8mo ago

Americans earning under $50K are skipping meals, selling belongings and delaying medical care to cover housing costs

finance.yahoo.com

United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml

☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ @lemmy.ml

8mo ago

Americans earning under $50K are skipping meals, selling belongings and delaying medical care to cover housing costs

finance.yahoo.com /news/americans-earning-under-50k-skipping-180900270.html

19 comments

The people who hold the power to change this:
An unending maelstrom of human anguish and death, orchestrated solely to fuel the insatiable greed of a handful of the most nightmarishly evil human beings to ever exist: okay
One nightmarishly evil human being getting blasted: not okay
- i love living in a society structured around maximizing ~~profit~~ quantified human misery
  Death to America
Failed state
delaying?
To my European mind, 50K is a very high salary
- Salary only has meaning when contextualized against the cost of living. As a European, you don't worry about going bankrupt and ending up on the street if you get sick, you likely enjoy functional public transit, and so on.
  
  you don't worry about going bankrupt and ending up on the street if you get sick
  in ireland a lot of people do. contradictions around this stuff are probably worse here than anywhere else in western europe tho
- I make barely 13k net salary in :estonia-flag-burning: and probably live better than most AmeriKKKans making up to 70k
  
  I make just under $80k in a small american town, probably in the top 10% of workers here, and I'm still paycheck to paycheck.
  Food for 3 people comes out to like $2500/month, rent is $2000/month, taxes are $1600/month, health insurance is $400/month with about $50-100 out of pocket for meds. More of someone has to go to the ER or Urgent Care. Rest of it (~$200) goes to general expense, and we frequently have to dip into credit.
  Also that $400 health insurance doesn't even cover doctors visits and if I bring it up, the price skyrockets from $50 to $250 because thats what BCBS says it's worth. Gotta hit that $8000/year deductible before any of that money I pay in can even be used.
  And no I'm not in some mansion or anything, I'm in a 110 year old house with 2 bedrooms and a rotted deck that the landlord refuses to fix. Most of the other houses here are occupied by elderly people who are paying $200-$300/month for their mortgage or renters living 2 to a room spending $1800-$2000/month to a landlord that bought the house after the old person that lived in it died.
- Yeah, I was chocked as well. But it could be that they count "household" income (average household is like 2+ people I think).
  But also when you factor in that all burgers, even the poor, must have a shitty expensive car to go anywhere. They need health insurance that alone probably cost more than the total income tax for most of Europeans, and even then it doesn't actually cover the medical expenses. Then, as I understand it, they don't really have a pension system, so all those "savings" are actually for not starving to death when they get old. Then there's school, kinder-garden and no paid vacation, so you need to save for that as well.
  Yankees basically pay over 70% tax on income if you add up all the "hidden costs" when you sigh up for American Inc subscription. But hey, you get to live in a cardbord box with a square patch of grass outside.
- Cost of living. Problem is when you live in shithole area like Poland where the costs of living are 1/2 of German ones but your wage is 1/5
  
  Yikes, is it that bad these days? I haven't been for years, but when I visited in the 00's things still cost like 10% of what they did in western Europe

19 comments