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Dream On: The American Dream now costs $4.4 million over a lifetime
(www.usatoday.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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I agree. All I'm saying is if 50% of salaries are above that 60k mark and as a dual income you are probably getting close to hitting the dream at that level. That's not as dire as thinking only 10% of the population can afford it. 4.4 million is a scary number, but no one is expected to have that as liquidity or even net worth. That value of spend is actually more attainable over time than it looks when seeing it as raw sticker price.
And again, "American Dream" means family with 2 kids. Not everyone wants that or needs that. If you are a single person and happy living with just a partner or without kids (DINK lifestyle is fun), this is not saying you need 4.4 million to have a decent living standard.
i'm not sure i'm following your points. My point was to argue that even the long-term prospect of grossing 63k per year by any metric is beyond the reach of a lot of specialized workers. Add to that, the fact that that's an evenly divided number. It would be more realistic that the income would need to be even higher closer to retirement if the initial young professional started out grossing less than 63k per year.
I don't think anybody should be arguing that it should be acceptable to pay people less simply because they don't want to have kids. Family planning decisions are often guided by household economics.
I'm not making an argument about the current state of wages. I'm just saying 4.4 million isn't as unattainable as people think. And household income gets murky when you include single income households. And the definition for this article of American Dream includes 2 kids, so if kids aren't in your planning the 4.4 million mark is probably 1 million less if you still want to attain those other things. I think some folks see that number and think "OMG I'm never going to have that much money." You are right, you will never have that much money all at once, but over a lifetime you may have earned and/or spent that much without ever leaving the sort of "middle" income range in America.