4 ms·

I don't disagree with you, but at some point the number stops mattering. What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? And even if the

I don't disagree with you, but at some point the number stops mattering. What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? And even if there is a difference, is that worth the opportunity cost of paying everyone else a little bit better? It's not a very popular opinion, but there should be a maximum salary imo. Beyond a certain number money is a means of acquiring power and influence, and it feels wrong to reward people with that. Set a maximum to give people something to work harder for, but without inadvertently giving individuals the power to subvert democracy through money.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? Pretty massive, particularly when it comes to taking vacations and bringing friends who can’t afford them with you. $300k barely permits that domestically. $1 or 2mm lets you do that comfortably all over the world. Or, alternatively, single handedly saving restaurants you love or a buddy’s small business.
- amrocha 3y ago
  "Saving" a business isn't really a lifestyle thing, that's more of an investment really. Realistically, your life isn't meaningfully worse if you find a new restaurant to go to. Paying for friends to vacation with you is a very good one though. But idk, I feel like you can extend that so far that it feels like a copout. For example, maybe you can afford a nice home on 300K, but you can't buy your mom a nice home as well. And you can't pay your brothers student loans. And you can't gift them a car every couple years. That's not your quality of life, that's paying for someone else to live the same lifestyle as you. At that point I'd just argue for raising wages across the board so that you don't feel the need to pay your friends, they just want to go on vacation with you.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  Why do you have to have ultimate power and oversight of an entire branch of government AND flit comfortably all over the world? Shouldn't ultimate power be its own reward? That and ten times the salary of most people…
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Why do you have to have ultimate power and oversight of an entire branch of government AND flit comfortably all over the world? I don't think SCOTUS judges need a multimillion-dollar salary. Just pointing out that low single-digit millions is well below the threshold past which spending becomes performative.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
$300k - after taxes - is not buying you a lavish lifestyle of in most major cities. It's probably not even getting you comfortably into one of the better neighborhoods, unless your partner is the bread winner. Chicago is one of the most affordable major cities in the US - and $300k isn't gonna do more than have you comfortably living in a small condo in the better neighborhoods.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  A household income of $220k puts you in the 95th percentile of income in Chicago[0]. Is the bar for comfortable that you get to rub elbows with Bezos? [0] https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Illinois/Chicago/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Illinois/Chicago/Househol...
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    No, the bar for comfortable is being able to afford a decent place to raise a family in a decent neighborhood. I'm not sure why we think this is only something for people who rub elbows with Bezos or for people who bought a house 10 years ago.
    - amrocha 3y ago
      If you don't think you can do that with 300K per year then idk what to tell you, your accounting looks very different from mine
- tptacek 3y ago
  Huh? $300k/yr will get you pretty much anything you want in Chicagoland. By standard consumption patterns, that's an $800k house. An $800k Chicago house is quite large. It's also a 4-bdr condo even in some parts of the Loop.
  - bamfly 3y ago
    $300k (household) isn't upper-middle, before the term became diluted to mean "middle, but with a little left over every month"—the upper-middle of Fussell's Class and The Official Preppy Handbook - Good private school for a kid or two (guess what one of the bribes to Thomas was...). Not gonna get away with much less than $25k/yr/kid, there, and it goes up from there. - Long vacations expensive places a couple times a year (again...) - House somewhere nice (notably, however, the public schools can be shit, which saves a little money here) - Country club membership, or similar - Don't have to do, at least, the ~50% of chores you hate the most (you pay to have them done). Ditto the worst parts of childcare. - (optional, but recommended) Attendance of fancy functions (esp. e.g. charity events–what's the point of it all if you don't feel fancy?) - Second property with housing on it (doesn't have to be lavish, but can't be quite as shit as a hillbilly fishing shack, which even poor country folk sometimes have) - (optional, but recommended) Any money left over after that. That's gonna be $400k+, household, in a cheap but not crazy cheap market (who wants to be fancy in truly bum-fuck nowhere? Though your vacation property might be there...) in 2023. Bare minimum ([EDIT] that won't get you much of the "optionals", I mean, and the rest is gonna be teetering right on the edge of having to start cutting items—and then, only if you're somewhere relatively low COL). You aren't living, to a certain social class, if you start having to sacrifice much of that. That's how you're supposed to live.
swader999 3y ago
You get into Nanny zone and hiring out all your chores with more time available.
- amrocha 3y ago
  I used to that for the most part already on a third of the income (for a 2 bedroom apartment and no kids to be fair). Biweekly maid service where they clean the dishes, the house, and do laundry. It wouldn't be much more expensive to change that to weekly and include cooking too if you wanted. If you wanted to get a full time nanny though that's probably out of reach, but I don't understand why you even had children if you're just gonna pay someone else to raise them for you.
  - swader999 3y ago
    Agree, I never desired that either. I also like learning how to do repairs and renos to my house. Although I'd hire out the drywall next time.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? Pretty massive, particularly when it comes to taking vacations and bringing friends who can’t afford them with you. $300k barely permits that domestically. $1 or 2mm lets you do that comfortably all over the world. Or, alternatively, single handedly saving restaurants you love or a buddy’s small business.

amrocha 3y ago
"Saving" a business isn't really a lifestyle thing, that's more of an investment really. Realistically, your life isn't meaningfully worse if you find a new restaurant to go to. Paying for friends to vacation with you is a very good one though. But idk, I feel like you can extend that so far that it feels like a copout. For example, maybe you can afford a nice home on 300K, but you can't buy your mom a nice home as well. And you can't pay your brothers student loans. And you can't gift them a car every couple years. That's not your quality of life, that's paying for someone else to live the same lifestyle as you. At that point I'd just argue for raising wages across the board so that you don't feel the need to pay your friends, they just want to go on vacation with you.
Applejinx 3y ago
Why do you have to have ultimate power and oversight of an entire branch of government AND flit comfortably all over the world? Shouldn't ultimate power be its own reward? That and ten times the salary of most people…
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Why do you have to have ultimate power and oversight of an entire branch of government AND flit comfortably all over the world? I don't think SCOTUS judges need a multimillion-dollar salary. Just pointing out that low single-digit millions is well below the threshold past which spending becomes performative.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

$300k - after taxes - is not buying you a lavish lifestyle of in most major cities. It's probably not even getting you comfortably into one of the better neighborhoods, unless your partner is the bread winner. Chicago is one of the most affordable major cities in the US - and $300k isn't gonna do more than have you comfortably living in a small condo in the better neighborhoods.

fbdab103 3y ago
A household income of $220k puts you in the 95th percentile of income in Chicago[0]. Is the bar for comfortable that you get to rub elbows with Bezos? [0] https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Illinois/Chicago/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Illinois/Chicago/Househol...
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  No, the bar for comfortable is being able to afford a decent place to raise a family in a decent neighborhood. I'm not sure why we think this is only something for people who rub elbows with Bezos or for people who bought a house 10 years ago.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    If you don't think you can do that with 300K per year then idk what to tell you, your accounting looks very different from mine
tptacek 3y ago
Huh? $300k/yr will get you pretty much anything you want in Chicagoland. By standard consumption patterns, that's an $800k house. An $800k Chicago house is quite large. It's also a 4-bdr condo even in some parts of the Loop.
- bamfly 3y ago
  $300k (household) isn't upper-middle, before the term became diluted to mean "middle, but with a little left over every month"—the upper-middle of Fussell's Class and The Official Preppy Handbook - Good private school for a kid or two (guess what one of the bribes to Thomas was...). Not gonna get away with much less than $25k/yr/kid, there, and it goes up from there. - Long vacations expensive places a couple times a year (again...) - House somewhere nice (notably, however, the public schools can be shit, which saves a little money here) - Country club membership, or similar - Don't have to do, at least, the ~50% of chores you hate the most (you pay to have them done). Ditto the worst parts of childcare. - (optional, but recommended) Attendance of fancy functions (esp. e.g. charity events–what's the point of it all if you don't feel fancy?) - Second property with housing on it (doesn't have to be lavish, but can't be quite as shit as a hillbilly fishing shack, which even poor country folk sometimes have) - (optional, but recommended) Any money left over after that. That's gonna be $400k+, household, in a cheap but not crazy cheap market (who wants to be fancy in truly bum-fuck nowhere? Though your vacation property might be there...) in 2023. Bare minimum ([EDIT] that won't get you much of the "optionals", I mean, and the rest is gonna be teetering right on the edge of having to start cutting items—and then, only if you're somewhere relatively low COL). You aren't living, to a certain social class, if you start having to sacrifice much of that. That's how you're supposed to live.

swader999 3y ago

You get into Nanny zone and hiring out all your chores with more time available.

amrocha 3y ago
I used to that for the most part already on a third of the income (for a 2 bedroom apartment and no kids to be fair). Biweekly maid service where they clean the dishes, the house, and do laundry. It wouldn't be much more expensive to change that to weekly and include cooking too if you wanted. If you wanted to get a full time nanny though that's probably out of reach, but I don't understand why you even had children if you're just gonna pay someone else to raise them for you.
- swader999 3y ago
  Agree, I never desired that either. I also like learning how to do repairs and renos to my house. Although I'd hire out the drywall next time.