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Photos of items from families in different countries with different incomes
- forshaper 3mo agoI'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.
- qurren 3mo agoIt's interesting that $14000/month is "rich" on this website, and some people earning $100/month actually own houses. Meanwhile people making $50000/month in San Francisco can't afford a house because half of it is taxed away and housing is astronomically expensive.
- EPWN3D 3mo agoI promise you that someone in SF making $50k/month can comfortably afford a very nice house.
- qurren 3mo agoI promise you not. Houses here cost $2M+ for something livable and $1M for something with mold and other safety issues. When half that $50K gets taxed, half of what's remaining has to be saved up for retirement in a place that deeply discriminates against age, you don't have much left to save up for buying a $2M house.
- onraglanroad 3mo agoOk, I made my other comment before seeing this but I find it very difficult to believe you can't find something reasonable for far less.
- qurren 3mo agoNah it's the reality here. I'd say minimum income to safely own housing here is $100K-150K/month. OR cash already saved for the home, in which case income doesn't matter. Yes, lots of households make that much, especially people at e.g. Nvidia with unvested appreciated RSUs. Yes, the US economy is that badly fucked. And the people on mortages were brainwashed into buying something they can't afford, and in for a foreclosure disaster when the economy corrects.
- kbelder 3mo agoYou can't make many national judgements based on the economics of the Bay Area. It's much more sane in nearly every other area (with some other outliers, such as New York City).
- tenuousemphasis 3mo agoYou're shifting the goal posts, but I'll bite... what is 'safely' owning a home, to you?
- polairscience 3mo agoIn every thread about housing people on HN post wildly outlandish claims about expenses that belie their totally out of touch perspectives. If you make 100K a month (the lower bound of what you just wrote). Let's say you put 25K into retirement. You eat out every meal so 4K food/living budget. That leaves 60K (I'll give you 10K slush fund for savings money or as a general keeping-up-with-the-jones' fund). 60K per month will pay a 4.5 million dollar mortgage. 4.5 million will buy you some of the nicest houses in the bay that aren't mansions. See: https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/midcentury-modern-masterpiece-sale-historic-california/ https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/midcentury-modern-... You are either insane, or out of touch in a way that makes you insane. Of course, you can get a much cheaper very nice condo and "safely" squirrel away phenomenal amounts of cash savings. Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.
- nostrademons 3mo ago
- skissane 3mo ago> half of what's remaining has to be saved up for retirement in a place that deeply discriminates against age, you don't have much left to save up for buying a $2M house. Buying a $2M house is saving for retirement. Owning your own home in retirement is a massive financial win. And if you own a home in an expensive market, you can sell it, buy one in a more affordable market, and then the difference is unlocked retirement savings.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dwa3592 3mo agoI am not even sure if you are being sarcastic. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/80-Prentiss-St-San-Francisco-CA-94110/15161527_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/80-Prentiss-St-San-Franci... check this out.
- mikestew 3mo agoMan, that's nicer than houses in Redmond for the same money (though the SF one is a touch smaller), and you won't get that view. Bay Area house prices are insane, ya say?
- onraglanroad 3mo agoIf your net pay is $7000 per month you absolutely can afford to own a house, you're just being fussy about the house you want.
- qurren 3mo agoYou're not going to save up for a $1-2M house very fast on $7000/month, when you also have to live off that $7K, pay rent, pay medical bills, and save up for retirement expenses.
- burner420042 3mo agoDoes the website reference net or gross monthly income? Edit: So the numbers are not a direct exchange rate to USD. Q: How were dollar values assigned to households? A: The households’ door numbers represent the consumption values (US dollars) that each adult in the household has per month. This figure comes from a combination of the household’s self-reported consumption and income levels. We then checked the official cost of living data in each country to adjust the values for purchasing power parity (PPP) and converted the value into US dollars. Read more about how we assigned the Dollar Street values here.
- drivebyhooting 3mo agoIf you’re gonna have kids, fussy means: * have decent schools * not covered in lead or asbestos * not next to a highway
- qurren 3mo ago+ * in an area not going to get shot or mugged * structurally earthquake safe so that we don't die
- jt2190 3mo agoThe housing market is highly dependent on the job market so no, it’s not “being fussy”, it’s “I need to live here so I can have a job and income”. Unless you’re suggesting that people should quit their jobs and go get that cheap house in the middle of nowhere?
- tjohns 3mo agoYou have it backwards. Housing is astronomically expensive in San Francisco precisely because there are so many people with high incomes bidding against each other. When you have a highly inelastic supply (constrained by zoning laws, density limits, and geographical boundaries), prices rise to the maximum margin of what the highest-income buyers are capable of paying. Regarding taxes: Since taxes apply to all local high-earners equally, it doesn't change their relative purchasing power against one another in the local housing market. If taxes were suddenly halved, that extra liquidity would be priced into the next bidding war, driving home prices even higher.
- tenuousemphasis 3mo agoGlobally, $14k/mo is unbelievably, obscenely rich.
- joncp 3mo agoWhoa, nice reminder of how filthy rich I and almost everyone I know are.
- stuxnet79 3mo agoNote 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.
- bellowsgulch 3mo agoI observed the same. There are "poor" countries listed here that would make large swaths of Americans look like they still lived pre-WWII, and were destitute. Edit: Sorry, to be more explicit: by global standards large swaths of Americans DO live pre-WWII lives and have poorly constructed homes and lifestyles.
- dzonga 3mo agoyeah some things are old - but still important documentation of how some people live.
- mmooss 3mo agoTypically in developing economies, economic growth is very unevenly distributed. I would expect that in an economy that has grown 4x, many people would not experience any economic growth at all. I would be very surprised if that didn't happen - if rapid economic growth was that evenly distributed. And governments, especially in developing countries with little accumulated wealth and little credit, cannot afford to raise the standard of living of large numbers of people through welfare programs.
- onraglanroad 3mo agoTo 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.
- Pooge 3mo ago> That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things If you had the same salary in Switzerland or Luxembourg which, believe it or not, is not impossible, there would be a lot of items that you can't afford. Salary is important but cost of living matters as well. Granted, inside the same country, figures could change drastically but people tend to live where there are lots of job opportunities where it's more expensive.
- DontchaKnowit 3mo agoHow can you afford a 300k mortgage at 55k a year. That would be a very large percent of monthly pay right?
- tenuousemphasis 3mo agoMortgages are generally paid over 30 years.
- ffsm8 3mo agoLong mortgages are a really really bad idea with high interest percentages. Unless you've locked in a low percentage from before corona you're going to pay almost as much in interest as you'd be paying for the house... To pay off 300k within 30 years at current mortgage interest of 4% you'll have to pay 1432/month (215k of interest will be necessary) Depending on the amount of taxes you have to pay, thats likely > 50% of netto wage
- onraglanroad 3mo ago
- cliglot 3mo ago> 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.
- smusamashah 3mo agoClick the Families dropdown. There are many other things, including beds, pets, toys and teeth.
- scotty79 3mo agoModern lifestyle seems to start at $700-$800 per month per adult pretty much everywhere and doesn't get much better even at few k.
- dyauspitr 3mo agoIt depends. In a ridiculously cheap country like India where food prices are hilariously low you can get quite far on $200/month. Fresh vegetables (tomatoes, potatoes, onion, garlic, spinach, squashes, gourds, eggplants etc) are literally an order of magnitude cheaper than what you would find in a cheap American grocery store. You can also get full meals from restaurants for about 30-40c. Medical care is also dirt cheap with most regular doctor visits costing between $1-$2. High end medical care and surgeries for less than $1000 for the whole procedure and stay. The PPP multiplier is something like 6-7x.
- kerriy 3mo ago[dead]
- RetroTechie 3mo agoWhat's missing in comments: 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.
- binary132 3mo agoConcepts 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.
- em-bee 3mo agowhat is your point? as far as i can tell the pictures only show the reality. they don't explain why. the interpretation is up to the reader. my personal experience suggests that cost of living vs living standards is pretty uniform globally if compared on a national level. (at least in the places i have been to. higher cost of living in a country always also meant higher living standards, and vice versa. differences only mattered within a country with popular locations being more expensive, and there mostly it affects the cost for homes.). so your idea that raising poor families to $2500/mo would make them wealthy is only true if they don't try to change their living standards. and what does that have to do with international economics being based on exploitation? again, that's an interpretation of the things we can see here. i don't disagree with the interpretation, it's just that the photos do not themselves make the interpretation, they only observe.