Does society have a skewed view on what constitutes a good income?

Great Debates
161

That’s the difference between defining something as “wealth” and defining somebody as “wealthy”. Two quite different concepts.

My argument was that there are very good reasons for not taking the colloquial definition of “wealth” - such as rich in health, family, happiness, good memories - as literal: namely, that if circumstances change, you can (subject to certain limitations) transform one form of literal wealth into another - but you cannot transform colloquial “wealth” into another form. Or at least, society today rather frowns on selling your kids. :wink:

162

I think that clairobscur hit the nail on the head. Things that many of us take for granted really are luxuries for many people.

When I was growing up, my Dad’s income was in probably in the top 10% in the U.S., and my Mom’s wasn’t too far behind. Yet for a long time I viewed myself as “solidly middle class”. Never mind that we took a family vacation every year, sometimes overseas. My classmates and neighbors lived in houses similar to ours and drove cars similar to ours, and that’s what formed my perception of “normal”.

Now I live by myself, making about the median income for an individual. Though I do have to be a little careful with my budge, I live quite comfortably on this. I even have enough money to save for retirement, and engage in luxuries like eating out on occasion.

Some of my coworkers, making similar amounts of money, are living more paycheck to paycheck, and I suspect, feel poorer. Where does the money go? Most of them eat out every day for lunch, while I usually bring one. Many of them will go out to the bar, every Friday night, and sometimes Thursday too. Some of them live in bigger apartments, or in apartments closer to work. These sorts of things are luxuries that I was familiar with.

However, in my apartment complex, there are many people who need to be much tighter with money than I am. I have a studio apartment, which is quite nice for a single guy. But a number of my neighbors are couples living in the same size apartment. If my girlfriend were to move into this apartment… well, we could do it. We could fit in a bigger bed if we moved some furniture around. The biggest issue would be storage space. I’m using up all of it as it is. We’d each have to get rid of about half our junk. Growing up, I’d never really thought of having enough storage space as a luxury. One of my neighbors has a daughter, maybe 13-14 years old. I obviously don’t know what the sleeping arrangements are, but she certainly doesn’t have her own room, a place with any sort of privacy. I never considered being able to close a door to get away from my parents a luxury. That being said, there are apartments nearby that are cheaper. I live in a pretty safe neighborhood, but it’s not too far away that the weekly crime statistics go up pretty steeply. I never considered being able to live in a reasonably safe neighborhood a luxury, but I sure do now.

Sometimes the choice of luxuries is not “can I afford to send my daughter to private school?” but rather “can I afford to live in a place where my daughter will be reasonably safe walking to school?”. For some people, not my neighbors generally, but some people living not too far away, the answer is no.

But the person worried if he can send his child private school probably worries just as much about it as the person who worries if he can keep his child out of a gang. And so even though he is earning much more money, he still feels like he’s not really wealthy, he’d struggling to make ends meet just like everyone else.

163

“Luxury”, like “wealthy”, can be defined downwards as far as one cares to - assuming it is all relative. No doubt, for someone living in some places in sub-Saharan Africa, those living off of food stamps in the US are “wealthy”. They have food stamps.

Similarly, one can define it upwards as far as one likes, too - and worry about the relative “poverty” of having to send one’s kid to school at the second-best private school, and not being able to afford that second vacation home.

The problem with such infinitely elastic definitions is not that they are wrong, but that they are useless. They provide no basis for agreement. Everyone is rich and everyone is poor, from someone’s perspective. Which means that talking about something being “luxurious” or someone being “wealthy” is just meaningless banter, without a whole lot of exposition.

Yet there appears to be a very tangible and concrete difference between someone able to afford a mansion, multiple vacation homes, and some personal servants, and someone living on food stamps. It would be nice to be able to use words like “rich” to refer to the one and “poor” to refer to the other.

164

Eventually, any luxury becomes a necessity.

165

That’s the definition of “rich” - a “mansion”, multiple vacations homes and personal servants? Of course, that definition for some reason uses spending, and not wealth, as criteria. By that definition someone with $100M who lives in a 4,000 sq ft house, has no “vacation home” and cooks his own meals is not “rich”. Are you sure that’s what you were going for?

166

No, read my quote that you have cited in yours slightly more closely - it is someone able to afford those things who is “rich”. Not someone who owns those things.

As has been pointed out at great length in this thread, owning stuff is no guarantee of being rich - and in fact, in many cases leads to the opposite: spending in excess of income leads to debt, not wealth.

167

Oh :slight_smile: Well now, you have to specify where the imaginary homes/mansions are and where the imaginary personal servants are hired. Because those prices vary greatly, and a $100,000-worth man can be “rich” by being able to afford a mansion, personal vacation homes and personal help in some places (but definitely not others).

Should we further limit the definition by “afford at the location where he chooses to live”? Then “rich” becomes geographically defined more than net-worth defined. Which is, I thought, what you were trying to get away from.

168

I agree with you. I have little sympathy for individuals grossing 100k per year and having trouble making ends meet. But the original question was about how sogmeone who is objectively very high earning can consider themselves to be just getting by. And the answer is as a gave: even people in the top income bracket have things they would like to buy that they cannot afford.

I would like to point out that you seem to be falling prey to the sort of thinking that has a wealthy man think he is really not all that rich. Someone grossing 100k per year is in the 93rd percentile in the U.S. That’s rich. And yet he won’t be able to have “a mansion, multiple vacation homes, and some personal servants”. So he’ll think “I’m doing OK, but I’m not really rich. Rich people have a mansion, multiple vacation homes, and some personal servants, and I can’t afford that”.

169

What I said was by way of example - that there is a somewhat objective distiction between “rich” and “poor”, that it is not merely a case of person A being comparatively well off, when compared to person B, as in the old saying “I cried because I had no shoes, but then I met a man with no feet”.

That does not mean I’m defining, for all time, “rich” as meaning who can afford living in a palace or whatever. Only that a person who can afford living in a palace is, inarguably, an example of someone being “rich”.

I’d argue someone who earns $100K isn’t really “rich” in that sense. He or she isn’t “poor”, either. He or she is doing well, but in terms of social class, 100K won’t rate you as more than upper-middle - and near the bottom of that range, to boot.

170

As my income has gone up things that were once luxuries became wants, and wants became needs. In college I wanted to live without a roommate, now that I have the money to do so it is something stronger than a want (not quite a need though). Same with medical care, I’m getting a lot of medical care that I couldn’t afford in college. I probably spend a few hundred a month (outside of insurance) on medical care.

Granted I guess that is a testament to how bad income inequality has gotten when healthcare and privacy are considered luxuries but there you go. But people went without them for a long time (people used to live with tons of strangers in a small apartment, I don’t even want to live with 1).

I think the more money you earn, and the more secure you are in your earning potential the less you value money. A person in India who makes $5 a day is not going to treat $10 the same way you or I would treat $10, and someone who earns 300k and expects to continue earning that the rest of their life isn’t going to value $100 very much. IMO I think people value money as a % of their income and earning potential, not as something concrete. $5 is not the same to someone earning 1k a year, 50k a year and 500k a year.

171

And I think that is everyone’s point: how can “bottom of the upper-middle” = top 93% of earners. We are dividing the top 10% of earners into 5-6 subtle shades and lump everything under that into “lower middle class” and “poor”, with maybe a “working class” in there somewhere.

172

Wut? Who said that the classes have to be evenly divided? And who is this “everyone” you are speaking for?

“Upper middle” = people who tend to have have professional occupations, like lawyers and other high-salary white-collar jobs. Naturally, they are a comparatively small proportion of the population, because only a small percentage have those occupations.

The mistake you (I guess “everyone”) is making, is judging matters comparatively rather than objectively. Sure, for a lot of folks, it is annoying that someone earing $100K isn’t really even rich; if one is earning a lot less than that. But facts are facts: that’s the sort of salary a mid-level associate lawyer working in a big city law firm would make, and they, while well-paid, are not the “rich”.

173

I love how Stil asked a perfectly good question in the OP, and a dozen or so people showed up just to answer it by proving how little perspective people have.

When I first graduated grad school and got my first teaching job, I made just over $40k a year and that was good money. I was single of course, so money goes further, but hell, just by cutting back on my discretionary spending I could easily imagine supporting a family on that money alone. It wouldn’t be a fantastic life but it would be possible.

Now I make significantly more than that, and I am literally heartbroken that we have people coming in saying “well my spouse and I make over 100k a year and we certainly don’t feel rich.” Well, you should. You are rich. I fucking feel damn rich and I don’t even make nearly that much. Even if I had to support a family on what I make now, it wouldn’t even be a stretch and I think it’s frankly sickening that people who make even more than I do can feel like they are just scraping by. I literally laugh out loud at people like zoid who talk about how they barely manage to send their three kids to private school. That’s a fucking gigantic luxury. And who get all weepy about having to spend money on presents for their friends. I can’t EVER remember my parents buying a present for my friends for their birthdays or Christmas, and I had a perfectly normal middle-class childhood. The very idea is laughable, if it weren’t so sickening and so sad.

174

And there are people who “literally laugh out loud” at people who talk about how they barely manage to afford a studio apartment. (Because the laughers-out-loud have to live 4-to-a-room somewhere in the world). Does that mean that those who live in studios are “rich”?

175

Yes they are. They can live in a nice apartment in a desirable neighborhood in a big city. They can go out boozing with their friends on weekends, and go on a nice vacation once a year. They can take their girlfriend out to nice restaurants and popular shows. They earn more than 93% of Americans. They’re rich. Now if you’re raising your family on $100k per year, then that’s “only” top 20th percentile, and maybe you’re upper middle class.

176

Again, “fucking feeling rich” isn’t the same as actually being rich. It isn’t a purely subjective state.

177

You are simply declaring that someone who can afford to do [some list of arbitrary nice stuff] is “rich”. Again, this notion that “rich” is a purely subjective state.

My point is that such judgments are not wrong, but they are essentially worthless. There is always someone out there who thinks whatever stuff you are doing makes you “rich” by that measure - even if all you are doing is “being healthy” or “able to eat”.

Upper middle class has always been a state descriptive of a range of occupations and income - namely, salaried white-collar professionals.

That’s a reasonably useful term. Using it as you appear to want to makes it sorta pointless as a descriptor.

178

I’m sure those people would respond with a hearty, “Well good for you!”

The truth, good or bad, is that people judge themselves against what they see. Not the abstract “guy under the bridge”, not the guy who lives a million miles away somewhere in a Third World village. But the people they live next to, who they see at the grocery store, and who they work with. Their own parents. How we compare against other people is the most obvious metric of success.

To illustrate: I was talking to a successful professional the other day. Her husband is a college professor and a rabbi. Their children are professionals, too–a lawyer, a doctor, and a college professor.

She told me quite frankly that she’s unimpressed with her grandchildren. Expecting to hear something juicy, I asked her what they are doing. Come to find out all of the grandkids are in college. Just no Ivy Leagues. None of them are studying anything “high brow” and they seem aimless in their aspirations. One wants to be an LPN (shudder!) They aren’t going to be “anyone” when they grow up, she fears. She said this all of this non-ironically. I could tell she was sincerely disappointed.

In my family, having all the grandchildren in college, unsaddled with babies or baby daddies, on the good side of the law, sobriety, and nervous breakdown, would be cause for celebration. I’m a hard agnostic, but even I’d be praising the Lord for such a “blessing”! But for this woman, no doubt accustomed to only the highest levels of success, it’s a pretty mediocre standard.

I guess I could have guilt-tripped her about how ungrateful she is. It’s not enough that she already has three future Nobel Prize winners out of her own children. She wants a whole basketball team of them! But as sick as it is, I kind of get it. I’m lucky in so many unbelievable ways and don’t want for anything materially, yet I am not about to call myself rich. I feel rich when I am alone, or when I compare myself to my parents when they were my age. When I’m around most of the people I spend most of my time with, though, and they’re flashing literally or figuratively, a little voice in me whispers, “Dayum. Guess my broke-ass just needs to sit down in the corner somewhere.” I don’t think I act on that voice, but it’s always there.

I don’t see anything wrong with feeling “insecure” in moderation. A person needs a little hunger and fear to be motivated to stay on top of their game and get what they want in life. I don’t agree with Nietzsche on everything, but I do agree with him on that.

179

I think there’s been a pop-cultural tradition for year that has been driving up the benchmark of typical middle-class life is supposed to be like. Think of the typical films about contemporary family life these days, comedies and dramas both. Unless financial duress is a major plot point, there’s never any hint of money shortage or difficulty making ends meet. The characters live in huge houses that would not be out of place in Lake Forest IL or the Hancock Park district of L.A.

Unless you’re allergic to old movies, check out the original Father Of The Bride from 1950 with Spencer Tracy in the title role, then watch the 1991 version with Steve Martin. One of the plot points in both versions is that the future in-laws are considerably richer and live in a much grander house than that of the main characters, so the bride’s parents are a little abashed on their first visit to the other parents’ house.

Spencer Tracy’s character is a lawyer and lives in a not-too-large house that can barely accommodate the reception guests; so much so they have to take the interior doors off the hinges to provide more space. (“You’d be surprised how much circulation you lose on account of doors. Especially doors like those.”) By contrast, Steve Martin’s title character runs his own shoe company and his San Marino house obviously has a few more rooms than a family of four needs. Although, like Spencer Tracy, he grumbles over the wedding costs, and at one point loses it over the compulsory waste stemming from the incommensurability of hot dog and bun packages[sup]1[/sup], it’s fairly clear that he and Diane Keaton’s MOTB character are doing pretty well for themselves. In short, their house is about as big as the one owned by the wealthy in-laws’ in the 1950 version.

[sup]1[/sup]BTW recently I’ve seen hot dogs that come seven to a package, and buns six to a package. Relative primality! A new milestone in the incommensurability of buns and hot dogs has been reached.

180

I think what those people find annoying is that even if you go to a top school, get top grades, go to a top law or business school and get a “good” job with a law firm or big company, between debt and high living costs, people still struggle to make ends meet. The fact is, the big city law associate probably had to ring up over $100k in law school loans, not to mention any undergrad loans still outstanding, and now lives in a city where the average rent for one room is $2500.
Also, studies have shown that people judge their wealth comparatively than absolutely. No one cares that they make more than 90% of the country. They care that they make less than someone with a multi-million dollar Park Avenue penthouse.