I've generally loved this site. Wondering what other distributions could be made so visual, where people near the top complain about the people just above them.
Note that some of the entries here are clearly outdated. I've cycled through some "global south" countries that I'm familiar with and what's shown may have been true maybe 15-20 years ago. GDP has 4x since then and at the same salary level the lifestyle is either equivalent or better than the richer countries.
To give context on my other comments, where I live in Scotland, median full time wage is around $55k.
You can live a perfectly comfortable life on that; you don't have to worry about bills or medical expenses, and you can afford to get a mortgage and buy a house (probably costing around $300k or so)
That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things.
The median income in Southern England is comparable, but house prices are 2-3x higher. Not surprising that we moan about tax subsidies getting paid to folk with a better lifestyle.
> Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.
High salaries and an industry boom over the last decade created a sort of whiny arrogance amongst software developers, and particularly those of Silicon Valley. They desperately want to see themselves as the elite.
Of course the elite get their mansion where they want. They are entitled to it.
In developed countries, people buy (or rent) the things they need. Most financial transactions are recorded, taxed, regulated, and with 3rd parties involved at every step (who also expect to get payed). Car insurance, home insurance, electrical bill, etc etc. Grocery prices go up, you pay more. Renting, and rents are raised? Tough.
But in less-developed countries it's not rare for people to grow their own food. They could be living on 0 income & still have food on the table. Swap produce & services with other people in town. No 3rd parties, no taxes (see: informal economy). Build their own home on family-owned land. Insurance? What insurance?
TLDR; there's many flavours & angles on what "poor" or "rich" means in practice.
Concepts based on this take no account whatsoever of the differences in currencies and local/national economies that lead to incredibly different costs of normal life in different towns within a state, let alone between different countries around the world. If it were somehow possible to magically level USD incomes of all families depicted in this chart, perhaps to an arbitrary median of $2500/mo, many of the poorest families would be very wealthy — or at least very well-off — by their local standards, while many of the high-income families would lose their homes, healthcare, and means of income due to their local costs of living. It’s always so strange to me that people seem unable to comprehend this simple fact that nearly all of our international economics today are predicated on exploiting.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 37.9 ms ] threadMeanwhile people making $50000/month in San Francisco can't afford a house because half of it is taxed away and housing is astronomically expensive.
You can live a perfectly comfortable life on that; you don't have to worry about bills or medical expenses, and you can afford to get a mortgage and buy a house (probably costing around $300k or so)
That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things.
High salaries and an industry boom over the last decade created a sort of whiny arrogance amongst software developers, and particularly those of Silicon Valley. They desperately want to see themselves as the elite.
Of course the elite get their mansion where they want. They are entitled to it.
In developed countries, people buy (or rent) the things they need. Most financial transactions are recorded, taxed, regulated, and with 3rd parties involved at every step (who also expect to get payed). Car insurance, home insurance, electrical bill, etc etc. Grocery prices go up, you pay more. Renting, and rents are raised? Tough.
But in less-developed countries it's not rare for people to grow their own food. They could be living on 0 income & still have food on the table. Swap produce & services with other people in town. No 3rd parties, no taxes (see: informal economy). Build their own home on family-owned land. Insurance? What insurance?
TLDR; there's many flavours & angles on what "poor" or "rich" means in practice.