As someone who lived much of their life in real poverty, you can live a pretty decent life on $50k in most of the US. Yeah, you won’t be posting your vacations on Instagram but who cares. Many people live a decent life within these income constraints. There is an enormous amount of government subsidies if you are this poor.
Don’t exaggerate what is required for a decent quality of life in America. It doesn’t benefit anyone.
> ...you can live a pretty decent life on $50k in most of the US.
Where? And what's the size of the household?
It's one thing to make $50,000/year as a single young person sharing an apartment with 2 other people. It's another to be a family of 4.
> Don’t exaggerate what is required for a decent quality of life in America. It doesn’t benefit anyone.
"Decent" is subjective, but we can look at hard numbers.
After taxes, $50,000 will be somewhere between $39,000 and $42,000 in much of the US. That's $3,250 to $3,500/month. The median rental price of a 1 bedroom apartment in the US is about $1,500. A 2 bedroom is somewhere around or north of $1,800. That means the median 1 bedroom apartment already eats up almost 50% of your after-tax income at the lower end.
According to BLS, the average spend on groceries in the US is now over $500/month. The average cost of a used car in the US is now over $25,000. A set of new tires will run you $400 to over $1,000. The average cell phone bill is $140/month.
Do I need to keep going?
Numerous studies show that over half of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and almost three-quarters of middle income earners say their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living.
What doesn't benefit anyone is to pretend that tons of people aren't struggling.
It's unavoidably true that 50% of Americans are going to be below the median. I understand why someone might feel frustrated or say they're struggling if they look at their home, car, groceries, etc. and see that 50% of Americans have better ones. But no economic policy can solve this. A meaningful analysis has to be based on some level of functional adequacy, not just comparing median expenses to below-median income.
It's not about everyone being above average. it's about as few people as possible falling through the cracks because they lost their job. Or in recent cases for the youth, are unable to even get a leg in the door of the job market.
Sadly, we have more than a few people ignorant or outright apathetic towards systematic issues and act like not being rich is a personal failing.
I'm responding to a comment that was quite explicitly about everyone being above average. The commenter listed out a number of average costs to illustrate that they're not affordable to employed households pulling in less than the average. I think it's important to ensure everyone enjoys a decent quality of life, and I'm sure the apathy you're describing exists, but what's much more common in my experience is frustration with the mathematical invariant that 50% of households can't afford a 50th percentile lifestyle.
>what's much more common in my experience is frustration with the mathematical invariant that 50% of households can't afford a 50th percentile lifestyle.
Are we calling "shelter and 2 kids" a "50th percentile lifestyle" now? Is half the country now destined to either not raise family or raise a family on substandard conditions (putting a huge systematic burden on a child's upbringing)?
If such basic goals set by biology a million years ago cannot be obtained, we aren't truly a society anymore. And probably won't be for long.
Again, it depends entirely on what you mean by "substandard". It's entirely reasonable to demand specific standards - "children should have healthy food", "children should have health insurance coverage", etc. The median American child gets these things, with 81% of American children satisfying even the strictest standards of food security and 94% having health insurance. Getting these numbers closer to 100% is a laudable goal, and I've never encountered an effort to do so that I didn't support. Perhaps there's some other standard that isn't commonly tracked but should be!
If you mean "comparatively substandard", again, you have an unresolvable argument with mathematics. No system can possibly arrange things so that 80% or even 60% of American households have a 50th percentile standard of living.
Of course two people with low incomes shouldn't have two kids. But (as detailed in my other comment) you need a 4 person household with 2 kids to get tax negative at $50,000/year. Even a 3 person household with 1 kid isn't tax negative in most of the US at $50,000/year.
So the other poster's argument that $50,000/year isn't so bad because of transfers, tax credits, subsidies, etc. doesn't hold up to real-world examples.
I find comments like this interesting because they're devoid of the details that matter.
What's the size of the household? Could a single person in rural America making $50,000/year save up enough to buy a house? Sure. Could two adults in a $50,000/year as a household? Possibly if they're very frugal. Two people with 1-2 kids? This is where the situation changes dramatically.
The economy exist for the people, not the other way around. If too many people can't get something as fundamental as a family that will guarantee long term survival of mankind, the economy needs to adapt, not the people.
If you're implying abortion (or Swift's proposal) is the only option for birth control, you're very wrong. Are there any roadblocks to condoms or contraceptives in any state in America? I'm not aware of one.
I'm implying that an existing family of 4 in the present day is a bit too late to be "in control of those variables". Unless you have a modest proposal in mind to cull the numbers. Not much point talking in "should" tense.
>Are there any roadblocks to condoms or contraceptives in any state in America?
A few states are working on restricting birth control, no worries.
Presumably the family of 4 isn't a family of 4 from the 1950s. Supporting a family of 4 on $50K or less hasn't been a thing for at a decade, so they were clearly in control of the variables at the relevant point in time.
"Should" is fine because I'm disputing the very idea that this is an issue society should be responsible for solving. If I want a 4 bedroom home or lobster for dinner, buy it, then complain that I've financially overextended myself, is that society's fault or did I go beyond my means?
>A few states are working on restricting birth control, no worries.
So there are no roadblocks preventing them from using contraception in the past or currently. Not much point in talking about "working on" if you're discussing families now...
I don't think you understand the actual point here. Or worse, are choosing not to understand the point.
>Should" is fine
"Should" is not what I'm arguing. If you want to make your theoreticals, find another discussion. I'm simply using this to highlight existing problems and the (lack of) solutions to it. "You should have X" is a dismissal of the problem (and quite frankly, an active show of malice), not a solution to problems caused by systematic issues.
I’m disputing that it’s anyone’s responsibility except their own to find a solution to it.
Work harder, earn more, or make do with less - they chose to take on two 18 year financial commitments and now are complaining that despite the bevy of financial benefits society already gives them compared to individuals without children, it’s not enough.
> After taxes, $50,000 will be somewhere between $39,000 and $42,000 in much of the US
NO. WRONG. Read what I actually said. This was after transfers, at the OP's income range US income tax is NEGATIVE and puts you at the $49,000 I cited.
Yelling doesn't prove your point, and you conveniently avoided answering the most important questions, like where and what household size?
First, there is no credit that offsets payroll tax.
A single person with $50,000/year income is not negative. They'd have about ~$34,000 in taxable income and pay ~$3,800 in federal income tax. A 2 person household filing jointly with no kids would still pay about $1,800.
A family of 4 (2 children) with $50,000/year gross income gets a benefit and probably keeps all of that (or a bit more) in take-home after the standard deduction, child tax credit, EITC. At 155% of the poverty line, they're probably above the SNAP gross-income cutoff but they'd probably get ACA premium subsidies and reduced-price school meals.
But they're still living at 50% of the median household income for a family of 4 and you'd have to explain how you think 4 people living on $4,100/month is anywhere near decent or easy in most of the US. The median rent alone for a 2 bedroom in the US eats up over 40% of that amount.
A family of 3 (1 child) in most states will not be negative after payroll and state tax at $50,000/year gross household income.
Poor people pay payroll taxes, which usually is flat and doesn’t have a big deduction. At $50k, a single person is paying just as much if not slightly more in payroll as they are in income tax.
A single person making $50,000/year is not tax negative in the US. You need a 4 person household with $50,000/year in gross income to get clearly tax negative to the point where their take-home income is $50,000 or slightly above. Even a 3 person household isn't tax negative.
I said in the original post a person with $22,500 BEFORE TAX ends up with $49,000 AFTER TAX AND TRANSFERS. There is no additional income tax after receiving the negative income tax! That's the final number!
A single person with no children making $22,500 before tax does not come away with $49,000 after tax and transfers. Look it up, dude.
I assume you saw the CBO distribution-of-income report and didn't actually read it. The distribution-of-income figures look at HOUSEHOLD averages. So you're talking about families with children, retirees, etc. who are getting EITC, the child tax credit, SNAP and Medicaid.
Single people without children get virtually none of those and are actually in the worst position of all because so little is available to them.
According to CBO, the lowest fifth of HOUSEHOLDS (making $20,000–$25,000) get about $45,000–50,000 in "income after transfers and taxes."
A large chunk of that ~$25,000 in average HOUSEHOLD transfers is Medicare and Medicaid, which CBO counts at the government's cost. It's not cash that the individuals actually receive. You can't take $10,000 in "value" you're receiving under Medicaid (where "value" is the government's cost) and spend it on rent or groceries.
Even worse, they've done studies on Medicaid and it turns out that the value of the transfer is skewed because the average recipient would only spend 20–50 cents per dollar of program cost on healthcare if they didn't get the transfer and purchased healthcare themselves. So that means that if you receive $10,000 in Medicaid transfers (again the value based on the government's cost), you'd really only "feel" $2,000-$5,000 in benefit in terms of your actual wellbeing.
Bottom line: single people making $22,500 before tax ARE NOT getting $49,000 "AFTER TAX AND TRANSFERS". Some families, retirees, people on disability are but the vast majority of those transfers are not cash-based, can't be spent freely, and their value is based on government cost, not the actual cost of what the recipient might spend without the transfer.
> I said in the original post a person with $22,500 BEFORE TAX
A person is not a household of 4 people. You can't even keep your comments straight, but in either case, you're just wrong.
A 4 person household (2 adults, 2 kids) with $22,500 in income isn't "walking away" with ~$50,000. With 2 kids, this household is receiving a bunch of credits and mostly non-cash transfers that don't function like cash because they can't be spent freely.
And if you think a family of 4 living on $22,500 who is "doubling that" with mostly non-cash credits and transfers is living a good life, you're completely out of touch with reality.
That’s not a decent quality of life. I know you may feel differently and find it hard to think about it objectively because you lived it, but you had a poor quality of life. It’s great that you’re doing well and you made it through, but don’t romanticize it.
Compared to 99.9% of people in history, it's a king's life, and even today $50k is a top decile income. Of course, the US is more expensive than most countries, so you can move it down a bit, but it's tough to argue that you're not in at least the top 25% of people living today at least.
Don’t exaggerate what is required for a decent quality of life in America. It doesn’t benefit anyone.