We don't have public transit, so we need cars... It's part of what makes us poor...

Welcome to our country that has utterly failed to invest in public transit outside of a few major cities, such that we must be dependent on cars. Love it here.

You are correct. We are forced to have them though. There's no mass transit and everything is two hours away on foot. Most new cars now are $40k unless you get like a base Sentra but the median income is only $60k.

Less than 30 minute commute, if it's less than that the price of housing goes up ~20% for each 5 minutes you would save.

we also do gross before taxes in Germany. 57k before taxes is still a solid salary in many areas of Germany. Some MINT and Financelords might want to disagree with that, but it is in the top 15% of salaries. At that Level you pay about 5,1k taxes, 5,3k pension and 4,6k for health, 1,3k eldercare and 750 unemployment insurance. (all mandatory)

That seems quite a lot at first, but for instance unemployment pays 60% of your net income up to a year qfter loosing a job, health insurance also covers all children until they are 25 or earn more than 500€/month.

Really? I had no idea. It turns out I make a lot more money than I thought.

we don't understand the brain very well, psych is somewhere between leeches and luminiferous aether.

if it was more well understood then people won't need to go to 15 fucking different therapists before finding one that helps (if you're lucky), antidepressants would do better than batters do at baseball, you wouldn't need to try dozens of different medications to find one that works (if you're lucky), and they'd take effect more quickly.

You could have even gotten a BS in psychology