Conclusion: There are only 400 rich people in America. :rolleyes:
Almost no one is “rich”. That’s correct. Because apart from the “rich” that are beyond both me and you, it would take serious “definitional jiujitsu” to define “rich” that would include me and not you.
Is that how you define “rich” - you don’t wonder how you will have to pay a bill? I know people who earn $50K who have never missed a bill and never wonder how they would pay it. Are they “rich”?
Everyone can “afford tax increases”. Can you spare a quarter? Then you can afford a tax increase of a quarter. How about a buck? A fiver?
When the saving goes somewhere I cannot touch for 20-30 years, it is an expense. When you pay for car insurance, you’re buying transportation. When you pay into your 401K, you’re buying eventual retirement.
No. That would be a quantitative difference. The difference is qualitative.
I’m one of those $200K households. I don’t consider myself Rich (like Warren Buffet rich) but do I have it a hell of a lot better than most people? Damn straight I do. Can I afford to pay more in taxes so that the less fortunate can get a break? Damn straight I can. Willing and able.
Terr is being incredibly disingenuous. Entertainment, a mortgage, gourmet food etc… isn’t the “basics”. Basics are: 1) a roof over your head - maybe 5 people squeezed into a dingy 1 bedroom apt, 2) enough food so that you don’t starve and get your minimum daily nutritional requirements, 3) some minimal standard of health care (in the USA, this might not even qualify as basic).
We used to live as a family on about $20K a year. To say that my life now is qualitatively the same as then is flat out stupid. Being poor sucked. Having to beg family for money so that we could cover my spouses medical bills sucked (we had student insurance but it only covered 80% of the bill - a 4 day hospital stay came to about $40K, leaving us many thousands on the hook).
I’ve been poor and now I’m well to do. I have it easy now. Don’t believe anyone who tries to sell you something different. If they make that much and have problems paying their bills, they can’t handle money and their problems are of their own making.
Having been in both situations in a fairly short period of time, I can assure you that it’s only true in a VERY broad sense.
Yeah, I still have a house, a job, and a commute, but it’s amazing how much easier having four times as much income makes everything. At 50K a year, the eight or nine thousand we currently spend on day care would have knocked an impossible hole in our budget. At 200K a year, we barely notice it. At 50K/year, the 40K we spent to adopt the Firebug from Russia would have been completely out of our reach; instead, we paid it out of pocket. Having a cleaning lady come in every other week is no big deal instead of a barely affordable luxury. And so on.
True, our life has the same superficial appearance as it did 13 years ago when we were in our 50K bracket, kind of like the way someone wearing a backpack full of lead weights would look superficially the same as someone wearing a backpack full of balloons. And that’s about how different it is.
Yeah, the difference between my life now, and that of a rich person, is even bigger. But the difference between 50K and 200K is still pretty damn big.
You continue to be quite mistaken about what that word means. And other stuff.
“Having it a lot better than most people” is your definition of “rich”? That’s pretty pathetic.
It’s like that discussion of “trust fund babies” that I saw on this forum. People giving examples of someone they called a “trust fund baby” and relating how he had to go find work after he burned through the money. That’s hilarious. A true “trust fund baby” cannot possibly burn through the money and wind up in a situation where he has to work. It would be physically impossible, both because of the size of the trust fund and of the way the trust fund would be set up.
And in response to someone above who said that “rich is always at least twice your current net worth” - no. Someone who has twice my net worth is still not rich. You would have to have about ten times to twenty times more than I do to even scrape the lower bound of “rich”.
I’m curious, what’s your definition of “poor”?
No, “rich” in this discussion is a meaningless term, and clouds the real issue. Rich is the word that the haves are using to dupe the have-nots into supporting policies that directly hurt them.
To say that $200K isn’t rich, therefore “I’m just like you!”, and “my taxes shouldn’t be increased, but hey, you guys who don’t pay taxes (because you earn shit-all to begin with ) need to pay up!” isn’t just dishonest, its (as said upthread) downright evil.
In a “rich/poor” dichotomy? Roughly - anyone who must work in order to lead a comfortable life. Ascetics needn’t apply.
Really, “disingenuous” is far too kind.
Well, this isn’t the pit.
Just did a search on flights, and wow- they are much cheaper than I thought. I had expected (and was arguing from the point of) flights being more like $1500 per person for same day flights, and Priceline just smashed that assumption. I know it used to be that bad- but for whatever reason, it is nowhere near that now!
So, first, I have absolutely no idea how you can get to the Phillipines every year making $25K, one- so go you! I haven’t been able to make it overseas, EVER, and I make a little more than twice that. So I can’t go overseas, but I do bet that the $200K people could.
Looking at what flight prices ARE right now vs what I THOUGHT they were, I even think you are right, it would indeed likely be possible to do it same day/week.
So yes- it would not be a hardship, nor would it likely require planning, for me to fly Anaa out here once we are making $200K + per year.
Thank you for re-stating the question, and for making me challenge my own assumptions…
I made no mention of a dichotomy and I doubt many people who are poor lead a comfortable life, given your earlier description of what you consider the basics of life. However, your answer reveals that you only think there are two categories and apparently you define rich as those who do not have to work to lead a comfortable life. Your strange world consists of billionaires and poor folk, with nothing in between. Sociologists and reality would beg to differ.
From the listing:
Pretty well says it all. When a real estate listing simply states “As Is”, you know it is, indeed, a doghouse (or rather, is being sold for the lot - a tear down).
Also, by car Oshawa is 60 km from Toronto. While in a perfect world this ought to take an hour or less, in real life it is going to take longer if you are a poor slob who is commuting to work in Toronto’s notorious rush hour gridlock that appears to last much of the day.
In short, even the hyperbole is pretty well true - you can only find a detached home within commuting distance of Toronto in that price range if it is (a) at the limits of “commuting distance” and (b) is a shithole.
That’s just stupid. Having enough financial security to not worry about covering your bills doesn’t make one rich. If that’s the case, then I’ve always been rich, because even back in 1997, making 30k a year right out of school, I was always able to pay my bills and have some left over.
Generally speaking, a good rule of thumb for rich/not rich ought to be:
If you’re paid a periodic salary, and it’s the majority of the money you make, you’re probably not rich.
If the money you make consists primarily of stock options, high-dollar bonuses, etc.. you may be rich.
If the money you make comes from dividends, direct profits, or gains on your stock portfolio, you are likely rich.
It’s essentially Malthus’ comment, except clarified a little more.
You’re conflating two of my arguments: 1) People who make 200k/yr, being in the top 3% of one of the richest nations in human history, are inarguable rich by any reasonable definition.
- People who have 200+k/yr incomes do not ever have to worry about which bills they will pay and which they won’t. That is ONE of the many reasons people in that income bracket are in no way similar in lifestyle to myself and many millions of Americans.
The statement you quote here was not meant to imply that anyone who doesn’t worry about paying bills is rich. I can understand now why it might have seemed confusing though.
Well I retract my suspicion that you were being dishonest then. 
You should definitely try to go overseas, save up for your tickets, check out hotel reviews online and then book, and just do it, you will not regret it.