8 ms·
Millennial men with different incomes
- greenshackle 10y ago3 'more or less' typical millenials? 3 CEOs and one poor guy? Really?
- patmcguire 10y agoThe WSJ had a similarly out of touch cross-section a while back http://www.wsj.com/news/interactive/WEALTH0105 http://www.wsj.com/news/interactive/WEALTH0105
- breitling 10y agoWow, this just takes it to a whole new level
- michaelchisari 10y agoWhy does the single parent with $260k a year income look so sad? In fact, why does everyone in this look like they're in a Ken Loach film about a miner's strike?
- zodPod 10y agoBecause of those cuh ray zee tax increases, of course! /s Not sure seriously. I'm with you, these people all look so sad. I'm not sure if it's a work life balance thing or if I'm just crazy thinking that, if I could insanely increase my income, I'd be happier...
- havetocharge 10y agoThat's one bunch of sad looking people.
- kchoudhu 10y agoAh, the HENRYs. I remember laughing my head off at this crew working at a bank in the middle of the financial crisis, waiting for the world to end. http://www.felixsalmon.com/2008/10/unsympathetic-demographic-of-the-day-henrys/ http://www.felixsalmon.com/2008/10/unsympathetic-demographic...
- spennant 10y agoFTFY http://afscme.tumblr.com/post/40696645755/fify-wall-street-journal http://afscme.tumblr.com/post/40696645755/fify-wall-street-j...
- weberc2 10y agoTo be fair, one of the CEOs was staunchly in the middle class ($55K/yr).
- greenshackle 10y agoGranted, but it's still a decent margin above the median millenial at $33k/yr. I would have liked to see at least one closer to the median.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dtemp 10y agoWow. A noncompete to make sandwiches.
- greenshackle 10y agoYeah, that looks a lot more like typical millenials.
- rayiner 10y agoThe comments about taxes are really interesting. There is a perception in the U.S. that the wealthy don't pay enough taxes, but in reality the top 10% carries a much a larger share of the tax burden (relative to their share of income) than in countries like the U.K., France, Germany, and Sweden: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/americas-taxes-are-the-most-progressive-in-the-world-its-government-is-among-the-least https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/ameri.... So the question is: where does this perception come from? Is it this way in other countries? Do people in Sweden complain that the rich don't pay enough taxes? Or is it something cultural in the U.S.
- michaelchisari 10y agoThis comes up a lot in a discussion about taxes, and there's a big logical problem with it. We have a much higher wealth gap than those countries. So tax burden as a percentage isn't a useful metric. If we had a healthier lower and middle class, they would be paying more in taxes, which would ease the burden on the wealthiest considerably. But our middle class is shrinking, and the rich are becoming extraordinarily rich. So of course their tax burden as a percentage of the whole is going to be more. The concern people have is about the taxes that individuals in the top brackets pay in relation to the middle and lower brackets, but also this acts as a proxy for concern about infrastructure, safety nets and an ever shrinking middle class.
- rayiner 10y ago> We have a much higher wealth gap than those countries. So tax burden as a percentage isn't a useful metric. Which is why I compared tax burden as a percentage of total taxes to income as a percentage of total income. In Sweden, the top 10% make roughly a quarter of the income and pay roughly a quarter of the taxes. In the U.S., they make about a third of the income, but pay almost half the taxes.
- michaelchisari 10y agoAs pointed out above, though, top 10% is not a very useful metric.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago> We have more opportunity, but the price of living is unbearable. The cost of basic groceries & clothing is down dramatically over the last 50 years. The price of housing could be too, but we've decided that it's more important to keep prices rising and supplies limited.
- michaelchisari 10y agoCost of healthcare has skyrocketed. As has housing, as you've mentioned. Those are much bigger expenses than groceries and clothing, so those lowered costs are not offsetting the biggest jumps.
- coredog64 10y ago40 years ago it would be seen as okay to have a middle class family in a 1600-1800 sq. ft. house. Now ostentation requires that it is 4000 sq. ft. with a garage bigger than the childhood home of either homeowner.
- tuna-piano 10y agoDoes the $1.5M earner not add up to anyone else? His expenses are $6K a month ($72k a year, but call it $100k). His after tax income, call $800k. That leaves $700k unaccounted for - and he's talking about saving $15k for his kids college, or not being able to retire for 15 more years? I don't get it.
- nwah1 10y agoHe didn't say how many kids. Or how many mothers.
- infinite8s 10y agoHe said he put away 15k in a tax advantaged account for his child (singular). But agree - his annual income doesn't square with his desire to save more, bring his family over from the UK, or pay off his mortgage. Edit - actually his family status says getting married next year, and rereading the statement about the education savings he could be speaking in the future tense.
- omonra 10y agoFirst thing that jumped at me. He also says "I wish I could pay off the mortgage". From what he described, he should be able to pay it off in a year or two. Doesn't add up.
- nugget 10y agoI'm guessing that his income grew rapidly and this may be his current "run rate" if everything goes well (or of course he could be inflating the # for PR purposes).
- eddof13 10y agoAlso the part about not being able to pay off his 800k mortgage?
- todd8 10y agoWe can't know what he is thinking, but I can imagine him feeling stressed if he want's to maintain his life style has a few children and wants to retire very early. It requires a big big nest egg to provide an income of around a million for the 50 or 60 years that either he or his wife will live after he stops working. Retiring in 15 years requires quite a bit of investment every year if he wants to roughly maintain income at retirement, and many people would hope to be better off over time. Depending on how much risk he is willing to take, he might need to invest as much as $400,000 per year! For such an early retirement he might be seeking an eventual portfolio of as much as $30,000,000 before he retires. Right now you can't count on much more than a couple of percent above inflation return on investments without taking risks that he might not be comfortable with.
- tuna-piano 10y agoI assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely has kids at home, I can't help but feel a sense of guilt (and also luck). Even as I earn more money, I feel guilty spending it, so I end up just saving a large part of it. Not sure there's a point or a problem or something I'm trying to solve, just wanted to share my feelings and see if others felt the same way, and hear any advice or thoughts they had. Edit: I do take some (perverse) solace in the fact that it seems many extremely poor people across the world seem happier than the average wealthy office worker I know. Add up: long commute + winter weather (and darkness) + unfulfilling work + expenses that expand to their level of income = potentially a pretty unhappy person, even though they are high income. Edit 2: Reading about how the low earner saved up for a $160 pair of shoes also gave me some warm feelings. Maybe that's why rich people do challenging, but relatively pointless things like hiking mountains. We don't have enough challenges in our daily lives, so we invent them so we can feel good about ourselves after.
- virtuexru 10y agoGod damnit dude; it's Monday. I didn't need this! sips Starbucks while typing this on a MacBook Pro in a large AC'ed office building while making 100k
- antisthenes 10y agoYou should feel somewhat lucky, because your parents made a substantially bigger investment in you than you realize, through which you were allowed free time to acquire the technical aptitude to become a developer (or whatever else allowed you to become a high earner). Whether you want to keep feeling guilty is up to you, but you should definitely go thank your parents again! > When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car In countries where public transportation is the norm, there isn't anything strange about the first part of the sentence. It's just that USA really punishes non drivers through some really poor infrastructure choices made 60-70 years ago.