I just moved from $35k to $45k and it feels fucking decadent. People making $120k are cartoonishly wealthy in my head. Eating out every meal. Hiring servants and shit. Taking vacations every year and flying everywhere. If I know anyone who makes 6 figures, they’ve had the sense to not tell me
it is more regional than you’d think because of housing and other similar expenses. I lived in a city where the median income for a person (not household) was 100k. I got forced out, and so is anyone else not in tech. I don’t want to downplay the differences here because those people are absolutely secure in a way that I am not but when a region hits that point a lot of that money is just gone to stuff that is good to have but doesn’t feel extravagant as far as luxury (i.e. housing, car related taxes and licensing, retirement funds, etc.).
The area is a great example of how the Democratic Party has no answers that materially help people without money and their policies just lead to ever increasing expenses and taxes.
I’ve been living off ~17k/yr max and just getting the enhanced unemployment was a life changing amount and it only worked out to be what a $15 wage would get me. I literally do not understand what people do with their fucking money.
I used to be friends with a dude who was born in intense poverty, shot up into the 1% as the CEO of a medical tech company in the 90’s, lost everything in 2008, and died on welfare eating in soup kitchens.
He once told me that when he was rolling in it he was part of a bougie cigar club even though he wasn’t super into cigars. I asked him why and he said, “I dunno, man. It’s what you do. When you’ve got money, you spend it.”
