median wage. (yes, its a joke but true)
Tons of people live on fixed incomes like social security. One big medical co-pay destroys your entire budget for the year. My mom got a $2000 balance bill under her medicare provider for cataract removal. If I wasnt her backstop, this would have wiped out a year of savings.
Not everyone is a SWE, in fact most people have normal jobs with normal incomes. Yes, incomes are going up, but only median incomes. Not everyone's income is going up.
Seeing BMWs should not be a handwave that everyone is doing well. We really should have empathy for the troubles a fraction of our neighbors are going thru. In a country with a large enough population, fractions are a huge number of people.
It’s easy to point fingers at something (anything, really) and have it stick when the actual cause - including bad health habits, unmet social needs, a constant barrage of BS on the media, and no meaningful plan or hope to actually resolve any of this - seems unapproachable/unresolvable.
anxiety because their standard of living went down from before the high inflation from the economic so-called stimulus, and election because they trust Trump to grow the economy by removing obstacles to growth. The US economy is more dynamic than the European economy because of less regulation and bureaucracy. As one example, companies are more willing to hire workers for a speculative new project if they don't have to pay extensive wages to lay people off if the project fails. American workers are used to it and are willing to take good jobs when they are offered, and it just makes the economy go faster, "ahead of its rivals".
That informed electorate?
Mosty because of marketing and social medias.
When you are targeted 24h/d by ads on what shit you should buy or subscribe to and you feel you couldn't afford 10% of it while your social medias feed seems to show a lot of people enjoying them, you feel like cost of living is way too high.
Because when inflation got under control, prices didn’t go down. They just stopped going up so fast.
We’re at the tail end of the most significant period of inflation in the US since the 1970’s. While incomes are growing slowly and unemployment is low, the pain of inflation is still being felt.
Until real incomes grow significantly, people are going to feel worse off than before the period of inflation.