After reading several threads on this subreddit, I decided to do some research by myself, as I couldn't believe the amount of people who seem to be struggling in the 25-70 age range (the active age range post undergraduation and graduation (BA, MA) if you would) The average salary is around 50k in the US, or so they say…so, woooow, it's really really nice for an average especially compared to our salaries in Europe isn't it?…except it's not, it's a meaningless number skewed by the ridiculous wealth of the top 1%, the top 0,1 and the top 0,01% of the country (and we could go even further). The ultra rich in America are way richer than the ultra rich in most other places in the world…or are just way more common on average.
Turns out that the median salary is around 34 000 dollars in the US, roughly 30 000 euros. Which ISN'T that far from Western European median salaries (roughly 25 000 euros), except Americans are on their own whenever something bad happens to them, big time: diseases, accidents, loans, student loans, medical debt, gunshots, absolutely insane housing prices yada yada…
Take a look at this video when you can (https://youtu.be/6dLo8ES4Bac), the TLDR is that in the silicon valley, while tech workers earn on average 113 000 dollars, blue collar workers earn on average… 19 000 dollars. So they end up sleeping in their cars or their vans because hey, that's the only solution for these people.
So yeah, even if I regularly see some people here talking about 100-150k salaries (which isn't that uncommon I suppose), Americans are not that rich for most of them. Hell, EVEN if you earn something like 60-80k dollars, which would be a big salary in Europe, I'm pretty sure that you're not living like a king in most places because everything is so damn expensive and you're really on your own.
I wanted to write this thread because I know that a lot of people (me included) have/had a lot of misconceptions when it comes to wealth in America. Seems to me like it's nothing more than a “get rich or die trying” countrywide scenario, and that only a few can get there..
TLDR: this subreddit has been, funnily enough, better than any documentary when it comes to understanding the myth of overall wealth for Americans, and I guess that it's simply because of all your testimonies. If 20% of Americans seem to be living very decently, the rest seems to be going through much harder times in general.
I didn't even take the time to talk about the hours you put in / the ridiculously low number of vacations you get / the toxic work culture, because you guys mention it sufficiently on a daily basis (lol) but maybe I should have, as quality of life is of the utmost importance (but honestly, we also have some pretty toxic workplaces in Europe, depending on the situation).