$15 for a 40 hour work week no weeks off is 31200 per year. Minus taxes since it’s in a low gc bracket it is about 23-24000 net income per year. Housing would be at most for someone working minimum wage 1000 if it’s more they need to gtfo to a new place. That means they have about 11500 leftover. For 1 person food if you are buying in bulk and the right things would be 1250 I did the calculations, assuming sauces and seasoning is negligible. So that’s about 10,000 leftover, and utilities will take out about half of that at most. A cell phone+ plan would be about 1500 per year if you have to buy a new one. So it is enough money to live albeit not comfortably. Now this is just for a minimum wage worker, which the majority of American workers are not. Now College is definitely not 50,000-100,000 a year or else your household income has to be above 100,000 per year. Public universities are about 26,000 per year for the majority of people, and that is before deducting grants scholarships and work study. I’m fact the numbers would usually be closer to 8,000–15,000 per year if you take advantages of the previously mentioned programs. And if you do need to take out loans, it will usually not be a private loan. Government loans have lower interest rates depending on the plan you pick, some will be available for forgiveness if you go into education/nursing. And if the average cost of property ks too high, move away. Everyone knows California is expensive so that’s why they are loving to cheaper places like Texas but those places are also getting expensive because of all the immigration from other states. What is very inexpensive still is the Midwest. And no the United States is not becoming a third world country you cannot trust everything you see online especially on the internet. We are blessed to live in a country where being brown here automatically puts you in the 95 percentile for global wealth. Those European countries also have the blessing of the United States protecting them militarily thus they don’t have to spend as much money on military. And if you move there, you WILL be making much less money than you make here and less take in because of the much higher taxes. (This is the comment from the guy I’m arguing with).