Lack of comprehension leads to misdirection and confusion. Let's look at the numbers, shall we?
Our society had 111 million males over age fifteen in the year 2004. 57 million, or slightly more than half, earned under $27,000 in that year.
81 million or roughly three-quarters of our 111 million total headcount earned less that $45,000 in 2004.
Let see how the girls did.
Not so good it seems. While the ladies outnumber the guys by seven million with a total of 118 million, sixty million or slightly more than half earned less than $15,000 in 2004.
92 million or roughly three-quarters of the female members of our society earn less than $32,000 a year.
We can't really add A to B and come up with a mean because these figures are not household numbers. What they represent is the income of the `average' worker.
Half of the men make less than $30k a year and half of the women make less than half of that. This is a snapshot of our society, a yardstick you can use to measure where you stand.
This is a far more accurate picture of our society than stating (as this table does) that the `mean' income for all men is $39k. A figure arrived at by `averaging' the total reported income by all of the males in society--14 million of which had income under $2,500 in 2004.
http://www.bankrate.com/....
The next thing to determine folks is what it means when ½ of all men earn less than $27K and ¾ of all men earn less than $45K.
For the purpose of this part of our research I used my local city (Boston) as a base and compared it's cost of living to other parts of the country to get a `feel' for what the average cost of living is.
Cities compared are Los Angles, Columbus, Houston, and Orlando with Boston representing the Northeast.
If you like you could click on the link and use five podunk towns which would doubtlessly provide you with lower figures. I felt it was better to use cities whose names were popular enough that folks would know which state they were in without having to look them up for extracting our `mean' figures.
Home prices are up there regardless of location. The price of an `average' home is around $386,000 with an average monthly payment of $1,688 per month EXCLUDING property taxes. (LA is high with a median price of $726,000 and Houston was low with a median in the $193,000 range.)
A third of us don't own they rent. We'll have to assume the given figures are for, say a two-bedroom apartment although the figure shown for my local area would cover a one-bedroom roach infested pit. The average is; $1,022 per month while the high is still LA ($1,500 p/mo.) as the low moves over to Orlando ($710 p/mo.)
Next datum to examine is energy. Houses or apartments without electricity get condemned...and you gotta pay for heat and lights.
Median total energy cost is $225 per mo. This could vary widely depending on where you live what kind of heat your place uses. This time my neck of the woods was high while Orlando held onto low.
$27K translates to only $2,250 per mo. gross. It's a pretty safe bet that the vast majority of our males that earn this much or less falls solidly into the renter crowd. This is bad but at least ¾ of the ladies are in the same leaky canoe.
Taxes on that $2,250 per month run around 25%, more where I live but less elsewhere. Since you can only spend what you take home our median guys only have $1,688 running through their checking accounts each month.
Our renters are cracking $1,245 per month, roughly half of their gross pay, without a phone, cable, car payment, insurance for the car, a morsel of food on the table or a drop of gas to get the car to work. Needless to say, they are also naked and likely to smell pretty bad.
Where I live $25 a month gets you measured phone service that costs a fortune per minute for the area beyond where your voice can no longer be heard when you shout out your doorway. Unlimited local dialing, essential for Internet access, is twice that.
Phone network access didn't vary that widely. Boston was the most expensive while Houston was the cheapest but the figures were less than ten dollars apart.
The renters now have a phone. This brings their monthly nut up to $1,270 per month. Can't keep a job if you can't get there regularly and on time. Gotta put some wheels under these people's butts!
While you can lease a new econo-box for around $150 per month most of us don't live close enough to the job for this to be practical. This option also carries the onus of insuring and paying the excise tax on a new vehicle.
For about the same amount as the down payment on the lease you can buy somebody else's headache...and sink that much again into making it `roadworthy'.
Fast Louie, the used car salesman wants a minimum of ten grand for anything with under a hundred thousand miles on it and semi decent tires. This option comes with roughly the same $150 a month payments but reduced taxes and insurance because the car isn't `new'.
Depending on your driving record you can expect to pay around this again for insurance. This puts our monthly transportation nut at around $300 a month without putting a drop of gas in the tank.
What city guys save by using public transportation they spend in rent. Living `in town' is much more expensive than living in the burbs.
The roughly 4 million guys that actually make around $27K are now facing a monthly nut of $1,570 per month...there are 51 million guys that earn LESS than $27K and 55 million that earn more than this `median' figure.
For the 75% of our ladies earning less than $32K, things are looking pretty bleak...and nobody has cable TV, food in their fridge nor a stitch of clothes yet!
At this level let's assume these are the must haves. Our median guys only have $118 per month or $26 a week to put gas in their car, food on their table and clothes on his back.
With this said, a retirement savings account, weekly health insurance premiums...that have office visit co-pays as large or larger than their weekly food/gas budget and night school or continuing Ed of any kind are looking like non-starters.
Remember this is the place where half of the men and almost three-quarters of the women in this country are coming from.
While it's significantly cheaper to live in the central sections of the nation it's also proportionately more difficult to land a job that pays this magical `median' wage.
Finding a job that pays better is easier on either coast but this carries a significantly higher cost of living...so the `mean' here isn't too far off the mark.
When men and women team up the income picture improves but so do the expenses. Larger living quarters, more mouths to feed and paying someone to watch the kids while you're both trying to crack your never ending nut.
Let's face it boys and girls, if your combined yearly income doesn't crack six figures you're living hand to mouth.
If we use the old maxim that water seeks it's own level and the mean income for men stands at $27K and the female mean at $15K, we have a potential $42K in annual income for more than half of our population.
http://pubdb3.census.gov/...
Here's a link for the tables used in compiling this report. As you will see, the data is broken down as presented here. I suspect this is because the number of people that earn less than $30k combined is just a bit frightening.
We have a good idea of what the bottom looks like. Let's take a peak at what the rarified air is about.
A 111 million men in this country and only 7,452,000 crack the six-figure ceiling. That said, there are only 3,356,000 guys sitting in the $80K to $100K window.
Of the seven and a half million over the magical one hundred thousand dollar a year club, a full four and a half million of them are the just over this range with a mean income of $115,000.
The 4.5 million earning over $100K represents an interesting `bubble'. At this point the annual wage measurement jumps from its $2,500 increments to $50,000 increments which stop altogether at the $250K mark.
Accident, coincidence or is this the `key' the economy is currently geared to? Understand that prices are `fixed' around a key income level, if you aren't making that kind of money, tough.
Remember the ¾ mark for men is $45k...the gap between $45k and $80k has 17 million men or roughly fifteen percent...
The over $250K in annual earnings club has less than a million members or less than a single percent.
Less than ten percent of the guys are members of the over eighty thousand a year group...less than 3 percent of the girls can make the same claim.
Less than one in a hundred men make over $250k, contrast this with five out of ten earning under $27k while seven out of ten makes less than $45k.
This is our economy good citizen a place where eight out of ten of us live hand to mouth. A place where encountering one bump in the road can quickly lead to economic tragedy.
How do we `fix' this situation? We can't, not using our current socio-economic system, a system that relies on constant growth.
When you make a big-ticket purchase you are counting on a steady increase in wages to, over time, reduce the impact of this investment on your economic well-being.
If wage increases are slow in coming you will suffer longer, if you encounter a `reversal' where you no longer make as much as you once did, you'll lose everything.
Luck has nothing to do with it. This is the system, both hard and cold. You pay to play so a few can be rich.
I guess the single most important thing to keep in mind is the fact the seven out of ten that earn less than $50k are the ones that bring us the world as we know it.
The rest could die and they wouldn't be missed, life wouldn't skip a beat.
Our economic system is upside down and there's no reason for it. Even if you `believe' the people that earn huge incomes are worth every cent, that doesn't make it true.
It is here good citizen that we encounter the brick wall. Those who believe things are as they should be have condemned the rest, those who do society's heavy lifting, to a life of misery and suffering.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner