"Most Americans Who Earn $90,000 Don't Consider Themselves Rich" - MarketWatch Study, Filed Under "No Fucking Shit"
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I feel like something was lost here in the chain of communication between researchers and writers and editors. Like my best guess is somebody dropped a zero along the way, and everyone was really talking about $900,000. That’s a pretty good debate that you actually hear all the time – is a million dollars rich in 2019?
Who are America’s rich?
“Not me” is the answer from a surprising segment of the population, including many people making six figures and above. Some 87 percent of people who make at least $90,000 a year said they weren’t rich or poor, according to new findings from polling company YouGov. (The survey asked 1,163 Americans how much money someone needs to be rich or poor.) [NY POST]
Oh no, we’re going with $90K. Nine zero.
When it comes to who’s poor, most respondents (68 percent) thought people who make the equivalent of the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour, or $15,080 a year) fell into that category. “The point at which most Americans think you’ve escaped being poor comes at around $30,000,” wrote YouGov’s lead data journalist Matthew Smith.
People start to be considered “rich” when they make at least $90,000, the survey found. But only 44 percent of poll participants said someone making $90,000 a year was rich. Meanwhile, hitting those six figures seems to make all the difference: 56 percent of those surveyed said they considered people who earn $100,000 a year rich.
Let’s be totally clear: $90,000 a year is not poor. I mean in NYC that’ll get you like a shoebox with no running water, but still, at least you have a roof over your head and possibly a hot plate to make Ramen noodles and toast, and depending on your skill at Instagram, the ability to convince your loser friends from high school that you are living large in “the greatest city in the world.”
I just wasn’t aware that you are either “poor” or “rich.” Like it’s possible to just be neither? Just another person going to your job every day, living relatively comfortably, having fun and eating well but still desperately needing that next paycheck to come in to keep your lifestyle going. That’s how I’d say around 99% of the people I know live, a stat I think applies to pretty much everyone. I mean I’m the richest person I know and I just overdrew my checking account buying a 25 pound gravity blanket on Amazon.
That made me feel pretty poor.
Instead you got Economic Policy Institute think tanks spending their time and energy on digging into if people who make $90K a year are rich or not.
Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, said the findings relate to the growing gap between the rich and poor and middle class and everyone else. The average annual income of America’s top 1 percent was $1.8 million in 2015, Bivens noted. That was a far cry from the $100,000 a year deemed rich in the survey he said.
Fellas, could have just sent a tweet out or something then checked the responses. Takes like 2 seconds. When you get 2.4K responses that all say “HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH lmao” then you’ve got your answer right there.
Researchers + survey takers = still the biggest mailtime racket going.