How is that possible? It's almost as if your "baseline of living" is actually "living high on the hog as if tomorrow doesn't exist".
Is paying the rent 'living high on the hog'? I don't get it. Rent alone on a studio flat in loads of places is 10K. If you move away you earn less than you save on the rent.
What's the suggestion? Live 2 to a room? Live in a car?
Theoretically possible if you're determined I suppose.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/25/uk-incomes-how-...
Pretty much every story you could tell to explain this away (e.g., folks in the City earn 2x as much but cost of living is 2x higher) kind of undermine any real inequality story.
A person working in London cannot live like a person working in Preston (for the same amount). The same quality of life costs more.
Surely you understand this? Do you work FT? I don't really know how to go further with this, it feels a bit like trying to prove that the sky is blue.
Also, if inequality is merely a matter of where one lives, why do you care?
As I said, this sort of observation seriously undermines basically every complaint about inequality.
Your rebuttal was that the 5th decile earning twice as much surely can, because the 1st decile survive by spending less.
My argument is that the 5th decile are predominantly in higher cost of living areas and end up in roughly the same situation.
But let's just concede and say that they can. No doubt some can - there are people earning median UK wage in the north.
The bottom guys still can't save at all. Do they just not matter? Should 10/20/30/40% of the population be stuck renting for their entire lives? Is that reasonable?
I am not making the claim that a London worker earning double a Preston worker is a problem.
My claim is that people earning far more than that being able to build masses of capital whilst others cannot build capital at all is a problem.
It's not really about the numbers at all; it's more the idea that me "owning" 20 homes and forcing others to labour if they want to live in them is OK.
I dunno. I kind of don't have enough interest in continuing this, I gain nothing from convincing you. I know people who cannot save, many of them, they exist. They aren't intelligent enough to get out of that hole unless they won a lottery or similar. I don't need to convince you that they exist, because I can like, go and visit them. I want to fix that, you seemingly don't, best of luck.