This kind of article and the people who write this type of description are a lot of what causes America to be this way. "Why are you unhappy?" "Cause you're du

This kind of article and the people who write this type of description are a lot of what causes America to be this way. "Why are you unhappy?" "Cause you're dumb and you should be happy, cause the stock market has lots of money, and we can buy lots of material stuff" Almost every argument in the entire article is BS. "wealth isn’t confined to only the top percent" "American's are materially wealthy" Almost every argument is money, money, money, money, money... Wealth is completely confined to the top 1%. The entire government shut down for a month and the part that actually got attention? ... "there's no foodstamps". 40 million people won't have Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. Standard response from IRS filings, 50% of America only needs to file for the rebate, cause they barely (or don't even) make the deduction. (Last column, 51-100, 76,794,954 returns, averaging $19,936.70) The next 25% average less than the often cited "enough to get by without much difficulty" number of $80k-$100k (for singles) and way below the $200k cited number for a family of four. (Notably, 200k seems a bit excessive, maybe $150k) [1][2][3][4] 75% of America is beneath the "get by comfortably in America." Generalized results from MIT for CA, TX, FL, NY have breakdowns by category as examples (for ~127 million of the 340 million Americans) [5][6][7][8] In the most recent tax filing season data available (2024), there were tax returns of: Top 1% Top 5% Top 10% Top 25% Top 50% Bottom 50% All Taxpayers Number of Returns 1,535,899 7,679,495 15,358,991 38,397,477 76,794,954 76,794,954 153,589,908 Average Income Taxes Paid $653,730 $187,468 $108,251 $50,963 $27,891 $667 $14,279 Adjusted Gross Income (Millions) $3,872,395 $6,182,180 $7,745,525 $10,613,602 $13,191,209 $1,531,038 $14,722,247 If we then break those into the actual groups, and numbers per group, then we find their Average Per Capita Income 1 2-5 6-10 11-25 26-50 51-100 Number of Returns 1,535,899 6,143,596 7,679,496 23,038,486 38,397,477 76,794,954 Income Taxes Paid (Millions) $1,004,063 $435,594 $222,966 $294,234 $185,068 $51,225 Adjusted Gross Income (Millions) $3,872,395 $2,309,785 $1,563,345 $2,868,077 $2,577,607 $1,531,038 Average Tax Rate 25.9% 18.9% 14.3% 10.3% 7.2% 3.3% Average Per Capita Income $2,521,256.28 $375,966.29 $203,573.91 $124,490.69 $67,129.59 $19,936.70 [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/07/salary-a-single-adult-needs-to-live-comfortably-in-all-50-us-states.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/07/salary-a-single-adult-needs-... [2] https://fortune.com/2025/06/09/sinks-earnings-family-by-state-affordable-expensive/ https://fortune.com/2025/06/09/sinks-earnings-family-by-stat... [3] https://www.manchestertimes.com/news/national/how-much-do-you-need-to-earn-to-live-comfortably-in-every-u-s-city/collection_9d7e2b1d-4846-5de7-b581-078116c7e468.html#4 https://www.manchestertimes.com/news/national/how-much-do-yo... [4] https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/ [5][6][7][8] (CA) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06 https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06, (TX) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/48 https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/48, (FL) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/12 https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/12, (NY) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/36 https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/36 TLDR, I agree with you. Found myself less happy after reading their spew article. Lots of other data.