62% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck, making it ‘the main financial lifestyle,’ report finds
cnbc.com
Breaking news: in one of the most productive countries / economies in the entire history of humanity, the majority of people creating that productivity do not get to enjoy the rewards of that productivity.
same as it ever was.
Unions.
I give 1% to my union. My pay is ~10% better than it would be if we didn't have it, and management gets in huge trouble if they mistreat workers. And by trouble, I mean they fired a manager when they scheduled a worker over their lunch break.
Damn, I could sure use that at Amazon...
Wow great comment. Thanks for contributing
You know, as time goes on, your derision just outs you for the bootlicker that you are.
So you still live paycheck to paycheck, except now you have to trust someone else to negotiate on your behalf instead of negotiating yourself
If one person quits they shrug and hire some other shmuck. If everyone quits, they have a problem. Good luck negotiating that way.
I guess it depends on the industry. Replaceable production line workers following processes that haven't been automated yet are different from say engineers designing the production line
Plenty of engineers get abused by their employers too it's super naive to think otherwise. And it's going to get worse and worse and worse as time goes on that's the undebatable history of capitalism.
Engineers designing production lines absolutely get fucked over with horrible working conditions. Unions benefit every single position workers fill.
I guarantee you've never known an Engineer in manufacturing.
LoL what a shit take of thinking you are special because you are currently being treated nice.
If an engineer is living paycheck to paycheck it's their fault, and very weird, since they're generally decent at math.
"instead of negotiating"
Negotiating collectively is the only way to negotiate with a Capitalist. Individually, you are a replaceable cog, collectively you're the machine.
If you're living paycheck to paycheck it stands to reason that your negotiating position isn't very good.
This was a terrific time for us to go down to a single income.
Terrific time for me to get divorced.
And be a single income prior to it.
Alimony is brutal
Lady in the thumbnail got some guns
Srsly. Economics Schmeconomics, whats the tattooed lady’s story?
If she has kids, they gotta be the most well behaved kids in the history of the universe.
Guns like Prison Mugatu
https://youtu.be/7xUtZzLBV5c?si=13fkF-f1zcH8HAQZ
Did you just assume their gender?
Lol aren't you just on a roll on this post 🤣
Seems like a lowball number actually
Many many people are unemployed and/or homeless, or trapped in debt, which skews the numbers.
If only we were back in the good Ole days of 2019 with the economy roaring and 78% of people reporting living paycheck to paycheck according to CareerBuilder.
It's PROBABLY a measurement problem, not an actual number with insight on how people are living. People self report incorrectly to a lot of things, and paycheck-to-paycheck can mean a lot of things. We think of it as someone who might be homeless without their paycheck but someone who would have to sell some stocks or stop retirement contributions might also think of themselves as "paycheck to paycheck."
If you are working, your paycheck is probably a big part of your budget. That makes this survey question a bit meaningless.
You're spot on here. Plenty of people count maxing out their 401k and IRA as "living paycheck to paycheck", because their budgets would go upside if they missed a paycheck and did literally nothing to cover it.
Combine that with the general bias all people have to view themselves as generally normal and you get a pretty meaningless metric.
Oh, like I had to do when I moved to another apartment? I had to wipe out my (tiny) Roth IRA just to pay the deposit. My wife had to wipe hers out just to pay the movers and all the other BS fees. We now have no retirement savings and haven’t since we moved six months ago. We both had to stop contributing to our IRAs in order to continue paying the bills. We’re not even paycheck to paycheck at this point, we’re at month to month.
We just had to refinance our mortgage because our credit card debt was out of control and the payments were too high.
But it did nothing to help with student loans or medical debts.
Yeah, I had to empty my 401k to be able to just keep renting and I've decided that it's probably not worth paying towards anymore since by the time I would retire they likely would tell me I need at least 8 times whatever I could afford to put in so I'll just plan for death as my retirement like Boeing would want.
Pretty much. I’m very much resigned to the fact that I’ll be working well after the standard retirement age and will likely die at work, with nothing but debt to pass on to… nobody because I can’t afford to have children.
Boeing actually found the longer you work the shorter you live so good news you won't work past retirement you will work until you die and then retirement age won't exist. It will be a myth from the past.
And some people think the Earth is flat...
But neither population is statistically significant
Selling my stocks to pay rent would be like selling my car to pay for a bus ticket.
if you need to sell your stocks to receive value from them then you're gambling not investing and I would actually consider that the same shitty situation.
The median savings is $5,300. So at the bare minimum, 12% of America has over $5,300 in savings but considers themselves "paycheck-to-paycheck."
If you only have about 5K in savings, you need that in savings for emergencies such as medical expenses or suddenly needing to move due to rent increases. That is paycheck to paycheck.
jeez. that's the low-end of my goal for yearly savings. I generally average a bit more, at least the last few years.
Still? That number will only grow. Trickle down economics doesn't exist and Americans don't understand what class consciousness is.
Ugh, poor people and their disgusting lifestyle choice of having no money.
Can't they just dip into their trustfunds if they're short?
Trustfunds? You think every success is a Rockefeller or something? Just ask as family member for a million dollar loan to start a business, that's how all the modern greats have done it. (/s plz don't hurt me)
Remember this the next time someone says "what the market will bear."
Unchecked capitalism is about aggressively exploiting resources. We, our time, and whatever we posses of value, are all such resources.
Hey, but everyone, the 1% are doin' great and Biden needs his re-election, so the economy is super stronk!
How ignorant can a comment even be? I mean just the idea that the current economy and state of wealth inequality is Joe Biden's fault is astounding. The previous administration gave biggest handout to the 1% of any government in the history of mankind.
But that's just the history of America for the last 40 years I guess. Republicans administrations gutting things, giving massive handouts to the rich, destroying social safety nets, allowing corruption and fraud to go rampant, etc... then when a democratic administration tries to clean it up just a little bit, to stabilize things, all the mouth breathers suddenly forget everything happened beforehand.
Don't get me wrong I hate the prior guy. But isn't it always funny how the Democratic party in their times of super majority don't tend to fix the shit entirely that the last guy rammed through. Take the tax cuts and removing alot of deductions for the working class. Wouldn't it make sense to undo those tax cuts and tax increases?
Both sides aren't the same but this ain't a left vs right issue, it's a class war.
What super majority?
Good thing that Biden isn't fixing that but is instead spending all his time trying to throw more bombs on babies.
Lots of words by a dolt who just doesn't get it.
I get it. You voted Hilary. Like a dolt.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump%20salutes%20north%20korean%20general&iar=images&ko=-1&iax=images&ia=images
Speaking of dolts.
Even Hillary wasn't this stupid.
Really need to bring back the 'New Deal' era laws and regulations.
Waiting for raw Capitalism to 'lift all boats' just won't happen, as only the strongest 'boats' survive the storms.
Capitalisms default mode is 'let them eat cake'.
damn that person looks swoll while buying chips and syrup?
I am unable to find (and would love a link) any data on population distribution through the quintiles of income.
Does this help? This is the most recent data I found.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/
This does help! Quickly cross-referencing this, it means people solidly in the middle quintile (not all, but some %) are also living paycheck to paycheck, which honestly should be talked about more.
What I have seen is that the issue is now at the local economy level. In the urban areas costs have returned to pre-2020 prices. In rural areas the prices are still extremely high. Gas in a urban area is around $2.30 while in rural areas it's $3.15. Milk prices are about a 0.75 a gallon difference as well. Life sucks if you live in the middle of nowhere, but it's not bad if you live close to a urban area. The price difference appears to be due to transportation costs. It just isn't worth the logistics to support rural communities anymore for most companies.
You keep saying this. Got a source?
Gas near me in my urban area is at $2.90 and milk is $3.15 a gallon. Prices are still way up on most essential goods, but they've stopped climbing. Wages sure as hell haven't kept up either. And rent went up higher last year than ever.
I wish gas was that low. It's still at about $3.65 here and has been for years.
Gas is a little under $5 a gallon in my urban area.
Gas in my commute town in rural Georgia and nearby rural towns is around $2.90-3.20, in Macon it's $2.70-2.80, Savannah it's $2.70-2.80, in Augusta it's $2.80-2.90, and in Atlanta it's $3.20. My area has over 50k people, Macon has 234k people, Savannah 405k, Augusta 611k, and Atlanta 6.1 million. Based off of this limited data I could guess smaller urban areas have lower prices, which rise the larger they get until they eventually meet or surpass rural prices. But then you can look at Colombus with 330k population and their gas prices are $2.50-2.60, but then again it's partially in Alabama which might explain the lower prices (Alabamans are poor af)
Not this urban area.
I don't know about that. I live in a small city, but it's a depressed community. Gas here has been under $3.00. This weekend, we went to visit my mother in a slightly larger city, but it is a desirable city, and gas was over $3.10.
So it's not really all about urban and rural. There are urban areas people want to live in and there are urban areas that people are less interested in living in and the latter are also cheaper despite being urban.
I just looked at a good example. Gary, IN and Chicago, IL.
According to Gas Buddy, gas in Gary is around $2.75/gallon. Gas in Chicago is around $3.10/gallon. Gary definitely counts as urban.
Meanwhile, nearby but rural Winamac, IN (I picked it at random)- $3.10. Same as Chicago.
Gas prices very wildly from location to location, and probably aren't a good indicator.
lol, urban prices have not gone down.
You might want to check again.
I live in Seattle. Prices have not gone down, inflation has simply slowed. You might want to check again yourself.
Isn't that by design in Seattle?
By nature of the income class that moves to Seattle but not exactly by design.
That makes sense.
No, and in fact our city council is regularly working towards better affordability and equitable housing/income/education. I can't say they're especially successful overall, but that's what they get voted in for and that's what they try to do.