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There's no such thing as the 'american average'. Your wage's utility largely depends on your local factors, because when buying a home, no where do you possibly

There's no such thing as the 'american average'. Your wage's utility largely depends on your local factors, because when buying a home, no where do you possibly buy the 'average American house', the 'average American grocery bill', the 'average American appliance costs', etc. Each local market can be very different.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
??? I'm very puzzled at your comment, but anyways here: Bureau of Labor Statistics release about American National Average salaries for Q1 of 2024, with quite a lot of breakdowns for demographics https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t03.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t03.htm
- swatcoder 2y ago
  They're saying it's not an informative measure in discussions about affordability or lifestyle because no individual lives some national average life, not that it can't be calculated or used in policy analysis.
- anon291 2y ago
  Suppose you have town A where food costs $10/unit and housing costs $2/unit and town B where food cost $2/unit and housing costs $10/unit. According to statistics, the average cost of food and housing in the country of ABCland (consisting only of town A and town B) is $6/unit food, $6/unit housing. From this one concludes completely incorrectly that food and housing are as expensive for the average resident of ABC land. Except... that's not true at all. No matter where you are in ABC land, housing and food have extremely different costs. Now suppose, wages are $12 in both A and B. Do you think the results will look the same in town A and town B? Why? or why not? Will both suffer the same problems? Why or why not? And that's the point, if DOL says that wages are on average $60k, that says nothing about what the cost of living is in any particular area. For all you know the poster above could live in a high cost of living area, in which case, this is a modest wage. Or he could live in a low cost of living area where this is exorbitant. Or he could live in a place where food is cheap, but housing expensive, or vice versa. Without knowing the details of where the wage is being used, it's impossible to form a coherent narrative.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    > Without knowing the details of where the wage is being used, it's impossible to form a coherent narrative We use the average because we do not know the details of where the wage is being used. I'm aware that I've even made a pretty big assumption that the OP we're talking about is even living in America, but lacking any more specific information all we have to fall back on is probability. Hacker News is majority American users, so I feel it's a reasonable assumption. America is made up of many small markets, sure. But the nature of averages is such that some people will be below the average, most will be clustered around the average, and some will be higher, regardless of which market they live in Some markets may have a higher income floor than others, but the highest minimum wage in the USA right now is 17 an hour, which is roughly 35k per year if you're full time. That means there are no markets in the country that have a higher yearly income floor than the national average. So here's my narrative: It actually does not matter what market this person lived in, whether it was super high cost of living or otherwise. They were still earning a salary that was likely 2-3x more than what many other people in their market were likely making, which is a pretty privileged spot to be in no matter where you live It also is important to remember the context. This OP was talking about living on just one income, allowing their wife to not work a job and be a full time child raiser instead. Having someone making 2x the average means they are earning as much in one income as 2 average earning parents would be, even in the same market. That was the intention of my criticism in the first place: It's relatively easy to say "just have one partner stay home and raise the kids" when you earn as much as two average people! This is true regardless of the market you live in because you will still be able to afford a much higher quality of life than a single income making the "average". Adjusted for the market you live in, of course, but still!

bluefirebrand 2y ago

??? I'm very puzzled at your comment, but anyways here: Bureau of Labor Statistics release about American National Average salaries for Q1 of 2024, with quite a lot of breakdowns for demographics https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t03.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t03.htm

swatcoder 2y ago
They're saying it's not an informative measure in discussions about affordability or lifestyle because no individual lives some national average life, not that it can't be calculated or used in policy analysis.
anon291 2y ago
Suppose you have town A where food costs $10/unit and housing costs $2/unit and town B where food cost $2/unit and housing costs $10/unit. According to statistics, the average cost of food and housing in the country of ABCland (consisting only of town A and town B) is $6/unit food, $6/unit housing. From this one concludes completely incorrectly that food and housing are as expensive for the average resident of ABC land. Except... that's not true at all. No matter where you are in ABC land, housing and food have extremely different costs. Now suppose, wages are $12 in both A and B. Do you think the results will look the same in town A and town B? Why? or why not? Will both suffer the same problems? Why or why not? And that's the point, if DOL says that wages are on average $60k, that says nothing about what the cost of living is in any particular area. For all you know the poster above could live in a high cost of living area, in which case, this is a modest wage. Or he could live in a low cost of living area where this is exorbitant. Or he could live in a place where food is cheap, but housing expensive, or vice versa. Without knowing the details of where the wage is being used, it's impossible to form a coherent narrative.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > Without knowing the details of where the wage is being used, it's impossible to form a coherent narrative We use the average because we do not know the details of where the wage is being used. I'm aware that I've even made a pretty big assumption that the OP we're talking about is even living in America, but lacking any more specific information all we have to fall back on is probability. Hacker News is majority American users, so I feel it's a reasonable assumption. America is made up of many small markets, sure. But the nature of averages is such that some people will be below the average, most will be clustered around the average, and some will be higher, regardless of which market they live in Some markets may have a higher income floor than others, but the highest minimum wage in the USA right now is 17 an hour, which is roughly 35k per year if you're full time. That means there are no markets in the country that have a higher yearly income floor than the national average. So here's my narrative: It actually does not matter what market this person lived in, whether it was super high cost of living or otherwise. They were still earning a salary that was likely 2-3x more than what many other people in their market were likely making, which is a pretty privileged spot to be in no matter where you live It also is important to remember the context. This OP was talking about living on just one income, allowing their wife to not work a job and be a full time child raiser instead. Having someone making 2x the average means they are earning as much in one income as 2 average earning parents would be, even in the same market. That was the intention of my criticism in the first place: It's relatively easy to say "just have one partner stay home and raise the kids" when you earn as much as two average people! This is true regardless of the market you live in because you will still be able to afford a much higher quality of life than a single income making the "average". Adjusted for the market you live in, of course, but still!