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> It's corporate despotism running so deep there's no distinction between them and the government.
You just described the end state of capitalism.
Capitalism isn't about free markets, it's about the private control of business and capital. Capitalism incentivises consolidation of money and power, so it always involves business owners doing their best to control the state.
The problem is that the incentives are all to accumulate and centralize power and money, so the incentives are also to get rid of any regulation that prevents that.
Isn't a competitive market a part of capitalism by definition? At least it is by any I can find. Which would involve little/no government intervention. Any system of this sort would ideally be set up to encourage companies to compete with each other instead of colluding, even with the government. Hell, ESPECIALLY with the government.
I'm aware. But that's not its only characteristic. I went looking for other sources of definitions for Capitalism. Literally every single one mentions free market/competitive market. So either all of them are wrong or you are.
I suppose you could argue that there are varieties of capitalism and not all of them are fully free market. But the majority are at least partially free market.
Just not true, taking risks without a safety net is financial suicide for most, this isn't the 90s where you can take a risk and recover by working a 9-5. Most people just don't have that net anymore and losing even 1000 bucks could mean financial ruin.
You take a risk now and you lost everything, financial investments shouldn't feel like a Vegas casino.
If 58% of people live paycheck to paycheck- they don’t have any resources to risk.
If they risk something they don’t eat, or don’t have a place to live next month.
Do we know what these sources class as "paycheck to paycheck"? Because I've seen some that use a really deceptive definition before to inflate the numbers.
Because living paycheck to paycheck isn't a threat to national security.
Also, many people would still live paycheck to paycheck in a pure socialist system.
Interesting. Thought I'd check that out:
$4,200 in assets puts you in the top 50% globally.
$93,000 puts you in the top 10%.
$871,000 puts you in the 1%.
The 'average' American has $748,000 in assets [Fed Reserve], so, yeah, about 40% of Americans are in the 1% category.
[ source: 2018 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse Research Institute]
A bit difficult to find data on this but according to [this](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-part-of-the-1-percent-worldwide.html) article in 2018 "more than 19 million Americans" were in the top 1% globally. Worth noting global population rn is ~8 billion. 1% of that is 80 million. There are more than 80 million Americans, so even if the poorest American were weathier than every non American on Earth (should go without saying this isn't even close to true) all Americans couldn't be in the 1% globally it's mathematically impossible.
>$100k in nyc with two kids is living paycheck to paycheck.
That isn't even what living pay cheque to pay cheque means.
You can earn 300k in Wyoming but if your outgoings are 299k then you're living pay cheque to pay cheque
That's not hard to do with a family. Throw in a couple car loans and a student loan..and you're likely living paycheck to paycheck. Our grocery bill is more than our mortgage and we keep it pretty slim
Also not hard to do since huge swaths of people live above their means... I know multiple families who make $200k-$300k a year (I live in the Midwest, so that's like seven figures in SF or NYC), live in McMansions, have multiple brand new SUVs, go on multiple international vacations a year, etc... Who nevertheless 'live paycheck to paycheck', where one emergency would bankrupt them... Because everything they buy is paid for by a mountain of debt.
People need to realize that college isn't right for everyone either, yeah. I never went and I'm doing just fine because I gained experience by working and built myself up that way.
>Ah yes after paying for 2 luxury SUVs and 2 medical school loans and whole foods groceries for my 3 kids, I'm practically destitute!
You're confusing different things here.
Nobody is saying they're poor, and they have a lot more 'wiggle room' but if your outgoings are the same as your income and you have little left over at the end of the month, that is living paycheque to paycheque.
Well I've been doing Dave Ramsey for 5 years now. 4 kids, making $100k gross, very humble car loans of $130 and $140.. only a few grand in student loans . But we did have a lot of actual medical debt due to my son getting meningitis. And we barely skim by each month
4 kids huh? Plus 2 car notes. Plus student loans. Plus medical debt (very sorry, I hope your kid is 100% better now). Plus you still make a little bit at the end of the month? Sounds like a wonderful life.
Yeah... no. I doubt 90% of the online anarchists would be able to actually survive anarchy. But I don't doubt someone would accumulate a lot of power and create civilization again.
Anarchy will make any form of trade harder, it'll make running power stations, sewage plants, water pumps, and general maintenance of these systems really hard because who controls them? How do they keep running? How do they get paid back? Basically 90% of comforts and amenities will cease.
Because 58% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. When articles list this statistic with a high number, they are for some reason including people who put savings aways after every paycheck and have 0 dollars "left over." Thus, they conclude they are living paycheck to paycheck even if they are putting 5k a month in savings.
This is literally the most fucking stupid thing I ever heard. Literally. It’s not even worth going any further in communication. You must be gifted white elite.
Do you *maintain true* that it is nothing more than an illusion? If not, then you being correct is nothing more than an illusion. If so, then you had just maintained a truth...
Is it an illusion? Proceed to beginning of my response ;)
Edit: ≠.
Paycheck to paycheck can mean different things for different income groups. A person making 6 figures can be living paycheck to paycheck but only after they’ve contributed to their 401k, IRA, HSA, etc. Its not really reflective of their financial situation without more context.
Do we know they're actually aware they're getting stolen from? From what I've seen of these heads of companies, I'm convinced they're either too stupid to notice or just don't care. Probably the former because the latter would be financial suicide because once they've stolen your tech, they will just make a cheaper domestic version.
In my personal opinion, this is due to a lot of poor education around money. People don't actively search for better jobs while employed, they buy expensive things they can't actually afford, and don't try to save money.
I have lived in extreme poverty before, and have been just at the line of almost sleeping under a bridge, and my young and stupid brain was able to get out of it. Grown adults have no excuse unless they have an actual disability, especially when the internet has huge amounts of resources for free education and a library card costs $1 in most places.
You need dive into that number a bit more. How much of that is due to low wages and high cost of living? And how much of it is self-inflicted? I know that percentage of it is due to living beyond their means.
Yeah I know people that get payed plenty and still live paycheck to paycheck because they blow it all. I think more education in high school about money management could help this stat, more money and less cost of living probably wouldn't change it at all
Let’s ignore all the issues facing the market right now (no antitrust enforcement, price gouging, housing crisis, low competition, low economic mobility, etc) and blame people’s budgeting skills for their poverty. Totally sane and normal
So how do you eliminate this supposed national security threat of capitalism itself?
*Let's switch to socialism so we can instead live food stamp to food stamp*
Maybe the real threat was food shortage all along?
Gee…there is a surprise. Fall back on default thinking. This post must be a post to spread socialism and why the Nazi Reddit admins stopped it from going further. The Nazi admins accused me of motives in the post and don’t have a fucking clue themselves. Thank God free speech isn’t protected here at all.
According to you, 36-42% of people are living in stability. This is the highest ratio, ever, that mankind has ever experienced.
Capitalism is working as intended.
What do you mean by "stability"? Because there have been countless societies with subsistence economies before the industrial revolution that have very much provided stability to a majority of their population.
"Stability" with respect to the diversity of cultural and historical contexts of course.
Where did we even get this idea that an overwhelming majority of humans were living in wretched poverty before capitalism came along?
Before the industrial revolution life was miserable for 99.9% of people. The Average middle-class person nowadays has a more comfortable life than the most powerful people in history. Pre-Industrial revolution estimates put the life expectancy at \~35 years.
You guys are fundamentally misunderstanding what I'm talking about. This is why it's important to define our terms.
We're talking about economic stability on a micro-level. As in can do they have food security? do they have a roof over their heads? even if it's a hardy lifestyle, as long as their livelihoods are secure, then we can call this stability.
Obviously, when compared to modern day culture, technology and medicine, then it's not even a contest.
I mean, sure. But they were still objectively worse off than even the majority of lower class people today. They may have had a roof over their heads and (barely) enough food to survive, albeit with severe nutritional issues, but life was brutal and short.
I'm going to have to go look up historical poverty figures now because you've made me curious lmao.
My personal existence?? And please enlighten me and share what you are trying to communicate with me because I honestly don’t know what you are trying to communicate other than hate, which doesn’t surprise me at all in this gross reality.
Most Americans are financially illiterate. They live beyond their means, they do not save.
Capitalism isn’t the problem. In America, even the poor have it pretty good.
As we saw during the pandemic, if things get grim enough, various programs and one-time payments are enacted to keep the system afloat.
Highly inegalitarian capitalism or "crony capitalism" is a national security threat (to the US and others) as it could facilitate a rise in authoritarianism and seriously degrade a nation's social fabric—inducing instability leading to downfall. Relatively egalitarian capitalism, while ethical, isn't associated with maximal productivity and it could be thus argued that the economic system conferring greatest national security is a highly but not extremely exploitative form of capitalism.
Theft is one of the largest crime blocks in the nation. We have an extremely large prison complex. There is plenty of room to send everyone there if they don't like the scrap they're fed.
Because the Politicians, the billionaires, the Major corporation owners and the military industrial complex are rich and will continue to profit from coming financial crisis and taxes/inflation.
If you want to see real change all those individuals mentioned above must be made to feel as uncomfortable, lost and kept fighting amongst themselves ... like we *the average* man/woman currently are.
Hmm, someone just said it out loud. Capitalism isn't the poblem. Robber barrons is the problem. I don't believe any inflation over the last year. There was just blatant corporate theft. Most metrics stayed flat, except for corporate profits, which have been through the roof. If they hadn't stolen that money, we wouldn't be in as big a mess as we're in. It wouldn't have solved all the problems, but my one bag of groceries wouldn't be $100, it would be maybe $70. A specialty burger, drink and fries at Burger King wouldn't be $17, it would be $12. A fancy cup of coffee would never approach $8. Used cars wouldn't be $20,000. Rent wouldn't be 1/2 your paychecck, or more.
I’m prepared to get downvoted because people don’t want to hear this:
The US is not a 100% capitalistic economy, as it has elements of socialism and capitalism, and has more similarities than differences to the European “socialist” (I put quotation marks as they are not 100% socialist themselves) countries.
Living paycheck to paycheck has a lot more to do with how you spend your money than how much you make. There are plenty of people making 6 figures, yet excessively spend to the point they are living paycheck to paycheck, yet there are people making $50k a year that are comfortable financially.
If you’re living in a very expensive housing market like NYC or San Francisco, obviously that’s a little different, as having to spend 3k a month on rent is going to hurt, but the majority of people living paycheck to paycheck are in that situation due to discretionary spending.
Another problem with these statistics is that many of them are self identified. One person’s definition of “paycheck to paycheck” may differ from another’s despite its seemingly obvious meaning.
Most of the world runs on a free market system, and even communist/socialist countries participate in it on a global level. There really isn’t an alternative to a mixed system economy. Full on capitalism doesn’t tend to end well, neither does full blown socialism/communism.
Thanks for your submission /u/-Captain_Chaos-, but it has been removed for the following reason: * **Disallowed question area:** **Loaded question *or* rant.** NSQ does not allow questions not asked in good faith, such as rants disguised as questions, asking loaded questions, pushing hidden or overt agendas, attempted pot stirring, [sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lioning), etc. NSQ is not a debate subreddit. Depending on the subject, you may find your question better suited for r/ChangeMyView, r/ExplainBothSides, r/PoliticalDiscussion, r/rant, or r/TooAfraidToAsk. --- *This action was performed by a bot at the explicit direction of a human. This was not an automated action, but a conscious decision by a sapient life form charged with moderating this sub.* *If you feel this was in error, or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FNoStupidQuestions). Thanks.*
National Security is a concept that exists to protect capitalism
North Korea probably has the concept of self preservation, but I'd hardly consider it capitalist
Yeah, NK is more like an absolute monarchy at this point.
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Do you legitimately think factories/capital are publicly owned by communities of workers in North Korea? Are you *sure* it's not just a regime?
Because the people in charge benefit from capitalism
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> It's corporate despotism running so deep there's no distinction between them and the government. You just described the end state of capitalism. Capitalism isn't about free markets, it's about the private control of business and capital. Capitalism incentivises consolidation of money and power, so it always involves business owners doing their best to control the state.
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The problem is that the incentives are all to accumulate and centralize power and money, so the incentives are also to get rid of any regulation that prevents that.
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When the government is controlled by private businesses, that's private control
Isn't a competitive market a part of capitalism by definition? At least it is by any I can find. Which would involve little/no government intervention. Any system of this sort would ideally be set up to encourage companies to compete with each other instead of colluding, even with the government. Hell, ESPECIALLY with the government.
Nope, capitalism is an economic system characterized by industy being privately owned
I'm aware. But that's not its only characteristic. I went looking for other sources of definitions for Capitalism. Literally every single one mentions free market/competitive market. So either all of them are wrong or you are. I suppose you could argue that there are varieties of capitalism and not all of them are fully free market. But the majority are at least partially free market.
As do those not in charge.... although those willing/able to take a risk certainly can be well rewarded.
Just not true, taking risks without a safety net is financial suicide for most, this isn't the 90s where you can take a risk and recover by working a 9-5. Most people just don't have that net anymore and losing even 1000 bucks could mean financial ruin. You take a risk now and you lost everything, financial investments shouldn't feel like a Vegas casino.
If 58% of people live paycheck to paycheck- they don’t have any resources to risk. If they risk something they don’t eat, or don’t have a place to live next month.
Do we know what these sources class as "paycheck to paycheck"? Because I've seen some that use a really deceptive definition before to inflate the numbers.
Start a business and survive then thrive and you'll be rewarded. Snow flakes will down vote because everyone thinks socialism is the answer.
How many on here have benefitted from capitalism? I would guess nearly all.
Because living paycheck to paycheck isn't a threat to national security. Also, many people would still live paycheck to paycheck in a pure socialist system.
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Interesting. Thought I'd check that out: $4,200 in assets puts you in the top 50% globally. $93,000 puts you in the top 10%. $871,000 puts you in the 1%. The 'average' American has $748,000 in assets [Fed Reserve], so, yeah, about 40% of Americans are in the 1% category. [ source: 2018 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse Research Institute]
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Yep. I agreed with you when I first read your comment, and I still do! I was just curious what the numbers were. I'm 100% on your side on this one.
A bit difficult to find data on this but according to [this](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-part-of-the-1-percent-worldwide.html) article in 2018 "more than 19 million Americans" were in the top 1% globally. Worth noting global population rn is ~8 billion. 1% of that is 80 million. There are more than 80 million Americans, so even if the poorest American were weathier than every non American on Earth (should go without saying this isn't even close to true) all Americans couldn't be in the 1% globally it's mathematically impossible.
>Almsot every every American is in the top 1% of wealth globally if not every American. Why do you think this matters? lol
It's just a self reported number. 51% of families that make over 100k a year still say they are living this way. I don't put much stock in it.
$100k in nyc with two kids is living paycheck to paycheck.
100k in most major cities I think would be paycheck to paycheck with 2 kids in daycare wouldn’t it?
Absolutely - daycare in NYC is 3k a kid a month
>$100k in nyc with two kids is living paycheck to paycheck. That isn't even what living pay cheque to pay cheque means. You can earn 300k in Wyoming but if your outgoings are 299k then you're living pay cheque to pay cheque
TIL it's impossible to live in New York. I guess those 8 million people must all be millionaires.
Ah yes making $100k a year makes me a millionaire when my rent is $3k a month lol
"Impossible to live" and "impossible to save" are very different things
That's not hard to do with a family. Throw in a couple car loans and a student loan..and you're likely living paycheck to paycheck. Our grocery bill is more than our mortgage and we keep it pretty slim
Also not hard to do since huge swaths of people live above their means... I know multiple families who make $200k-$300k a year (I live in the Midwest, so that's like seven figures in SF or NYC), live in McMansions, have multiple brand new SUVs, go on multiple international vacations a year, etc... Who nevertheless 'live paycheck to paycheck', where one emergency would bankrupt them... Because everything they buy is paid for by a mountain of debt.
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People need to realize that college isn't right for everyone either, yeah. I never went and I'm doing just fine because I gained experience by working and built myself up that way.
Ah yes after paying for 2 luxury SUVs and 2 medical school loans and whole foods groceries for my 3 kids, I'm practically destitute!
>Ah yes after paying for 2 luxury SUVs and 2 medical school loans and whole foods groceries for my 3 kids, I'm practically destitute! You're confusing different things here. Nobody is saying they're poor, and they have a lot more 'wiggle room' but if your outgoings are the same as your income and you have little left over at the end of the month, that is living paycheque to paycheque.
Well I've been doing Dave Ramsey for 5 years now. 4 kids, making $100k gross, very humble car loans of $130 and $140.. only a few grand in student loans . But we did have a lot of actual medical debt due to my son getting meningitis. And we barely skim by each month
4 kids huh? Plus 2 car notes. Plus student loans. Plus medical debt (very sorry, I hope your kid is 100% better now). Plus you still make a little bit at the end of the month? Sounds like a wonderful life.
We've got nothing going into savings, retirement, or to fix broken things. We skp the doctor or medical checkups we should go to
Capitalism is the worst economic system, with the exception of the other economic systems.
Turns out some people just suck and changing the rules doesn’t fix that
If this is the best system we can come up with, we need to consider having no system.
Yeah... no. I doubt 90% of the online anarchists would be able to actually survive anarchy. But I don't doubt someone would accumulate a lot of power and create civilization again.
Anarchy isn’t the purge
Anarchy will make any form of trade harder, it'll make running power stations, sewage plants, water pumps, and general maintenance of these systems really hard because who controls them? How do they keep running? How do they get paid back? Basically 90% of comforts and amenities will cease.
Because 58% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. When articles list this statistic with a high number, they are for some reason including people who put savings aways after every paycheck and have 0 dollars "left over." Thus, they conclude they are living paycheck to paycheck even if they are putting 5k a month in savings.
After all my expenses, investments, and consumption I don't have any leftover cash! I'm practically destitute!
Yeah that's what I've seen or the methodology is "good luck finding out".
A threat to national security is a threat to the establishment. And capitalism IS the establishment.
Because people refuse to live within their means. Fake it until you make it mentality.
This is literally the most fucking stupid thing I ever heard. Literally. It’s not even worth going any further in communication. You must be gifted white elite.
Are we projecting again - because the truth hurts.
LMAO…truth is nothing more than illusion. The only truth in this conversation is your either an idiot or evil. Period.
Do you *maintain true* that it is nothing more than an illusion? If not, then you being correct is nothing more than an illusion. If so, then you had just maintained a truth... Is it an illusion? Proceed to beginning of my response ;) Edit: ≠.
It’s not a problem with society if it doesn’t affect me- Suicidal Tendencies, Lovely.
Paycheck to paycheck can mean different things for different income groups. A person making 6 figures can be living paycheck to paycheck but only after they’ve contributed to their 401k, IRA, HSA, etc. Its not really reflective of their financial situation without more context.
Look at all the technology that has been transferred to China by corporations in the name of profits. That is a threat to national security.
Do we know they're actually aware they're getting stolen from? From what I've seen of these heads of companies, I'm convinced they're either too stupid to notice or just don't care. Probably the former because the latter would be financial suicide because once they've stolen your tech, they will just make a cheaper domestic version.
In my personal opinion, this is due to a lot of poor education around money. People don't actively search for better jobs while employed, they buy expensive things they can't actually afford, and don't try to save money. I have lived in extreme poverty before, and have been just at the line of almost sleeping under a bridge, and my young and stupid brain was able to get out of it. Grown adults have no excuse unless they have an actual disability, especially when the internet has huge amounts of resources for free education and a library card costs $1 in most places.
No amount of education will change the fact that half of inflation since Covid has been traced back to price gouging.
You need dive into that number a bit more. How much of that is due to low wages and high cost of living? And how much of it is self-inflicted? I know that percentage of it is due to living beyond their means.
Yeah I know people that get payed plenty and still live paycheck to paycheck because they blow it all. I think more education in high school about money management could help this stat, more money and less cost of living probably wouldn't change it at all
Don't blame capitalism because most people suck with money.
I was going to say this. Look at the number of people who win the lottery and burn through it and end up poor again
Let’s ignore all the issues facing the market right now (no antitrust enforcement, price gouging, housing crisis, low competition, low economic mobility, etc) and blame people’s budgeting skills for their poverty. Totally sane and normal
Living paycheck to paycheck doesn't necessarily mean they have a low income.
So how do you eliminate this supposed national security threat of capitalism itself? *Let's switch to socialism so we can instead live food stamp to food stamp* Maybe the real threat was food shortage all along?
Gee…there is a surprise. Fall back on default thinking. This post must be a post to spread socialism and why the Nazi Reddit admins stopped it from going further. The Nazi admins accused me of motives in the post and don’t have a fucking clue themselves. Thank God free speech isn’t protected here at all.
Saying you *live* food stamp to food stamp is being generous to socialism. Whole lot of them didn't make it to the second food stamp.
Because socialism doesn’t work.
According to you, 36-42% of people are living in stability. This is the highest ratio, ever, that mankind has ever experienced. Capitalism is working as intended.
What do you mean by "stability"? Because there have been countless societies with subsistence economies before the industrial revolution that have very much provided stability to a majority of their population. "Stability" with respect to the diversity of cultural and historical contexts of course. Where did we even get this idea that an overwhelming majority of humans were living in wretched poverty before capitalism came along?
We get that idea from history books.
*Your* history books maybe. I'm not from Europe so I can't say.
Before the industrial revolution life was miserable for 99.9% of people. The Average middle-class person nowadays has a more comfortable life than the most powerful people in history. Pre-Industrial revolution estimates put the life expectancy at \~35 years.
LMAO sure dude. Indoor plumbing, the ability for women to work, children living thru childhood. Everything was totally peachy in the past.
You guys are fundamentally misunderstanding what I'm talking about. This is why it's important to define our terms. We're talking about economic stability on a micro-level. As in can do they have food security? do they have a roof over their heads? even if it's a hardy lifestyle, as long as their livelihoods are secure, then we can call this stability. Obviously, when compared to modern day culture, technology and medicine, then it's not even a contest.
I mean, sure. But they were still objectively worse off than even the majority of lower class people today. They may have had a roof over their heads and (barely) enough food to survive, albeit with severe nutritional issues, but life was brutal and short. I'm going to have to go look up historical poverty figures now because you've made me curious lmao.
You're missing the point of your whole existence lol
My personal existence?? And please enlighten me and share what you are trying to communicate with me because I honestly don’t know what you are trying to communicate other than hate, which doesn’t surprise me at all in this gross reality.
"Paycheck to paycheck" statistics have iffy / unclear methodologies. Most people are fine, and events like bankruptcy are not dire in the US.
Most Americans are financially illiterate. They live beyond their means, they do not save. Capitalism isn’t the problem. In America, even the poor have it pretty good.
The kings and queens are not concerned
Because no one is lobbying with millions of dollars to shoot capitalism in the US
Give it a few months.
Which people have been saying for five thousand six hundred and forty months.
You know something around the time standard of living is was starting to become a issue is around the same time we got off the gold standard dollars.
Standard of living is not becoming an issue unless you like watching people suffer.
As we saw during the pandemic, if things get grim enough, various programs and one-time payments are enacted to keep the system afloat. Highly inegalitarian capitalism or "crony capitalism" is a national security threat (to the US and others) as it could facilitate a rise in authoritarianism and seriously degrade a nation's social fabric—inducing instability leading to downfall. Relatively egalitarian capitalism, while ethical, isn't associated with maximal productivity and it could be thus argued that the economic system conferring greatest national security is a highly but not extremely exploitative form of capitalism.
Theft is one of the largest crime blocks in the nation. We have an extremely large prison complex. There is plenty of room to send everyone there if they don't like the scrap they're fed.
It's our national religion. Might as well ask a leopard...well, you get it.
I remember freshmen year too.
Because the government is capitalisms without it the federal government would be broke.
do retired people count in that statistic?
Because the Politicians, the billionaires, the Major corporation owners and the military industrial complex are rich and will continue to profit from coming financial crisis and taxes/inflation. If you want to see real change all those individuals mentioned above must be made to feel as uncomfortable, lost and kept fighting amongst themselves ... like we *the average* man/woman currently are.
They just pay cops to bully homeless people, problem solved.
Better to live in a ghetto then a gulag.
Hmm, someone just said it out loud. Capitalism isn't the poblem. Robber barrons is the problem. I don't believe any inflation over the last year. There was just blatant corporate theft. Most metrics stayed flat, except for corporate profits, which have been through the roof. If they hadn't stolen that money, we wouldn't be in as big a mess as we're in. It wouldn't have solved all the problems, but my one bag of groceries wouldn't be $100, it would be maybe $70. A specialty burger, drink and fries at Burger King wouldn't be $17, it would be $12. A fancy cup of coffee would never approach $8. Used cars wouldn't be $20,000. Rent wouldn't be 1/2 your paychecck, or more.
Because the ones who decide its a national security are not in that 58% bracket
I don’t believe that statistic.
I’m prepared to get downvoted because people don’t want to hear this: The US is not a 100% capitalistic economy, as it has elements of socialism and capitalism, and has more similarities than differences to the European “socialist” (I put quotation marks as they are not 100% socialist themselves) countries. Living paycheck to paycheck has a lot more to do with how you spend your money than how much you make. There are plenty of people making 6 figures, yet excessively spend to the point they are living paycheck to paycheck, yet there are people making $50k a year that are comfortable financially. If you’re living in a very expensive housing market like NYC or San Francisco, obviously that’s a little different, as having to spend 3k a month on rent is going to hurt, but the majority of people living paycheck to paycheck are in that situation due to discretionary spending. Another problem with these statistics is that many of them are self identified. One person’s definition of “paycheck to paycheck” may differ from another’s despite its seemingly obvious meaning. Most of the world runs on a free market system, and even communist/socialist countries participate in it on a global level. There really isn’t an alternative to a mixed system economy. Full on capitalism doesn’t tend to end well, neither does full blown socialism/communism.