You’re getting dangerously close to sounding like you don’t support the troops!

Well we certainly shouldn't have a universal healthcare system that would lift people out of medical debt and not tie them to low-paying, menial jobs just to get health insurance.

Because something about invisible hands.

Look, the oil rich countries arent going to discover freedom by themselves

I give 1% to my union. My pay is ~10% better than it would be if we didn't have it, and management gets in huge trouble if they mistreat workers. And by trouble, I mean they fired a manager when they scheduled a worker over their lunch break.

So you still live paycheck to paycheck, except now you have to trust someone else to negotiate on your behalf instead of negotiating yourself

Wow great comment. Thanks for contributing

Terrific time for me to get divorced.

And be a single income prior to it.

Srsly. Economics Schmeconomics, whats the tattooed lady’s story?

Guns like Prison Mugatu

https://youtu.be/7xUtZzLBV5c?si=13fkF-f1zcH8HAQZ

You're spot on here. Plenty of people count maxing out their 401k and IRA as "living paycheck to paycheck", because their budgets would go upside if they missed a paycheck and did literally nothing to cover it.

Combine that with the general bias all people have to view themselves as generally normal and you get a pretty meaningless metric.

but someone who would have to sell some stocks or stop retirement contributions might also think of themselves as “paycheck to paycheck.”

Oh, like I had to do when I moved to another apartment? I had to wipe out my (tiny) Roth IRA just to pay the deposit. My wife had to wipe hers out just to pay the movers and all the other BS fees. We now have no retirement savings and haven’t since we moved six months ago. We both had to stop contributing to our IRAs in order to continue paying the bills. We’re not even paycheck to paycheck at this point, we’re at month to month.

but someone who would have to sell some stocks or stop retirement contributions might also think of themselves as “paycheck to paycheck.”

And some people think the Earth is flat...

But neither population is statistically significant

Many many people are unemployed and/or homeless, or trapped in debt, which skews the numbers.

How ignorant can a comment even be? I mean just the idea that the current economy and state of wealth inequality is Joe Biden's fault is astounding. The previous administration gave biggest handout to the 1% of any government in the history of mankind.

But that's just the history of America for the last 40 years I guess. Republicans administrations gutting things, giving massive handouts to the rich, destroying social safety nets, allowing corruption and fraud to go rampant, etc... then when a democratic administration tries to clean it up just a little bit, to stabilize things, all the mouth breathers suddenly forget everything happened beforehand.

You keep saying this. Got a source?

Gas near me in my urban area is at $2.90 and milk is $3.15 a gallon. Prices are still way up on most essential goods, but they've stopped climbing. Wages sure as hell haven't kept up either. And rent went up higher last year than ever.

Not this urban area.

lol, urban prices have not gone down.

I don't know about that. I live in a small city, but it's a depressed community. Gas here has been under $3.00. This weekend, we went to visit my mother in a slightly larger city, but it is a desirable city, and gas was over $3.10.

So it's not really all about urban and rural. There are urban areas people want to live in and there are urban areas that people are less interested in living in and the latter are also cheaper despite being urban.

I just looked at a good example. Gary, IN and Chicago, IL.

According to Gas Buddy, gas in Gary is around $2.75/gallon. Gas in Chicago is around $3.10/gallon. Gary definitely counts as urban.

Meanwhile, nearby but rural Winamac, IN (I picked it at random)- $3.10. Same as Chicago.